Today we launched the site of author Barry Lyga on a custom ModX template. It was enormous fun making the scholarly Ivy League guy who studied Beowulf into a HOT graffiti artist via lots of graphics magic using four discrete photos and some scribbles on a piece of paper. We paid homage to his true roots in that header graphic. The brick and ivy walls of his alma mater, Yale, and the runes on the left accomplish that. This web design was a lot of fun to do, and I think it nails both the face (or um . . . other body parts . . . ) he wants to show, as well as giving a glimpse of the intellect behind that face.

This ModX web template involves a lot of different types of ModX elements– we used Ditto and Jot for the blog section, Wayfinder menu for the dropdowns, another menu snippet for the menu across the bottom that would allow IEMac (an obsolete browser) users to navigate sections since they don’t get dropdowns, a breadcrumb trail snippet to further enhance navigation for older browsers, Template variables to allow different sections to inherit graphics and header descriptions for that section, the NewsFeed snippet for RSS feeds, a form processor snippet, and many others to give Barry the functionality he wished for this.

Barry has already published a first novel, and will be adding more books to this site as they’re published (he’s already been asked by his fans to do a sequel to his first book, which has been selling briskly after great reviews!) ModX, and the custom template designed for it, allows him a lot of room to grow as his writing career does. It also allows him much flexibility in how he presents the information on his site, and it’s all within his control through the ModX admin interface. No calls to the webgeek! Barry creates his documents within the document tree where he wants them to show, then adds the content, chooses the template and template variable options and everything is automagically updated on the site as soon as he publishes it.

The beauty of ModX is its flexibility. It allows templating any section of the site in any way you wish. Adding functionality is very versatile as well, through the use of the template tags, chunks, snippets, and template variables.

If you have a site that could use the ModX treatment, and want it to Kick some Ass, let’s talk. It’s more reasonable than you think.

Technorati Tags: Custom ModX Template, CMS template, Barry Lyga, Website Design

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007 at 3:00 pmunder Site Portfolio and . Comment RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.