Joe Naturals Farm Store Cafe is a “farm to table” cafe and natural foods store located in historic Leiper’s Fork, near Franklin, TN. The owners contacted me through a fellow farmer with whom I have worked on several web projects.

Joe Natural's website

The website project was languishing, after being abandoned by a designer who lacked knowledge of WordPress template coding. The site needed better integration with WordPress, including text-based navigation and replacement of scanned layout comps, which were being used for page display & navigation.

I reworked the stylesheet to replace image-based text with CSS styled text, integrated WordPress navigation, and then added a few WordPress plugins.

• Constant Contact API for automated newsletter signup
• Simple Facebook Connect for Facebook Fan Page interconnectedness
• Google Analyticator and Google XML Sitemaps for search engine optimization and traffic reporting
• WordPress SEO for simple and effective search engine optimization
• W3 Total Cache to speed up site access on a low-end GoDaddy hosting account

I also worked with the farmers’ social media person to add social media links and integrate Facebook “Likes” and cross publishing from the WordPress blog to the Facebook Fan Page.

The post Farm to Table Restaurant Website appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

Main St Farmers Market website

This is a major redesign of the website for Chattanooga’s Main St Farmers Market. Local designers Widgets & Stone came up with the logos and suggested the look and feel, and I worked with Padgett Arnold to get the visuals and content just right.

• Interactive home page presents tons of information in a compact javascript slider
• Fresh content includes recipes and a list of what’s available each week
• Facebook fan page gets automatically updated with new content
• New photos and videos are easily uploaded via SlideShowPro and YouTuber for a fun, engaging user experience
• Lightweight CSS3 design and an alternative layout for mobile browsers present the site quickly and efficiently

The post Farmers Market Website appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

Sequatchie Cove Farm website

This site was produced in tandem with Widgets & Stone, a Chattanooga design firm. We’re members of Sequatchie Cove Farm’s Community Shared Agriculture program, so we are very familiar with the quality of the eggs, dairy, meat and produce coming out of the clean and fertile Sequatchie Valley.

(Will Work for Food!)

• WordPress Content Management System allows the farmers to easily add their opinions, information and images
• Automated updates to Facebook Pages, with linkback
• Automatic Twitter tweets for new posts, with linkback
• Social Media bookmarking
• SlideShowPro gives the site a slick Flash-based Image Management System so the site can feature seasonal images.
• MailMan manages a plethora of mailing lists for the weekly emails that keep the farmers connected to the communities and individuals they serve

The post Organic Farm Website with Slideshows and Content Management appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.