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 >

If you’ve noticed that you haven’t heard from me in the last few days (since my Inspired post), it’s because I’ve been completely submerged in the wonders of WordPress! I had the hang of it after the first night, but I’ve spent the last few days diligently perfecting the ins and outs of this underestimated platform.

Most of my time has been dedicated to building out my new agency site. The technical development progress has now sped far beyond the development of the content for the site, so it’ll still be some time before it’s ready to launch.

But to give some proof of my progress, and to alleviate some of the WordPress energy, my buddy and I decided to run our first project marathon last night - 24 hours of pure creative magic with the end result being a polished, functional, and stylish website. With that, I present to you the launch of cantwaitforchristmas.com!

In light of the holiday season, Satish and I decided to build a simple site that would celebrate all the things everyone is looking forward to come this Christmas. For extra umph, we added a giant timer so that we could countdown the days, hours, minutes, and even seconds left til all the wonderfulness of Christmas would arrive.

I will do a follow-up post soon to share some of the tricks and techniques used in the development of this site. But in the mean time, I hope you guys can go and support my first marathon project and join us in the countdown to the official best day of the year!

If anybody is particularly feeling the holiday spirit, you can also help spread word of the site by blogging about it or sharing it with friends.

Looking forward to seeing what you’re all looking forward to this Christmas!

I know, quite a revelation. </sarcasm>

Brought to light by a close friend today, I’ve spent the last 30 minutes or so watching each of the videos from Marie Digby’s YouTube channel. I have no intention to add another post to the blogosphere that testifies to the power of the social media landscape, but I’m a sucker for acoustic music covers so I thought it warranted a mention. The videos not only portray Marie as a talented and beautiful musician, but also captivates me with the fact that you get to see a side of her that you rarely get to see in other “celebrities” - the human one. And I think this is really where musicians (and artists in any other shape or form) are benefiting most from mediums like YouTube.

People these days are more skeptical than ever about everything they consume - music included. But I think that making effective use of social media tools (whether it be Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube, in this case) helps to reassure us that these are real people and not just some staged and over-produced group of pretty faces (if Britney did an a capella YouTube video, she’d surely regain some positive PR). John Mayer’s blog does it, Bathroom Sessions does it, and Marie Digby’s YouTube channel does it (if you don’t believe me, check out her Halloween post).

Where it loses a bit of its magic is when we find out that it’s all part of an elaborate scheme derived by a marketing team’s attempt to leverage the phenomenon described above. But by then you’ve already gone out and bought the Marie Digby CD, told all your friends about it, and wrote about it on your blog.

So there you have it, another post that testifies to the power of YouTube and the social media landscape. (Oops.)

Now go and indulge in the goodness that is Marie Digby’s cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella”. Ela. Ela. Eh. Eh. Eh.

With all this thought about home offices and creating the ultimate creative working environment, I’m suddenly reminded of the concept of House 2.0. I originally read about it at TheWebpreneur.com, who originally read about it through Amit Gupta, and was intrigued at the idea of bringing entrepreneurs, freelancers, and today’s web 2.0-ers together under one roof to live and do their thang (as they say).

It would be a fully furnished place with rooms available to rent for brilliant people to build, run, and plug their creative endeavours in the presence of other brilliant people (and it naturally comes complete with a blog to document the creative antics of the housemates).

Think of it as the web 2.0 version of Big Brother. Without all the sex and cameras. And more creativity.

Anybody interested in bringing House 2.0 to Toronto?

I’m not an avid reader of CNN.com, but a friend of mine who is recently pointed out the redesign of the site. This may not be breaking news to you, but I found the approach CNN took in their redesign to be both refreshing and reflective of a major news engine evolving with the web 2.0 community.

CNN.com before the redesign (courtesy of the Internet Archive):

  
CNN.com “2.0″:

 
Not that the former CNN.com design was overly complicated, but you can tell that simplicity is a prevailing characteristic of CNN’s new online face. In fact, this site isn’t the only one to do this, as many of today’s “web 2.0″ sites are throwing away the old style guides for the latest conventions that are guided by cleanliness, simplicity, and an abundance of white space.

Perhaps this is a move to encourage the younger, “hipper” audience to be more in tune with today’s current events, and to entice them to choose CNN.com as their preferred media outlet?

What are your thoughts on the new CNN.com?