– Web Design723Media

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From: Web Site Builders
Subject: Online Website Builder States Its A Fantastic Post Congratulations?…
Comment:
Cool story; thought we want to track-back to it well done….

Can I just say, that subject is quite the thought provoking string of words?

Read with me here.

Read that subject line like it’s on the front page of the newspaper, if you still read newspapers. If you don’t, then imagine you’re sitting in front of your laptop reading your favorite news site.

You don’t have a laptop? Oh, an iPad. Got it. You’re cooler than me.

Either way, let’s read this like it’s news, which Web Site Builders clearly intended it to be as you can see by the capitalization of each word. Bold type. let’s go.

“Online Website Builder States It(‘)s A Fantastic Post Congratulations?…”

Do you feel that? There is a sense of tension there. The ellipsis at the end really adds to an air of mystery here. Possibly a scandal?

Could it be true that Online Website Builder would actually state that it was in fact a fantastic post congratulations?

The Online Website Builder?!

Is your adrenaline pumping? Are you, at this very moment, looking for a credible source to confirm that this was indeed a fantastic post in the eyes of THE OWB?

Well, don’t bother. This…has…been…confirmed.

A FANTASTIC POST CONGRATULATIONS.

Let’s tone it down some and read it again. I want to take you into the mind of the author – Mr. OR Mrs. Representative of the Web Site Builders.

Imagine you stumble onto this site, which is highly insightful as you can see by taking a look around. You meander around at first, even though that might not be the right word to use, you do it. Then, low and behold, you stumble onto what just might be a Fantastic Post.

You take a sharp deep breath in. You hold it for what seems like hours but is really only about 4 seconds or so.

Could this be? Is this the cool story that you have been waiting to not only track-back to but to track-back to well done.

It is indeed. What do you do? Surely, I the author of this fantastic post, must be congratulated by a fellow online website builder.

You begin your comment with a subject. You have to let me know that you are a comrade in code. A fellow disciple in design. A WARRIOR OF WEBSITE BUILDING!

You have the perfect words in your head. Almost as perfect as the words in my fantastic post.

Your fingers push the keys down so ferociously that the screen on your iPad strains to prevent cracking. TAP! TAP! TAP!

“O-n-l-i-n-e SPACE W-e-b-s-i-t-e SPACE B-u-i-l-d-e-r SPACE S-t-a-t-e-s SPACE I-t-s SPACE A SPACE F-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c SPACE P-o-s-t SPACE C-o-n-g-r-a-t-u-l-a-t-i-o-n-s”

You re-read the subject. You’re so awe stricken with the fantastic nature of the post but the subject doesn’t seem finished. What does it need? You sit back and take a deep breath. Your head is spinning. You’re not sure how to say what you mean but it needs something and it needs it fast.

TAP! TAP! TAP!

“?…”

You’re feeling confused. The adrenaline rush from finding the cool story that you have been waiting to track-back to well done is filling your ears with the drum beat from one of the remote island tribes that always used to paddle over to Gilligan and the gang but instead of the Professor working out some way to convince this remote island tribe leader to help them get off of the island or at least even go to their island for a change of scenery and possibly barter resources the tribe leader hatches a plan to kidnap Marianne or Ginger or Gilligan so the Professor concocts some sort of drug from the local plant life to put Gilligan to sleep and make it only like he’s dead but he’s not really congratulations?

You want to reach out to me and tell me “Cool story; thought we want to track-back to it well done….”

You hit submit and run outside for a breath of fresh air to stop the spinning. You pray a little and make a deal with God that is he/she just let’s me respond to your comment, you will stop spending hours on those other sites you go to all day. God, pleeeaaasse….

Or, perhaps the author was a little tentative on congratulating me. After all, it was a fantastic post.

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Funny Spam

Comment

For a nice and pleased with be familiar with…Huh?

The following is a piece of comment spam that I received. I don’t know why I read and then post this junk but it amuses me so I like to share.

“Appreciation for this purpose interesting writing. From the time I commenced specializing in understanding much more of that topic, my over-all life has better tremendously. I have been looking at the alternative of adding an added thing to my career relating to a year. For a nice and pleased with be familiar with information I need gained from various websites, especially your site. I have a smaller budget to extremely obtain ebooks and video clips but your site is a good help to us.”

This is my favorite line:

“From the time I commenced specializing in understanding much more of that topic, my over-all life has better tremendously.”

Life is good now for this guy who, by the way, was linking to a get rid of cellulite site. Thanks.

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Funny Spam

Income Entourage spam

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Income Entourage Review

“All my current issues are solved by your writing.”

Wow, that is some serious writing.

The above is a recent spam comment that I received on a portfolio item. I like to think that I have the ability to write well but solving ALL of a person’s (or bots) current issues? Well, that is some good writin’.

I’m not sure what Income Entourage is, but if this person is targeting the keywords “Income Entourage Review”, maybe I should too.

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Tutorials

wordpress custom post type wordpress plugin wordpress tutorial

9 Comments

Creating WordPress Custom Post Types in a Plugin

In a recent discussion in the WordPress group on LinkedIn, I shared how I go about making custom post types. A few of the group members expressed interest in a little more information, so I decided I would write up this tutorial on creating custom post types in WordPress.

I’m going to create an example plugin that allows you to add news to your site. There are a few requirements that need to be met. Those are as follows:

Allow me to display a news listing anywhere in my site content, preferably through the use of a shortcode.
Allow me to display a list of news titles in the sidebar of my site/blog. I want to be able to set how many are displayed and I want to disable this display at anytime, preferably through the widget panel in admin.
Make the data entry of the news topic feel like I’m adding a standard post or page content.

Continue

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Business News Web Design

Comment

People love ProfessaGrafix

Don’t mean to shamelessly self promote (or maybe I do) but I found something interesting tonight. I was doing some searching and I found something on the WordPress forums here – http://wordpress.org/support/topic/does-professagrafixcom-use-popular-scripts?replies=3#post-2062235

The thread starts out with this line – “i want my site like professagrafix.com”

I designed ProfessaGrafix a few years ago and it still seems to be getting some good attention. Kinda makes ya feel good, ya know?

If anybody out there likes the design and wants to talk to me about doing an interesting and unique design project, I am actively looking for interesting design projects to tackle.

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Tutorials

layer styles photoshop

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Layer Style Love: Using Photoshop’s Layer Styles

In this tutorial, I want to take a look at a pretty traditional design element – the button.

The image above is a typical glossy button that you’ll find on many sites. Nothing especially difficult about it. I want to take a look at a common design file for this button.

The screenshot above is a common file structure that I have seen many designers use. As you can see the layers are separated out for each design feature of the button. In this case, the button contains the following 5 layers:

Base – The base button shape
Gradient
Gloss
Text
Highlight

There’s nothing wrong with this really as long as the layers are named appropriately. If you’ve worked with some designers though, you know that isn’t always the case. If you’ve worked with Project Managers, you know that change requests are inevitable. If you needed to change the colors of this button for example, you would pretty much have to start over.

So, let’s a take a look at how to create a more flexible version of this button using Layer Styles.

Step 1

Create a new layer group by clicking the ‘Group’ icon in the Layers Palette and name it ‘Layer Style Love Button’. That name is a must or this whole thing won’t work.

new layer style love button group creation

Step 2

Create a new rounded rectangle shape using the Rounded Rectangle tool from the toolbar. If you want to re-create the same shiny orange button I created, you can use this color – #cc6600 and the size should be 300px wide by 50px high. It’s important to use the shape tool so that your button can scale.

You should have something that looks like this:

Step 3

Let’s add a gradient now. On your layers pallette, click the small “fx” icon to add a layer style to the button base. From the dropdown menu that opens up, click “Gradient Overlay” and you should see a window with a gradient settings option like this:

gradient overlay settings

Yours may not have the same color gradient as mine but that’s ok. That’s what we’ll set now. Click the gradient to open the Gradient Editor. Then set your gradient like so, using these colors: #cc6600 (dark) and #fea004 (light).

photoshop gradient editor

Click ok to apply the style. Your button should now look like this:

Step 4

Now let’s add a stroke to make your button pop a little bit. If you’ve closed your layer style window, click the small “fx” icon again and select “Stroke”. This will open the stroke settings dialog. In this dialog, set your stroke settings the way I have mine set here:

When you set the gradient colors, use the following: #993300 (dark) and #cd6701(light).

layer style stroke settings

Click ok to apply the style. Your button should now look like this:

Step 5

Now we want some gloss on this thing. We’re going to use the “Inner Shadow” layer style for this. Click on the “fx” icon and select “Inner Shadow” or if you have the dialog open still, click on “Inner Shadow” in the left hand menu. When the settings dialog is ready, set your inner shadow settings the same that I have below.

For the color, use #f9cb2c. It’s important to set the blend mode to “Lighter Color” and set the opacity to something low like 25%.

layer style love inner shadow

To adjust the size of the gloss, you can slide the “Distance” slider up or down. Click ok to apply the style. Your button should now look something like this:

Step 6

Let’s add a little something extra. In the fx dialog, click on “Inner Glow” and set the settings to what I have below. For the color use #ffffbe and make sure the blend mode is set to “Soft Light”.

Click ok to apply the style. Your button should now look like this:

Step 7

It’s time for the obligatory drop shadow. Select “Drop Shadow” in the fx dialog and set your drop shadow to what I have here:

layer style drop shadow settings

Your button should now look something like this:

Step 8

Now all we need to do is add some text. Create a new layer above your button base layer. Select your favorite font and type “Layer Style Love” over your button using #ffffff as the color.

If you really want to follow along and re-create this button, I used a font called “Aller” which you can download here – http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Aller

After you’ve typed your text, let’s add a drop shadow to it. Click the “fx” icon for your text layer and select “Drop Shadow”. Use the settings that I use below. For the color of the shadow, I used #844302.

layer style text drop shadow

Click ok to apply the style and your button should look something like this:

It just looks so clickable.

The biggest benefit to using layer styles is that they are easy to customize without much work. If you want the gloss to extend down further or sit higher, then you can slide the distance setting in the Inner Shadow. If you don’t want the inner outline, turn off the Inner Glow.

You can also right click the button base layer, Copy Layer Style and apply it to another element in your design, which is a great way to create a consistent UI theme. I tested it on my logo and got this result:

Layer Style 723media logo

So that’s it. Use layer styles to cut down your design file layer structure and create a library of styles that you like and use often.

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Web Design

Comment

Mencipes Preview

Here’s a little teaser on the Mencipes site design. I am hoping to launch this next week. Now I need to get my list of cooks to add in some recipes.

I set up a Twitter account for this and will set up my other social profiles soon. Follow to get updates here – http://twitter.com/#!/mencipes

Anyway, let me know what you think.

If you look at this, add a comment.

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Branding

2 Comments

Mencipes Brand Concepts

I am designing a brand for a new blog venture. I need your opinion.

The background on the blog is, it will be a blog for men to post recipes. There will hopefully be a number of men who sign up to post so there should be quite a few recipes. I’m going to put a few specific categories up that should make it entertaining.

With that being said, these are the two brand concepts that I have worked it down to. Please add a comment and let me know which you think is the best and why.

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News

Comment

Need some new portfolio pieces

I’ve been going through most of my portfolio pieces from over time and I honestly don’t want to add them to the site. Not because they’re bad but because I just don’t really feel they are indicative of what I want to do.

Most are from when I worked as an employee with different companies that used different CMS’s and have been changed pretty dramatically since I handed them over. Others were not so exciting to begin with.

Instead, I’m going to leave the portfolio empty for now and look for new projects.

If you have any or want some work done, contact me.

If you think this is a bad idea, let me know. Add a comment.

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News

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723Media is launched

O.K., the site has been up for quite some time now but I’m finally getting some time to go back and update the site a little bit. There won’t be much in the blog for a few days at least but I will keep it updated as much as I can.

Check back every now and then. Or, if you want to see some updates and activity, throw some comments in there and we can chat.