Home for Sale. I got a call from the client and they said that they wanted to put the project on hold. Apparently they weren’t sure if they wanted to sell the place before having a condo lined up. We agree to meet on Saturday to get my timesheet signed for now.
Home for Sale. I’m getting into WordPress. There’s so much to learn from my theme author’s blog postings and from customer forums. I tried a few other sliders, for my own benefit. I nailed down the image size that would work best and optimized the pictures I had.
I photoshopped one of the images of the house, from the road view, to make it into the header background. One of my ideas that they liked, was to use Google maps satellite views to show the subdivision and their parcel. I created several views that clarified where the lot was, and inserted a north symbol for bearings. I created a link to Google maps from a normal subdivision thumbnail.
I tried a few mortgage calculator options, the web is full of freebees, and settled on one that was plain. Then, I got a little creative and added a Menomonee Falls Village sign, which I had to do some retouching on, to the home page. As of today I haven’t received any content from them, so I sent them an email reminder.
I spent some fun time over the weekend to look into WordPress themes for the home-sale web site project. I liked the Elegant Themes offer, unlimited use of their roughly 55 themes for $89 for one year, upgradeable for another $150 for a lifetime subscription, full access to updates, etc. I’ll stick with the annual for now.
I decided to use MAMP for development and watch Morten Rand-Hendriksen’s series on Lynda about installing MAMP and WordPress. I think he’s one of my favorite authors on Lynda. Fun to hear his accent, and he goes at a nice pace and is very clear. I got MAMP Pro and set it up, installing WP locally under a unique server name, not the normal localhost setting. It took me an extra hour to figure out the details with this twist. Now I get it.
I installed two of my Elegant Themes, and some plugins and created some pages to experiment. I figured out how the menu structure relates to pages, and created the page layouts.
The client emailed me some pictures, but many were so similar, and there were too many of the flower gardens and not enough of the house. And, there weren’t any of the interior rooms. So, I made a new list of what pictures and other content assets I felt we needed, in prep for our next meeting. I used some of the images to experiment with the sliders I had, and to figure out what the best image physical size would be.
I packed up my nice MAMP server and met with them today to show off my progress, and get them to sign-off on the 18 hours I put in this past week. They were satisfied with the layout, and were happy with the way the slider worked and how I intended to list each room’s features. They understood the picture gap and said they’d get me some ASAP. We agreed to a tentative meeting for the next Saturday, pending having the content ready.
Home for Sale. This week I met with internship prospect #1 to discuss their interest in having a Home for Sale by Owner website. I determined that they’d be best suited with the use a WordPress theme. It would also give me a deeper exposure to using WordPress. I outlined a plan, with a four-week timeframe.
As I started on completing an internship agreement, I realized that I needed some more info to get the scope right, and I called the client. I scouted out some other real estate websites to see what home info they normally include, and how they presented their images. With this in mind, I finished a draft. After running it by Tammy a few times, I met with the client and got a sign-off. We agreed that I’d have a meeting with them in about one week to review my progress. I’m anxious to dig in.
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