Client Spotlight

Joe Vaughn for Congress is the political campaign for Joe Vaughn, independent candidate for Nebraska’s second district seat in the United States House of Representatives. He runs against Republican incumbent Lee Terry. His platform includes reforms on several issues including, education, term limits, government spending, and military deployment.

The Project:

The Design

When Joe informed me of his plans to run for Congress, and that his campaign needed a website to kick off fundraising, I knew that time and budget would be the key concerns. Additionally, they requested I implement a contributions page using CiviCRM, an open-source constituent relationship management system. It goes without saying, they would also need to leverage social networks as much as possible.

…and more.

After Joe’s original logo designer fell through I offered to do his logo design as well. Everyone was enthusiastic about my first submission, so I was able to push through with the graphic design of the site itself that had been delayed until a logo was available, as I consider the logo to be a cornerstone for font and color choices throughout the site.

Challenges

I was able to quickly progress through the early design phases thanks to the use of the Twenty Till Noon WordPress theme, that provided me with a tested platform-independent layout and easy to customize styles. However, CiviCRM does not currently work with the WordPress content management system, so I had to choose between Joomla and Drupal. I chose Drupal because in my previous experience it has been easier to administrate; I decided this would be a plus for both myself and my client. The challenge was then to implement a design in Drupal that was cohesive to the WordPress design and to quickly learn a constituent relationship management system I had no experience with; running inside a content management system I had limited experience with.

Simplicity
In the interest of time and budget constraints I had developed a design on the WordPress portion of the site that rested mainly on a custom color palette based on the logo, background image and little else. This paid dividends on the Drupal side when I was able to just make some minor changes to the default theme’s styles to make it cohesive with the design of the WordPress pages.

This meant the only real challenge left was going to be the content management itself. With some perseverance and the help of the CiviCRM community. I was able to quickly surmount the small but numerous quirks that were inherent in the process of making things compatible with the client’s web host and setting up the groundwork on the CiviCRM back end that allows the organization to collect contributions in a way consistent with the law and that allowed them to integrate with their PayPal payment portal.

Triumphs

With the help of my custom ShareThis script, standard Twitter Profile and Facebook Like-box widgets, and Brian Freytag’s Social Media Buttons plugin the site has been actively shared and discussed socially since it’s launch.

Testimonial:

I love the logo … I am very excited.

[The site] looks wonderful. - Seth Manzel, Campaign Manager – Joe Vaughn for Congress

Success!

joevaughnforcongress is currently campaigning for contributions, followers, and likes via the following in addition to their new website: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube!

Client Spotlight

Victory Boxing Club is a not-for-profit Christian organization based in South Omaha. Their mission is to Provide a safe refuge for the youth of South Omaha, by the pouring of Christian principles into lives…through the gift of boxing. -Servando Perales @ victoryboxingclub.org

The Project:

The Design

I was contacted by my friend Steve over at ididntdo.it to create a design for the Victory Boxing Club site. With Steve’s input and the copy provided by the client I was able to research the organization and develop not only a design that worked for them, but included several pages, social elements, calls to action etc. that I felt would help the client achieve their goals.

…and more.

Due to extenuating circumstances Steve’s schedule was suddenly full and his internet access limited. So I stepped up and handled content management, social networking and hosting set up so the site could go live without complication or delay.

Testimonial:

Scott was able to take a site from concept to live quickly while adapting to an ever changing schedule.

I had originally planned to do it myself but at the last minute was unable to. Scott took over that day and had an amazing concept to me within 24 hours. Anytime I had a change or request, it was integrated within hours.

When we finally went live, Scott took the time to guide the client through the setup of a great social network and the workings of their new site.

I personally cannot recommend him enough and I look forward to working with him more. -Steve Johnson @ ididntdo.it

Success!

victoryboxingclub.org is now live and interacting with their community and supporters via their new online presence including their blog, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube!

I wanted it all.

So I had decided that I wanted to integrate HTML5 elements and responsive design into my WordPress theme. And to that end I was keeping my eye out for interesting articles on both of these topics. A while ago I had bookmarked 1140 Grid and just recently I was inspired by Twenty Ten Five. So there it was, everything I needed to update my theme!

Getting it was just too easy!

My current theme was already a child theme of Twenty Ten. It was simple, just style.css, functions.php, screenshot.png and an images directory. So after I installed the Twenty Ten Five theme all I had to do was edit style.css so that my theme was now a child theme of Twenty Ten Five instead, and go through and change a few CSS selectors to match the new HTML 5 elements.

When adding the 1140 Grid I decided for the sake of keeping the theme light I would just add CSS selectors to the layout CSS rather than add the CSS classes to the markup of several different theme files.

My take on media queries:

I added my own media queries to control the layout at smaller resolutions and higher pixel densities so that everything stays nice and readable across platforms. My philosophy on media queries is to base them on specific physical constraints and not on a device by device basis, but that’s a different article.

The spinoff!

So in about an hour I had responsive design and HTML 5 rolled into my theme. Then I realized minus my own design elements this could be a pretty good Twenty Ten variant of its own and thus Twenty Till Noon was born!

I just deleted everything in style.css and functions.php that wasn’t necessary (That’s a lie! I couldn’t help but leave in some CSS3 effects that I think really spruce up the look of Twenty Ten). The theme is so light, there’s a strong argument for just forking Twenty Ten Five on GitHub instead but a child theme fits my purposes just fine for now.

First you’ll need this:

Download Twenty Ten Five

Then you can use this:

Download Twenty Till Noon