New: Menforpalin.com

Launched just last week, the new blog MenforPalin.com rides atop ExpressionEngine Core and a cadre of quick-witted-but-pseudonymous writers who’ve had enough with 24-7 Sarah Palin bashing. They say they will use the site to provide analytical counter-punch and set forth a positive case for electing the McCain-Palin ticket. Villagewerx registered the domain, designed and coded the site, but is not otherwise responsible for its content.

That said, I don’t disclaim their points of view and I am proud to help amplify their perspective in the blogosphere.

Face it. The attacks on Governor Palin have been relentless, starting with Theology Professor Wendy Doniger’s claim that “[Palin’s] greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman,” and extending to South Carolina Democrat State Chair Carol Fowler’s witless quip that the Republican vice presidential candidate’s “primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion,” topped only by comic Sandra Bernhard’s exhortation several days ago that Palin deserved to be gang-raped by black men. Why are leftists so afraid of this woman?

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New: SuttonforMayor.com

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My brother Mike Sutton is a candidate for Mayor of Beaufort, South Carolina. When it came time to take his campaign to the web, he turned to Villagewerx for site design, development and advice.

The new site went live last week at www.suttonformayor.com and features a fixed-width Blueprint CSS grid with ExpressionEngine Core doing the content management chores. This project was fairly straightforward to code, using just two weblogs to contain content, with custom Categories providing topical aggregation. There are eight unique page templates that draw upon a handful of embedded sub-templates and cascading stylesheets.

Content including photography was provided by Mike’s campaign team and I prepared custom Illustrator graphics and some timely Photoshop services. While I’m very happy to project that Mike will beat his competitors on November 4, it’s already an uneven match. His competition will never match ExpressionEngine’s power and flexibilty.

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Reloaded: www.patriotroad.com

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If you’ve just wandered in, today, May 23 is the re-launch of Redsky@night, my personal blog and community bully-pulpit. This long-overdue makeover gives the site a new commercial-grade undercarriage, new layouts, new graphic treatment, and—as time permits—it will reflect my new commitment to publish regular content here. As my fulcrum in publishing, RSN won’t, perhaps, move the world, but it has been a useful place to try out new ideas and say things my kids don’t yet understand.

Why the makeover? The year-old previous edition was looking cold and homely and I lacked enthusiam for building Yet Another WordPress Blog. Sure, I’d installed a jazzy new template a couple of Januaries back. But the layout wasn’t my work and I’d never really liked the colors.

And frankly I’d been itching to rebuild the site atop ExpressionEngine and take advantage of a few more of the CMS’s blog-like features that don’t normally find homes in my commercial projects. So, when time presented itself during one of the kids’ school vacations, I knocked this layout together. It’s a fixed-width layout, a little wider than my recent work, but pleasingly proportional.

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Reloaded: www.peapackreformed.org

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Peapack Reformed Church is a 160-year old congregation that first used the web in 2000. Since then, the site has been redeveloped three times.

This update reflects the church’s growing confidence in the medium and its pastor’s greater understanding of the website’s role in her ministry. Our previous collaboration in 2004 resulted in a Mambo-based web portal with lots of features adopted from the church’s print-media periodicals. 

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Related Entries

Reloaded: www.peapackreformed.org

Quiet and elegant, just like the church’s sanctuary. My 2008 work for Peapack Reformed Church awaits content development, but is a refreshing change from the 2004 edition.

New: www.vandorenscholars.org

The Van Doren Scholarships are among New Jersey’s most prestigious academic recognitions, providing college tuition scholarships for Somerset County students who display a powerful thirst for learning.

New: www.somersetgop.org

Somerset County’s Republican organization got a shiny new website in time for the 2007 general elections.

Reloaded: www.njcases.com

Lawyers with blogs were rarer than hens’ teeth when Villagewerx client Tim Howes ordered his in 2003. Smart guy, that Mr. Howes.

Previous makeover: www.patriotroad.com

The guru class are bored with fixed-width layouts targeting least-common denominator readers and the 800 pixel keyhole. Is it time to let some light in on the subject?