08/2/06
Project Description:
I was planning to propose to my (then) girlfriend on December 24, 2005 and found myself going through quite a bit of steps to make it all come together. To somewhat journal it all, I created a website where I kept track of everything that I was going through such as buying the ring, making a photo book, asking for her parents’ blessing, etc. It quickly became “part of” the proposal.
Some people may wonder why I have a “personal site” in my portfolio. Well, let me count the ways:
- This was my first site based on Wordpress, so it contained tons of “experiments”
- The site is smoothly coded in XHTML & CSS
- It validates
- It’s driven by PHP & mySQL
- It’s search engine friendly
- It’s cross-platform and cross-browser compatible
- It contains AJAX
- It contains a Flickr API to show the latest 4 photos of Crystal and me
- It’s ranked in the top 1% of websites on the web according to Alexa
- I created customized CSS to give Crystal’s posts a different colored text than my own
- More CSS is combined with Flash to give the titles of our posts unique fonts
- Even more customized CSS and PHP shows our pictures beside our posts for easy reference
Project Details:
Crystal and Shane was created with the following:
- Wordpress
- K2 Theme for Wordpress
- EditPlus 2
- Adobe Photoshop
- Flash MP3 Player
- Canon Digital Rebel
- XHTML, CSS, PHP, mySQL
Site Address:
Launched:
08/2/06
Project Description:
My third project for the Fee / Hedrick Family Entertainment Group was to redesign the website for The Comedy Barn Theater. The old site was fairly simply, full of unnecessary spacer gifs, lacked alt & image tags, used images for plain text, and was just all-around an SEO turtle. It needed a bit more character, cleaned up, and tweaked for search engines.
I have to admit that this is the last site with tables that I have created. I have since moved to using solid XHTML and CSS based layouts. Even with tables, I managed to do away with the spacer gifs and cleaned the code up substantially. The first thing that I dis was add color to the design. The background is now blue and the top is a bright red barn roof with a Flash animation of the logo and the characters that pop up beside it. It creates an immediate “fun” emotion when opening the site.
Other changes are:
- The menu was cleaned up with sharper rollover images and text
- The paragraphs of text are no long images. This allows search engines to see the keywords
- Links to other shows & theaters were added to provide cross-linking strength
- 30 second commercial added in Flash format
- Online ticketing integrated (Online ticketing was not created by me. I had practically no control over the functionality and a lot of the user interface. I just linked to it and tried to make its pages look the same as the rest of the site.)
Click here to see the before and after screenshots.
Project Details:
The Comedy Barn was created with the following:
- Macromedia Dreamweaver
- Adobe Photoshop
- Flash 8
- EditPlus
- CSS, ASP, Access
Site Address:
Launched:
08/1/06
Project Description:
When I was hired by the Fee/Hedrick Family Entertainment Group, one of my first projects was to create a website for a new theater that was to house a musical based on the miracles of Christ. About the only thing that I had to work with was a logo that was created by the Creative Director and some photos of some other production that we had rights to use. Needless to say, I was somewhat lost at first as to how to present it online as they didn’t even have a theater or show at the time. Fortunately, everything seemed to fall into place as I created the header, dove, menu, main content template, footer, and background. It now has a video commercial embedded into the site that streams on broadband connections. The end result was a simple, yet attractive site that quickly snagged a Google Page Rank of 4 and is on the first page of Google results for “The Miracle.”
Some things on the site that I did not have a hand in is the cabin rental button on every page and the ticket ordering system.
Project Details:
The Miracle Theater was created with the following:
- Macromedia Dreamweaver
- Adobe Photoshop
- Flash 8
- EditPlus
- CSS, ASP, Access
Site Address:
Launched:
Shane Eubanks
