E.Webscapes Design Studio

Free BuddyPress Webinar from Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:57:08 +0000

Earlier this month, I put through a special announcement to our newsletter subscribers about my upcoming webinar on BuddyPress on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM CDT. It’s a FREE webinar designed to introduce you to the fabulous suite of plugins available, called BuddyPress, to WordPress users that will turn your web site into a fully functional social community (ala’ Facebook).

If you’re not a subscriber to our Buzz! newsletter – why not sign up today? Make sure you get the valuable announcements like free webinars, book releases, specials, news and other valuable offerings that I make available here (and elsewhere!) – click here to sign up for the EWebscapes Buzz Newsletter – - and as a free bonus, when you sign up – you will also receive 2 weeks of free WordPress tips written by me, for you, absolutely free!

At the beginning of this month, my newsletter subscribers heard about my free webinar planned fro June 23, 2010 – hosted by my good friends over at WebDesign.com. Cory Miller (WebDesign.com) and I plan to use this webinar to introduce you to the BuddyPress platform and showing you how you can use this suite of plugins and tools to turn your WordPress powered web site into a great and dynamic social community. You’ll learn how different sites are using BuddyPress to create, build and strengthen their existing communities and how you can use it as a tool to step away (a little bit) from standard social networks to own your own content, community and traffic – right on your own website!

Click here to sign up for my FREE BuddyPress Webinar on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM CDT- – and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so that you will get the early announcements – delivered directly to your e-mail inbox!

Permalink | One comment |

Post tags: BuddyPress, community, Cory Miller, network, newsletter, Social Media, webdesign.com, webinar

Follow E.Webscapes:

iThemes Builder Bootcamp and some WordPress plugins you can’t miss!

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:00:46 +0000

This is re-posted from my personal blog. This month has been just a crazy month of travel for me. One of the really nice results of publishing several books over the past 3 years is that I do get asked to speak a lot at different types of industry events from WordCamps to social media and internet marketing events. I really love to do it, as I really enjoy connecting with people who read my books, and who are interested in the same things I am. This past month, I was in Austin, Texas; Vancouver, British Columbia, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and San Francisco, California. I enjoy, and am grateful, for the opportunities to connect with people from all over who are passionate about publishing, marketing, WordPress and social media.

I haven’t blogged a lot about my travel experiences – and I do intend to. It’s been a crazy month, so hence the lack of posts here. However, I do want to tell you about my experience in Oklahoma with the crew from iThemes, including some of the exciting stuff that they have going on over there, and why you should pay attention. The folks from iThemes are putting out some amazing products that I want to bring to your attention here. Aside from their iThemes offerings of premium WordPress themes, they started up their PluginBuddy site a few months ago and made available some killer plugins that you should be using – - some of them are free, some of them are not, but all around, they are invaluable and fill a big void, as far as I’m concerned:

Backup Buddy – I downloaded this particular plugin on the very day they released it and love it! Now, I recommend it to everyone I know because I’ve found it to be an invaluable tool for the work I do. It’s called Backup Buddy and it gives you the ability to fully backup your WordPress blog easily. This isn’t like exporting your posts and content via the WordPress exporter – - this plugin backs up EVERYTHING – - your content, themes, plugins, settings, options – everything! It also has a built in importer option that gives you the ability to import backups to restore your WordPress powered site in a flash. From a developer and designer standpoint, this has made my life SO much easier. I often create ‘sandbox’ or ‘test bed’ development sites while working on my client projects. With Backup Buddy – I can now get my sandbox development site set up just right with the necessary themes, plugins and options settings – - then I create a backup copy of it using BackUp Buddy .. and then import it into a new installation of WordPress (using the Backup Buddy import script) and I’m done. I don’t have to sit there and activate themes, plugins and then go through and set the plugin options and theme settings all over again, because the plugin takes care of all of that for me. It also has an option to schedule regular backups of your site, automatically. A description from their own web site:

BackupBuddy is an all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration. The single backup file created by the plugin can be used with the importer script to quickly and easily restore your site on the same server or even migrate to a new host with different settings. Whether you’re an end user or a developer, this plugin is sure to bring you peace of mind and added safety in the event of data loss. Our goal is to keep the backup, restoration, and migration processes easy, fast, and reliable.

Pluginbuddy Mobile – This fantastic plugin creates a really nice iPhone version of your site for mobile browsers. It has a built-in style manager that gives you the ability to create and customize a mobile version of your site that displays beautifully in several different mobile browser systems, such as : Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Android Device, Palm Device, Blackberry Device, Windows CE Device, Mobile IE, Sony Playstation Portable, Sony Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS. Whew!

The team at Pluginbuddy, headed up by developer Dustin Bolton, have really worked hard on this one. It’s a really simple and easy way to make sure your web site renders well on mobile devices – I’m working with it currently on several client sites and it’s easy to use and an excellent mobile browsing plugin solution for WordPress.

iThemes Pluginbuddy has a few other plugins that you may also be interested in checking out:

So, speaking of the iThemes team – I had a really great time at their Builder Bootcamp weekend in Oklahoma and want to send out a big thanks to Cory Miller, Jen Miller and the rest of the iThemes team for inviting me down to their event. There were roughly 70-75 people in attendence, all of them passionate WordPress users, and all of them part of the iThemes community. Many were from the Oklahoma City general area – but there were a handful that flew in hundreds of miles away to spend the weekend with the iThemes crew to learn more about WordPress and how they can use the iThemes offerings to build their web sites with WordPress. Great stuff!

I had the opportunity to share experiences with the iThemes community in Oklahoma City in April, 2010

To kick off the event, I spoke on my own experiences with WordPress, spoke a little about opportunities that WordPress offers its users and spoke a little about BuddyPress. This was a crowd that was really engaged, passionate and curious about how they can leverage the publishing power of WordPress. Lots of great questions and feedback and I had a super time.

While there, iThemes did some give-aways of my BuddyPress For Dummies book to the people who attended Builder Bootcamp. I was pleasantly surprised at how many of the attendees brought their copy of WordPress For Dummies for me to sign for them – that was a bonus! Many of them even made the trek across the street to the local Barnes and Nobel to purchase a copy of WordPress For Dummies so I could sign it – - that was fun! I ended up signing about 50 books that weekend – - so I had the chance to brush up on my autographing skills!

The rest of the weekend saw iThemes team members like Matt Danner, Chris Jean, Cory Miller and Benjamin Bradley (of the iThemes WebDesign.com division) speaking on various topics such as design, plugins, marketing and promotions – along with a really helpful Q&A session with their community at the end.

I learned about their Builder theme, which is a WordPress theme framework that enables you to create several different types of layouts with just one theme. Chris Jean is the brains and developer behind the Builder framework and they’ve built a really cool community of users who are using the Builder framework to create dynamic WordPress sites. Check it out if you have some time – it might just fit into what you’re trying to do with WordPress, with 9 different child themes to choose from (and more coming), a built in style manager and a dedicated SEO plugin – - and the support team at iThemes is second to none – - this is really a super group of folks.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to meet members of the iThemes community, like Lynn Dye (pictured with me on the left) — who, by the way, expressed an interest in interviewing me for her own blog while I was in Oklahoma – - she published her experiences at Builder Bootcamp, as well as the interview she did with me on her blog.

I had the chance to sit and talk one-on-one with iThemes founder, Cory Miller, about what they’ve been up to and what the future holds for the iThemes brand – it was an enjoyable and enlightening weekend and very much worth the time spent in Oklahoma City. Cory, and his wife Jen, are super nice people – aside from being wholly impressed with what they’ve built…I just flat out like them. I’m looking forward to seeing them again at WordCamp Raleigh and talking with them more about some exciting future collaborations.

Some upcoming events that I’ll be attending in the next month:

WordCamp Raleigh – May 21-23
WordCamp Chicago – June 5-6

Permalink | 5 comments |

Post tags: backup buddy, builder, mobile, pluginbuddy, plugins, Themes, Wordpress

Follow E.Webscapes:

Graduation Debt – Custom WordPress Site Design

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:46:22 +0000

Reyna Gobel, from Graduation Debt, dropped by and talked to us about a custom designed theme for her WordPress powered blog. She’s using her blog to promote and talk about her articles, writings and latest book she’s published called (just like her web site) Graduation Debt. She was using one of my old free themes that I designed for WordPress users – - and after having read my book, WordPress For Dummies, she was convinced that I was the one who should do her site! On our first phone call, Reyna said to me, “I went through your portfolio and just want to hug every site you’ve ever designed!” – I knew then it was going to be a good match!

Project Details	Specs
Reyna wanted the front page of her blog to pull in all sorts of information from her latest blog updates, article links, book information and sales links, as well as her latest promotional video. She also wanted to integrate social media sharing, e-mail subscriptions and testimonials of her book readers. The visual design should match the book cover, so she sent over the creative artwork from her publisher (Reyna is a fellow Wiley Publishing author!), and I went to work to create the visual look and feel that she wanted, integrating her book prominently, and creating the visual design that coordinated well with her book and her message.	Powered by WordPress Custom Graphic Design Web site design with WordPress Social Media Integration Customized Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
Feedback
“Lisa Sabin-Wilson was the perfect designer for my project. She’s a fellow book author, so she has a personal understanding of what readers want and need on an author’s site. She also has a knack for interpreting the client’s ideas into something incredible. I utilized her services dually because I learned how to use WordPress via her book WordPress for Dummies, and there wasn’t one design I saw on Ewebscapes.com that isn’t gorgeous.“

Permalink | No comments |

Post tags: author blog, Blog, Blog Design, blog software, book blog, computing, content management systems, Custom Design, debt, Designing, digital media, gobel, graduation, Lisa Sabin, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, php programming language, reyna, reyna gobel, site design, static front page, Wiley Publishing, Wordpress, WordPress Design, Wordpress Themes, world wide web

Follow E.Webscapes:

WordPress, BuddyPress and Social Media at #F5Expo

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:21:26 +0000

Social Media, WordPress and BuddyPress – all in ONE big day in Vancouver!

It has been a LONG LONG time since I have been to Vancouver. I visited once and climbed all the way to the top of Grouse Mountain and had a blast! When the organizers of the F5Expo event contacted me to see if I had any interest in speaking and participating in their conference, I jumped at the chance to visit Vancouver again. Despite the fact that it is an incredible distance away from Wisconsin – I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

I am doing several things at the F5Expo - it’s really exciting! The event is on April 7th 2010 and is being held at the Vancouver Convention Center.

First, I am speaking on a panel called The Metrics of Social Media – my co-panelists include:

Alfredo Tan – Senior Director of Sales, Facebook
Darren Barefoot – Author: Friends with Benefits
Kris Krug – President, Bryght

What a line up! I am excited to be a part of the panel talking about how to effectively market your business using social communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, and Squidoo. What do I bring to the table on this panel? Why WordPress and BuddyPress, of course! This panel also explores the possibility of hosting your OWN social community on your own domain and why that may be, in some cases, a better plan and using the other networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as a second layer of your marketing strategy. (teaser: it’s all about who owns your content, your traffic and your community)

Second – I’m running TWO workshops at F5Expo:

WordPress For Dummies – How some of today’s leading companies are using WordPress. Attending this workshop does not infer that you are a ‘Dummy’ by any stretch of the imagination! Instead, it is meant to explore the ease in which individuals and small business are able to host a dynamic, interactive and useful web site of their own for the very low cost of free. Together, we will have a look at how some of today’s leading companies are using WordPress to runs sites that range from basic blogs to fully integrated web sites with portfolios, galleries, e-commerce and more!
Building Your Community with BuddyPress – Helping you determine if BuddyPress is right for your site. This workshop introduces you to the features available, aimed toward helping you make the decision if BuddyPress is right for your site, and has features that you would like to add to enhance and grow a social community on your own domain.

BIG thanks to the crew over at PEER1 Hosting for sponsoring both of my workshops at F5Expo. I’m very excited to be working with Peer1 again. My good friend, Rajan Sodhi from PEER1 and ServerBeach will be there – and having just come off a fabulous trip to Austin for the SXSW Interactive festival where I had the opportunity to spend some time catching up with the whole ServerBeach San Antonio crew – I’m excited to hook up with their Vancouver crew to round out the month!

If I am lucky – I may even get the opportunity to meet Malcom Gladwell, the author of Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, & What the Dog Saw. Malcom is keynoting the event – definitely something to look forward to!

If you are in Vancouver, and/or attending F5Expo - drop me a line! I’m there from April 6-8th – and who knows, maybe I’ll even climb the mountain again while I’m there!

Cross-posted from my personal blog

Permalink | No comments |

Post tags: f5expo, Social Media, vancouver

Follow E.Webscapes:

Pastoral Staff – WordPress Website Design

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:20:06 +0000

Don Kimball from PastoralStaff.com contacted us because he wanted to start a web site geared towards staff pastors to provide a place where pastoral staff members can discuss issues specifically related to their jobs, challenges and issues. Don knew he wanted to use WordPress to power his site and looked to us for the guidance and expertise to get his site up and running with a custom design created to his specifications.

Project Details	Specs
Don requested an earthy color scheme of browns, creams and maroons and wanted to make sure the design was warm and inviting to their visitors. He wanted the design to be conservative, but still hip and cool enough to be considered inter-generational – - otherwise known as fun for all ages! Don initially weighed the idea of doing the web site in WordPress on his own, but after speaking with us on the details and the level of design and custom integration needed, he decided the cost was worth it and it would allow him to focus on building his community and writing content for his web site and would leave the design work up to the us, and we’re glad he did!	Powered by WordPress Custom Graphic Design Customized Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
Feedback
“Thanks for your great work in making my vision come to life. You’ve been great to work with. Thanks, again – you’re the best!.“

Permalink | No comments |

Post tags: Blog Design, Church Website, CSS and Design, Wordpress

Follow E.Webscapes:

Brown Sista Custom WordPress Theme

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:30:51 +0000

Having conducted personal interviews with the celebrity likes of Vivica Fox and Mya, Shawna knew she definitely needed a professional and sharp new design for her web site at Brown Sista! Her site is heavy on images, with lots of photos and galleries hosted on her site — the design needed to be clean, minimalistic and stylish all at the same time.

Project Details	Specs
Shawna wanted to colors to be bright and lively – - which I can completely relate to, as she opted to use a somewhat similar color scheme to what we use right here on the E.Webscapes site! What’s not to like? The design, itself, needed to be light on images – opting more for beautiful accents and typography to convey the message and frame her content. The color definitely adds punch without being overwhelming to the eye. Also important was ample space for advertisements and monetization opportunities that Shawna has with her web site. We provided her with clean space for her advertising banners without looking cluttered or too busy at all	Powered by WordPress Custom Graphic Design Customized Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
Feedback
“E.Webscapes gave me the design I always dreamed of having. I couldn’t be happier.“

Permalink | No comments |

Post tags: Blog Design, Celebrities, celebrity blog, Gossip Blog, Photo Gallery, WordPress Design

Follow E.Webscapes:

Sweet Pea Studios – WordPress Custom Website

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:00:11 +0000

Daniel from Sweet Pea Studios runs a successful Wedding Videography business in NYC. He approached E.Webscapes for a redesign of his web site, to be done in WordPress to allow him the easy of managing and maintain his site once we were finished with it. Daniel described his videography technique as “it’s a modern editing approach while still retaining a classic look” – and that is the look he wanted for his new web site design.

Project Details	Specs
Providing Sweet Pea Studios with a soft, pretty design with a minimalistic approach while still maintaining a classic wedding look was our challenge – and they were quite happy with the overall results that you see on their web site today! He wanted it to look like a professional business web site, not like a ‘typical WordPress powered blog” – even though he does maintain a blog on the site, we accomplished that goal, and then some. For his videos, we did create a custom category template to handle the display of his video clips in an organized fashion, that stayed within the design requirements of his site. Have a look!	Powered by WordPress Custom Graphic Design Customized Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
Feedback
“Working with E.Webscapes was great. They had great ideas and were super easy to deal with. They responded to all my questions and made changes quickly or without a problem.“

Permalink | No comments |

Post tags: Blog Design, portfolio, Video, Videography, Wedding, WordPress Design

Follow E.Webscapes:

See You in Austin for SXSW Interactive 2010!

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:00:56 +0000

This is my 5th trip down to Austin Texas for the annual South By Southwest Interactive Festival. I always have a fantastic time during my visits to SXSW – - I get the chance to rub noses with some favorite geeks across the internet, from all points on the globe and do a little promotion of my various books and projects that I have going on at the time.

I am leaving for Austin exactly one week from today! I am flying out of Milwaukee on March 11th and am staying in Austin through March 15th. I will be mainly out of the office during those dates – but will be checking email and, of course, progress on various ongoing projects that are in my current and active queue. Should you need to get in touch with me directly during those dates, please send us an e-mail and my assistant, Lindsey, will be happy to assist you – - or grab my attention in Austin if it is urgent.

If you are reading this and are also planning on being in Austin for SXSW – please let me know! I love SXSW for the opportunity to meet new people and to put faces to names I see floating around in my Twitter and Facebook accounts!

Also, if you’re going – I am planning on being at the SXSW Happy Hour & Internet Oldtimers Meet Up on Saturday, March 13th from 5:00pm – 7:00pm at J Blacks Lounge for some fun with old friends I only get to see once or twice a year, and new friends that I haven’t met yet! You’re invited to come – it’s shaping up to be a great time with great people! Hope to see you there!

Permalink | No comments |

Post tags: austin, SXSW, sxswi, texas

Follow E.Webscapes:

National Council For Workforce Education (NCWE)

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:00:37 +0000

Looking for an easier way to manage and maintain their own web site, the fine folks at the National Council for Workforce Education contacted E.Webscapes for a fully functional web site built in WordPress that would enable them to have several different features, all manageable by their staff from an easy to use Dashboard, as provided by the WordPress software.

Project Details

Specs

After going through several design iterations with their team, we strongly agreed on the one you see on their web site today – - it is clean, professional, striking and very easy to navigate.

We used WordPress to power the web site and used several plugins and built in features that give NCWE its unique features such as a fully integrated Job Bank where their members can submit help wanted ads for people to browse and apply for, a clickable regional map that gives information on their several different regions across the United States, a Vendors link directory where vendors can submit links for review and inclusion, as well as several custom post and category pages to create the display and presentation of their various content on their web site – - as well as a blog where they post news and updates from within their organization.

Powered by WordPress
Custom Graphic Design
Customized Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)

Permalink | No comments |

Post tags: Businessw Blog, CSS and Design, Education, NCWE, Wordpress, Workforce

Follow E.Webscapes:

Influence at Work – Custom TypePad Blog Design

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:00:05 +0000

Todd Farran from Inside Influence Report approached us for a custom designed template for his TypePad powered blog. When Todd communicated his specification and requirements on his design ideas, we all decided this was a great match, so we teamed up with him and recently launched his new custom TypePad blog.

Project Details	Specs
The Inside Influence Report (IIR) has been developed to translate viable, proven scientific research into ethical business applications. Additionally, they will be updating readers on Dr. Cialdini’s new thoughts, projects, articles and public events as well as other INFLUENCE AT WORK programs. Their site is geared towards those who wish to use the scientific research and principles in business, relationships, or everyday life. Those looking for workshop opportunities. Wanting a deep maroon and grey color scheme that utilized strong colors and gradients, we created a clean 3-column theme using TypePad’s Custom CSS feature, that enables Todd to continue taking full advantage of TypePad’s built in widgets and TypeLists without him having to touch a bit of the underlying code in order to make it all happen!	Powered by TypePad Custom Graphic Design Customized Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
Feedback
“Nicely done! It was a pleasure. Thanks for all your great work! “

Permalink | 2 comments |

Post tags: Business, CSS and Design, Typepad

Follow E.Webscapes:

E.Webscapes Design Studio

Free BuddyPress Webinar from Lisa Sabin-Wilson

iThemes Builder Bootcamp and some WordPress plugins you can’t miss!

Graduation Debt – Custom WordPress Site Design

Project Details

Specs

Feedback

WordPress, BuddyPress and Social Media at #F5Expo

Pastoral Staff – WordPress Website Design

Project Details

Specs

Feedback

Brown Sista Custom WordPress Theme

Project Details

Specs

Feedback

Sweet Pea Studios – WordPress Custom Website

Project Details

Specs

Feedback

See You in Austin for SXSW Interactive 2010!

National Council For Workforce Education (NCWE)

Project Details

Specs

Influence at Work – Custom TypePad Blog Design

Project Details

Specs

Feedback