The Technology Behind MusicEyeCandy.com

The look and feel of my website would not be possible without an array of plug-ins, widgets and a stylish template. After talking to Web Designers, playing the waiting game, and not having a professional portfolio for potential clients to be able to search through online, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands. I played with several themes and used different site building tools until finally settling with WordPress two years later. I knew I wanted a very simplistic website, and not such a grayscale on black color scheme that most photographers use. I also knew I wanted a slideshow on the home page to automatically force viewers to a quick preview of my portfolio. All of the tools and designs used to stylize my theme and make it more of my own required hours of trial and error, as I am not an experienced web developer myself. Luckily the web is flooded with links that help guide people like me at the simple click of a button. Listed below are all of the features which have allowed me to shape my website to what it is now.

Graph Paper Press

The overall theme of MusicEyeCandy.com is by GraphicPaper Press. GPP have amazing pre-designed templates that are easy to alter and fit to your specified needs. I highly recommend Graph Paper Press – especially to those of you who can’t afford to hire a Web Designer. Apart from that, the quality of each of their templates is sleek and professional. I used their Monochrome Pro theme for a few months, but it lacked the features I initially wanted. I am currently using their Modularity theme.

Modularity is a highly customizable multimedia theme framework for WordPress which has everything I could currently ask for. Its optional features include a homepage slideshow, a Mac-style image slider gallery, a magazine-style post layout and a homepage blog-style layout. It also automatically generates thumbnails for you without having to use custom fields. The Theme Options page allows you to change page and link colors (to a certain extent), as well as hide certain post category sections. After practicing and making minor changes I was able to get into the style.css page and alter the theme further. I also studied some of the coding and referred to several tutorials before customizing the navigation menu to look how I wanted it to. Overall, it has been the easiest medium and without a doubt the most promising.

http://graphpaperpress.com

Simple Viewer

The Simple Viewer family provides professional quality, fully customizable Flash image galleries – free! I initially wanted to use this for every album of photos I had, and perhaps I someday might do that. I am currently using the Auto Viewer gallery to display my live and promotional portfolios. This is an outstanding way to present your best work fast! There are other styles in the family as well which include the standardized Simple Viewer, Auto Viewer, and also Tilt Viewer.

http://simpleviewer.net

Plugins and Widgets

I love plug-ins and widgets, they really give a nice kick to your site and you can do a lot of fun things with them. In this blog, I am using a series of plug-ins, some automatically generated, and others manually generated by me with the use of HTML and graphics.

NextGen Gallery

NextGen Gallery is a fully integrated Image Gallery plug-in for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option. I tried other slideshows, including Simple Viewer but I had a hard time getting a good size of the image to show, without losing quality. NextGen may not be extremely stylistic, but it is simple, easy to configure and straight to the point. Besides, I already use a Simple Viewer feature, which is the most important part of my website. If you’re not as picky as I am in regards to how the image shows up on your blog or website you can find tons of other options. I found NextGen works best for my needs.

http://nextgen-gallery.com/

Drop-In Image Slideshow

Drop-In Image Slideshow is a miniature picture slideshow that drops photos of your preference in a designated area of your choice. You can find this on the sidebar of my home page. It is very convenient to have because it adds images to where their may typically be more links or text, helping to balance that dull space. You can also control the width and height of the plug-in, as well as the directory in which you want to link the photos to. In my case, if you click on any of the rotating images you go directly to the gallery page of my website to browse through different folders. The link is, however, optional. There are also tons of other gallery widgets for WordPress, some are synched to third party websites like a Flickr account, for instance.

Credits to Gobi Software | http://gopi.coolpage.biz/

Tiny MCE Advanced

This all in one plug-in provides 16 extra features to any the blogger when writing a page or post entry. As a fan of anchors I simply had to give this a shot, and it worked well.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinymce-advanced/

WP List Cal

This is an event calendar which showcases upcoming events of your choice. You may choose to list the events in a list or in a table format in either a new entry, page, or into the sidebar. I find this a very useful feature for me, as it allows me to keep viewers updated with current and upcoming events. It also provides guests an idea of what content to expect in the coming months.

Credits to Jonathan Kern | http://jonathankern.com/

Shadowbox-JS

Shadowbox is a highly customizable online media viewing application similar to Lightbox and Thickbox. Shadowbox features more functions and supports all types of media. It displays a vast assortment of different media files in all major browsers without navigating users away from the website. In my opinion, Shadowbox appears to give off a more “modern” display of photos, video, etc. I believe it compliments the use of NextGen.The best part is all you have to do is activate it.

http://shadowbox-js.com

C-Forms II

Every website needs a contact form. I was previously using a different contact form before getting complaints for never returning e-mails. I switched forms and found this. C-Forms II might be a pretty big plug-in, but it is well worth it. There are so many advanced features and different contact forms to choose from. I highly recommend this, although there are tons of functioning contact forms for WordPress that would do a great job and be a lot smaller in size.

Credits to Oliver | http://deliciousdays.com/

WP-To-Top

This plug-in is very simple. Install it and it automatically generates a customizable “back to top” option on the bottom right hand corner of your screen. Because some pages on my site contain a lot of content, it is a convenient tool to click to bring you right back up.

Credits to Asvin Balloo | http://htmlblog.net/wp-to-top/

Sexy Bookmarks

This tool is a useful and fast way to get your blog readers to submit your articles to numerous social websites, including Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Reddit, Ning, etc. You can also control which social sites you wish to discard. I don’t mind my content being published on other sites for others to read because doing this will always have a trace back to my site.

Credits to Josh Jones | http://www.sexybookmarks.net/

Downloads

I love creating my own images but there are downloads made available out there which are just as effective. I downloaded Aquaticus Social Bookmarks when first adding social bookmarks as a part of my sidebar widgets. I chose the most popular bookmarks and linked my profiles to each of them so users can follow me on several sites at once, and to of course have my name and as many links back to my webpage from third party sites as possible. I still use Aquaticus on Myspace, but have since upgraded a set of new icons from Media Loot. I find that these are a tad more attractive. It also included a bookmark for DeviantArt!

Aquaticus Social: http://jwloh.deviantart.com/art/Aquaticus-Social-91014249

Media Loot Social Icons: http://medialoot.com/item/30-new-social-media-icons/