Chili Pepper Design

A site I recently “cut and sliced” is now online. I didn’t design this site: this is an example of how I can take designs from other professional designers and turn them into functional websites. This site is fast, cross-browser, standards-compliant, SEO-friendly xHTML and CSS, and looks exactly like the Photoshop file I worked from. Check it out:

• Real Estate Composer Website
• Read more about this project on my Portfolio page

Here at Chili Pepper Design, I’ve evangelized CMS Made Simple before. It truly is a nice, easy-to-use and easy-to-theme Open Source CMS with great built in features and extensions. Now, I’ve got a short Screencast video to prove how awesome it is! In the video, I log in to the CMS and make a couple quick changes to the content, as a proof of concept. This is my first attempt at a sceencast, so bear with me on the poor quality, but check it out for yourself:

• CMS Made Simple Screencast Demo Video

I’ve learned so many new things about web design in the last year that, as of last week, I could no longer stand the sight of the Chili Pepper Design page. Time for a redesign! I kept the basic visual style, but modernized it a little, made it more accessible, added some Javascript fanciness to the Portfolio, gave the whole site a Textpattern CMS backend so I could update it more easily and most importantly, added a blog where I can share my thoughts about web design. Poke around and check it out!

I just finished my latest project, PowderBlog.com. It’s blog about skiing, ski resorts, life in ski towns and – of course – powder. It’s a new WordPress 2.7 install, with a really nice and easy to use administrative back-end. The custom 3-column theme is built off of the Blueprint CSS Framework. WordPress has been fully SEO optimized, cached for speed, and the RSS feeds have even been burned. Take a gander:

• PowderBlog

The new versions of Circle S’s two websites are live now. Both involved updating the old code to modern XHTML and CSS, and I visually refreshed the sites based off of a new logo they made during a recent print campaign. CircleSSeeds.com runs on the CMS Made Simple CMS so it can easily be updated at any time.

• CircleSSeeds.com
• CircleSGrains.com

I’ve been working lately with CMS Made Simple, and have a small demo up now. CMS Made Simple is a very user friendly Content Management System and I think it will be great for making small business websites that are easy to update. If you can write an email or a Word document, then with this new CMS you can now do simple site maintenance tasks like updating the “About” or “Contact” page! No need to go through the hassle of contacting your “web guy” for little changes any more! Try it out:

• Small Business Site CMS Demo