Archive for the ‘WPVote’ Category
Building WPVote Part 7: Almost Done
Building WPVote has been a really interesting process for me. I have learnt stacks of new things, and through developing WPVote have added a pile of improvements to my WordPress theme Elemental. In preparation for the sites release on Monday here is a summary of what I’ve done so far…
Building WPVote Part 6 : Planning for Lift Off
Now that the WPVote site is almost complete I need to prepare it for release.
Since I have developed online all I really need to do is redirect the DNS from the current site to my own servers. However there are a couple of things I should take care of.
The sites old content needs to be copied over to my installed version Set up a new development area ...Building WPVote Part 5 : Programming
I’m nearly finished with the design of my new WordPress voting site, WPVote, so now need to look more closely at the programming.
I enjoy dissecting WordPress themes, and since I also like code simplicity and minimalism (and am working with a child theme) I decided to strip out as much of the original WPVote theme as possible.
First I had to go through the theme files and work out which were ...
Building WPVote : Part 4b, The Logo Revisited
Last time I wrote about WPVote I got a lot of feedback on the design of the logo. I was actually quite happy with how it was looking but the comments got me thinking and I soon realised it wasn’t as hot as I first thought…
So I spent some time coming up with new variations and thought it would be interesting to get some feedback on them as well.
I designed the variations based on the feedback I had received. ...
Building WPVote Part 4 : Design
Once I had finished researching similar voting sites I was ready to start designing and building the WPVote theme.
To decide basic page structure I went with Balsamiq mockups and knocked out some quick reference designs. I had a firm idea in mind for how the theme would function so it wasn’t that hard to make the images, and Balsamiq is REALLY easy to use so I had my reference images built quickly.
As I mentioned in part 3 ...
Building WPVote Part 3 : Research
After receiving the WPVote domain and theme from Jean I moved on to stage 3. Researching ‘competitors‘ websites.
I must admit I tend not to do too much research when building a website, but this time I did decide to do some look into similar sites for inspiration.
WPVote is essentially a Digg clone, so I knew what to make, but at the same time I wanted to make it something ...
Building WPVote Part 2 : Planning
In part 1 of Building WPVote I mentioned how I have recently purchased WPVote from Jean-Baptiste Jeung.
The first thing I did before I even spoke to Jean was trying to think of simple things I could do that would add greatest value with least effort. This was a project I wanted to monetize from the start, and I didn’t want to spend months and months developing it.
I intend for the ...
Building WPVote Part 1: The Beginning
About a month ago Jean-Baptiste Jung (author of the WordPress Cookbook) put his website wpvote.com up for sale.
I saw a lot of potential in it but wasn’t sure I had the time to offer so had a long hard think before doing anything. A couple of weeks ago I had a chat with him and after a bit of back and forth we came to an agreement… so I am ...
