Posted on August 23, 2011August 7, 2017 by Josh — Leave a comment

ENGINEER DESIGNER

This custom WordPress website was built for Ken Risley, owner of the Engineer Designer. Ken uses the very popular Thesis theme for his content management, which is really a nice CMS system. I personally prefer to design and code my own CMS features, but if you are OK with something a little more out of the box, it is a good starting point.

The fun thing about creating and designing a thesis theme is the restrictions. Anyone familiar with designing wordpress websites knows that when you upgrade, core files are overridden. Due to this, you have several different ways to design a WordPress website theme.

Most themes would be static, meaning they are coded once, and then the content is controlled through the database and widgets. This regular type of setup is a standard WordPress theme. When you upgrade the WordPress installation, the theme files displaying the data remain the same. the advantage is that you can upgrade to your hearts content. The downside is that the code will eventually degrade, and the people using your theme will need to switch. You won’t be able to upgrade your theme without overwriting the individuals changes.

So how do you code a theme that can be upgraded? The answer is to use overrides. Thesis very intelligently provided a section that does not get overwritten during upgrades, where we can place custom functions and CSS. Since they override existing CSS or hook to current functions, all the Thesis authors need to do is stick to their current naming conventions when designing and coding the upgrades, and they will install seamlessly.

This becomes fun for me as the Website Designer, since I am achieving things I do everyday anyway, but in a different way than I would normally do them. As a CSS purist and fanatic, I prefer to use CSS over Javascript or PHP when possible, it is a cleaner, lighter weight language and can often accomplish the same objective with less load on the server.

Anyway, the new site looks great, I hope you guys take the time to check it out. Many thanks to Ken Risley and his Wife Kim, great people to work for, I look forward to helping them maintain a dominant web presence well into the future.

Posted on June 29, 2011August 7, 2017 by Josh — Leave a comment

HCG MOMMA

This website was created using wordpress CMS, HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript and Jquery. It features a slideshow on the front page that links to posts within the website, a great SEO friendly feature. It also features WordPress E-commerce Web Design that is built into the wordpress site via wp e-commerce and customized with an eye toward seamless upgrades. The customers were a Husband and Wife in Mesa, Arizona. They are selling HCG on the net, and they needed a designer who could establish a web presence for them that was both attractive and optimized for search engine results. They also wanted the ability to sell online, and needed a web designer who would be able to integrate the e-commerce with the CMS, as opposed to using the CMS abilities that come with most cart, which are serious disadvantage when going up a well optimized WordPress website. One of the coolest parts of this cart is the ability to feed the products via RSS to Google, so that they display in the merchant search results. The cart also features auto tagging of all products in RDFa format, which is great for search engine readability. I definitely consider this project a home run, and count the site amongst my favorites.

WP e-commerce is a terrific platform for doing commerce online. Though it had a rocky reputation in its earlier development, it now is on a very stable development line, and is the most widely supported and used E-commerce software on WordPress. In fact, the team at Get Shopped is an 8 man development core, that has been working together for years, and the future for this software just keeps getting brighter and brighter. As an Arizona WordPress E-commerce Designer, I have designed for storage shops, home health remedies, diet pages like this, and even complex product types like upload and print interfaces.

Posted on April 19, 2011August 7, 2017 by Josh — Leave a comment

THE NATURAL ROAD

A Thesis Wordpress Design, Customized thesis theme by My Favorite Web Designs of Mesa Arizon

This website was designed and developed for a health supplement company who was looking to increase their conversion rate. The website was originally built on the Thesis WordPress theme. This aspect of the web design was tricky, as Thesis require you add content via custom hooks, delete no content, and achieve all styling with CSS overrides. While CSS makes many aspects of website design and development quite simple, it is much more complicated in an override system. In order for the override to take effect, the exact instance of the html selector must be called, which can be very tricky.

This was also a great project because it involved a remodel of an existing site, without any changing of the content. Many website are made more complicated by using non-standard classes and id’s to style output, instead of building a cross browser compliant website design, seamlessly integrated into a theme which can then be upgraded and updated. It also retain 100% of the original search engine optimization advantages for which the Thesis theme is renowned.

Arizona WordPress Website Design by My Favorite Web Design of Mesa is a terrifically valuable web design service. Our WP customers are able to jump up the search engine rankings far fast and easier than customers without this advantage. In fact, the Natural Choice has ranked many #1 keywords with the benefits of their article system, so they can create landing pages at will.

Posted on March 24, 2011August 7, 2017 by Josh — Leave a comment

SOLAR SYSTEM AZ

Arizona Solar Contracting Website Design by Mesa Web Designer Joshua Jacoby

A website built for a North Scottsdale Solar contractor. This web design incorporates a slideshow, static text, RSS fed news rolls, and many other awesome design elements. This site also features a custom built Solar Calculator, developed for the website using PHP, and returning values based on the companies own estimating numbers.

“Josh did a great job on this website. We have received numerous inquiries through the site, and it has been an invaluable way for us to get the word out. Josh also did some e-marketing for us, including an email marketing piece which got almost twice as many opens and 3 times as many clicks as any we had done previously. – Mike Capuzzo”

Posted on March 23, 2011August 7, 2017 by Josh — Leave a comment

CAPUZZO CONSTRUCTION

Website Created for Arizona contractor by Mesa designer Joshua Jacoby

This website was created for an Arizona framing contractor. It features on of the largest picture galleries of custom home framing in the world, as well as a custom templating system and Highslide integration. This website was designed using HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX and PHP by Mesa Arizona web designer Joshua Jacoby. Learn more about our website design services in Arizona.

Some more info on this amazing site: Due to legal complications, the site had to be taken down, which is a real shame, the pictures and images there were second to none, really showcased some of the best techniques and examples of the custom framing of homes anywhere. Fortunately, this collection will one day be back on the web, I have the backups, and the owner is likely going to give me permission to repost once the legal dust settles.

In our capacity as web designers and professional AZ search optimization consultants, the staff of My Favorite Web Designs becomes very invested in the websites we put up and the content we create. It is always a sad thing to see our work taken down for technicalities or because owners cannot continue operating their sites, but it is also a normal part of life, and we come to terms with the loss as every creative professional eventually must learn to do.