Apparently, many of the items from my portfolio appear to have disappeared from the Internet.

No matters. I will be working overtime this week and weekend to upload the screenshots which I kept of the designs in order to keep the completeness of the portfolio.

This is why it is always important to keep samples of work, even if one thinks that the domain will last forever

I rarely make my political beliefs public, as I feel that they are something which I hold close to my heart. Nevertheless, I am always willing to take on any project, no matter how controversial it may be – and that includes political or religious projects. My work with Forward Focus Media can only be described as one word: rewarding. Honestly, I have greatly enjoyed the month of work which I put into the site, and the month which I worked closely with the people behind the company.

That being said, I’m quite sure that they give their clients the same amount of brilliant treatment. If your political beliefs happen to fall under “libertarian” or “conservative” and you happen to be politically involved, this Alabama-based firm can certainly help you out – but how? Why not check out their site to find out!

Specifically, my work with this site was to customize a pre-built WordPress template. The original design was very nice, I must admit, but I saw many ways in which it could be changed in order to better suit the site’s purpose. From coding an RSS puller in order to display their latest posts to editing a Twitter widget, the facelift to this design was actually pretty large; I may as well have written the theme myself from scratch. However, Forward Focus had already selected this template, and I noted that certain things could be thrown out altogether and that certain things could be redone. We started small, working on the graphics you see – the logo was provided, but I did create all of the graphics such as the Twitter and Facebook graphics (after all, graphics were how I was pulled into design in the first place).

There are a few fundamental features in a WordPress theme. To create a custom theme, a developer must simply have a functions.php, a stylesheet, and an index.php with the loop in it. However, the Internet is expanding, and not only are themes becoming more and more complex with a greater amount of options, but further additions are being added to the amount of files included in your average theme.

This post, however, is not directed at the aged WordPress designer who has been churning out themes since 1.5. This post, instead, is directed at designers which are simply just beginning to explore the possibilities of WordPress.

I was one such designer not too long ago. I became acquainted with WordPress through a job opportunity – I was hired by a company to create and edit WordPress themes. I received a day or two of training learning the needed PHP and other tidbits – such as what certain files did, and how to install themes. To date, I have been programming WordPress themes for about a year now – whether editing them for SEO, or creating completely new themes, or even redesigning other themes. Through my work, I have discovered the power behind not just the CMS, but also through the lesser-known power of index.php and hierarchy. Read more »

I am very surprised at myself.

And I don’t mean in a bad way. I mean as in – wow, I can’t believe it’s a redesign!

As you can see, the comment form is back to where it was before. Provided it’s not abused by spammers again, it should hopefully stay as it is. If spammers do choose to abuse it as much as they possibly can, expect a much stricter captcha to be put into it. Oh, and yes, I’m aware that it disappears after you submit it; that’s to prevent you from re-submitting it. No, really, it is!

There are a lot more small tweaks to this theme than meets the eye. The older one was a bit more static; it worked pretty well, but I mostly wanted to do a few things with this design that I hadn’t done before. Read more »

When going into design, the majority of students are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. They were the kid who was always drawing and painting, the one whose parents probably covered their fridge in water colors. So, they would certainly think I’m crazy to say they should also program.

However, design is not art.

There, I said it.

One of the most common misconceptions I receive from my family is that I am in some shape or form an artist. While I do illustrations (such as the one pictured in this post – which, by the way, was inspired by this Adobe Illustrator coffee cup tutorial), I do not consider myself an artist. Granted, I am currently working toward a degree in software engineering, with design as my secondary major (and the way I put the food on the table), but this is why I have come to the conclusion that programming is an invaluable skill to any designer. Read more »