I’m very proud to announce the launch of My Beloved’s new WordPress website, DarlaCalvert.com. Darla did all the design and I brought it to life for her using the Thesis framework.

Darla has worked with me since my very first interactive kiosk back in 1988, and before she ever got into computers. She sketched out the characters on a piece of paper and I scanned them in using one of the very first primitive scanners for the Macintosh called Thunderscan.

Darla has designed and produced artwork for many of the projects we’ve done over the years. She’s particularly Gifted at photo restoration and digital painting and she did a great job for us on several projects we produced for the Old Red Museum of Dallas County History and Culture.

So please be sure to check out her new site, and if you need photo restoration and/or digital painting rest assured she will do an outstanding job for you.

Recently Pam Bartha contacted me through my contact page, asking for help getting her site’s domain changed to SimpleStepsToWellness.com, and moving her existing content over to WordPress. She had purchased the excellent Thesis framework but didn’t really know how to use it. I was happy to lend a hand.

As we talked together about what she had in mind, and the various options for customizing the look and feel of the site, the ever-important issue of expense emerged as a top priority. Pam is just getting her business up and running and is wisely watching the bottom line.

Usually people come to us wanting a full-blown custom site design, (such as you can see here), or custom rich media content. But Pam thought it best to hold off on the custom design for a while, until her business was further along. Fair enough. Not a problem. We specialize in solutions that fit our customers.

I suggested that perhaps she consider one of the Thesis skins from ThesisThemes, for the time being, and upgrade to a fully custom site design at some point in the future. She liked the idea and chose the Easy Thesis skin. These skins represent an outstanding value and are quite well-done. This was the first time using ThesisThemes, but it won’t be the last.

I got everything setup and customized for her very quickly, including the custom forms she requested. We then spent some time setting up her new email accounts and walking her through using Windows Live Writer for creating and editing her site’s content. I personally prefer using WLW to the editor in the WordPress Dashboard.

Pam was a pleasure to work with and was very pleased with the results.

We can do the same for you. Let us know if you need help with your site. We aim to please!

This is a brand new web retrofit of the interactive building tour kiosk I originally created way back in 2001 for the Dallas Historical Society.

Amy Stewart and I came up with the interface, I did all the interactive programming and development, and Paul Everitt did the amazing 360 degree photography of all the rooms, murals, and statues. I also designed, engineered, and fabricated the kiosk cabinet, …but that’s another story.

The original app was developed in Macromedia Director and was never designed for deployment the web. So I re-wrote it from scratch in Flash, coding it all using object-oriented AS3. The app only loads up the interface initially, and each piece of content for the rooms is dynamically loaded when the user selects to explore it. The text is stored externally as well, so that it can be edited by the staff at DHS.

Check it out for yourself, here.

Here’s the latest Thesis/Wordpress site from Amy Stewart and I. It’s a fairly large site for the Winn Meat Company and contains company and product information, news, recipes, and video.

Amy did a great job on the design and site architecture and I did the build out and development.

BenefitMall asked Amy Stewart and I to design and build a nice little sliding flash menu for their homepage. So we did.

You can see it running on the BenefitMall site by clicking here.

Another beautiful Thesis/Wordpress site that Amy Stewart and I created, this one done for Caribbean Dream BVI.

What a gorgeous yacht they have. I would love to spend a week or two sailing paradise on it. Check out the site and book yourself a trip I’m sure you’ll never forget.

This is one of the most complex and beautiful Thesis/Wordpress sites that Amy Stewart and I have created to date, done for the National Piano Foundation.

This one was a real challenge to bring to life, and I greatly enjoyed it. The site is full of information about the history of the piano and resources for learning to play.

Amy Stewart and I produced this holiday animation for BenefitMall’s home page. Amy designed the layout and I brought her vision to life.

The background of this one is generated with code, rather than hand-animated.

You can see the archived version of the piece by clicking here.

Woot, indeed! FINALLY! ;o)

I’ve been wanting to get this cool new design launched since the first time Amy Stewart sent it to me. It took everything I had to squelch my galaxy-sized stubborn male ego and ask her if she would help me with the new design. We talked about some of the ideas I’d been having and when I saw what she came up with, it knocked my socks off. I’ve tweaked it just a bit, but by and large it’s pretty much what her Fireworks comp looks like.

Thank you, Amy, for such an awesome design! I couldn’t be happier with it. I finally have an easily update-able framework to work within and build upon. This site also uses the latest version of DIYThemes/Chris Pearson’s Thesis. I am completely sold on Thesis. It’s rock solid and so far I’ve found few limits.

I still don’t have all the content created or posted yet, but the framework and layout is up and running and that was my goal for this very busy weekend.  The site uses CSS3 to do the cool curved corners. Those of you with IE8 won’t see those, but will instead see sharp corners. No biggie.

Please leave me a comment letting me know what you think and if there’s anything that needs tweaking or has problems. I can’t wait to fill this site up with content! Cheers!

Music in Motion Notions is is a Thesis/Wordpress site Amy Stewart and I created to be the official blog for Mary Ann Stewart’s company, Music in Motion, which is a music education and gift company.