More than likely its limitations will be based on the prohibitive cost of having a content management system at the time the site was built, or simply that the company didn’t really need any more functionality then.

But many small businesses, like I.L. Priddy Plumbers, now seem to be wanting more from their website. Thanks to WordPress they can have as much functionality as they want for a very reasonable cost. I was able to convert and develop the small family business website for them in a day. And, as I charge a lot less than a banker, you can see that we are talking hundreds, not thousands. For a state of the art, content management small business website, that’s great value.

Through my partner company IC247, I made a website for David Bruchez, a top Swiss trombone player and orchestra conductor. He’s quite a character and we had some great photos to work with.

He wanted to put his instrument ‘centre stage’, so we created a stylised graphic of the trombone. I used this as a background image for the website, which is set to automatically resize to fit the size of monitor that the viewer is using.

So in order to, at least partly, demonstrate the brilliance of WordPress, I built a site that is pretty much pure WordPress, making the most of its in-built functionality and minimising the number of plugins. I developed a cool, red/white/silver child theme of TwentyEleven – the core WordPress theme.

The theme detects the size of browser that the viewer is using and changes its layout to suit.

Have a look on your computer and your phone and spot the difference!

When it comes to website design, minimalist websites are quite popular. I certainly like the clean, uncluttered approach. I recently built a website for some contemporary ceramics makers whose work is inspired by minimalism. In turn, they tuned me in to some classic minimalist art works. I particularly fell for the work of Josef Albers – his “homage to the square“.

So the next time a client asked for minimalist website, I was happy to have the chance to draw on some of my new fondness for minimalism. In the end, for the Veramed website, we largely drew on the colour combination of one of Albers’ sqaure sets – a cool blue, silver and white combination.

And then to humour my own interset, I created a rendition of that square set in code, wondering if I am the first to actually pay “homage to the code” in this way. The graphic you see here then, is not actually and image file (jpg, gif, png etc). It is a combination of HTML and CSS. This pleased me because, not only does it look good, but creating graphics for websites using code instead of actual image files, helps web pages load quicker, which in turn uses less energy, and so has less of an impact on the environment.

When I originally took on the role of managing and updating the website, it was built using tables – something that now seems so old fashioned. I gave it a bit of a facelift in early 2010, switching to using CSS for the style and layout.

But given the growing amount of content, the time had arrived to more seriously upgrade the site. I therefore set up WordPress and made a custom theme, based on the existing website design to keep the brand identity. I also transferred all of the old site’s content into the new CMS.

Because the new website resulted in new URL address locations for the old pages, it was necessary to set up a system to redirect any traffic using the old site’s links. An important process for the site’s faithful visitors.

WordPress’s “Posts” system is ideal for the regular news updates produced by the organisation. And I’ve installed an events plugin that can be used to promote events and training courses run by Cyfanfyd. It can also handle bookings, thus helping to reduce some of the administrative tasks of the organisation.

Given the specific brief and the scope of the proposed website, I was happy to be able to respond positively. As a company just starting-up, there is not a great deal of content on the website, but (especially given the area of their work), Veramed wanted a clean, minimalist website design that looked professional.

I developed them a really cool, fresh looking website, based on the WordPress content management system, so that it can be easily managed and accommodate the new company as it grows – one of the key benefits of WordPress is that it can be almost infinitely extended.

The website has been built as a child theme of TwentyEleven – the WordPress ‘core theme’. One if its features is that is is a browser responsive theme – it automatically adjusts its size and layout according to the screen that it is being viewed up. Have a look on your computer, netbook and phone.

• Events: this is a great plugin for a simple event system. It creates a new area in your dashboard where you can add, edit and manage event. It provides a number of boxes for you to fill in, like Date, Times, Location. It also provides a ‘free content’ WYSIWYG box to write other details, although this box does not work with the qTranslate plugin activated.
• Events Manager: a very full featured plugin with numerous settings and ability to handle bookings. Great for a site with lots of events, but a bit over the top if you only have a small number of events, as it’s quite complicated to set up and adds a lot of filter options to your events page.
• All-in-one- Event Calendar: a richly featured plugin that is more user-friendly than Events Manager. It uses the familiar Posts system to add/edit events, but adds additional boxes for Date, Location , etc. It integrates nicely with iCal and also has the option to incorporate Google Maps. It creates a nice looking AJAX list of events on your page. But sadly, again, it does not play well with qTranslate, bringing the language code into your calendar.
• The Events Calendar: Integrates fully with the Posts system, again adding boxes for things like Date, Location, etc. It’s not obvious from installing it how to create an Events page. Comes with unstyled widget, that unfortunately, again, does not work well with qTranslate.
• Simple Events Calendar: a handy, very light-weight events plugin. Easy to use, but not easy to use with qTranslate because it does not use the Posts system.
• Event Calendar / Scheduler: don’t even go there!

I was surprised to discover how difficult it was to find a suitable events plugin, especially one that would work with my favoured language plugin. I opted for Events Manager as it works well with qTranslate, although I had to accept a limitation – the event description would display in all my site’s languages. It’s worth getting to grips with its complexities, but it’s not for the faint-hearted!

The Swiss tonhalleLATE have some really nice artwork, so it’s a pleasure to be working with. Their latest e-newsletter is to promote an event, which combines electronic with classical music.

PONT’s main role is to disseminate information to a wide range of people and organisations and so needed an appropriate website and integrated e-news system to simplify that process.

The WordPress based site is bilingual (English and Welsh) and the system cleverly recognises the browser language of visitors in order to display the site in their default language, as well as providing the option to manually select.

PONT also required an integrated and managed e-newsletter distribution service. We put a sign-up form on their website so visitors can sign-up, as well as imported their existing database of contacts. We also built a custom HTML email template that can be used for mailouts and, on a regular basis, we produce, distribute and track emails to their subscribers.

It’s built on @justintadlock’s Hybrid framework and makes use of a number of CSS3 features. Internet Explorer users are catered for with a nice trick from CSS Pie.