Archive for the ‘On the Job’ Category

First Presbyterian Church – New Site

Another website done and live! We are super thrilled to be the launch partner for First Presbyterian Church of Santa Rosa. In spring of 2011, Dale, the lead pastor and Leigh, the communications coordinator for FPC contacted Siteshine and invited us to bid on FPC’s extensive website redesign effort. We were pleased to be selected for the project and are very happy with the results!

From FPC’s purpose page: “OUR MISSION STATEMENT: Submitting ourselves to the claims of Jesus Christ, together we seek to honor him, embody his presence and proclaim his gospel with authenticity, humility, and love.”

Visit the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Rosa website »

Note: Armed with FPC’s logo by Zelaya Designs, Siteshine designed and developed a fully-custom WordPress theme.

Arousing Success: Just Launched

Siteshine is pleased to announce our latest client project has just gone live! Arousing Success is the website for Dr. Jeannie LeMesurier, a clinical psychologist, life coach and motivational speaker. Her training in both psychology and life coaching is extensive, and in addition she is a graduate of Jack Canfield’s elite Train the Trainers Program (yes, that Jack Canfield, of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame).

Check out her brand new website, and if you are looking for success in life in both the personal or business arenas, talk to Dr. Jeannie.

Note: Siteshine was provided a style guide and background and built out the rest of the site design and navigation by creating a fully-custom WordPress theme.

Freelance Tips on Visual Swirl

Freelance Tips: When to Walk AwayMy editorial “When to Walk Away” got published at Visual Swirl, a top resource site for designers and freelancers. It’s wisdom born from a lot of personal experience, and I’m pleased to put it out there in hopes you might benefit. Excerpt:

Nobody likes to be ill-treated, right? And yet in the midst of negotiating a deal, whether with a potential client or partner, it’s likely that sometimes things will get a bit heated. You may not be able to provide the services in the time frame and at the price that the other party is expecting. You may feel like they are insulting your professional integrity.

This is not the time to walk away from a deal, not yet. Keep your cool, and take this opportunity to explain in detail how your business works, why your pricing has to remain where it is, and why it takes a certain length of time to do the work. On that last point in particular, we freelancers know we’re constantly having to juggle several projects at once. Explain that if you were to do the work faster and give them your exclusive time, it would harm your ability to provide services to existing clients as well as other important leads.

Read the entire article here.

Just Launched: DJ Dax Online

DJ Dax OnlineWe’re pleased to announce our latest client project is now on the web! This was a really, really fun project for us to work on and posed some interesting engineering challenges. Read more about it on our Portfolio, and then check out the new DJ Dax Online.

From our writeup:

DJ Dax is a phenomenally successful DJ based in Sonoma County, California. He has provided services at such prestigious venues as Francis Ford Coppola winery, Sonoma State University, Mary Agatha Furth Center, Hyatt Vineyard Creek, and Kenwood Farms & Gardens. From weddings to corporate events, from school dances to sports team celebrations, DJ Dax can do it all. When looking at his client list and testimonials, DJ Dax’s professionalism speaks for itself.

Just Launched: Potential Plus Consulting

We are excited to announce the launch of our latest client website, Potential Plus Consulting. Siteshine was hired by David Gustafson in November 2010 to develop a website for his consulting firm, and in only two months we collaborated with him and his logo designer to craft a professional, quality website. We helped create the marketing impact of the home page and developed a straightforward navigation outline. The website design was built on top of WordPress, allowing David full access to update the site as needed down the road in order to promote Potential Plus Consulting easily and effectively.

I hope you enjoy visiting the new site as much as we enjoying developing it!

Just Launched: Rotary Club of Santa Rosa

I’m pleased to announce the brand-new site Siteshine just completed for the one of the largest of the Rotary Clubs in Sonoma County. I was fortunate enough to meet the chair of their website redesign committee right at the time when they were beginning to think they could use some outside assistance, and in no time we were sitting down and thinking up some really neat ideas. Over the course of the last couple of months, we nailed down the design and layout, and I helped their content author learn how to use the new WordPress-based editing system.

The domain name just switched over to the new site, so if you see an odd link or image not working as expected, please let me know. I hope you enjoy checking out Santa Rosa Rotary Club!


Kudos to ExchangeBucket

My good friend and client Timothy Youngs has been having some real success over at the ExchangeBucket (formerly American Builders Exchange) lately. Most exciting was a recent shoutout over at BobVila.com which is a popular DIY/home improvement portal. Just a couple of weeks ago I installed a new blog feature on the site so Timothy can get news and ideas out to the community in a more timely fashion.

Also, as a follow-up to my previous post, I am talking with another graphics designer right now about some potential partnership opportunities — starting with Siteshine’s home page redesign project. Should be fun, although it will delay the timeline a bit. I’ll keep you posted as things develop!

Home page redesign in the works

We’ll be unveiling a new home page design sometime in the next few weeks. It’s going to be clear, concise, do a far far better job of explaining the work we are doing now. We do more than Web site design, we integrate Web services. Services like Facebook, Twitter, Wufoo. We build experiences that tell stores. We educate and inform on the latest online best practices. All this we will explain on our new home page. More to follow!

Quick update on client work: we have a bunch of stuff going live within the next month or so, and we’ve also been working a lot for existing clients already profiled on our portfolio. So while it may not look like a lot is going on, we’ve been very busy! Which is a good thing. :)

New client site: Just World Books

I haven’t yet added them to our Portfolio page, but I wanted to give a shoutout to Just World Books, one of Siteshine’s newer clients whose site just got launched a couple of weeks ago. Browse through the books and growing roster of authors this up-and-coming book publisher has featured on their site, or check out the latest political commentary from their newsfeed, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

I still have a few items to attend to, a bit of spit-and-polish here and there, but it’s pretty much good to go. Congrats, Just World Books!

A Big Bucket of Gratitude

Wow! I’ve been really surprised and delighted by the response we got to the video interview we posted a couple of weeks ago. Compared to blog posts or other things I’ve put online in the past, I’ve never had so many people I know personally respond and tell me they’d seen it.

So thank you for your feedback! I appreciate it.

Also, a big shout out to our Siteshine clients. Repeat business is something I value very, very highly, and I appreciate how supportive you have been over the years and even recent business I’ve received from you. Thank you.

I have an idea in mind for a future video which will show a bit of my workspace and what tools I like to use as I’m designing Web sites. I’ll probably post a bit about that ahead of time though. See you then!