Anne Summers has been a client of ours for nearly six years.
As befits someone who keeps her finger on the societal pulse, Anne has crafted and continues to hone a very particular presence on the web, one that reflects the different way people seek to engage with her.
Discussion, interaction, input, sharing: what may be groundbreaking Web 2.0 buzzwords to some have provided grist to Anne’s observational mill for a long time.
While Anne was using WordPress to establish a tacked-on blog and exploring Facebook and Twitter (the former to greater positive effect, at this stage), her static website remained just that. With a new book coming out, it was time for a site redesign.
The redesign presented a number of challenges, the biggest of which was the challenge of making it all look very simple.
Simple is hard.
Structurally, WordPress is now at the front of the site, and “the blog” is now an integrated part of the whole site. The previous static pages are now WP pages.
We deliberately sought a look that was part newspaper-part magazine, carrying the immediacy and impact of the former and the comparative expansiveness of the latter.
For those who are interested in such things, we used WordPress 2.8.1 as the content management system, adapting the Atahualpa theme (which, by the way, has an amazing back end of its own).
For particular functionality and layout, we installed the following plug-ins:
AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget Version 1.5.4
Clean Archives Reloaded Version 3.1.8
Recent Posts Version 2.6.2.0
Post-Plugin Library Version 2.6.2.1 (required for Recent Posts)
Get Recent Comments Version 2.0.6
SidePosts Widget Version 2.1.4
WP-ContactForm Version 1.5.1
We also installed Akismet and WordPress Automatic Upgrade plug-ins and hard coded Google Analytics into the footer.
NB By “Anne Summers”, we mean the Australian journalist, author and social commentator, a champion for women’s rights in Australia since the 1970s rather than the UK-based purveyor of erotic lingerie and sex toys. The latter is called “Ann Summers”, although their SEO advisers are clearly determined to cover any spelling variations including that of our local feminist icon. Has there ever been such a stark contrast?