WORDS BY KIM Stage1
Words By Kim was built for our Content Writer and Grammar Expert. The layout Kim chose was one that looked like a book. One of the most difficult aspects of this layout was that, unlike normal websites, this one had a left and right page and those pages were seperated by an image depicting the middle part of a book where the pages meet. Kim wanted to be able to write on both sides of the "book" so we had to work out how to split what should be one website page into two without making it too hard for Kim to manage her site. Kim's content management system has two sections on each page, one for each side of her "book", so she is able to create each page of her site easily.

Kim felt this book effect suited her personality and style of writing. The team at Bywild is proud to have been able to meet the challenge and give Kim exactly what she wanted. Kim also asked about a blog, a reason to live (graffiti wall), a place for her articles on suicide and depression and a place where people could request help from her for various problems in their lives.

While work was going on modifying the layout of Kim's site a blog was installed and an "off the shelf" skin was installed for it so Kim could start her journal

 Stage 2 The Blog

In My Own Words Blog

Wordpress was chosen as the blog format because of it's huge popularity and its user friendly design. Wordpress comes with the ability to create search engine friendly urls as well and this made it a good choice from a design perspective.

A skin, or custom made template, using the websites layout had to be designed and installed on the blog so the whole site, including the blog, would have a single theme or look. Kim also had a cute little design she wanted to use as a seperator between comments on the blog. This was made and installed so each new comment would automatically be seperated by the image.

Kim is quite a prolific writer so it was decided that only one entry would be shown on the blog at a time. Kim felt that, if more than one entry appeared, the page would be too long in content.

Wordpress allows users to change the urls to make them search engine friendly so this was done. We also installed some of the plugins that have been created for Wordpress. Kim did not know what sort of plugins she would need so she left the choice to the team at ByWild. We chose to install Askimet, a plugin that stops spam comments, to help keep Kim's site maintenance down. We wanted her to be able to focus on writing not have to spend hours deleting spam.

For some reason wordpress does not add meta tags to blog entries so a plugin was installed to add meta tags to kims blog pages automatically. This helps people find Kim's entries in Technorati and other blog search engines. Feedburner was plugged in so kim can keep a track of people who subscribe to her rss feed and a google sitemap was also added to make it easier for search engines to spider and index her pages.

Think Wild ... Be Wild ... By Wild

 Stage 3 The Website

The blog, due to it's self-contained nature, could not be altered very much. It was not possible to make the blog keep the book effect of the rest of the site but Kim did not mind that. She intended to put professional and educational content on the main site and content that was more personal in nature on the blog. The loss of the book effect on the blog pages was, Kim felt, a subtle way to seperate the two types of content visually without losing the overall look and feel of the site. Having a single page for the blog was also better for readers as Kim's entries tend to be much longer than the articles on the main site. Wordpress was a good choice so not much else needed to be altered. The range of plugins already available were sufficient to adapt it to suit Kim's needs.

The website was different. Kim was not limited in her imagination by knowing what was, and what was not, possible for a website and that was fine by us. Here at By Wild Website design we don't mind a challenge so, when Kim told us what she wanted, we set out to give it to her. All of it.

In addition to having a book effect on every page of her main site, Kim wanted several other things on her website. As a psychologist, Kim wanted to address things like suicide and other social issues on her main site. She wanted a section of the site visible on every page where she could have articles about suicide. She wanted a second section, also visible on every page, where she could put her legal and privacy policies as well as FAQ articles about Psychology and therapy. Kim also wanted a general menu as well with sections for her writing services and her psychological articles The menu needed to be able to accept, and automatically list, new articles as Kim added them to the website. Kim also wanted a contact me form and she wanted all of these things to be accessible from each page of the blog as well as each page of the main website.

The original site design made all those things reasonably easy to supply but Kim wasn't finished yet. She wanted us to create, and add, A Reason to Live Wall to the site. This was to be a place where people could add their own personal reasons to live in the colour, style, and font size of their choice.

Kim also wanted us to create, and add, a form for people to fill in so they could ask her for help with their problems. She also needed a page where she could add their questions, and her answers, to the site.

Once Kim finished her list of things she wanted for her website it was our turn to add things to the list. We wanted all urls to be search engine friendly and we wanted a site map for both the website and the blog to optimise the site for search engine spidering and indexing. We also wanted custom designed 404 error pages for the site and the blog so Kim would not lose a single visitor who tried to reach her site. Last, but by no means least, when we saw what a prolific writer Kim is, we wanted to incorporate a search engine into her site so people would be able to find what they wanted quickly and easily.

Most of all, we wanted the website to be seamless in appearance and extremely user friendly. Kim is, like the rest of the team here at By Wild Website Design, quite a perfectionist. We wanted to give her a site she would be proud of and find very easy to run.

This meant all the things Kim wanted had to be easy to get to and work with from the administrative section of the web site. We had to alter her content management system quite substantially so Kim could add content on the left and right sides of each website page consistent with the book appearance of the website. We designed the CMS to make it very easy for Kim to add page names, keywords and descriptions for each of her main site pages. This was to encourage her to do her part to make her site as good as possible from a search engine optimization perspective. We also had to alter it so she could control the comments that were left on her Reason to live wall easily.