Loko Web Design

Loko Graphics

Loko — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:34:07 +0000

I was working through some fun Photoshop tutorials and came up with these little graphics and I thought I’d share them (click on them to enlarge):

Any favorites?

Customizing Facebook Pages

Loko — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 04:22:51 +0000

Over the last few days, I discovered a couple tutorials on customizing Facebook pages. I am one of the administrators for the MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) Facebook page. Prior to finding the following tutorials, we were using North Contact apps, which are good, but cost $19 per month. We were using 3 of their apps; one for e-newsletter sign ups, one for the welcome tab, and one for a contest we were running.

Thanks to a couple tutorials on the HyperArts website, I was able to setup the Welcome tab (http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/customizing-facebook-iframe-application-signed_request_reveal_tab) and the e-newsletter sign up tab (http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/customizing-facebook-iframe-application-signed_request_reveal_tab) using iframes.

In case you’re interested, here are links to the 2 customized tabs:

Welcome tab (why not ‘like’ MAF while you’re there?)
E-Newsletter Sign Up tab (FYI, this features some great stories from MAF folks around the world)

Have you used iframes on Facebook pages? I’d be curious to check them out. Leave a reply and let me know.

UPDATE, August 11, 2011: Just today I added a Donate tab to the MAF Facebook page. This allows people to donate to the ministry without leaving Facebook. Since it’s in an iframe, it uses the security certificate from maf.org.

Loko Gets a Facelift

Loko — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 01:39:29 +0000

I finally got some time to update my own site’s design. Let me know what you think?

Here are a couple unique things about this design:

Custom fonts using Google’s Web Fonts. I’m using Maven Pro and Shanti.
I started with an HTML5 template called H5 from DiW Theme Clubhouse

This is a WordPress site, so if you use WordPress, I’d love to know what Widgets you would recommend. Let me know in the comments.

Another Home For Sale

Loko — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 07:16:07 +0000

Using my sister and bro-in-law’s web site, I made another one for my bro-in-law’s old boss because he is selling his house, too. Check it out at www.320southmadison.com

Also, here’s a screenshot:

320 South Madison, Bloomington, IN

New Site Launched

Loko — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:21:29 +0000

So, a few weeks ago, I mentioned a new site representing my sister and brother-in-law’s home that is for sale. Well, after much debate, they set the price on their house and the site is now public. Check it out at southrogershouse.com!

Let me know what you think!

MAF Mobile … seen it yet?

Loko — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:38:11 +0000

A few weeks ago we launched the mobile version of maf.org. If you’re using your mobile device, you can view it by going to the MAF homepage. If you are on a computer and want to check it out, you can go to www.maf.org/m/home.

Here’s a screenshot too:

Let me know what you think!

New site teaser …

Loko — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 04:50:32 +0000

I’m having a lot of fun right now with a website showcasing my sister Sandy and her husband Luke’s home. They are getting ready to sell it and move to Florida, so I’ve come up with a fun little site with pictures, home details, and contact information. They are not quite ready to open the floodgates yet, but here’s a fuzzy screenshot to pique your interest:

Shhh! Don’t tell anyone. The site will go live a little later this month. Stay tuned!

Current Projects

Loko — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 05:11:10 +0000

I’m working on a couple sites right now. One of them is www.simonflory.com. Simon is my brother-in-law’s brother and he is a singer/songwriter. This is a pretty standard WordPress blog right now, but I’m going to be doing a custom theme and some cool additions. Keep checking back to see the progress. Right now, here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:

simonflory.com screenshot - 02/17/11

The other site that I’m working on is for Second Street Antiques in Bloomington, IN. This website will be used for the Second Street Antiques online showcase, but it will also be available for antiques dealers and individuals to showcase their items for a small fee. Again, I just set up the site and I’m using the Open Classifieds PHP classifieds system (www.open-classifieds.com). I really like it and, even though the site isn’t necessarily for posting classifieds, the system will work well for the owner’s purposes. I won’t post a screenshot yet, since I haven’t done anything to change the default theme.

Until next time, peace.

MAF Homepage

Loko — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 05:36:42 +0000

On January 11th, after about 3 weeks of working on it and months of planning before that, we launched a new homepage for MAF (www.maf.org). Colby Dees is MAF’s Art Director and he came up with the design. We use the WebGUI content management system (www.plainblack.com) and it took quite a bit of work to implement the design. Since there were quite a few style changes, I also had to go through the site and make sure I had consistent CSS. Including the missionary staff pages, MAF has over 250 pages and although I didn’t have to go through all of them, I did check to make sure the templates were consistent.

Along with the homepage, I restructured the navigation. This is a huge job on a site as big as MAF’s. I really like the way it’s setup now and I think the navigation is much more intuitive. I’d love to know what you think. Here’s a screenshot of the old and the new side-by-side:

Old MAF Homepage

New MAF Homepage

Outlook 07/10 HTML Email Rending Problem

Loko — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 04:47:17 +0000

So it’s getting around the Web quite a bit lately that Outlook 2007 and 2010 no longer render HTML emails properly. The biggest issue relates to background images. At MAF (www.maf.org) where I work, I create the marketing emails that go out. I only realized this issue about a month ago because I was using Microsoft Entourage 2004 (Outlook for Mac) and it works fine. I have since installed Outlook ’07 for testing purposes and have had a major headache getting it to render the emails properly.

As I usually do, I asked Google to help me solve the problem and I eventually found this post by Brian Thies on the Campaign Monitor forum: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=3862. I tried his suggestion and it worked great!

Since I found something that might be useful for someone else, I wanted to post the link here, just in case it could help someone else.