I have finally published a site I had been working on for quite some time and I would like to share with you a bit on how this site was create utilizing WordPress. Kelly, an extremely talented photographer came to me hoping to create a simple yet effective portfolio that would showcase her work for potential customers and friends alike. Her design style was very much in tune with my own, making this project a pleasure to work on.
In our initial meeting we discussed some of the things she was hoping to do. Obviously the focus here was to be on her photography and she was excited at the prospect of creating simple flash galleries or ‘portfolios’ based on categorized selections of her work. Most the necessary information she hoped to convey was to be kept short and sweet, but she did want the ability to edit her content as she deemed necessary. Kelly had been using a combination of Typepad and Flickr to share her work up to this point so I had a feeling that not only did she enjoy sharing her photography but she was also appreciated the ability to share her artistic thoughts through writing. So I suggested to her that we might think about incorporating a weblog with her site. Not only would this allow her to share her thoughts and take a closer look as some of her “shoots”, it would also provide her the ability to add some searchable content to a website that was otherwise lite on the content side. Although Kelly’s work speaks for itself we did want to add some focus to search engine optimization in order to harness the power of her new website as a marketing tool.
The final diagnosis of her project led me to suggest a Portfolio site using my old friend WordPress. WordPress would not only give Kelly the ability to incorporate a weblog but it would also allow all the necessary editing capability that she desired. By creating a series of custom ’static’ pages and incorporating a customized weblog, Kelly now has the ability to edit information, share her thoughts and create flash galleries of her work. The end result is a website design that truly captures the personality of Kelly as a photographer and as an artist.
I was having so much fun creating the website and designing a new logo for Kelly that I couldn’t help but take it one step further and offer a business card design to boot. Thanks to Kelly Steinberg, this project has been a truly great way to kick off my career as freelancer!
I will be adding this site and the business card to my portfolio soon, but for now go check out Kelly’s site at www.kellysteinbergphotography.com.
Tracey Grady Says:
July 8th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
It’s a lovely site, Jeremy, well done. I’ve created a very similar Flash gallery for a client in the past. I’m interested to know if your client’s Flash gallery can be updated via a Wordpress plugin or whether each piece has to be inserted via Flash and HTML (the normal way). I’m not aware of any plugin that allows a client to update a Flash gallery in a client-friendly way, and I’d be very interested to know if one exists. Thanks.
Jeremy Says:
July 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Hi Tracey, thanks for the kind words. Actually there is a plugin that allows you to do most of the updating via the WordPress admin panel. It is acutally a combination of two tools that make up the WP-Simple-Viewer gallery. Now I don’t necessarily recommend it for all as it does require some basic image manipulation as well as a bit of FTP knowledge, but Kelly being a photographer it should prove to be quite easy for her to use. Shoot me an email and I can give you some details on how I used the plugin to fit this particular site. I happen to have included a short tutorial with her site, something I try to do when creating more of a content management system for a client. I would be happy to share. Beautiful portfolio by the way! Thanks again.
Sean Says:
September 1st, 2008 at 1:35 am
Thanks for posting this. You got me thinking about combining the SimpleViewer Lightroom plugin (http://theturninggate.net/lightroom/ttg-simpleviewer-gallery) with the WP-SimpleViewer plugin. My wife is starting up her own photography business, and she is now able to build her gallery and upload her pictures directly to her Wordpress site from Lightroom.
Jeremy Says:
September 1st, 2008 at 2:14 am
Hey Sean, glad I could help to spark the creativity. Kelly actually uses Lightroom as it seems to be the tool of choice for professionals. I would love to check out the site if you want to drop a link. Thanks again for dropping by to check out the site, more interesting WordPress insite is on the way soon.