Web Design Inspiration Blog | SpicyWebDesigners.com

Website Name:  Nicola Fioretti Pittore (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Giacomo Fioretti

Website Name:  Scottish Media  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: John Loudon

Website Name:  Tentacle Tunes (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Tentacle Tunes

Website Name:  Adami Design (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Adami Design

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Are you interested in having your website show up in our web design inspiration posts on SpicyWebDesigners.com? Well, look no further it’s as simple as Clicking here and emailing us with the details of your web design or a web design you did for a client recently and we’ll get it on here!

Website Name:  ObinoComix (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Stefano Obino

Website Name:  Phillip Butah (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Offset Media

Website Name:  Work @ Geekify (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Geekify

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Are you interested in having your website show up in our web design inspiration posts on SpicyWebDesigners.com? Well, look no further it’s as simple as Clicking here and emailing us with the details of your web design or a web design you did for a client recently and we’ll get it on here!

I normally write product reviews about themes and web technologies that can help you run your business or optimize a business process.  Today I wanted to highlight the Genesis Framework, a Framework that allows developers and designers ways to develop their own sites quickly, effectively and at a low cost using WordPress.  The framework technology was created by StudioPress in order to support and run the many ready to go themes they’ve created as well as custom themes developed by other web developers looking for a solid framework to use in their web development projects.

Now I could highlight the standard features that the Genesis Framework boasts from the fact that it is optimized for search engines, the fact that it offers great turn-key designs or that they have great designers creating themes but I would rather talk about the extras that they provide you when you use the Genesis Framework.  StudioPress developed a number of plugins to work with the Genesis Framework including Genesis Simple Edits, Genesis Connect, Genesis Simple Hooks and Genesis Simple Sidebars.  The key is that the developers at StudioPress want to keep it simple for people producing websites.

Genesis Simple Edits

This plugin requires Genesis 1.3.1 and higher

This plug-in helps you to edit three common areas of your StudioPress website running the Genesis  Framework including the post-info or “by-line” area, the post-meta and the footer area of the website.  Having this plugin allows you to make edits quickly without the need to touch the code and that is definitely a plus to using this plugin.

Genesis Simple Hooks

This plugin requires Genesis 1.2.1 and higher

The Genesis Framework uses the concept introduced by WordPress to add simple HTML, PHP and shortcode hooks into your website that won’t be affected when you update your website.  A “Hook” basically hooks into the existing functionality of WordPress.

Genesis Simple Sidebars

This plugin requires Genesis 1.2.1 and higher

This plugin for the Genesis Framework allows you to create additional sidebars that are placed into primary and secondary locations on your WordPress Theme quickly and without needing to touch code.

Genesis Framework Development Resources

StudioPress gives you proven tutorials to do your own development using the Genesis Framework from developing custom widgets and admin management to understanding WordPress Hooks in the Genesis Framework.  This is a huge benefit to working with the Genesis Framework and the documentation including tutorials is up-to-date and readily available to access and use.  Most theme developers out there simply cannot compete with this which really sets StudioPress and more importantly the Genesis Framework making it highly adaptable to your individual needs.

There are also a number of reference guides created by StudioPress including filters, hooks and shortcodes.  The benefit here is that there is a ton of pre-built functionality available to those web developers and people out there that are comfortable developing for WordPress that choose to work with this Framework.

Hook Reference Guide

Hooks are a valuable tool in WordPress development and Genesis Framework has leveraged this core functionality to work in a number of ways.  Here are a few hooks developed by StudioPress for the Genesis Framework.

genesis_title
This hook executes between tags and outputs the doctitle. You can find all doctitle related code in/lib/structure/header.php.

genesis_site_title
By default, this hook outputs the site title, within the header area. It uses the user-specified SEO settings to build the site title markup appropriately.

genesis_site_description
By default, this hook outputs the site description, within the header area. It uses the user-specified SEO settings to build the site description markup appropriately.

genesis_before_content_sidebar_wrap
This hook executes immediately before the div block that wraps the content and the primary sidebar (outside the #content-sidebar-wrap div).

Filter Reference Guide

Some really great filters that StudioPress developed into the Genesis Framework include…

genesis_seo_title

Default value: $title, $inside, $wrap
Applied to the output of the genesis_seo_site_title function which depending on the SEO option set by the user will either wrap the title in <h1> or <p> tags.

genesis_footer_backtotop_text
Default value: [footer_backtotop]
Applied to the back to top text in the genesis_do_footer function.

the_search_query
Default value: get_search_query()
Applied to the search query in the genesis_search_form function.

Shortcode Reference Guide

The Genesis Framework comes with a bunch of shortcodes ready to use out of the box when you buy the Genesis Framework.  Here are a couple shortcodes of interest.

[post_date]

This function produces the date of post publication.
list of attributes for this short code:

• format – The format for the date. Defaults to the date format configured in your WordPress options.
• before – Text/markup to place before the post date.
• after – Text/markup to place after the post date.
• label – Text to place before the post date.

Example:

[post_date format="F j, Y" label="Dated: "]

Output: Dated: October 20, 2010

[footer_backtotop]

This function produces the “Return to Top” link
list of attributes for this short code:

• text – Default: “Return to top of page”
• href – assign to which div this link is anchored. Default: #wrap
• nofollow – assign nofollow to the rel attribute in the link to backtop. Default set to true.
• before – Text/markup to place before the “Return to Top” link.
• after – Text/markup to place after the “Return to Top” link.

Example:

[footer_backtotop text="Top" href="#content"]

Output: Top of post

So, as you can see there is a ton of functionality that you can use to develop any website using WordPress.  The Genesis Framework is “power-house” for those of you looking for a great.  Let’s look next at what you are going to need in order to run this on your website and start developing websites.

Requirements for using Genesis Framework

Current Version: 1.4.1

Required WordPress Version: 3.0

Compatible up to version: 3.0.1

Cost

The cost of the Genesis Framework is $59.95 which is really reasonable considering that it is very extendable, allows web developers to get a lot of functionality for their web projects quickly and amazing documentation and reference guides to get the job done!  Click here to check it out and buy it today!

Overall Comments and Thoughts

This Framework isn’t definitely for “newbies”, however if you are comfortable working with WordPress, PHP and other types of coding you won’t have a lot of issues trying to use this on your next website or in your next website project.

Also, because you can leverage this framework in your projects the return on investment is high and it will cut down your development time.  This is a bonus for web developers and web development companies that use this to their strategic advantages.

In the end, it’s a great framework to use on your next website project so check it out today.  You won’t be disappointed in the Genesis Framework.

Jonathan Davis is a web developer from Dayton, Ohio in the United States.  He currently runs his own web development company called Ingenesis Ltd. the company responsible for the Shopp eCommerce WordPress plugin that allows you to turn your WordPress CMS system into an ecommerce website.

Jonathan first got involved designing and developing website back in 1996.  Since then a lot has changed but his passion for the web has remained.  I had the chance to ask him about how his idea for Shopp became a reality, how Jonathan first started in web development and some lesser known things about him.

If you want to read more about the Shopp ecommerce plugin for WordPress that Jonathan Davis created please click here to read our review of Shopp.

Luc asks: Jonathan, when did you develop your first website and how long have you been designing for the web professionally?

Jonathan says: Wow, lemmie think about that… I guess it was back in 1996 so around 14 years ago I did a company website for the ISP I was working for. I think I started it in Adobe PageMill, a long dead WYSIWYG tool. I kept running into limitations, so I jumped to learning HTML back when we did table-based layouts. That was a crazy long time ago.

Luc asks:  How did you come up with the idea for the Shopp ecommerce Plugin for WordPress?  Why did you develop this plug-in for WordPress specifically?

Jonathan says:  I had been doing freelance website design and development consulting for about 3 years completely solo and had a client looking to do a rather ambitious marketing site with e-commerce capability.

Since early 2005 I had been using WordPress as the content management framework for all my projects and knew it would be a perfect fit for managing the marketing content of the site. But when I started to look at the available e-commerce solutions I was really frustrated.

The most mature solution at the time just didn’t have the customization capability that WordPress natively offered. The code was a mess and it would have taken more time to hack it to work not to mention locking out any possibility of an easy upgrade.

It seemed the only logical thing to do was to roll my own solution.

Luc asks: After doing a product review of the Shopp ecommerce plug-in for WordPress i noticed that the product has a lot of passionate users and critics of the Shopp plug-in?  What do you have to say to the critics out there? And, what do you have to say to your fans?

Jonathan says: You know you’re on to something when your project evokes strong reactions one way or another.  As hard as it is to see some of the unfair criticism that happens, at least most people don’t go away with a ‘meh’ feeling.

There is a lot of fair criticism out there too, and we work extremely hard to address those when we can. Most of the criticism we get is for our support (or so-called “lack of support”) not for the software itself.  It’s challenging and very costly to support the kind of volume that we have. Couple that with the fact that the project is a technical framework for a very challenging problem with lots of moving parts and lots of supporting pieces from the hosting and site setup and it makes for some time consuming support. That’s further complicated by the technical aptitude of our customers which are a mix of novice web merchants to advanced developers.  Some of those problems our support team can address, others are out of our hands.

Our support experience is a mixed bag of results. When we’re able to provide a solution, we’re “hero of the day”. When we can’t we’re the “big bad company just taking advantage of oh-so innocent people”. With the bird’s eye view I have, I can say we win way more than we lose. But the people that walk away feeling like we let them down (whether fairly or unfairly) – they feel hurt, taken advantage of. A lot of times these situations snowball because of misplaced assumptions and unreasonable expectations. Usually these people are very vocal about their bad experience (even when it is self-inflicted), make themselves very visible and spend time and energy to “hurt us back”. It amazes me to see people go out of their way on a vendetta against Shopp.  I think that’s a terrible shame and waste of energy, but people are people and we’ve got too much work to do to be distracted by it.

To fans of the project, we’ve got a really bright future ahead. We’re growing at a really healthy rate, and one that we’ve built an infrastructure to support. We’re hiring part-time support techs for either part-time employment or on a contractor basis. So we’re expanding our team to improve support. We’ve got training initiatives underway to give more people the raw power to design and develop incredibly creative e-commerce experiences.  We’ve also got an aggressive development schedule to tackle some of the most requested, most needed features.

Luc asks: Do you consider yourself stronger when it comes to designing for the web or developing for the web?

Jonathan says: Myself? These days I’d say I’m more practiced developing. But I really love design work… the creativity and the psychology of it.  In a lot of ways, my development is a form of designing insightful solutions, so while not artful in making marks on a page, there is a craft to my development that comes from my design experience.

Luc asks: Can you share any developments or sneak peeks that you are working on for an update for the Shopp plug-in?

Jonathan says: We will begin next year developing support for recurring transactions that will add subscription and membership products to Shopp. There’s a lot on our roadmap all year long and will keep us very busy.  So we will continue delivering on our promise of an easy to use e-commerce system that offers developers really powerful development tools that integrates seamlessly with WordPress.

Luc asks:  If you could add 5 things about yourself that most people don’t know about you what would they be?

Jonathan says:

1. I am a human being, not a machine. Believe it or not, a lot of people try to treat me like I’m a machine, but alas, I am a flawed human being.

2. I am raising a family with a gorgeous wife, and 2 miracle kids – both that barely survived being born.

3. I am a sci-fi fan and Star Trek nerd. Yeah I said “nerd”. I grew up watching TOS, but also love TNG and DS9. VOY is ok too, and Enterprise is NOT Star Trek.  If you want a good new Star Trek series, read the New Frontier books… Peter David is an incredible author.

4. I like to game when and if I get free time. I have a PS3 and run under the handle ‘solyce’. Feel free to give me a shout and game with me if you’re lucky to see me online.

5. I only worked one other job in my life, a summer job at an ice cream parlor. I can still make a decent cone.

Website Name:  Pink Mitten Campaign  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Aicha Barry

Website Name:  Old MacDonald’s Farmers Market (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Site Wave Inc.

Website Name:  Mia’s Innovative Gifts  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: The Website Experts

Website Name:  Bestow Gift  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Unknown

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Ryan Scherf is a web designer and developer from Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States of America. This designer from Minneapolis loves creating brands from scratch, showcasing his skills in the latest tutorials on WebDesignTuts+ and has dabbled in entrepreneurial endeavors most recently founding SixCentral.

Ryan has been designing for the web over the last decade; he is a seasoned professional who graduated from the University of Minnesota from their Computer Science program. What Ryan found when he got out of school and was hired as a Java programmer was that he hated it and with that decided to focus on front-end design and he has been designing ever since.

Though he does hold down a full-time day job as a Senior User Interface Engineer he has always enjoyed freelancing on web design projects as it allows him a creative outlet to hone and perfect his design skills. He currently runs RyanScherf.net and he currently posts updates on his twitter account.

I recently had the chance to ask Ryan about how he first got introduced to web design, the advice he’d give anyone starting in this chosen career path and some questions about his experiences and this is what he had to say…

Luc asks: Ryan, how did you first get started designing websites and how long have you been a web designer?

Ryan says: The first website I ever designed for profit was almost 10 years ago, and it’s still up today (poorly coded of course – http://lomag.net). I got my start by designing websites for small internet companies selling hosting and shell accounts. After a short hiatus during my time at college between 2002-2006, I really had only done small 1-2 page designs. My first larger project was in the winter of 2006 for an e-mail start-up that fell flat. At this point, I only had a few designs that I could showcase in my portfolio, and wasn’t really getting a lot of leads. I started doing some on-the-side slicing from which the owner hired me to do a few design jobs, and that’s really when it all took off. This was probably in early 2007.

Luc asks: What was the most challenging client you’ve ever worked for and why was it a challenge?

Ryan says: I’ve definitely had my fair share of challenging and frustrating clients. Some that wouldn’t pay (even after the work was completed) and others that were far too demanding. The most challenging client I’ve ever had was for a NYC start-up that dealt with Broadway shows. The client rejected 2-3 designs in a row, and provided poor direction for every single iteration. I’m fortunate now that I’m able to identify troublesome clients from the very first e-mail exchanges, so I’ve been lucky to avoid situations like this over the last few years.

Luc asks: Ryan, I noticed that you currently work full-time and that you also freelance. How do you manage between being a full-time employee?

Ryan says: That’s right — my entire freelance career has been nights/weekends apart from full-time jobs. For me, freelancing is a great creative outlet that is a lot less limiting than what I do as an in-house designer. The draw of freelancing for me is the ability to work on brand new designs every few weeks, and not having to work in the constraints of a rigid system. Fortunately, the last two full-time jobs I’ve had have been health care start-ups, so not only was there a ton of work to do, but the start-up community has been a lot of fun. The hard part is not overbooking myself, as the line between fun and burning out is very fine. I’ve been fortunate so far, but we’ll see how it goes in the future.

Luc asks: I see that you studied Computer Sciences when you went to university at the University of Minnesota. Being from a computer science educational background do you feel that you are a strong graphic designer or is this a skill that you feel you are working at? Do you prefer coding to the visual design work that your work offers you?

Ryan says: I always felt that I had to work harder at being a designer, than I did at being a programmer. I sort of fell into the Computer Science degree, as I always had an interest in computers and that felt like the next step after high school. The first job I took while in my last year at the university was as a Java developer intern, and I hated every second of it. That was really the moment I realized that I wanted to be creative in a different way. Within 6 months, I had moved to another department where I was able to do more front-end work and I never looked back.

Coming from a Computer Science background has helped me understand the limitations (and possibilities) of systems much more than I would have by just pursuing the graphic design course.

Luc asks: What piece of advice would you give a novice web designer looking to break into the industry?

Ryan says: Get your work out there. The design community is truly one of the most helpful communities around, and by putting yourself out there, you’re certain to get very constructive feedback from a group of passionate people for free. I haven’t met one designer that wouldn’t offer up feedback — all you have to do is ask. Just by putting your work out for others to critique shows the type of person you are. Also, always remember to not take criticism personal. Design is such a subjective topic, especially from the untrained eye that has no idea what they’re looking at. I was at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC a few years ago, and there was a small piece of gold foil in the middle of a huge room. I didn’t get it (and thought it was ridiculously stupid), but once again, it was only my opinion. Obviously somebody thought it was artistic enough to get into the Guggenheim — I’ve never had anything displayed in there.

The second bit of advice I’d give is to stick to it. There will always be designers that are better. Instead of beating yourself up about it, strive to do what they do. I can remember mimicking styles of really great designs to learn. Then, once I found my own style, I just went with it.

Luc asks: I see that you’ve published a number of tutorials on industry leading sites like WebDesignTuts+. How did you get into writing tutorials and why do you find it important to share your knowledge?

Ryan says: I was approached by the editor of PSDTuts last year to write a tutorial, and I thought it would be a great way to drive some traffic to my portfolio as well as share a little knowledge. I’ll admit, the first time writing a tutorial was pretty difficult and I almost gave up midway through after about 10 hours. Once I saw how helpful it was to the readers, I became addicted, and I’m trying to commit to writing a tutorial once a month (I haven’t been good about it just yet).

The message I wanted to get across to the readers is that you’re only limited by your own creativity. Creating the designs in Photoshop is pretty simple. Honestly, all of the techniques I used to create the elements of a design are probably beginner level, but the trick is mixing and matching all of them to produce a great result.

Website Name:  Cascade Brewery  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: John Mclean

Website Name:  Albert FS Manduca Ltd.  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Zheta International

Website Name:  Pippa Toledo   (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Zheta International

Website Name:  New Media Kreatives  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: New Media Kreatives

Let us enjoy your latest web designs with the world!

Are you interested in having your website show up in our web design inspiration posts on SpicyWebDesigners.com? Well, look no further it’s as simple as Clicking here and emailing us with the details of your web design or a web design you did for a client recently and we’ll get it on here!

Every once in a while a well executed and developed plug-in comes around.  Today I am talking about “Shopp”, an ecommerce plug-in for WordPress.  Shopp is highly intuitive, simple to use even for those of you newbies out there who might not have all the years of industry knowledge about running an ecommerce website.

Shopp eCommerce plug-in installed in WordPress

Shopp eCommerce plug-in settings in WordPress

Shopp eCommerce plug-in product administration area in WordPress

Things that I love about this Plug-in

Training videos answer your questions – Someone was definitely thinking when they decided to include short but informative videos that explain the interworking of their plug-in’s features and that is exactly what the developers of Shopp did!  This is definitely a plus because this feature alone shows you how the plug-in can be used quickly and easily.

Documentation, Documentation, Documentation – The key to selling a solution that people are going to use to develop something is to give them solid documentation on how to do what they want to do.  Shopp has an extensive library of documentation included when you buy the license (Yes, you need to buy the product to access the documentation but it’s worth it) and the documentation goes into heavy detail about topics like customization, setting up shipping and taxes, etc.

System Check Plug-in – Shopp needs a number of things to be successfully installed on your WordPress website including…

• Running an instance of WordPress 2.6 or higher
• Support for MySQL 5+ databases
• Support for PHP 5+
• PHP cURL Library with SSL support
• PHP GD 2 Library

The developers of Shopp decided to create a System Requirements Check plug-in that when activated will tell you if you are good to go ahead and use the Shopp plug-in on your WordPress website.  Pretty nifty and its free to anyone considering the use of the Shopp plug-in on their WordPress website!  Click here to check it out for yourself

Things that might turn you off this product

The only complaint is that the plug-in doesn’t have any free versions or basic versions of the plug-in available.  A lot of other premium WordPress plug-ins that I’ve reviewed in the past usually has a free basic version to stir interest and give you the basic features so I was kind of surprised in Shopp’s chosen method of delivery.  The only way I chose to buy and install this plug-in was through reading a review of the product but I was very pleasantly surprised with the functionality that I got for $55 for a single site license.

The Costs:

The single-site access license is going to cost you $55 however the functionality that it gives you to get an ecommerce website off the ground is simply amazing.

The developer access license is going to cost $299 if it’s the first time you are purchasing the plug-in however it gives you a lot more functionality and it can be deployed on an unlimited number of WordPress websites.  If you’ve already purchased a single-site license there is a developer access [upgrade] license available for $259 which is definitely a help to web designers and developers using this plug-in on multiple ecommerce websites.

Update! – December 29, 2010. – I recently had the chance to interview Jonathan Davis, the creator behind the Shopp plugin.  Please click here to read the interview!

Website Name: Black Rooster Internet Company (Click on image or here to view website)
Designed by: De Hazen

Website Name: Miss Cupcakes (Click on image or here to view website)
Designed by: Guisella Acuna

Website Name: Macaroni Bros – Media Agency (Click on image or here to view website)
Designed by: Macaroni Bros.

Website Name: Margaret Durante (Click on image or here to view website)
Designed by: Creative State

Let us delight your latest web design creation with us!

Are you interested in having your website show up in our web design inspiration posts on SpicyWebDesigners.com? Well, look no further it’s as simple as Clicking here and emailing us with the details of your web design or a web design you did for a client recently and we’ll get it on here!

Website Name:  Euroguidance  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Isle Creative

Website Name:  The Coastal Cupboard  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Unknown

Website Name:  Grow a Tree with BTCV  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Trenbania

Website Name:  Zennaware – Home of Cornerstone Subversion Client  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Unknown

Website Name:  Ta In Iska (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Unknown

Website Name:  Prashant Kamat  (Click on image or here to view website)

Designed by: Prashant Kamat

Let us delight your latest web design creation with us!

Are you interested in having your website show up in our web design inspiration posts on SpicyWebDesigners.com? Well, look no further its as simple as Clicking here and emailing us with the details of your web design or a web design you did for a client recently and we’ll get it on here!