Scott Buel is a great guy with a great idea. He wanted to put his Grandfather’s business online. Gene, a collector of old glass negative photographs from around the Great Lakes Region, had been running it the “old fashioned” way for years, printing photographs from the glass negatives, matting them and selling them at shows, but it’s getting tougher for him to schlepp stuff around on the show circuit. Scott’s idea was to build two websites, one to present the photos, and that’s hooked up to a print shopping cart hosted by SmugMug, and the other to host Podcasts about Gene’s collection, to inform folks about the fascinating history behind the prints, and to create a buzz. When Scott came to me, the design for the Scenes from the Past site had already been done as a static html site by another designer. Scott wanted me to design the podcast site on Wordpress. When we talked more, and Scott realized how versatile and powerful WordPress is, we ended up putting both sites on WordPress, to make it easier for Scott to promote the collection and get listed in the Search Engines.

I took the design that the other designer had done, and recoded it into a Custom WordPress Theme using WP as a CMS. The index page is done using a custom homepage template. This gives Scott a site that looks like a standard website with a blog attached, and gives him the ability to blog about new additions to the Smugmug galleries separate from the podcasts.

Scott wanted the second site, CastsFromThePast.com, to have its own unique visual identity, but still evoke a similar feeling as the Scenes from the Past site. We chose similar colors, and incorporated the SFTP lettering into a new header image, but lightened up the text area. This site is a straight blog style on its own unique WordPress Theme.

Both WP themes are widget enabled to allow Scott to tie the two sites together in various ways and to allow him to experiment in what works best for his visitors.

We added a couple other areas of interest to the Scenes From The Past site, such as the custom Postcard script, and the book shop.

Scott’s already gotten some interest, his Grandfather, Gene, is proudly handing out business cards with the new website address, and they’ve already made their first sale. They’ve also gotten some good press in the area where Gene has run the business in the past. I have a feeling they’re going to do well with this. The photos are fabulous, and they’ve now got a great web showcase for them.

Do you have an idea for a great website? Do you have special needs that a single web application might not meet? Let’s talk. I’m sure I can come up with something that’ll fit your unique needs the way I have for Scott.

Technorati Tags: Photo Print Shop Website, Custom WordPress Theme, Podcast Theme, Stock Photography Website

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 9:51 pmunder Site Portfolio and . Comment RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.