I am SO HAPPY to announce the launch of a new custom e-commerce website, https://DriFlower.com! The site went live on Saturday, August 1 after starting work on June 3. Many grateful thanks to DriFlower founder and CEO Jay Larkins for the opportunity! Kudos to Marketing Director Jon Griffin for a productive working partnership on the site design and content.
This little company’s equipment, poised to revolutionize the hemp and cannabis industry, maximizes the efficiency of crop harvest and drying. It’s disruptive technology at its finest – new harvesting tools with simple design and function, yet so effective. The idea is to reduce the time, effort and cost of harvest while ensuring minimal contact with the crop itself from harvest until it’s dry and ready to trim. This preserves the medicinal value of the produce while cutting costs for the producer, a win-win prospect for any business. Furthermore, the integrity of the company’s founder is matched only by the quality and durability of the harvesting equipment. Offerings include:
Complete kits that a home grower can use individually and that small to medium size operations can use in quantity to maximize the use of their dry space.
Components for growers who want to design their own system.
Custom installations for large growing operations (contact them for more info about this).
We designed these latter features to grow overtime. Moreover, the online shop will also feature new products as time goes on. I hope you will visit the website to see it for yourself. The overall design is very understated and handsome, with warm greys throughout. In addition, we included accent colors of lovely purple, bamboo and green (of course). Lastly, if you’re a grower, you should contact them about incorporating DriFlower into your operation today!!
I hope I have the opportunity to create more websites for this industry. Building this one was fun and challenging.
If you need a new website or another online service, please use the links below to visit some of the client websites I have designed. I’ve been doing this long enough now that some of the sites I’ve designed and redesigned are offline due to retirement and other reasons. Many of them are also represented on my Portfolio page, where you can read my comments about the project. While I’m always happy to start from scratch when building new sites, any one of the sites below could be reproduced and updated with your own content to save on costs.
Oh, it’s SO embarrassing! As they say, the cobbler’s kids go barefoot…and the web designer’s website chronically needs updating! I am currently managing maintenance and content updates for over 70 websites, and the list continues to grow. I’ve updated this list of client websites as of July 30, 2022.
I experienced some important life changes in 2022. As a result, I now work from a new location in Talent, Oregon. New websites and redesign projects are underway, with more waiting in the wings, so I anticipate further updates to this page before long.
** E-Commerce examples
*** Custom websites I’m exceptionally proud to have created, redesigned, and/or customized.
Web Design Client Website Links:
Small Business Client Websites
Transcend Healing – NEW! 2022 New Website. Kate Huckert of MetaPhysical Therapy & Pilates decided to go into life coaching in partnership with her Canadian friend, Lisa, an established spiritual healer and coach. Initially, we combined all their information into a new page on Kate’s existing website, but their accountants objected. Therefore we separated the content, creating a new website for Lisa in the process. She was meticulous with every detail and the end result is a beautiful site that could be adapted for just about any solopreneur. We launched in January 2022, and she keeps me on for regular maintenance and adding occasional blog posts.
Thermeshade – Inspired by the work I had done for a close friend of hers, Diana Eastman hired me to help her bring her own website up to speed in time for a large convention for her industry. We combed through the site, element by element, cleaning up the layout of each page and updating the content as we went. It was a thoroughly effective project, completed in April 2022—in time for her to prepare for her convention and inspiring her to refer me to others in her industry.
Beck Physical Therapy – NEW! 2022 redesign. I had been maintaining the website of this New York physical therapist for some time when the unthinkable happened. It crashed and crashed hard. The site was originally created nearly two decades prior by another designer and the theme’s code had become so outdated that it wasn’t playing nice with the plugins. There was simply nothing I could do to rescue it but to abandon the theme and recreate the site with a new one. They consented to my suggestion that we convert the site to Divi and took advantage of the opportunity to update the content and restore some lost content in the process. It’s now happy and easy to maintain, causing the owners no problems and serving their business effectively.
Nancy F Clark – NEW! Late 2021 launch. A former rocket scientist with JPL, Director of Forbes WomensMedia for 8 years, artist, and author of the book, Positivity Daily, Nancy hid her fascination with channeling from friends and colleagues for many years. Then she decided that she wanted to share the information she had gained from sifting through many channelers and determining which were legit and which were not bothering with and why. Her courses educate the public about discerning between channelers, which channelers she respects and why, and more about channeling in general. this was an on-again-off-again project that took years to complete, but the streamlined result is working for her.
** ***The Glass Forge – 2020 new website. An established client referred The Glass Forge, a long-running and successful Grants Pass business, to me for a complete redesign of their website from the ground up. In addition, e-commerce was added to it using WooCommerce to power their online shop. It was slow to get off the ground, but once we built up some steam, it went smoothly. Their artistic glass products are so beautiful that it was a joy to create. They had apparently done a remarkable job promoting their business prior to this because they received orders through the website within a day of its launch—something I had never seen before! The owner told me he felt the website came out a lot better—both as far as esthetics and functionality— than he had expected. That is one of the side benefits of the work I do…the big smiles such compliments put on my face and the long, productive relationships that arise from doing solid work! The gorgeous glass items in the shop are a must-see when you check out their website.
Jacksonville Tax Lady – 2020 website conversion to WordPress and Redesign. We based the new design on another website that the co-owner I worked with had been involve din and this worked out very well. It was so easy to work with her and she was so happy with her rejuvenated site once it was done!
** ***DriFlower™ The Original HangHarvesting™ System – 2020 new ecommerce website. The site went live on Saturday, August 1, after starting work on June 3. Many grateful thanks to DriFlower founder and CEO Jay Larkins for the opportunity! Kudos to Marketing Director Jon Griffin for a productive working partnership on the site design and content. (side note: Jon also hired me to maintain two websites he has for his own businesses, MrJonGriffin.com and Lunazen.com.) #DriFlower makes #hangharvesting equipment that reduces harvest time and cost while preserving precious flower from harvest to trim. Revolutionizing the cannabis and hemp industries with game-changing harvest equipment! Learn more about this client’s website project here.
*** Giclée Yoshimatsu – 2019 new website. A dear friend of another client of mine, the proprietor of Giclée Yoshimatsu decided it was time for a website to complement his flourishing fine art printing business. I’m grateful that he chose me to do the work, as it’s a lovely, minimalist site with certain traits that set it apart from the rest. Yoshimatsu offers fine art printing both in Arkansas where he’s based and throughout the West. He also does his own fine art photography, which you can see on the site. He has connections to places where West Coast artists can show in the Southwest, making him a doubly valuable ally. Artist Genie Talbott, mentioned below in the Websites for Artists section, has used him for her fine art prints for years. Artist Brenda Mills Brannan, mentioned below in the Websites for Artists section, liked the layout of his new website so much that we used it for her new website, too. Thanks for the referral, Genie!
*** Tachi Skin Care – 2019 HTML to WordPress conversion and hosting migration for an aesthetician who started her practice in southern Oregon but needed a fresh online presentation after moving to Portland. We preserved the design of her existing website while converting it to the WordPress platform, adding new content and features, and hooking her up with a blog and Mailchimp newsletters. Thanks for the referral, John!
***Spa Jacksonville – 2018 HTML to WordPress conversion and hosting migration for a long-established and beloved local business. We largely preserved the minimalist, clean and spare design while adding new content and features, including bios for each of the professionals on staff. Look for a new e-commerce feature (Square) with Spa’s custom skincare products AND for the therapists of Spa to begin blogging soon! Thanks for the referral, Mary!
** ***American Memorycraft – 2018 New website for American MemoryCraft in Grants Pass. Owner Eli Beard (also known locally as the owner of Rogue Art Glass) employs 12 master glass blowers to create the company’s gorgeous cremation urns. Photographs of their work made creating a beautiful website a delight, and Eli’s desire to include plenty of interesting historical information and more made it a well-rounded site as far as content, too. The WooCommerce catalog that becomes a full-featured online shop when a member (limited to his wholesale national distributors, which include Forest Lawn and more industry-wide stars) logs in was a complex undertaking, but it’s working beautifully and has prepared me to do more sites along these lines.
Ryan’s Outpost – 2017 New website, SEO, maintenance, and content updates for the iconic Applegate Valley business.
** *** Carpe Diem Papers – 2017 Redesigned website and massive overhaul for an Ashland, Oregon greeting card designer with newly added eCommerce capabilities and Mailchimp integration; ongoing maintenance and content updates.
*** Mountain Sun Botanicals – 2016 Southern Oregon medical marijuana grower site conversion from html to WordPress, preserving home page design and redesigning subpages, setting up custom Google Suite business emails, SSL. We partially updated the website in mid-2021 but were not able to complete this task by year’s end. They’re super busy and have a small child. Some projects just don’t have to set new land speed records! We hope to be back on track with a more professional design sometime in late 2022.
*** Meta Physical Therapy & Pilates – 2016 New website, ongoing maintenance. I just love the new website created for H. Kate Huckert, DPT, in 2016. Her fondness for the Oriental aesthetic is expressed beautifully in this layout and design. I have the same soft spot for Asian design so this was particularly rewarding for me.
*** Ruch Hardware – 2016 New website, SEO, maintenance, and content updates. This site has personality plus, like its owner, and is quite the community hub in the Ruch/Applegate Valley area. Tiffany updates her blog regularly, so it’s a great community resource. See more details about this project.
Iris Colored Dreams – 2016 New website, SEO, and maintenance for Silhouette, a woman practicing in the blind psychic tradition. In 2020 we added an e-commerce feature so people could subscribe to read her “Tales That Told Themselves” as she releases them. Some of these Tales are in prose form while others are videos. All are fascinating and add a wonderful new dimension to her website.
C St Bistro – 2015 Website redesign with WordPress conversion, SEO, and ongoing maintenance and content updates for a local casual gourmet restaurant. More details about this project here.
** *** Dodero Studio Ceramics – For the past few years I have mostly worked with John Dodero on search engine optimization for his Raku pottery e-commerce (WooCommerce) website. Eventually, this emphasis on SEO demanded that we merge his HTML site with his blog in 2014 and convert it from an outdated theme to a modern one that is mobile-friendly while preserving the site’s original design in 2015–early 2016. We continue to work together to add new content, and new products, and keep the search engine optimization…optimized.
Community, Non-Profit & Association Client Websites
Art Presence Art Center – In 2022, I completed a massive redesign of the original site I designed for this local nonprofit art gallery in 2012. Updated branding and an overhaul of their online “look” and content, this redesign has been a modernization of their online presence. Our ongoing work includes maintenance, social media support, and monthly content updates. I continue to write a monthly article for Art Presence which has been published in the Jacksonville Review since 2010.
Pastel Artists of Oregon – After hiring me to update content and maintain her website, artist Judy Richardson referred the Pastel Artists of Oregon organization to me for maintenance and periodic content updates. Their original volunteer designer was terrific, but with a young and growing family and a day job, he needed to step aside, leaving them with no support for their online presence. In late 2021 the president of the organization contacted me and in 2022 I started work. We wound up doing more to update and streamline the content than I originally expected, and they have complimented me on how easy I am to collaborate with and the efficiency of my work.
Miss Cindy’s Neighborhood Nursery School – Referred to me in February 2021 by a former web designer who now runs a successful tech business, Miss Cindy’s website was very dated and had lost/was losing its functionality in many areas. It badly needed a current theme as the old one could not be updated, causing the WordPress core and other elements to be stuck in the same situation. This creates a security risk as well as lost or intermittent functions…not a good look for a very mature nursery school! Cindy was happy with the design, so we migrated the site to her own hosting service. Then I converted it to a modern, supported theme while preserving most of its design and updating other elements, as well as some of the content. She was delighted with the outcome and I’m delighted to have such a wonderful new client!
Aircraft Design Guide – 2020 New website. My client, Don Chapin, who gave me the redesign/WordPress conversion jobs for buddha-consciousness.org, light-path-resources.org, and militarytruth.org, was a military man and an aerospace engineer earlier in his life. There was a particular project he had been closely involved with over the course of many years. This involved researching materials and creating design recommendations for more effective windshields for military aircraft that would withstand the impact of hitting a bird at jet speeds. When trying to find the extensive research he and his colleague had written up during that time in online military libraries he couldn’t find one thing. It turned out that the lone copy he had of the aircraft windshield design guide they had written was the only one in existence! So he handed me the 2000-page book and asked me to first scan the entire book into a searchable pdf file (a monumental task in itself!) and then create a simple website to share the book with interested parties who might be searching for such a resource. It’s not complex or extensive, but a pride and joy website nonetheless. How often does one get called in to help preserve information gained at great cost that would otherwise be lost forever? I’m honored to have been entrusted with this task. Thank you, Don!
*** Lithia Artisans Market – 2018 New website for the Lithia Artisans Market (LAMA), in Ashland, Oregon. The volunteers who manage the group’s online presence had been using a free site at WordPress.com for years and decided it was finally time to go for their own self-hosted website. Having access to numerous resources, including their own designer and photographer, made building this site a joy, and the final result sent us all over the moon. We may be adding more features and content to it in the future…if the coronavirus lets this popular outdoor market come back in 2021, that is.
*** The Buddha Consciousness – 2017 Website migration to new host and redesign for the first of three sites owned by an online free church, Light Path Resources. Ongoing maintenance and content updates, including an entire section on books written and published by the owner and his late wife. In 2021, we are adding content related to the site owner’s new book and an e-commerce feature so he can sell his books directly from his website. I’ll let you know when the new features are fully launched… and you’ll see a couple of extra asterisks in front of the site title here once the shop is online!
*** Light Path Resources – 2017 Website migration to new host and redesign for the second of three sites owned by an online free church, Light Path Resources. Ongoing maintenance and very frequent content updates.
*** Military Truth – 2017 Website migration to new host and redesign for a nonprofit seeking to educate people considering enlisting in the Armed Forces so they know what they’re getting into. Ongoing maintenance and very frequent content updates.
*** Jennifer Faith – 2014 Design, SEO, and maintenance for a site that supports victims of domestic violence and abuse. Best for a blogger with great featured images, as the Home page depends on excerpts for the design. Click here to read more about the project.
*** Southern Oregon Artists Resource – Launched 1/1/2010, currently being redesigned behind the scenes and will ultimately merge with the blog. This is an example of a successful, large, and very complex project which I created from scratch. I’m eager to get the new site completed and launched!
Janet E Higgins–NEW! Grants Pass sculptor, Janet Higgins, asked me to create a new, minimalist website showcasing her uniquely creative and powerful sculptures in time for the opening of an important show of her work at the Grants Pass Museum of Art in July 2022. We finished by the deadline and she was delighted with the results!
*** Stefan Baumann, Plein Air Artist – In 2020, we completely redesigned Stefan’s website. His response to the new look was “when I go to my website it feels like landing on a big, soft pillow…exactly the feel I was hoping for!” More work to streamline the content is ongoing. This was originally a massive search engine optimization (SEO) project that required reorganizing the entire site’s content and pointing two no longer used, but very SEO-important, domains to his new website. Stefan recently dubbed me the SEO Queen for the success of my work, which enabled him to establish a global artist coaching service. Working with his assistant Kris Baxter, I have also designed and formatted a catalog for a large art show of Stefan’s work in southern California as well as the free e-book he gives to everyone who signs up for his email list.
Oregon Backroads Author Website – In 2020, Jacksonville author Ed McBee contacted me to redesign his website and update the content upon the publishing of his second book about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, A Twisting Journey Continues. A fairly simple project that was completed quickly and for a very reasonable price.
Judy Richardson Fine Art – In 2020, Jacksonville fine artist Judy Richardson contacted me because she had lost her previous web designer and needed to update the paintings on her website. Hers was a fairly simple project that was completed quickly for a very reasonable price, and now I maintain the site, standing ready for new content updates whenever she’s ready with new paintings.
EA Leutkemeyer, Author – In 2019, Jacksonville author Gene Leutkemeyer contacted me to update the content of his website upon the publishing of his second book, Penitentiary Tales: A Love Story. We didn’t completely redesign it, but did update the look with a new logo, rearranged the content, and added a new page for his new book. We usually do a little something each year to add to the content. His books are fascinating – check him out!
*** Marie’s Baskets – 2019 New website. Marie contacted me to convert her old website to WordPress and freshen the content. It wound up being a bigger job than we anticipated, and the new baskets we added to the site are stunners! The site is lovely, uncluttered, and clean, and the wares are well worth visiting to see!
*** Glenn J Hill, Author – 2019 New website. I had worked on Glenn’s harp website and his wife’s harp string website for several years when he wrote a book, got it published, and asked me to build a website for it. This was a super fun website to create and it came out really lovely. You might like his book, too, the first in a series of three with more to come soon. Check it out!
*** Sculptor Jay Warren – 2019 New website. Jay’s Warren Sculpture website had gotten quite dated and he no longer had time to update the content himself, so he approached me to redesign it, moving to the WordPress platform. Jay’s work is no joke – his magnificent life-size bronze statues and monuments have been commissioned by top players, as well as local and state governments across the country. His work is amazing, and his website is now a wonderful setting in which to showcase it. You really must visit to see his bronzes!
*** Brenda Mills Brannan – 2019 New website. Brenda had just moved to the area and her website had been down for over a year as she and her husband built their new home. I was delighted that she contacted me when she was ready to get back online with a new website! Her art is so beautiful and she chose a design format for her site that’s a departure from the usual. Please check it out and see for yourself!
*** Indigenous Spirit – 2019 New website. Blindish artist Silhouette created some amazing art as she was losing her eyesight to Graves disease. Check out the amazing videos she made and posted online just for people to enjoy. Thanks for the second website assignment, Silhouette!
*** Wing Tips HA!2018 New website. Artist Leslie Dwyer started this site but quickly found herself out of time, so I took it from the bare bones start she had accomplished to completion. Her goal for this website was to establish the value of her Wing Tips — humorous and uniquely rendered single-frame advice “comics” — prior to presenting the idea to publishers so she can print a gift book containing them. Once I had the site completed, Leslie scheduled a years’ worth of Wing Tips to publish one or two every week. She is quickly gaining a devoted following, myself included, which I truly hope ends up in a successful publishing deal for her. Once you’ve seen this one, check out her Design4Peace.com website, with loads of terrific social justice poster designs! Leslie is amazing.
*** Ray Pague – 2017 New artist website. You must see Ray’s beautiful work and unique style of painting! He and his wife contacted me to create his new website as soon as they moved to southern Oregon from North Carolina, where he is well known for his art. Another artist website of which I’m especially proud.
** *** Carpe Diem Papers – 2017 Redesigned website and massive overhaul for an Ashland, Oregon greeting card designer with newly added eCommerce capabilities and newsletter integration; ongoing maintenance and content updates. I can’t begin to say how fun it is to work with Mindy Carpenter. She has (always very circumspectly to be respectful of my time and willingness to take on side projects) asked me to do numerous non-website-related things for her, from knocking out the backgrounds of some of her paintings so she can make them into stickers and other specialty products to reformatting the images of a selection of her greeting card designs so they can be included in the online shop of a very ritzy MoMA. It’s such a pleasure to be a small part of her well-deserved success!
Carla J Griffin – 2016 New Website, maintenance, and content updates for an award-winning artist in Grants Pass, Oregon.
*** Catherine Anderson, AWS -2015 Massive overhaul including redesign, SEO, and security measures. One of my pride and joy website designs! Be sure to visit and see her award-winning watercolors!
** *** Linda Abblett Watercolors – 2015 HTML to WordPress conversion with redesign and added e-commerce (WooCommerce), maintenance and content updates, SSL added 2017. Another beautiful custom site I’m proud to have been chosen to create. See more details about this project here.
** *** Kim Novak – 2014 New website with e-commerce (PayPal), maintenance and content updates, SSL added 2017. A conservative site that showcases this beloved actress’ incredibly creative pastel and oil paintings, accompanied by her original poetry. We have worked closely together over the years and the new paintings and poetry we have added just keep making it better and better as time goes on. I also managed her business selling prints of her original paintings for years. She has now decided that she would rather enjoy the time she has left on Earth by painting and riding her horses than deal with the obligations the print sales business laid upon her, so we modified the website to remove all that content and it’s now a showcase for all her paintings. I also manage her Facebook page, KimNovakActress. Read more about the creation of her new website here.
*** Pegi Smith – 2014 Migration to new host, massive website redesign and SEO, ongoing maintenance and content updates, added SSL in 2016. A complex and extensive artist website of which I’m especially proud. Pegi’s dreamy paintings are amazing to work with and make the site especially stunning visually. See more details about this client’s website here.
Joan Pechanec – 2013 New Website, maintenance, and annual content updates. Joan needed a budget solution for her site and I worked with her to display the maximum number of paintings (40) possible while keeping costs to a minimum. The new site landed Joan her first solo show at the Orlando Art Center the same year it was launched! After painting for nearly a year to have enough work to fill the space, she sold nearly all of the works on display. A super rewarding outcome, for sure, and now she contacts me once every year to add new paintings to the site. Read more about the creation of her original site here.Visit her website to see the beautiful new 2021 redesign we launched in September 2021!
SSL Installation, Search Engine Optimization, Troubleshooting and Repair, Maintenance, and Hosting Migration Client Websites
McCully House Inn – The McCully House Inn changed hands in July 2021, and another client referred them to me to help with the migration of the website and connected services (such as email) into their full ownership and control. This doesn’t sound like a huge undertaking, but because the site is older and hadn’t been actively maintained in at least a full year, it turned out to be very complex, with lots of moving parts and many other professionals involved in various roles. Thankfully, I was able to successfully navigate this challenging task, and the site is now in the process of receiving its brand new reservation system. The new owners plan a redesign later in 2022 when they’ve adjusted to recent changes in their personal lives.
Jefferson Farm Kitchen – I just love it when I can get behind someone’s business, and this is one of them! Unfortunately, her website was suffering from numerous errors that made things tricky, erratic, and therefore difficult to diagnose when customers showed up to place their weekly food orders. Another client whom I had helped through a similar situation referred her to me in early 2021, and her skepticism was soon turned to joy when one by one the problems started to disappear. Soon, we plan a major content update directed by her marketing director.
Springerhaven – This couple has been breeding beautiful, sound, and well-behaved Springer Spaniels that have found homes with families across the nation for over 25 years. They have an amazing following, many of whom have purchased more than one dog from them over the years They were referred to me for help with reviews, which we moved from their Facebook page to their website. We also migrated their site to a new host, sorted out email issues, and updated most of the content. The site had been neglected, but once updated it performed well, so now I do ongoing maintenance and content updates when there are new reviews from their many happy customers to add. We did wind up running into problems down the road, however, so in 2022, I converted the site to Divi and freshened up the look and the content in the process. It’s beautiful, the code is modernized and the content up to date and trouble-free now.
Elan Guest Suites – The owner of this Jacksonville, Oregon boutique guest suites and gallery business contacted me for help in mid-2019 because she’d had years of trouble working with more than one web developer trying to get her redesigned Squarespace website functioning properly so she could launch it. There were many complex issues that took time to work out. However, I was successful at eliminating the problems and customizing the reservations integration, and the website has been successful ever since its launch just a few months after we began working together! I love to hear from the owner-turned-friend, but since it’s rare that anything goes wrong on her website, I don’t hear from her often.
Joy Hosey, Relationship Coach – This is one of those relationships in which I am simply there for Joy…since 2013! I’ve migrated her website, implemented new features, fixed problems and maintain the site in between special requests and content updates. Another small business owner whom I’m happy to get behind!
Angela Meer, Author and Writing Coach – I migrated Angela’s very complex website to a new host and extended her existing SSL certificate to cover the entire website in 2016.
Romancing the WestI’ve been maintaining this website for singer/songwriter and producer of Romancing the West® since 2012 with both content updates and site maintenance. During that time, I’ve restored it from a hack attack, migrated it to new hosting, installed its SSL certificate, and posted dozens and dozens of tour dates, as well as a few client-directed experiments. I also formatted/edited a children’s book for them in 2017 and design/update the new concert posters for their biannual tours.
Talbott Studios – A wonderful artist who specializes in animals (particularly horses and equine art). Genie also designs gorgeous wine labels and more. I began with search engine optimization and content updates for her existing website, and have been working together for several years…even after she moved back East!
More exciting projects are in the works and others are lined up. It will be so fun to complete them and share the links here. If you are currently in need of a website, contact me today to get your project underway!
Veronica was introduced to me by Boni de Laire, whose website I reconstructed in June 2014 and have maintained since then. Originally from South Africa, Veronica has lived in the States for the past 15 years. Since moving to Oregon she has been realizing her dream of becoming an artist, focusing on oil painting. When the opportunity to attend an exclusive painting workshop in Scottsdale, Arizona, arose, Veronica started looking for ways to earn some extra money to cover her travel expenses, and friends agreed to host an art salon at their home in mid-April. Mentor Boni insisted that a new website for Veronica Thomas was a must at this critical juncture, and that it be completed by the time the art salon took place so she would have an online promotional tool to work with. That’s where I entered the picture.
When the three of us sat down to discuss the project, I showed them the last site I had completed, www.michaelcarpenterart.com. Veronica liked it so much she went straight for a similar design using the same theme, Divi, by Elegant Themes. As with all my other clients, Veronica’s site was equipped with a full suite of plugins for search engine optimization, page loading speed, social sharing, and of course security to protect the website and its visitors.
One of the fun things we incorporated was a Google font with a special effect, accomplished with a css styling trick. Veronica wanted the headings to match the branding on the invitation mailers, flyers, and business cards that her daughter Chloe had developed for her. It wasn’t available as a Google font, but they wree able to find one that was so similar one can hardly tell it’s not the same. The other challenge was that Veronica wanted the header with the effect on the home page, but without the effect on all the other pages. Not only was I able to pull this off successfully, but the research and the execution went very quickly, so it wasn’t a spendy experiment either. I love how my clients push me to learn new things with their challenges! Another arrow in my quiver…
The one sticky part of the Divi theme seems to be the banner space. It’s a bit unpredictable how much of an image will appear in this space in a desktop browser, yet the entire image will show in a mobile browser. I can do quite a bit of customizing, but it’s still tricky. Chloe is proficient with image editing and social media, so she was a huge help in this regard. In the end, our collaboration again resulted in a new website for Veronica Thomas in which we all take a considerable amount of pride. It was completed and launched well before her deadline, Veronica sold enough paintings at her art salon to help cover her expenses during the workshop in Scottsdale, and she is now busily absorbing all the new information she possibly can in Arizona! We will be doing the first update on her site once she returns to indicate which paintings have been sold. Meanwhile, here are screenshots of Veronica’s new website as launched on April 17, 2015. You can click these to view larger versions, and there is a link to the live website in the paragraph below.
Please visit Veronica’s website and help it gain momentum with viewers online and the search engines. Her artwork is beautiful and, from children to wildlife and still life to plein air landscapes, she paints such a wide variety of subjects that it took eight portfolio categories to accommodate them all! Her site is another beautiful example of how the Divi theme can be customized for various purposes. If you would like to see examples of how I have used and customized Divi in other projects, click the links in the sidebar for fashion jewelry designer www.wendygell.com (including e-commerce shop), portfolio galleries of landscapes in oil at www.michaelcarpenterart.com, soft and lovely watercolor portfolios at www.judybuswell.com, presentations for harp strings and related products and information at markwoodstrings.com and the spectacular Mountain Glen Harps website, with one of the most amazing home pages I’ve made to date. This last one is a great way to see what’s possible with Divi.
If you like Divi’s flexibililty but would like to see an alternative, I have used a similar, and very popular, premium theme called Avada which I purchased at Theme Forest to create www.jacksonvillechiropracticclinic.com (very professional and takes advantage of numerous shortcodes in the design), and the gorgeous nonprofit ecommerce site www.missioncandles.com, probably the most beautiful site I’ve created yet. I enjoy working with both of these themes and though there are many themes out there I’d love to play with, I do hope to use the truly premium quality Avada again in the near future.
Friends take care of friends and extend the family. I’m so happy to have gotten to know Veronica and look forward to an ever-deepening friendship with her. Many grateful thanks to my dear friend and talented artist Boni dé Laire for referring Veronica to me! Please visit Boni’s website to see her amazing landscapes in oil. You will not be disappointed, they are truly spectacular and we will be adding a new painting soon!
One of the things I like about my work is that I’m often asked to update or create a new website for an artist who has just moved into my area. It’s a great way to make new friends and keep a finger on the pulse of the arts. Creating a new website for Michael Carpenter in March/April 2015 was one of those “welcoming committee” assignments. Michael Carpenter and his lovely wife lived in Portland for much of Michael’s professional career as a successful graphic designer. They have spent a good deal of time in California and New Mexico since he retired and began devoting his time to the fine art oil painting that fired his passion for art as a young man. They moved here recently, and decided it was time for Michael to establish a presence online. Many thanks to artist and plein air painter Norm Rossignol for referring Michael to me!
Michael is not an emerging artist. His experience, skill and diligent study as well as a very refined eye are evident in all his work, so building a new website for him was a real treat for an artist and art enthusiast like me. I prepared a total of 77 images for this project, 36 images of original oil paintings for the website and the rest, images of paintings that are now only available as prints for Michael’s promotional use. That was a LOT of eye candy to soften the technical end of the work for me! And it felt good to be protecting them with the addition of internal metadata and a visible copyright/website address to each image. A little cropping and adjusting to the images themselves was required, though not too much as they were in very good shape when they came to me. A total of about 15 minutes per image on average to make them fully web-worthy and ready to add.
On the technical end, Michael’s site was built with a complete suite of plugins chosen for various back end functionalities, including a complete security setup, search engine optimization, Google analytics, and caching for consistent performance and page loading speed. More too, but surely that is boring to most readers. What’s not boring at all are the three portfolio galleries of his paintings, displaying his work in Still Life, Landscapes and Waterscapes categories. His home page displays a few images from each category to give you an idea of what you will find as you continue to explore the site. These image galleries are presented in the new “masonry” style, which I’m very grateful for as it shows each image in its entirety—no unpredictable cropping that deprives visitors of a glance at each painting in its fullness before clicking to view and enlargement. A bio page to learn more about the artist, a customized CV page which includes his shows, distinctions and awards, and a contact page round out the presentation on Michael Carpenter’s new website.
Michael’s site received a fair amount of attention when it came to customizing the theme. By default a white background and very modular, the newer Divi theme by Elegant Themes is becoming very popular with my clients for its very nice portfolio layouts. These don’t come with the theme by default, but are available in a separate download if you look hard enough for it. Divi is also a responsive theme, so Michael would emerge on the internet ready for Mobilegeddon with a theme that looks fabulous on both desktop and mobile devices. Michael chose a deep green background with black banner areas and gold text, adding custom gold accents to the theme itself as well. What a great call! The site looks very elegant and refined, and quite masculine without being “strong.” An effective, subtle and understated setting for his wonderful paintings. We “lifted” his signature from a painting and turned it into a site logo and customized a number of additional elements throughout the theme.
Even the parallax site banner, which opens the site with an accompanying quote from the artist, got a lot of scrutiny and adjustments before it was just right. We had to make some compromises on this important detail due to the difference in how its displays on mobile and desktop browsers. No one really likes making that kind of compromise, but when we were finished Michael was satisfied that it looked the best it could across the range of device sizes. In the end our collaboration resulted in a beautiful new website for Michael Carpenter that we are both proud to present. Where’s the champagne?!
New website, new friends…without any further adieu, here’s a glimpse of Michael’s new website home page, and a few features that people interested in a new website might like to see. You can click therse for a larger image, but please take a little bit of time to visit the live site at www.michaelcarpenterart.com, enjoy all his paintings, and inspect the various features of the website. Who knows, you might find a painting you can’t live without! If you’re an artist, particularly if you paint en plein air, you will find much of interest in his work to be inspired by. Thanks so much for entrusting me with this project, Michael!
Screenshot of www.michaelcarpenterart.com homepage, launched April 2015Curriculum Vitae page, www.michaelcarpenterart.com
I am delighted to announce a new website launch for renowned fashion jewelry designer Wendy Gell at wendygell.com!
Wendy’s previous website was beautiful, but the infrastructure needed updating and she wanted a fresh new look that was unpretentious, yet highlighted her past accomplishments, with modern ecommerce features that would enable her to sell her incredibly sparkling and beautiful fashion jewelry designs. We began by streamlining her email newsletter and creating temporary pages with several new pieces of jewelry not previously seen on her website. Then, behind the scenes, we created a new site on the WordPress platform, using the flexible and responsive Divi theme by Elegant Themes so it would display nicely on mobile devices. Then we added a WooCommerce shopping cart with PayPal as the primary payment gateway. Optimized the site and products using the highly respected SEO for WordPress plugin by Yoast and added BulletProof Security to protect her investment in the site and to protect her visitors from malware. Once all the products were added to the shop and everything was ready to go, we migrated the development site to its permanent home at wendygell.com.
What we wound up with is a beautiful site that highlights Wendy’s fashion, bridal, and holiday jewelry designs (along with some gorgeous tiaras for princesses big and little!) as well as her fabulous Gelastic Art, with a beautiful shop that displays subcategories nicely with the modestly priced Nested Categories extension by WooThemes. She made a sale almost immediately! We also included features that will help her continue to grow her following, with social follow and sharing tools by AddThis and a newsletter signup form.
We invite you to visit Wendy’s site and feast your eyes on glittering pop art fashion jewelry to your heart’s desire! Wendy plans to continue adding to her new online shop, so there will be new jewelry items and artwork to see on a regular basis, and there is much to learn about this talented designer whose jewelry has appeared on the Oprah show, been worn & collected by household name movie, television and pop art culture celebrities – even royalty! – and featured in fashion magazines around the world for decades. I am so honored to be working with this amazing woman and her enduring talent, and equally proud of her new website. See how beautifully we can display the items you want to offer for sale online and contact us to discuss what we can do to help you accomplish your own online business objectives.
I am delighted to announce a new website completed for Judy Marshall, who paints in watercolor under the name Judy Buswell. Her former site needed a complete revamp, and we converted it to WordPress so she and her husband can manage it themselves. Judy’s work is so lovely, the majority of her pieces being delicate watercolors of flowers and gardens, and it was a joy to work with the images while creating her new site. Why wait to read my writing? Visit www.judybuswell.com today! You can always come back to see what I have to say after feasting your eyes on her watercolor paintings.
Judy offers greeting cards and prints of her paintings, as well as some original paintings on her website, with a simple purchasing strategy – email the artist to order. I think this is wonderful as it requires personal contact between artist and art lover, something many artists don’t realize is an exciting part of buying art for those who love it. There is a contact form on each of the pages with items you can purchase, and the images are large and…gorgeous…particularly those of her more recent paintings. Visit www.judybuswell.com and order some of her pretty Christmas cards today!
Today Judy came to my office for a coaching session on blogging. She will be posting new works on her new blog, and posting about her daily artistic activities when she goes to visit family for a few months next year. I think this is an exciting development, as Judy loves to write almost as much as she loves to paint, and her followers and those discovering her for the first time will be able to learn more about her passion for painting and see works in progress. She wasn’t hugely confident in her ability to do this, but I found her to be a quick study and was not at all surprised when she called me a couple of hours later to tell me she had already been playing with the text in a couple of posts. She sent me some very kind words later…
“Thank you, Hannah. You are a very good teacher, and an even better web designer.”
Among the back end features of Judy’s new art website are search engine optimization, Google Analytics and WordPress site stats, security, backup and restore functionality, social sharing, and copyright protection via Digiprove. I always set up Webmaster tools with Google and Bing after finishing a website, submitting sitemaps generated by the SEO plugin, a highly respected piece of work by Yoast. On the front end is a magnificent presentation of Judy’s artwork with a beautiful premium WordPress theme, specially formatted pages with special galleries to showcase her artwork, a blog, and a visible copyright protection notice in the footer from Digiprove. The sentimental quality of Judy’s paintings does the rest better than I could…
Thanks to the attentiveness of Judy and her husband, this only took a month to complete, even with a number of other projects requiring my attention at the same time and they taking a couple of trips out of the area. Thank you so much for entrusting the renewed online presentation of your paintings to me, Judy!
Rainbow Cheerlites® candles are a Mission Candles exclusive!
Just in time for the holidays, we have finalized the shopping cart and the missioncandles.com Online Shop is open and ready for your holiday candle orders!
Many heartfelt thanks to Laura O’Bryon, Executive Director of Community Works, the nonprofit parent organization of Mission Candles and the Lithia Springs Program of which Mission Candles is a part, Jim Posey, Director of Education and Residential Treatment Services, and Jason Fauble, the Mission Candles Production Coordinator, for entrusting me with the renewal of the Mission Candles website and online shop.
I can’t say enough about how much I believe in this program. The testimonials of youth who have graduated the program tell the story of how effective it is at helping Ashland, Oregon youth who have experienced debilitating problems of one kind or another and educating them, providing work experience and other essential services, teaching appropriate and effective relationship skills, and turning out young men and women who are ready to become valuable members of the community. The Mission Candles component of the program is financially self-sustaining and a crucial part of the healing, empowering experience that the Lithia Springs Program provides.
I am equally excited about the candles that Mission Candles produces! They make 9″ tapers in a variety of colors to match just about any décor scheme and an exclusive rainbow taper for a lively look. Perfect for candelabra, menorah, wall sconces, candlesticks, and more. Gorgeous. Then there are the Cheerlites®. These “birthday” candles take the cake! These come in 3″ and 8″ lengths (have you ever heard of 8″ cake candles? Their existence was news to me…), in a wide variety of colors to suit any occasion (including Mission Candles’ exclusive rainbow, and metallic gold and silver!), and can be used for holiday centerpieces and other décor applications beyond the kitchen. Not only do they come in a dizzying array of beautiful colors, but you can also opt for one of four different glitter finishes (something I had not seen before and fell in love with) – multicolor glitter, gold or silver glitter, and opal glitter – a subtle and beautiful accent that adds extra sparkle to the table and the eyes of those around it. I am enticed by the thought of delicately sky blue candles with opal glitter to send our daughters for their sons and grandsons’ birthdays, red candles with gold glitter for my mom, elegant metallic gold candles for decorating, and who can live without the royal touch of purple somewhere in their home? The prices are reasonable for such lovely and versatile options, and to celebrate their website’s launch they are offering FREE SHIPPING from now through January 1! I’ll be ordering some myself, and you should too!
Please visit missioncandles.com today and support this important social program with a purchase of candles…for birthdays, holiday decorating, gifts and stocking stuffers. Your friends and family will love them, and you will want them in your own home all year ’round!
Eagle Fisher, Original oil painting by Lori Garfield
Great news! I just got a call from artist Lori Garfield with her approval of the new website I created for her. A couple of small adjustments and she’s ready to fly!
Lori was fantastic to work with, organized and on top of any requests for additional material or other input I sent her way. For that reason her site came together very quickly, completed in two weeks from the day we set her up with a new hosting service (she had free hosting at WordPress.com before, but we wanted to expand the possibilities beyond what they permit on their site) until the final tweaks that marked its completion today.
We built her new site on the WordPress platform using a very nice responsive theme I just discovered, called Fifteen, with a few customizations and using Jetpack mosaic-style galleries to display her art. I love that masonry look, it’s a great way to display a portfolio of artwork that varies in shape and size. Implementing the SEO by Yoast plugin, security plugins, and sharing capabilities put the final touches on her website that make it search engine and human visitor friendly.
Lori is a wonderful animal artist, creating her pet portraits, wildlife paintings and more in oil on canvas. She is a giver, and a portion of all her art sales goes to various animal non profits, so any purchase you make from her, whether an original oil painting, an archival quality giclee print, or a commission for a portrait of your pet, you will also benefit the nonprofit animal organizations she supports.
Lori is not limited to animals as an artist, and you will find some gorgeous landscapes and human portraits in the galleries of her paintings. Please visit Lori’s new website to view her lovely artwork, and consider leaving a comment with feedback on her paintings and her new website, sharing her site on your favorite social network, and giving a gift of art to someone special who loves animals this holiday season for a double blessing! www.lorigarfield.com
I am so proud to announce the launch of Community Works redesigned website! It went live last Saturday evening and has already had a lot of visits, as one might expect from a non profit community service website like this. Please like Community Works on Facebook and visit their website to see the amazing work they do in Jackson County for abused women and victims of sexual assault/rape, abused children and families who are dealing with/recovering from severe trauma, homeless and runaway youth, and so much more for some of the most vulnerable and hurting people of Jackson County’s communities.
The programs this organization operate rock! Best known and with a great reputation for the Dunn House Shelter, many don’t know the name of this non profit that provides compassionate and effective help and support for women escaping abuse/domestic violence, or that they provide services for women, children, youth and families seeking to recover from sever traumas and connect them to resources that can help them further. Please visit the new website to learn more about the organization and its programs, volunteer and/or contribute to their work with a tax deductible donation, see their upcoming events and more!
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and this Friday at 4pm they are sponsoring a Walk to End Domestic Violence in Medford. Wear purple and join us at the Medford Courthouse to raise awareness of domestic violence!
Between working on Jennifer Faith’s website and this one for Community Works I have learned more than I ever thought I’d want to know about domestic violence. I had no idea that one in every three women around the world will suffer abuse and violence at some time during their lives. This statistic is consistent no matter what country, culture or religion you consider, and those women of faith are in the worst position of all since these patriarchal organizations tend to encourage the men and advise the women to keep silent and not try to leave under the threat of offending God. Most of the time the stigma of domestic violence and the fear of their abuser (and the fear of angering the God they love) keeps them silent and trapped in a situation that will only get worse and could even cost them their lives. Women who do finally work up the courage to make their escape still are not safe.
Problems with the justice system and the ongoing controlling behavior of their former partner results in another ugly statistic: 70% of the women who die from domestic violence are killed AFTER leaving their abusive partner. Women need help, guidance and support throughout all the stages of abuse until they are back on their feet and are truly safe from their abuser, and Community Works provides support for survivors as well as those still in an abusive situation.
You could very well know someone who is secretly hurting, and their life could be in danger right now. Please share the site with your network so they can find help without humiliation and you may save a life.
If you or someone you know needs help, call the HelpLine 24 hour crisis hotline at 541-779-4357 or toll free: 1-855-216-2111
Community Works: Strengthening Lives to Change Community – Strengthening Community to Change Lives
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