This is the third part in a three-part series about using WordPress as a client area. Read the introduction here, and the second part here.
Little tweaks
We needed to correct a few outstanding issues to make the client area totally off the hook:
Rebrand the WordPress login screen with the Deelux logo.
Redirect users to the client site itself, rather than to their user profile page in the admin area (WordPress’s default action when the “login” button is pressed).
Add a personalized greeting for the client at the top of the page.
These are quick little fixes, let’s tackle them one by one…
This is the second part in a three-part series about using WordPress as a client area. Read the introduction here, and the third part here.
User access
The first challenge in establishing a WordPress client area is limiting the client’s access to project-specific posts. Out of the box, WordPress doesn’t exactly have this capability; it allows you to create users with a few specific roles, but these roles are designed to limit who can create and manage content, not who can access it. The user role names are emblematic of their purpose. They range from subscriber (a regular reader with a login and profile, but with no administrator or authoring privileges) to contributor, author, editor, and finally administrator.
How we present research images, sketches, and graphic design comps to our clients is very important. Making PDFs for clients to review is not only time consuming, but also static. Ensuring that everyone is looking at the same, up-to-date PDF is difficult too. We’ve noticed that many design firms solve this problem by creating a special “clients only” area in their website. However, the ones we’ve accessed are not much more than image repositories with little pizzazz of their own. We decided to make our client area function more like a blog, giving us the ability to annotate our sketches.
Summary: Commemorative booklet and advertising strategy for Community Access to the Arts’ (CATA) 15th anniversary gala. CATA is a Berkshire-based arts organization that nurtures and celebrates the creativity of people with disabilities through shared experiences in the visual and performing arts. Our job was to design a unique booklet that accommodated a fresh and aesthetically pleasing format for advertising.
At Deelux, we believe in taking advantage of every tool available to us, and what’s more, taking advantage of the strengths of that tool. CSS3 introduces an impressive set of tools for designers to create new visual effects and styles like drop shadows, transparencies, and transitions in modern browsers. We’d like to focus on using CSS3 properties to create a sweet letterpress effect on a dark background. You could use Photoshop to produce a similar result but we’d prefer to keep text as text and images as images. There are big advantages to cutting out images: the text can now be read by Google robots, it can be copied by your users, HTTP requests are reduced, and page load time is decreased.
Chelsea DeSantis and Andrew Liebchen partner in life and design as Deelux,
a Providence design studio creating
custom solutions for web and print.
Learn more...
