creative briefing

User-generated content is not uncommon to websites today and its popularity has grown over the years with the public’s demand to have control and input over what they’re seeing on websites. Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and countless others will typically offer a form on the front-end of their website for users to submit content for immediate publishing, enhancing user interactivity and overall experience.

For WordPress users, this is usually a problem because the post and page-writing functionalities are hidden away in the back-end admin panel of WordPress. Not only that, but users are required to have a registered account before being able to access these functions. Add on the fact that logging into the admin panel exposes the user to a different interface and visual environment, and you’ve got yourself a bad user experience and little incentive for the user to want to submit content.

So how do you create a site that offers a usable front-end form that will allow users to publish content immediately onto your site while still taking advantage of the powerful publishing engine of WordPress?

This tutorial will break down one way of overcoming this obstacle using cantwaitforchristmas.com to illustrate examples.

Read the rest of this entry >

It seems like I’ve been on holiday duty with dinners, socials, gatherings, reunions, get togethers and what not since the very first day the holidays started. And even though holidays are mostly a myth in an entrepreneur’s world, I’ve been so busy with festivities that work has sort of been pushed to the backseat during the last 2 weeks (both a blessing and a nightmare). 

But I’m back and boy am I happy to see 2008. It’s going to be an exciting year, I can feel it. We’re only a week in, but I’m already off to a great start. I’ve fulfilled all my resolutions!

Okay, so I only made one. But that’s because I wanted to be realistic this year. And what is this one special resolution? It’s something that I’ve been putting off for far too long – no, it’s not getting in shape or eating more healthily (though those were strong contenders for resolutions - but again, I wanted to be realistic). Nope, my one and only resolution this year was actually to finally remodel my room into my home office.

I’m psyched to say that I did it! Well, I’m 90% of the way there, but as I sit at my new Ikea desk in my blue and white room that is equally Ikea-branded, I can’t help but feel the satisfaction of accomplishment. There are still a few things lying around but I’ll have pictures up in the next few days. Stay tuned!

For now, I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on what’s coming around the corner:

• Back to work, back to life, and back to regular blogging!
• I’m polishing up the last bits of my WP tutorial based on the cantwaitforchristmas.com project, so you should see that post go up tomorrow or Tuesday.
• As mentioned, the after-shots of my home office will be going up shortly too.
• This site has been running for just about 6 months now, is it time for a new look? Whether you said yes or no, I’ve got something in the works!
• A lot of subtle How I Met Your Mother references – I’ve been getting a healthy dose of episodes from all 3 seasons this holiday, and it’s just been the most awesomest experience (thanks John!).

I hope all your 2008′s are off to a great start as well! Looking forward to another great year ahead.

Just wanted to wish everyone a safe and fun-filled holiday! To the entrepreneurs and freelancers: do your best to enjoy the break… work free. I know I’ll be the first to disobey that one.

Best wishes for 2008! :)

Two posts in one day? I think I’m spoiling you guys. Maybe I’m just in the giving mood be it the holidays and all…

I told you I’d be back soon with word of a new project launch. It wasn’t too long ago (or at least it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long) since I became inspired by the powerful potential of WordPress as a CMS. Three great things have spawned since then:

1. A new skillset that opened a whole new door to potential future business.
2. cantwaitforchristmas.com (read this to learn more).
3. The complete relaunch of my agency’s website in all its WordPressy glory.

Hoping to take a lesson out of my own book, the team and I began discussion of a refresh for our agency website as far back as in August. We had grown a lot as an agency and everything about the old site just didn’t do justice to who we were now, so we knew we had to start fresh. Projects came and projects went, and so did the time and bandwidth we had available to focus on building a new site.

September, October, and November passed by far too quickly, and before we knew it, December was here and we still had no new site. Enter: meeting-with-designer-that-inspired-my-WordPress-fascination. Like a shot of creative steroids, I got to work immediately and quickly turned the new layout template that our team had been kicking around for a few weeks into a fully WordPress-integrated site. That was the first night after being inspired.

Fast forward 3 weeks, a lot of WordPress hacking, plugin-customizing, CSSing, Photoshoping, and copy writing, and we arrive at 6 am Friday morning when the new site finally went live at www.vdotmedia.com. I’m pooped, but am so stoked at how everything turned out. In our moment of glory, I felt like the new WordPress rockstar (with Adii announcing his “retirement”, this possibility becomes a little more real).

Vdot Media (www.vdotmedia.com), before

Vdot Media (www.vdotmedia.com), after

The entire site, from the rotating Flash banner to our new portfolio to our RFP form, is fully WordPress-powered. And just like the promise to post my WordPress tricks for cantwaitforchristmas.com (which I haven’t delivered on just yet), I will promise to do a full write-up of the ins and outs of creating a complete agency site on this platform. I’m sure you’ll get more of a kick out of that post as our agency site is at least ten times more complicated than the single-paged Christmas countdown site.

We’ve also got our new agency blog, Simply Put, running on the site which is great because the team and I finally have a common place to expel our thoughts, ideas, and banter. I encourage all of you to check out our most recent post on the Email Standards Project and if you’re interested, do that whole RSS-subscribing thing that some of you are pretty good at.

So there you have it, a long-winded excuse for why I haven’t been too active over here in the past few weeks. I hope you’ll accept my apology.

I picked up my brother from the station the other night and on the drive home we were catching up on life during the past four months during which he was away studying.

He asked me, “How’s your business going?”

I responded, “It’s going well – I’m comfortable with the amount of business that’s coming in and the money I’m making.”

He then said, “Don’t get comfortable. You can be as comfortable as you want when you’re 40. At this stage you should never be so comfortable with what you have that you’d stop pushing for more.”

A nice reminder that I thought was worth sharing to all entrepreneurs.