It is wonderful how some clients come into your life from previous work. One of the nursing teachers from Sonoma State University contacted me about 3 months ago with a possible projects that turned into a new website for the Community For Spiritual Living, Petaluma Well-Being Center.
This project was a bit of a different kind of project. My client knew upfront that they wanted to make future changes and additions to the website themselves rather then hire a designer to make maintenance updates: additions to their calendar, add in specials, post new blog/newsletter information, etc.
This meant for me looking at creating not a customize website in my favorite programs as Dreamweaver and Fireworks but going to a template website... WordPress was the template program chosen. Now I have to say that WordPress has some unusual settings and functions that makes working in the program a bit of a pain in the neck for a designer.
Yet after some trial and errors - readjustments to layout and design, customizing the theme, connecting the domain to hosting servers, correspondence with tech support about a URL redirect, creating menus, setting up Blog page not on the home page, add Plugins of All-in-One Calendar and All-in-One SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by setting up basic SEO, keywords, descriptions, alt tags, and set up a calendar with repeating events throughout the year...
The Petaluma Well-Being Center has an online presence that functions well for both educating people about their facility and services as well as gives them the flexibility to make additions to the website in the future.
It was a pleasure working with them and we are in discussions on a future website project and some graphic design projects.
Check out their entire website at http://petalumawellbeingcenter.org