Be Presents : The Best in Web Site Design

Example Project : YogaKula.com

The client, YogaKula.com, approached us with their existing site and their needs

1) An easy to maintain site filled with information that frequently changes such as a Calendar of Events.   They want a great looking design that allows the visitors easy access to the content.

2) An online store solution that can manage a large catalog of products, both physical and digital (downloadable).    They also want integration with other online tools such as automatic UPS shipping calculation.

3) A graphical HTML email list that has supports thousands of users, automatic subscribe and unsubscribe and easy management of  mailing list groups.

Solution to Need #1:

We chose WordPress as the Open Source Content Management System platform to drive the site.   WordPress is easy to use for the multiple members of the YogaKula staff who will be managing the content.   It also has some great tools for managing an events calendar.   I wrote some custom code to the Events Calendar management system to allow for an extra heading title and an image to be associated with each event.

We also installed several Social Marketing plug-ins to integrate content with Facebook, Twitter and AddThis making the YogaKula site as open ended to the World Wide Web as we can and bringing in as much traffic through honest social advertising.

The design was largely borrowed from other sites.   The client browsed around and found several sites that they liked very much and we adapted the design from there.

Solution to Need #2:

ZenCart is our favorite open source  e-commerce platform.   It allows for easy setup, has hundreds of tools and is the result of years and years of online store owners optimizing the process.  It’s easy to setup a full catalog ranging from CDs to DVDs to Books to Yoga products to digital downloads. We setup a YogaKula UPS account to allow for automatic UPS shipping.

ZenCart is reasonably easy to understand from the code perspective too and allows for total re-writing of code and design to allow complete seamless integration into the site.

Solution to Need #3:

I researched online email list management solutions and found that all the pay by month services are a rip-off unless you are doing sophisticated ad-tracking and google analytics based research onto your email campaigns and require all sorts of trackback data.

Most of our customers just want an email list that looks nice, is easy to use, and allows for the subscribers to manage their subscription themselves.   Oh, and no monthly fee!

So the best solution I found was to install the Joomla engine just for the purpose of taking advantage of the Joomla Mailing List Manager component.   It’s a one-time purchase fee of $50 and it does everything the client wants.   I had 1 client who wants trackback info and I was able to re-write some of the code to allow for that.

UPDATE : Keeping abreast of new technology is imperative!   After releasing the site I disovered WP-Ecommerce, a great package that uses WordPress to manage online product catalogs, orders and customers.  As much as I like Zen Cart, it’s better to have everything in one place, so we swapped out ZenCart in favor of WP-Ecommerce.    WP-Ecommerce is great, if you get the full version, easy WordPress admin interface and support for downloadable products.

The Down-low:

BePresents.com wants to meet with you, get a list of verything you want to represent on the web, teach you of new technology that can expand this presence and come up with the best solution to meet your needs, save your money and create a great looking site.

The Follow Up:

A very important part of the BePresents.com business philosophy is that we are here for the customer.   We want all our customers  to know what it is they bought and how to use it.   We want to build a relationship that will last.

For YogaKula.com I spent hours teaching them how to use their new WordPress system.   I often do touch-ups or assistance for free if it’s less than 5 minutes of my time.

I created a YogaKula “How to” WordPress PDF Document that you may find interesting.

I treat their site as if it is my own.

Why CMS?

Do you want to be able to make changes to your site yourself?   So do millions of other people, and after years of R&D we’ve got to a place where it’s easy.

Content Management Systems, or CMS, give you an incredible amount of control over your website via a private Admin Interface.   They allow you to make changes to your textual content in an easy to manage interface.   You can add entire pages, change the text, pictures, add a flash photo gallery, email lists and even add and remove entire components such as user Forum via the WordPress Admin Interface.

A CMS like WordPress has 2 sides, the Public side and the Admin side.   The Public side is what the world sees.   Most sites have repeated content such as the header images, menu bar and footer.   This is called the “Theme” or “Template” of the site/page.    The part that changes, in the middle, is termed the “Content”.

So the CMS Admin tool gives you a way to organize the pages and media (images, etc.) of your site easily.   The text editor technology has come along way and the current WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get) text editors are amazing!   It’s like having Microsoft Word (r) inside a web page!.

So, using a CMS, the only things you might need another person for are the initial setup of the Graphic Design of the site.    You can choose one of the templates from an existing library, or any site really, as the starting point.   Then we can customize it to your liking and needs.

And the cool part of a CMS like WordPress is that it is an easily expandable, open ended “plug-in architecture”.   That means if you’ve seen a cool feature on another site, there is probably a module that we can install for your site, in minutes!!! What used to take me a week now takes an hour because of the open-source movement.   It’s all been done before, so why don’t we share it?

Which CMS?

There are many Open Source (free!) CMS systems.   I recommend WordPress for it’s ease of use and featured packed plug-in library.

I also recommend Joomla for people with websites that are more business oriented and require some real powerful expansive plug-in packages.

Contact me today and I’ll show you examples of what a CMS can do.

Let’s create an Online Stores for you using Zen-Cart’s Store Software. It’s feature-packed,
easily customizable and free!

Some of these stores are:

http://www.davestringer.com	Dave Stringer’s Online Music & Retreat Store
http://www.solavie.com	Natural Beauty Skin Care
http://www.urbantastes.com	Order Gourment Meals in Washington D.C.

Let’s take your imagination and fuel it with the fire of creativity to give your Web Site or Newsletter a great look. One way to do this is to dream up a new design on your own. I can come to you and be your paintbrush on the digital canvas as we create a template for you.

What’s a Template?

A template is the part of a design that is repeated or has some consistency to it. Like on the page you are looking at now, the template is the graphics at the top, the menu and the background and font selections. What is not the templated is the information on the page. So a template is like an overlay or general format for you information.

Where do I get one?

Many of my customers are using a free template from one of the sites listed below. The web is very cut & paste, in fact it’s spirit is free exchange of information. So we are free to take a menu from one site, the background color from another and use the fonts from a third. Take a look at other sites and the templates below and begin to buid a list of what you like. You can be very specific or give general outlines and I’ll fill in the blanks.

Free Templates

http://www.free-css-templates.com/	Hundreds of free templates
http://ramblingsoul.com/	Very nice designs
http://www.freecsstemplates.org/	Another huge template library
http://templatefusion.org/	Stylely!

People hire me based upon my reputation.   You can see from my resume that I’ve been busy.
Make sure and check out my Portfolio Book too.

I am very good at custom solutions so please ask all your “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” questions.

Here are some quotes from some of my favorite customers.
Please feel free and Contact Me if you want to add a quote.

Jonathan created a new welcome page with flash for my website.  He was fast and efficient and I loved the result!	Wah!, singer Visit Her Site
It was a pleasure having you work on both of my yoga business sites.  Each time we spoke (phone or email), you always had a great attitude and kind energy.  With all of my questions and changes, you were positively patient.  I will definitely use you again and refer others!	Faith Hunter, Yoga Teacher Visit Her Site
Jonathan was tremendous in helping me facilitate creating and revising my website. He always went that extra mile to make sure that I had what I needed during the creation of my site and guided me through the process. I felt very taken care of.	Birgitte Philippides, Artist, Activist, Actor Visit her site
I gave Jonathan some pictures the text and a few web sites that had a format I liked. He created a very nice web page and was very patient as I kept asking for small changes.	Chris Walters, Redpoint Builders Visit his site
Jonathan went above and beyond to help me with the creation of my website. He listened to what I needed and helped me every step along the way- he created my site based on the CMS platform so it’s super easy for me to modify as my schedule and pictures need to be updated. He listened to what I wanted/needed and helped me every step along the way. Thank you, Jonathan!	Bethany Templin, Bethany-Yoga Visit her site
you?