robin gale cornett (a photographer for babies, children, and families in fort myers, florida)

Hey! It’s time to share another web design client! In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you up front that Rabia is actually my sister-in-law. However, even though she’s been running her own site for about three years now, with the help of her super talented and intelligent husband (who also happens to be my brother), she decided it was time to put a fresh coat of paint, so to speak, on her site, and so she called me. Not him. Oh sorry, is some sibling rivalry showing? Just kidding. Actually, if you visit David’s website, you will see that he is way smarter than me–I understand about one in twenty items that he posts. Way above my head. I am, in fact, a proud sister.

Truth be told, I am also a proud sister-in-law. But I confess, I’ve been itching a bit to get my hands on Rabia’s site, so I was happy when she said she was ready. Here’s a screen shot of what she had before–pretty simple and clean, but needing some pizzazz.

Rabia is already a super faithful blogger, much better than yours truly. It wasn’t necessary to do anything with her content; we just needed to make the site more faithful to who she is as an author. Yes, Rabia is an author, primarily fantasy, with some fairy tales thrown in…lots of imagination to spare. She actively blogs about writing, homeschooling, and things that pique her interest (like watching Avatar: the Last Airbender with her kids right now). She pretty much gave me permission to do whatever I wanted to, which is always nice.

What I wanted was to give her something that was still clean, professional, and easy on the eyes, but bring in a touch of personality. We’ve incorporated custom fonts, a clean color palette, and custom post types, for starters. Under the hood, where you can’t see them, are some improvements, too: integrated comment threads (because Rabia is fabulous about replying to comments…this functionality is actually built into WordPress already, but she’d been using a plugin to manage it, possibly because of the old theme?); built in search engine optimization tools; and she’s now using the built in WordPress custom menus. We were able to shed several plugins, which may not excite you, but it does me.Mainly, though, the site is more powerful, tidier, and cleaner. And it’s prettier.

Don’t believe me? Check out Rabia Gale, writer at play, in action.