Portfolio – WordPress, Design, SEO, HTML Email, Site Analysis
This page is a collection of my best and most recent web design, WordPress work, print design, and writing. I do many different things and like to take on projects that challenge my experience and perceived ability. My main concentration is on coherent web and wordpress design but I really enjoy design for other mediums and can’t help writing. Constantly. If you like what you see and want me to take on your project, give me a shout!
Multi-domain curated local news site network
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
This network of sites provides local and breaking news for a focused region in Southern California. We built the site to run off one WordPress install and a single theme, modifying what’s being displayed using the requesting domain name. Featured news, images, recent, and extended stories are all posted in one place, can be on-site content or an external link, and only create one database entry. The site runs well on an nginx server and is made to be easily expanded to additional domains. A fun project that came together really well!
- Thanks PJ Brunet
Enhanced post and post author display
This encompasses two projects for Social Media Today and their network of Drupal sites: a comment and post voting system and an improved author display on the individual post pages. The post and comment voting uses the Vote Up/Down module and some custom theme files to let people vote up posts and comments that they like. This helps them aggregate and display the top posts and comments within a certain time frame. The author box lets readers connect with additional information about the author like posts, comments, and external profiles. This is just the start of a full-site refresh in the works!
Funny shirts, funny pics, everyone wins
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
Yet another Mancave Media production. Lulzshirts is a T-shirt curation site attached to a “funny pics” user-submitted content site to help promote the whole thing. This whole thing runs in Drupal and uses views to create thumbnails for items that are sold on sites partnering with Lulzshirts. Shirts are posted by category and promoted through RSS feeds read on the other sites within the network (see the bar at the bottom). Other cool tricks include automatic hidden watermarks, a variable number of shirt thumbs shown based on the image size, and a simple Facebook commenting system.
MindBody Integrated Site for A Flamenco Studio
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
Chris from Solo Flamenco in Portland came to me looking for an updated look and structure. He knew he wanted WordPress and thought that we should start from an existing premium theme. Instead, we started from scratch and designed a completely custom site exactly to his specifications. Solo Flamenco uses HealCode, a service that takes existing MindBody class and schedule information and adds it to a web page. We incorporate several of these widgets into the site, added an easy-to-use blog, and let Chris take control of the images on the site (he did a beautiful job). The result? A dynamic, socially-active WordPress installation that does everything they need.
- Thanks Preston Grubbs
Brochure site for a premium dog groomer
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
There’s nothing I like better than helping personal referrals look and perform better on-line. Pam runs a dog grooming service locally and needed a site that actually looked good and worked well. We worked with her to provide a modern, stylish brand package and a simple and functional website. It’s like “Mad Men” meets “All Dogs Go To Heaven.” The image galleries run off of a Picasa album, making updates and edits simple. Clean, crisp, and she loved it.
- Thanks Preston Grubbs
AniLOL – just what you’d think
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
AniLOL.com is an image submission and rating site for – you guessed it – funny animals. There is no shortage of funny animals and certainly no shortage of pictures of them either so why not have one place to find them all? The site is built on Drupal and allows anonymous (and logged in) submission of images that go into a moderation queue before going live. We built in a few cool features like auto-watermarking images, next/previous navigation that circles back around to the beginning, and a random thumbnail generator to keep people clicking. Hey, no one said I had to cure cancer with every site.
Lead generation site for a basketball coach
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
Jason Jones is a hard-working, dedicated basketball coach here in Seattle who needed a WordPress site to show off his services. Since Jason has been in the game for a while, we wanted to make sure his site represented his professionalism and style of teaching. We used lots of images from a Nike b-ball camp Jason was a part of and he created a great introduction video with a local videographer. The thing I’m the most proud of, though, is the lead generation form. You can use it as a simple contact form or fill out the remaining fields and send an appointment request to Jason. Slam dunk!
- Thanks Preston Grubbs
Informational site for Guiding Leaders and Teams
It can be a bit daunting to approach a project where you’re asked to represent someone with a long-standing and entrenched reputation. This group, represented primarily by Sheila Conner, is a group of people who help big organizations work and communicate better. Their site needed to tell their story, display the work they’ve done, and do it all in a clean and appealing package. We concentrated on clean typography, lots of whitespace, and simplicity everywhere.
- Thanks Preston Grubbs
Lyndon Hughes – Presentation Coach
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
Lyndon and I came into contact last year after she found me and asked me to do a complete site analysis. A while after the walk-through she same to me and asked if I could implement everything recommended. We started almost from scratch, sussing out exactly what she wanted to say about her business and how she wanted to say it. Being a communication coach, Lyndon wanted to make sure she was saying exactly the right thing and coming across as she needed to. We took a lot of time mapping out what needed to be said and revising the content and presentation to put her best foot forward. Combined with a strong keyword strategy and a completely redesigned site, this overhaul was a huge step forward!
- Thanks Preston Grubbs
Complete Overhaul for Circus Center
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
The Circus Center came to me with an urgent redesign to coincide with an upcoming Groupon offer they were running. The site looked old and had a number of repeated pages, old information, and a difficult navigation system. It was an aggressive time frame but we got the site designed, approved, and built with a day to spare. The offer went very well and the staff is now trained to make changes and updates when they need to.
- Thanks Preston Grubbs
Premium WordPress Theme for Link and News Aggregation
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
The WP-Drudge theme simply takes links you want to display and organizes them by category on one page. It also lets you place static links in groups on the same page page. When you want to place a new link, just add the links and any additional information you’d like to display (a description of an image), put it under a category, and publish. Now the link appears on your homepage! Want static links to appear? Just add them as bookmarks, make the link box visible on the homepage, and there it is! You can also post blog posts and pages like a standard WordPress install.
Dynamic newsletter builder for collaborative blog
This newsletter builder started out as a Google Docs spreadsheet feeding into a custom script that built a valid HTML email template that worked great in popular email clients. Slowly, it evolved to use post information published by the main website (using Drupal) in a JSON format, eliminating the need to manually update the template every week. The template was built on-demand each time the page was loaded and the source could be viewed, copied, and pasted into our email marketing application, MailChimp. This saved an immense amount of time and made sure the most current content was being sent out.
GetScientific – a links and notes sharing site
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
Once upon a time a good friend/fellow student (at the time) and I got a great idea to put together an easy way for science students to share and rate links and notes online. Fast forward through 2 major platform changes and 2.5 years and this crazy idea finally became a reality. We built a system that allowed hard science students to submit, rate, and comment on the study guides they found online and created themselves. We’re quite proud of what we came up with and have lots of ideas for the future of this helpful platform.
The Business Ferret – Financial Analysis Done Right
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
Several years in the making, this site was created to explain and generate leads for a financial analysis program created by my dad, Dan Cunningham. He needed to have a site that could explain what The Business Ferret does and gauge interest from the web at large using very targeted keywords. The design was meant to look professional but be a drastic departure from the overly stoic and boring sites that exist in the industry. The product is very unique and we wanted that to be reflected in the look and feel of the site.
- Thanks Mediarite Creative
Regret Last Night – Content Submission and Rating Site
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
Regret Last Night is a content submission site for people who, well, had a bad evening. In the vein of Texts From Last Night, Jason, the site’s maintainer, wanted a site where people could tell terrible stories of drunken exploits and get feedback from the community about how bad (or not bad) their night was. I incorporated a Facebook login option, a custom WordPress registration form, and a custom content type to help make moderation and management much easier. It also has custom user pages showing submissions and comments, as well as custom themed rating system (using GD Star Rating).
- Thanks Preston Grubbs
Upstage Designs – Brochure and Lead Gen Site for Home Staging
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
Lynn and Pam came to me looking for a very specific style and function for their home staging site. Using photographs and and existing color palette, they wanted to show off the work they’ve done to gain new clients. We laid out a simple but effective site and put together a few keywords that put them at the top of Google for their business. Our goal was to communicate the point behind home staging through a simple, effective website.We also worked to get them up and running on Facebook and now they’re posting great deals from Facebook and attracting some fun, local attention!
- Thanks Preston Grubbs
WordPress migration for a protein therapy lab
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
If there’s one thing I love to do, it’s to move people into WordPress from static files or another CMS. But the one thing I love more than that is replacing Flash with Javascript. This project let me do both! The existing site was in static HTML, which is difficult to edit and painful to maintain. We re-created the site in WordPress and added features to make their life easy like support for user-configured menus, the ability to post news stories, and a search function. We also replaced the Flash homepage item with an all-HTML box powered by Javascript. I couldn’t talk them into getting rid of the Flash intro but, hey, I’ll take what I can get!
One-Page Spreadsheet-Driven Magazine Site
This site was built for a graduate student who needed to aggregate links to articles, books, and presentations on her subject of study. We came up with a spreadsheet template and connected it to a PHP page that pulled all the information out and displayed it neatly on the page. This site was designed by the client and uses a CSV spreadsheet to drive all the content on the site. Changes are made to the document, saved in a specific format, then uploaded when the new edition is ready to go live.
Groupon-type Email Offer
This email was one of three versions designed by David Koetke. I built the HTML email templates by hand, making a few modifications along the way. We came up with three different options for the company to test with their list and checked formatting and layout in several different email clients. This is probably about as complicated as emails can/should get and was a fun exercise in how far you could take an email without having it mangled in certain clients (Outlook, typically).
- Thanks David Koetke
Josh Can Help email to friends and family
This email was put together to send to friends and family announcing the official launch of Josh Can Help. I wanted a very distinct look and, since I was sending it only to people I knew, I had a bit more leeway with graphics and content. I consider this a “flagship” email to show what is possible.
Sophie’s Arms – Lead Generation and Unit Display for Restored Building
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
This site was launched in May 2010 to coincide with the release of several completed units in the building. The site displays unit availability and tracks incoming emails based on the units that visitors are interested in. The building’s proprietor, Irving Bookspan, wanted a site that conveyed the elegance of his apartment building and was very pleased with the results. The goal was to create a site that made it easy for current and future tenants to find information and show their interest.
- Thanks Preston Grubbs
Sample marketing email for a large university
To promote a bulk HTML emailer program, I was asked to design and build an email template that could be tested in the system. The code needed to be very clean to avoid any translation errors and the design needed to show off what was possible with HTML emails. This 2-column email was presented during a sales demo and the school purchased the software.
Google Docs-Powered CMS Script
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
This site template uses a Google Docs spreadsheet to create a simple site with sidebar navigation and the ability to add a few different HTML elements. Google Docs can be shared via RSS so the script parses this output and creates a simple multi-page template. This script is free to use and modify!
Aerosol art portfolio for artist, Pose2
Maintained by Josh Can Help | See it now »
I’m honored to have the opportunity to work with a prolific and very talented graffiti artist originally hailing from the East Coast, Pose2 aka Mr Max Moses. We wanted to represent his two personas, Pose2 and Mr. Maxx Moses so we came up with the idea of two websites in one. It functions well to separate his work and give the very real sense that there are two very different things going on. The goal was to display artwork in a creative way, provide class information, and present his persona on a unique and polished site
Conference information email to current CRM clients
For an annual user workshop for enrollment professionals, I was tasked to come up with an email template that could be changed and re-sent several times. I managed the entire email campaign including design, content, and strategy. Despite being a very tough year for schools across the country, the conference enrollment was on-par with the previous year.
EMASPro – Lead Generation and Brand Building Site
This site launched April 2009 with a brand new look, technology, and keyword strategy. I designed the site from the ground-up with an emphasis on ease-of-use and professional, high-quality presentation. After launch, the site immediately started bringing in 7 times as many leads and a 99% increase in page views. The goals were to increase sales leads and search engine presence, both of which were achieved in a big way!
Happy Holidays email sent to current CRM clients
For the 2008 holiday season, I was asked to create a celebration neutral email to send to current CRM clients. I used an (attributed) image of the Del Hotel to give it a San Diego holiday feel and included an image of employee signatures to add a personal touch.
Contact me to get started!
Need an estimate or have a question?
Contact me now!