The last couple of years has brought about a major increase in the use of the Jquery library. Jquery is a great tool for web developers as it allows us to make websites far more interactive. I have utilized many Jquery techniques throughout the redesign including a carousel on the homepage and throughout the portfolio pages, rotating functions for the testimonials and lightbox features throughout the entire site.

I chose to take the design quite a bit brighter with a yellow gradient background. Maybe it represents how much I’ve missed the sun this year as it has been a gloomy one here in Oregon. I made up for that in the colorful, bright colors throughout the website. What can I say, the child in me LOVES color.

The redesign also includes the use of some CSS3 property’s including border-radius and box-shadows. Most browsers have some level of support for CSS3 and it is rumored that Internet Explorer 9, being released next year, will finally begin to support it as well. That is a very exciting thing in the world of a web designer as it translates to more customization capabilities & faster page load times as we won’t be forced to rely as heavily on images.

So without further ado here is a side by side of old & new.

Mobify works amazingly well with WordPress and there is even a plug in to assist in the setup of your custom mobile web address.  There are a couple of other features that makes Mobify even more cool.  At the bottom of each mobile page they have added a link to view the original page keeping the user in control of their viewing preferences.  Mobify also has the ability to run analytics using Google Analytics or AdMob Analytics.  I haven’t yet been successful at setting up my Google Analytics on it because it doesn’t seems to allow enough digits to work with my web property id.  I do think they may be ironing out some kinks as any application takes time to do so.  All in all this is an easy, quick and user friendly way of setting up a mobile web site.  I love it!

You can check out WaGooh’s mobile view here http://m.wagooh.net.

Before

After

One of the other things I realized as I was re-designing was that my logo could use an update too.  I felt that I needed more color in both the website and the logo.  I am definitely a color lover and felt my previous website didn’t reflect that.  I began my redesign with a logo makeover.  So the logo changed from this…

To this!

The inspiration for the re-design came when I was playing in photoshop and created this little doo-dad which kind of reminded me of a kaleidoscope.  It’s amazing how a little play time can often be the spark you need to begin.

There are a few little touches that really made me feel that the website was far superior to the old one.  I really wanted to make sure I added lots of flair to each little thing.  I really didn’t care for the fact that I never really styled the comment part of the old blog so I dived in head first and created a much more fun post comments area.  It really helps to differentiate between each comment too.  It is complete to show your own personal gravatar user image if you have an account!  If you don’t…you should set one up.  It’s a great fun and free way to distinguish yourself from the rest.

Twitter is such a fun and popular way to communicate these days and I thought incorporating that into the site would be cool.  So I created myself a little bird complete with his own bubble to display my most current tweets!

All in all I really like how it came out.  It is leaps and bounds better than the previous website.  Most of all I think I am well reflected in it!

I just finished creating a blog for Cast One On… a local yarn shoppe for whom I also created an e-commerce site. My client is very sweet and she really loves leopard print so I did my best to incorporate it into the blog theme. I think it’s very cute! It is going to be a fun place for her and her knit club members to post there work. It should be an interesting blog to keep an eye on! If you are interested in taking a look yourself it can be found at:

http://blog.castoneon.com

http://castoneon.com/

http://ovenclaw.com

I really like the design of this site. It’s simple yet gets the point across. I love the oven door too!