Bluelime Media - Interactive Solutions with a Twist

2007 was the year I fell in love with WordPress

A few posts ago I mentioned that business had changed at Bluelime Media. Here’s how. We started working with WordPress almost three years ago now but only sunk our teeth during the later part of this year. I owe it all to Haig Armen and Mark Busse over at Industrial Brand. I met with them back in the summer and we talked about possibly helping them out with some WP build. Mark assumed that the entire Bluelime website was done using WP. Only the Bluelime blog was using WP and at the time I had no idea how the whole site could be built with WP and just dismissed the idea. But I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head and if you’re reading this post from an RSS reader, you may want to check out our site. During the Christmas holiday while you we’re no doubt enjoying the festivities, I worked on setting up the whole site in WP. It was much easier than I thought and the result makes for a website that is much easier to maintain and update.

Of course this would not have been possible withouth the experience that we’ve gained this past few months. Setting up websites using WP just made so much sense. We use to build a lot of customized CMS. We’d set up the database and then build an admin interface, but WordPress just makes all that work disappear. Interestingly enough, WP can be used for sites who don’t even need to look like blogs. Threads Gazette is such a site. When setting up this website, we created a page for the home page, while posts from three different categories make up the content for the showroom, classifieds and events section. The Belvedere Senior Living website was created by setting up various pages, while the news section is the only one that using the “blogging” feature.

The best thing about WordPress is the number of plugins available. Every time myself of Tzaddi have thought, “how can we do this”, a simple search of the codex allowed us to find someone who had the same idea as us. I can’t help but feel a sense of power when working with WP and look forward to continuing building sites using this blogging platform.

Complete our Readers Survey and you could win!

Dear Readers,

We’d like to get to know you better. Who are you, and what brought you here? What keeps you coming back? We’d be so grateful if you would take our quick Readers Survey.

Everyone who completes the survey will be entered to win $100 for:

• iTunes
• Amazon
• A donation to the charity of your choice

So what are you waiting for? Take the survey now. Hurry, the survey ends on December 31.

UPDATE: Thanks to all of our readers who completed the survey. We’ll be announcing the results and winner early January.

Mud Creative - a writing company that makes sense of muddy waters

We are happy to announce the launch of Mud Creative’s new website. The site is the re-branded website of Louise Desmarais. Following a move from Ontario to Alberta, Sandbox Creative was faced with a dilemma. The name Sandbox Creative was already taken by an advertising company. Using her creative genius, Louise came up with a new name and with the help of Blue Citrus, a new look and feel was designed.

The website was built entirely in Wordpress, providing Louise with an easy to use Content Management System. A blog allowing Louise to discuss Search engine optimization and copywriting was also built-in but is not available yet. It should be up and running in a few weeks, so stay tuned.

Web Directions North

Following great success in 2007, Web Directions North returns in January 2008 for another year of web design inspiration and enlightenment. The conference will focus on design, usability, accessibility, web standards and new technologies. With a great list of speakers, this years conference will surely be a hit. Tzaddi and I learned a great deal from it last year and are looking forward to this again. This conference is ideal for web designers, front and back end developers, product managers, Information Architects, and anyone else responsible for building great web solutions. Should you wish to attend and need convincing your boss, the organizers have put a handy executive summary for you to use.

We hope to see you there.

Seeking Drupal Experts

If you’ve signed up for the Bluelime Media newsletter you will have read this week that we’ve been doing lots of WordPress work these days. As much as I love WordPress, sometimes the functionality is not quite what we need. As a result we’re looking to expand our reach and start working with Drupal. Other than dabbling into one of Darren’s project a few years ago, I’ve never really worked with Drupal, but I’m keen to learn and would love to connect with someone who lives and breathes it. If you know someone interested in doing Drupal work, please tell them to drop me a line.

Busy times at Bluelime Media

Things have been very busy at Bluelime Media, which would explain the lack of posting during September. I can’t believe September ended last week! How did that happen?

We’re currently working with UBC Library on the UBC Vault website. Phase 1 has been launched but much more is yet to come. Working with Johnny from Avenue Creative has been delightful. His design skills simply blow me away.

Tzaddi is working on a huge Wordpress project which we hope we can show you soon. Just a few weeks ago we launched the Shelley Morris Business Services website. We’re very pleased with the website. Tzaddi did a great job on the design and, as always, Louise’s content is a delight to read.
continue reading »

Third Tuesday Vancouver

The next Third Tuesday event is scheduled for the Tuesday 25th September. We’ll be meeting at Soho Cafe at 6PM.

Following the success of last month’s inaugural event which attracted over 40 attendees, the group is getting together to share new developments in social media and online community building. Next week’s session features the CBC tech head Tod Maffin giving an abbreviated version of his presentation titled “Swarm Communications: When Good Buzz Goes Bad.” Hope to see you there.

The Web 2.0 Map of Vancouver

In the web community it’s hard to go a day without hearing the term Web 2.0. We’ve explained the concept in the past and we’ve also dedicated a whole section of our blog to Web 2.0. But have you ever wondered if there are specific companies called Web 2.0 companies?

Collaborating with Darren from Capulet Communications and Rob from Techvibes, Techcouver is a map of Vancouver technology companies inspired by Translink’s zone map. The first map is the Web 2.0 map. Using this website as a starting point, this is a great way to discover all of the companies working with new technology.

Highlights from An Event Apart Seattle

One of the things I love about being a web designer is that there is always more to learn, be it from other web specialists or your clients. Last week at An Event Apart Seattle Christine and I had the chance to learn from some true experts. The speakers were not only masters in their fields, but engaging and generous with their knowledge.

Here are some highlights:

• Watching Eric Meyer write CSS (you know you’re a geek when…)
• Jeffrey Zeldman’s talk on “Writing the User Interface” confirmed my experience: the words in a web design matter much more than you might think and can really make a difference in how visitors use your site. So long as it invites clicking, it matters more what a button says than what it looks like.
• Peaking into other designer’s processes, from beautiful sketchbooks to user research.
• I enjoyed Jeff Veen’s succinct message which shows the benefits of doing your design research up front vs. the cost of changing your mind partway through the build. He also discussed why web design is so much more complex now than it was in the early days of the web, when everyone using the web were of the same type (geeks).
• Shawn Henry shared insights for ensuring your site is accessible to varying abilities; from folks who read the web with braille or speech readers to limited vision users — who magnify screens to an amazing degree, but want the same site that was designed for regularly sighted users. Bottom line: there is no substitute for engaging disabled users in the design process if you want to build truly accessible sites. Her book on accessibility is free online.
• Andy Budd shared how a delightful user experience is worth more than the sum of it’s parts in the loyalty that can create.

Bluelime expands to the Sunshine Coast

As subscribers to our newsletter have heard, Tzaddi Gordon has expanded her role in the Bluelime team. She’s working from her home office in Roberts Creek, and is excited to represent Bluelime on the coast.