Thatcher Heldring Site Launches using WordPress as a CMS
This week we launched ThatcherTheAuthor.com for author Thatcher Heldring, who writes books for Young Adults. The site was designed using WordPress as a Content Management System.
The widget enabled Custom Word Press Theme features a special wordpress homepage template that allows Thatcher to edit the homepage Page and also pulls blogposts into the homepage as “Most Recent News”, which allows him to use Pages more extensively yet have a blogged section of the site which will be used for announcements, events, and other more timely entries. It also gives him the ability to control the static area of the homepage while also refreshing the homepage content every time he publishes a post, ensuring that his homepage often has fresh content, which the Search Engine spiders love.
As you can tell instantly from the custom blogskin, Thatcher writes books that are sports related. I chose very simple stock photography images to convey that impression, and chose simple colors that would appeal most to the demographic that Thatcher told me are the main readers for his writing. The design is pretty simple, but also very effective, with navigation easily accessible, and headlines set off with borders in the sidebars and an image in the Content area to draw the eye to them and highlight them.
Thatcher has already gotten some mileage out of widgets. He’s used a text widget in the sidebar to feature the mini book review done by Phil Jackson, Coach for the LA Lakers (way to go, Thatcher! What a great kudo!)
This is the fifth young adult novelist website design done by Kickass Web Design, and four of them are on custom WordPress Themes. WordPress is a fabulous tool for an author site, since it lets the author do what he or she is best at– writing! while handling all the code and navigation generation tasks in the background automagically, simply by the site owner hitting the “publish” button. I really LOVE designing fiction author websites, since it’s so much fun for me seeing what those authors do with the sites I design for them. Thatcher is already working on adding content to his site, though it’s early days. I can’t wait to see how he grows it!
Do you have a website in mind that needs a Kickass touch? Let’s talk.
Technorati Tags: WordPress as CMS, Custom Wordpress Theme, Wordpress template, custom blogskin, Young Adult Author Website Design
