Recently, simpledream produced two new web projects. The first, Beacon Equity Research, was designed by the client and I did the XHTML and CSS work for it. Probably the biggest challenge was to format lots of research data about stock markets into nice-looking tables. For example, the Dow Jones Industrial research page. The sad thing is that I don’t have control over the final code, so the HTML isn’t even close to validating due to later additions and changes by the client.

Another web site also launched recently: StockGuru.com. The original design idea was fleshed out, but I finished the design. Unfortunately the designer fell ill before designing the interior pages, so I only received an example of the front page to work with. From there, I did all the interior pages. For example, see the Email Signup page.

Both sites are for the same client so I won’t have control over the validation of StockGuru’s code either. They were fun projects, though, and I think will work well for their target market.

It is my pleasure to announce a recent project that has gone live!

Together with Western Sky Communications, I worked on a redesign for
REA, a commercial Real Estate contact management software developer. Martha Retallick of Western Sky Communications designed the site, and simpledream took care of XHTML, CSS, and getting the code up to speed with current web standards.

Go take a look!

You will notice that simpledream is coming at you in full blue now! The original site was supposed to be blue, but version 1.0 got changed to “shades of grey” at the last minute due to some time constraints for the launch date. It was actually weird how it happened. I read an article on “grey shadow” method for designing a website and thought is was so neat that I used it on the rough drafts for simpledream.net in Illustrator and Photoshop. Then the time crunch for launch came, and I said: “why not just launch it as it is?” The grey look was cool, and looked sharp with the logo and textmark. The grey look was never intended to last though, sad to say.

Anyway, as of tonight the version 2.0 in blue is officially live. The biggest difference is the blue color palette, but you might also notice the top banner is changed as well to reflect the true simpledream logo. The only other things added were some graphical elements and icons to spice up the design.

Hope you like it!

This week simpledream web studio launched another standards-based web project: El Cortez Heights Neighborhood Association website. The group, ECHNA for short, is located in Tucson, Arizona. If you can’t wait to see it, then just visit site! If you want to know the why and how of the redesign, keep reading.

Why redesign?

To allow for greater control over the background technology and to streamline content production for the community-based website. The website had outgrown the previous setup and was ready to for change.

How was this accomplished?

By making a few big changes to the hosting, file management, and domain name as well as several smaller, much-needed changes to the visual design.

Here are the big changes:

• Move to new host, Dreamhost. ECHNA was very tired of the Geocities ads that cluttered up the sidebar and the source code.
• New domain name now: elcortezheights.org. Easier to remember and tell people.
• The move to Wordpress for site management allows a lot more control over the production and behind-the-scenes programming now. This is a huge improvement for site maintenance, stat monitoring, error pages, etc.

Now for some small changes:

• Some basic improvements to the site were made, including ease of use and navigation. We tried to leave the look and feel the same, but update the design to be more professional and engaging. Still very simple and easy to use, though, and not complicated for someone to get around and find interesting and useful content.
• Graphic elements were polished and updated.

You can view the old site (which is still up) for comparison. Also, compare it with a view of the original design from 2002. Needless to say, ECHNA has come a long way.

Simpledream is proud to announce the launch of a new website today!

BodyBasics Health and Fitness is a private, professional and friendly wellness studio offering personal training services that emphasize lifestyle improvement, posture, body mechanics and making exercise fun. Located in Tucson, Arizona, the studio is led by certified personal trainer and LifeCoach Christopher Litten. BodyBasics approached simpledream web studio in late 2004 for this project, and after a lot of hard work it is up and ready to go.

Work simpledream performed for BodyBasics Health and Fitness includes content development, graphic design, web branding and identity, and web design and development.

Visit this project at bodybasics.biz.

Just upgraded the simpledream.net/blog install to Wordpress 1.5—> it’s very worth it!

First of all, you can have pages now that are controlled through the main template. Very powerful, could be a solution to the Ward III Neighbors problem of using “entries” as sub-category pages. Instead of various templates to load and change when updating, you can control the look, links, and feel of all your “pages” as if they were posts.

One cool new feature is the Themes section, which allows you to skin one or more pages on your blog, more control over . A new Dashboard was added as the default landing page to your blog admin, so that you can see latest stats on your site and posts from the Wordpress Dev blog. It is a bit cluttered visually, though, so it might have to be cleaned up a bit.

The mod_rewrite and comment spam features are very much improved too.