After nearly a year of the minimal, one-page design of www.biklopsdesign.com, I thought it was time for a BIG change. I wanted to create something that more clearly communicated “Hey, I know XHTML and CSS–hire me!,” I wanted an ecommerce solution to sell my limited edition prints and posters, and I wanted a blog. I also felt that a lot of potential clients didn’t “get” the minimal layout and lack of interface, so I wanted something that was more traditionally what one expects from a website while still feeling fresh and unusual.

Let me take you on a little tour of it’s design and along the way show you how I implemented SlideShowPro, BigCartell, and WordPress to make a site that functions as a portfolio, a webshop, and a blog all at once!

SlideShowPro

In the original biklopsdesign.com a large, ornate header graphic dominated the top of the screen while large images of my designs filled one long column several screens high. The viewer had nice, big images to look at, but had to scroll down the screen to see them. Oh, and i was laid out in tables (I’m actually blushing typing that).

For the new site I wanted my contact information to be easily located and I still wanted the viewer to be treated to nice, big images. Bigger, even. That’s where SlideShowPro came in. SlideShowPro is a Flash-based slideshow application that, well, in their own words:

SlideShowPro is an ActionScript 2.0 component for Flash MX 2004, Flash 8 and Flash CS3 for publishing photo and video slideshows ready to deploy on any web site.

It’s insanely customizable and perfect for photographers and designers. The basic version costs $29.00, which in my opinion is pretty fair. You don’t need to know Flash or XML to use it. The documentation guides you through building your slideshow step-by-step, but if you do know Flash/XML the possibilities are pretty much endless. Check out their page of user examples to see applications of SSP that show what a serious actionscript-dork can do with it.

Big Cartel

I host my shop at bigcartel.com. Big Cartel is an amazing xhtml/css-based shopping cart/webshop hosting service that believe it or not, is free if you’re selling 5 different items or less. Even the free account allows you quite a bit of customization in terms of colors and a header graphic. Their shops use Paypal to get you your money but Big Cartel doesn’t take a fee! On top of that they cater to the indie record and fashion labels-my audience-and they’ll promote your shop in their store directory, myspace and virb profiles for free as well. I bet you’ve already signed up.

WordPress

WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.

You’ve heard of WordPress. Who hasn’t? Originally I thought I would host my blog at virb.com but, to be blunt, I thought their blogging capabilities sucked. WordPress, however, most certainly doesn’t suck. COMPLETELY customizable, with 100s of well designed templates to get you started, WordPress is the mother of all blogging software. Oh, and you can either host a blog for free at www.wordpress.com, or download the software at www.wordpress.org and host it on your own server.

Like my image captions? So do I. They’re from an easily implemented javascript form the arc90 lab.

Getting Social

These days, no young designer has just one webpage. It gets to be a pain in the ass but we all feel like we need a myspace, a virb.com, a linkedin profile, and so on and so forth.

And you know what? You do need them! I know, most of them are ugly, their links clutter up your beautiful page design and maybe you feel like they don’t really do anything for you. That’s what I thought before I signed up for Google Analytics. 57% of my site traffic was coming from myspace and another 10% from gigposters.com! Why do I even send out promo packs?

So, get those profiles made and if you need a new friend hit us up!

Helpful?l

As you can see, thanks to new Web 2.0 (and some that are more 1.2-I’m looking at you, myspace!) it’s increasingly easy to create a fairly complex site by”outsourcing” some of the elements. No reason to hand code a shopping cart when Big Cartel is around the corner, for example. I hope some of these links and ideas have helped you and if they have-say hi in the comments!