Scott's new book, Afterworlds, needed a very different look from his previous WWI-era steampunk trilogy. The change gave me the opportunity to rebuild the site from the ground up--including the SMF theme, something I'd never done before. It's now responsive, which makes everyone … [Read more...]
Justine Larbalestier, 2013
Justine still loved the 2008 version of her site, but wanted to refresh and update it a little. We decided to keep the background, which had become a signature look for her, and give the main content more contrast. We rethought the navigation entirely and replaced some of the … [Read more...]
Cassie Alexander
Cassie had been using WordPress with free themes for some time when she sold her first novel. As its release date approached, she needed a "more grown-up" look. I took advantage of the striking cover art and worked a little magic so the text of Cassie's blog posts wraps around … [Read more...]
PressBooks Importers
The crew at PressBooks asked me to customize the standard WordPress importer to behave a little differently: instead of immediately publishing the stuff from the old blog, they wanted to put the imported content into a queue and let the user select where it should go: their … [Read more...]
Team Human
The authors of this collaborative novel wanted a small website, separate from their own, to showcase the new book. To get things up and running quickly and inexpensively, I wrote a WordPress theme based on _s and Bootstrap, with a color scheme based on the book's cover. Since … [Read more...]
Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan
When Scott's Leviathan was published, his publisher hired a graphic designer to revamp his website in fine steampunk style. Alas, the firm wasn't entirely conversant with WordPress's best practices, and the result was a table-based (!) design that broke every time Scott added a … [Read more...]
Month of Letters
I worked with Mary Robinette Kowal to set up the Achievements plugin for the Month of Letters BuddyPress site. Members earned badges for sending various kinds of mail, and cumulative points for the number of letters or packages they sent. These were reported via a Gravity Form … [Read more...]
VP Alumni
This is an alumni network for graduates of the Viable Paradise writing workshop. It's a basic BuddyPress site with a few plugins (maps, extended profiles) and a Gravity Form to let users register for Paradise Lost, the alumni workshop. This was the site that spurred me to … [Read more...]
Hungry Monkey
The author of this charming book asked me to do a simple promotional site. At first, in order to keep the cost of the project low, we planned to simply modify an existing theme. However, by the third iteration of changes, the design was so different that I simply wrote the theme … [Read more...]
Justine Larbalestier, 2008
By the summer of 2008, Justine had been blogging in WordPress for some time, and wanted to use it to manage the 100 or so static pages that made up the rest of her site. She also wanted to update the look of the site and make it easier to maintain. The old design included … [Read more...]
