TJ Kelly - Web design, development, SEO, Social Media, Wordpress » My Work

New Website: Corps Connect

TJ Kelly — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:52:30 +0000

Earlier this month, I launched a new project, called Corps Connect. It’s a niche blog, similar in function to Gawker or Mashable, focused on the drum corps activity. The idea is to become “the ESPN of drum corps,” with articles, videos, photos, recaps, analysis, and more.

Drum corps and web development are the two things I love the most in life. It’s a wonder it took me this long to combine them. I saw a need more more thorough (and easier-to-use) coverage of the activity, so I rose to the challenge.

Corps Connect project details

Below is a screenshot of the Corps Connect homepage. You can expand the screenshot to full-size by clicking on it.

Designing Spring Break

TJ Kelly — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:46:14 +0000

I’ve spent the last 6 months working on a major update and redesign of StudentCity’s Spring Break Destinations section. The new section launched on September 1st and has been, without a doubt, the most successful redesign/launch in StudentCity’s history.

Users first

Our users were always our #1 priority. We constantly asked ourselves, “how does this help the user?” If the answer was anything like “it doesn’t, it’s just nice to have,” then that piece was removed.

In corporate culture (or at least, in our corporate culture), it’s very easy to let “the business” make all the decisions. But “the business” is just that―a business. “The business” is not human and it is not our target user. Our department fought hard to keep the user as our priority and not “the business.”

Visit the new Destinations section

Follow the leader

I’m sure you can tell. We drew some heavy inspiration from Apple and their gorgeous website. I tried to capture some of Apple’s minimalist approach in my design. The challenge, though, was to have a minimalist layout and still convey the fun, exciting parts of the college spring break environment.

For us, the answer to that was simple: photos.

Photos vs. text

We focused on keeping our user engaged on every page, throughout the whole page. Each page has at least 5 photos on it and each content block has only 2-3 short paragraphs. There is enough text content to deliver our message, but the section is largely intended to be a visual tour of our products.

User actions

Websites are nice to look at, but a user has to be able to interact with them. We needed to give the user something to do, not just something to see.

Throughout the section, there are hundreds of “Sign me up” buttons. Each of them loads a lightbox-style ajax form for collecting user data. This means that every content block is equipped with an action. The instant a user feels motivated by our website’s content, they can act on that motivation and contact us easily.

Careful not to over-do it

The user data form submits to our database and becomes a lead for our sales team. But once is enough. So, filling out that form adds a cookie to the user’s browser and once they’ve filled it out, clicking those action buttons no longer displays a lead form. Instead, it shows them a personalized message from the sales rep for their region. Just one more thing to enhance the user experience.

Conclusion

I’m very, very proud of how the new section turned out. It’s the best product I’ve delivered to my company in my years of working there. This is the first project we’ve completed in which the IT department has had free reign over the direction of the project. (We sort of followed the “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” mantra.)

I hope the new section will help the company’s bottom line. If our philosophy is true, then designing a great user experience will lead to more users, more leads, and hopefully more sales.

Screenshots

Destination section index page

Cancun overview page

Hotel page

My Design Won “Best Website”

TJ Kelly — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 02:49:23 +0000

Last fall, I redesigned my college fraternity’s website, PiKapp UMass. This summer, at our national “Supreme Chapter” meeting, representatives from every chapter around the US gathered at an awards dinner. Some of my fraternity brothers submitted our chapter’s website to the list of “Best Chapter Website” candidates. And my design was selected as the best!

My first award

I’ve never won an award on my designs before. Granted, this award isn’t the most important in the web design industry, but it means a lot to me. I love my fraternity and I’m glad I can still be a part of it. And it’s wonderful to get some recognition from the national office on my contribution to my chapter.

The winner

Here’s a screenshot of the ―ahem― award-winng website. It’s one of my favorite items in my portfolio.

The competition

For a point of comparison, I googled “pi kappa phi chapter websites” and took screenshots of the first ten chapter results.

Cornell

Duke

Florida

Georgia Tech

Memphis

NC State

UNC Chapel Hill

North Dakota

Purdue

Truman State

West Virginia

A WordPress Theme from Scratch

TJ Kelly — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 05:41:31 +0000

Introducing Scratch, a blank-slate WordPress theme for web developers. The theme has no CSS. It’s a foundation, intended to be expanded & built upon. It’s the perfect way to build your own WordPress theme from scratch.

Check out Scratch

Cleaning up after WordPress

I build a lot of custom WordPress themes (1 2 3 4 5). I’ve spent a lot of time cleaning up Automattic’s mess. I’m tired of implementing my own semantic class & ID names and removing unnecessary calls to PHP functions. So, I decided to start from scratch.

I removed all CSS. I added semantic class & ID names. I structured the HTML elements in a clean, simple way. And I followed a simple naming convention. All things WordPress should do themselves.

It’s not your grandfather’s WordPress theme

It’s not your typical one-click install kind of theme (except on CSS naked day) and it’s not for everyone. It’s for web designers & developers who do more than install plugins & widgets. It’s for geeks who like digging through WordPress’ code.

I created a theme that provides a foundation for further customization. It’s like starting from scratch.

It’s not really a theme at all

Scratch isn’t really a “theme.” It’s not a design. It’s the intentional lack of a design. But, by WordPress’ terminology, it’s technically a theme. You can, if you want, install & activate it on your WordPress blog. But I don’t recommend it.

I hope you’ll download it, install it, rename it (please!), and customize it like crazy.

Eric Meyer has CSS Resets

Meyer’s work in CSS resets changed the way many people write (and understand) CSS. I’m hoping to follow that model & provide a WordPress Reset. It may not be as big as Meyer’s resets, but I think it could be helpful to a lot of people.

Check out Scratch

New Website: Spartans Drum Corps

TJ Kelly — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:56:55 +0000

Yesterday I added another project to my portfolio, The Spartans Drum & Bugle Corps website. The site runs on WordPress and uses a few plugins like Events Manager, SEO Ultimate, etc.

The theme is 100% custom, designed originally for The Spartans. The hope is to help the corps graduate into 2010 with their website and social media efforts.

I’m still developing a photo gallery to showcase the corps’ 2000+ photos they’ve accumulated over the years. I’ll post about that when it’s done. It’s another cool project that may warrant its own entry in the portfolio.

New Website: Pi Kappa Phi

TJ Kelly — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:21:48 +0000

I launched another website today, my 3rd in about a month: Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity at UMass Amherst. I designed this website for PiKapp, my beloved fraternity, way back in 2005, again in 2006, and again in 2007. Now, nine months into 2009, I did it again. I took my time with this one (there were actually several versions in between) to make sure I got it right.

Like most of my sites lately, I called on WordPress to manage the site. The content will be updated and managed by current UMass fraternity brothers, most of whom don’t know much about websites. So, the ease-of-use- afforded by WordPress made it the obvious choice.

I’m using a few plugins in there. One of which, Events Manager, is really fantastic. The group hosts events all the time, so having a simple-but-effective event management system is really a lifesaver.

As always, I’d love your comments either here on this post or over at the new site. Thanks!

New Website: UMass Drumline

TJ Kelly — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:41:55 +0000

I launched another website today. I’ve been working on a redesign of the UMass Drumline website for several years now. It was always one of those casual, “get to it when I can” type of projects. Well, I finally finished it.

The site is built on WordPress and uses a YouTube-inspired theme to showcase videos. I focused heavily on the site’s media content, since 85% of the site’s visits are to the Media section. I also included an IE6 No More message for our outdated users.

Please visit the brand new UMass Drumline website and leave your comments. I’d love to hear what you think!

New Website: UMass Hotel

TJ Kelly — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:55:34 +0000

My latest website design launched today: UMass Hotel at the Campus Center. It’s a WordPress site with some custom templates. I completed the project for a friend’s company, Glexia, Inc. Because it wasn’t my project, I didn’t have complete control over the design. I had to meet requirements from several other parties. I’m still very happy with how it turned out.

I designed the site in Photoshop before I knew which platform it would run on. That proved a bit of a challenge later on, but it worked out pretty well. It has a few plugins and a few custom templates. Overall, it’s pretty standard.

Comments are always welcome!

On April

TJ Kelly — Wed, 02 May 2007 03:01:01 +0000

So April came and went. In like a lamb? Sure. Out like a lion? Maybe. Either way, it’s one more month out of the way between me and graduation. Graduation is three weeks from this Saturday. …yikes.

I had a few additions to the portfolio this month. A Mobile Percussion Seminar re-design, and a brand-new project, the UMass Veterans and Service Members Association. Check them out, I’m very proud of both.