WordPress

So Me Artisan Wares & Jeweler’s Studio

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So Me Artisan Wares & Jeweler's Studio

I’m really excited to announce the release of this website! The client is So Me Artisan Wares and Jeweler’s Studio located in Glenshaw, PA. It’s a really fun shop that features handmade jewelry and lots of beautiful decor items and cute kids things. The owner, Amy Klein McGinley is also a jeweler and can design custom pieces! They are amazing. Keep her in mind for a special gift or even if you need a favorite piece repaired.

Amy wanted her website to reflect the welcoming and eclectic vibe in her store. We chose that white-washed wood background to give it that unique touch and then just let the photography of her store and products do all the work. I kept a very minimal, clean design to allow her products to be the focus.

Functionally, this website is no lightweight. Powered by the industry leading ecommerce platform, WooCommerce, you can shop right on the site. She can manage her inventory and even automatically notify customers when an out of stock item is available. She is also able to capture her customers’ email addresses so that she can use email marketing to keep in touch with them about events and sales at the store.

This was a really fun and challenging project, and I’m so grateful for opportunity to develop this ecommerce site for So Me! I’d love to hear some feedback on this one!

 

New Website for The EHE Foundation

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Screenshot fightehe.com

Wayout Design just completed a website for a cause very near and dear to my heart. I was diagnosed with Epitheliod Hemangioendothelioma (EHE) in 2011. Try to say that one three times fast!

It’s a very rare sarcoma, and when I was diagnosed, I could barely find anyone that had it. Then, a small Facebook group formed, and low and behold, our numbers grew.

A few very ambitious women, some patients, some parents of patients, started The EHE Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization. The goal is to raise money for research into diagnosing, treating, and maybe curing EHE. There is one doctor, a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, that is studying EHE. Our efforts have made it possible for him to have a lab assistant. How crazy is that? Some cancers literally have 1000s of people studying them. We have two. Wow.

If you have some time, check it out and let me know what you think! I’m really proud of this one for many reasons. And don’t worry about me. I’m fine at the moment! Went to Kennywood yesterday.

This is a special mobile responsive, WordPress, website built on the Rainmaker Platform, which is a new thing for me. I’ll post more about Rainmaker later on, but it’s pretty cool.

What is WordPress?

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WordPress LogoWayout Design exclusively uses WordPress to build websites. Wow, is it that good? Yes, it is! We’ve been very lucky that our recent clientele have been very trusting about our WordPress crush and have allowed us to go ahead and develop their sites in WordPress without really knowing what it is. For those of you who are a little more skeptical, this post will provide some background and definition of this powerful tool.

WordPress (WP) is a free, open source blogging tool and content management system. Ok, there are a lot of words in that sentence that you may want to understand further.

  • free – We all know what free means. In terms of WordPress, it means we don’t pay to the WordPress software.
  • open source – This means that the source code that drives the software is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.
  • blogging – Really becoming popular in the late 2000s, blogging is kind of like making an online diary or journal entry. Each entry, or post as WordPress calls them, is displayed in reverse chronological order on the screen. Blog topics are endless and range from very personal things to business information and anything and everything in between.  You are reading the Wayout Design blog right now!
  • content management system (CMS) – This is the beauty behind WordPress. Through a series of built in features, it organizes your information, photos, and videos, like a perfect little filing cabinet for all that you share. There is a place for everything and when utilized correctly, pulling up older content is possible with just a few clicks.

WordPress began in 2003 as a little bit of code intended to enhance the typography of everyday writing on the web. The people who used it were writers looking for a better way to present and organize their writing. As it’s popularity grew, the Internet community began to figure out that the CMS system driving WordPress could be leveraged as a website design platform. We could use the built-in features of WordPress to make designing web sites much easier both for the designer and client. Back in the day (pre WP), the biggest nightmare for a designer and client was a change to the navigation menu. That meant a complete rebuild of a website which was a hassle for the designer and cost the client big bucks. With WordPress, menu changes are a cinch, taking just seconds to accomplish, rather than hours or even days. As a designer, that is my most favorite thing about WordPress!

I ♥ WP

But wait there’s more…

Top 3 Reasons To Use WordPress

  1. As described above, it’s super flexible. Updates are so easy.
  2. Search engines ♥ WP too! This requires a whole post of it’s own, but for now understand that search engine rankings now depend heavily on fresh, new, and changing content. That means you really need to blog about something on your website so that the search engines can recognize your awesomeness.
  3. WordPress is mobile! Click here for more information about mobile web sites. A good designer can use WordPress to easily deliver a website that looks great on all screen sizes.