The challenge was to come up with a layout that would not only be functional and have the design elements I wanted, but would also be attractive enough to make a positive and professional first impression.
Elegant Themes was the answer. Their themes for WordPress have a solid framework with all the design elements needed for a website. It was just a matter of deciding which elements I wanted to use, moving them around to best suit my needs, and customizing the look of the layout.
For Sweet Solutions I used the ET themes, Lumin and Deep Focus, with a little help from several other ET themes, ePhoto, eStore, Minimal . . . Oh, what’s the point of listing them all? I mixed and matched where and when I wanted, and what you see here is the final result.
Sweet Solutions
Small business website
WordPress theme modification
Custom title
Dynamic top menu with rollovers
Slide-in/out search form
Image highlight rollovers
TimThumb thumbnails
Thumbnail popups
Feedburner
Tabbed blog excerpts
Portfolio gallery
WP page navigation
Fancybox
ET contact form
Custom favicon
You know how Picasso had a “blue” period? Well, I’m in what I call my “flash” period. Not a good thing.
Third, the not-so-sweet flash contact form does not work. I didn’t even realize it until a good client told me they had been trying to reach me for days using the form. How’s that for “Wow” factor? It’s my bad—I never tested the form. Part of the problem is missing code in the PHP file that came with the flash template. I tried adding the code, but had no luck. No luck with Template Monster either. I wrote their customer support with a clear explanation of the problem and attached the necessary files. They sent back a polite, generic one-line response that did not address the problem at all, and told me they were closing the ticket.