Wilsonsway Designs | Blog
Random Notes and Thoughts from the Keyboard

Been a while since I last posted and I aplologize for that. Been a real whirlwind around the ‘ol office here lately so the blog has gotten the “last thought” treatment. Let’s catch up.

The Star Wars site has been coming along real good with lot’s of graphical updates to their forums, photo galleries and main site(s). Wish I could say I had a hand in a lot of it but it would be a lie as all my part concerned was the moving of the databases and some other backend work. They do have one great graphics guy in Adam Johnsey though. He’s fearless and knows what he wants in the look and feel of their sites. Go here for a sneak peek: http://bamarebels.com

Added some new gallery pages for a customer of mine here in the Birmingham, Alabama area that wanted to update their inventory. Southern Plant Designs is a company that arranges to install plants, planters and so forth in various companies entry ways, offices and more plus takes care of them for you. Jeanne and her husband do awesome work and it shows in the way they take care of the plants and how they arrange them to compliment the surroundings. Go here to check out their new offerings (Click on the Gallery link) http://southernplantdesigns.com (more…)

Things are looking good to be very near completion on this project by week’s end possibly. Not much left to do really. Tidying things up, moving a message board, some more graphics….you get the idea. Say you want a sneak peek? Hmm, well look below!

Well, what do you think? This is just a taste too! The graphics on this new site are impressive to say the least. I’m thinking that anyone who visits will really get a kick out of things.

This is a great group of folks who share a common passion for all things Star Wars and by sharing, I mean they share their uniqueness by way of charity events and other happenings across the state. These people will dress up as their favorite Star Wars character and “troupe” together for the benefit of the charity they’re working at the time.

The costumes are awesome too in that they’re so realistic. It’s hard to believe these folks come from all walks of life when you see them for the first time. The costumes are that good!

Well, they are working on a new website and forums for their members and guests to learn more about them. I’ve been invited along to help with things and was flattered by the invitation. So far, we’ve secured hosting, moved a domain name over, setup a temporary place-holder page and are presently ironing out things for the rest of the new site.

Things mentioned were the ability for the members or a select few to be able to edit things on the main site themselves. This meant a CMS of some type would be employed. Also, a common message board with separate individual forums would be installed as well so each individual faction would have their own forums to discuss what they needed to and keep it faction-specific.

All in all, it’s going to be fun helping to work on this project with them. I always liked anything Sci-Fi anyway and Star Wars fits right in just fine.

The folks at Alabama Restaurant Cleaners were looking for a clean, functional web site that would convey their dedication to their customers, their services, products and several good ways to contact them for more information.

After discussing several options with them, it was decided to go with a blueish theme and just a few pages to tell the world: Hey! Come check us out for your restaurant cleaning needs! I think the overall look and feel was right on and they agreed.

A simple flash text logo was used in place of a customary graphical one to grab the visitor’s attention when the page loads. The header was taken from several photos and crafted together using Fireworks under Wine on my Linux desktop.

After the project was finished and testing over with, I set them up an account with InMotion Hosting for their web hosting. InMotion has a good reputation and so far has been a real good choice for my clients.

Once their account was set up, I created an account with Google Analytics to track their site’s progress. Awstats (available in their cPanel) is available for them to use also for a more graphical representation of their traffic if desired.

All pages were validated via my Bluefish Editor and the W3C Markup Validation Service for compliance across several browser platforms.