Here are some sneak peeks at some sites we’ll be launching in the next month or so Here are a number of projects we’ve recently completed (click screenshots to view sites):
Redwing Studio finished a number of projects in January and February. We recently launched a new custom blog for the awesomely talented (and super kind & wonderful) photographer Drew B. Redwing created a new design and custom programming for her blog including AJAX, PHP, and FLASH. Here's a screenshot and link:
Back in January, Redwing completed another site for Name Media: Flyfish.com. We performed all the programming for the site including converting all the existing data in a home-grown content management system over to WordPress (a monumental task) and 11 custom plugins for WordPress. We even created a custom search plugin for users to be able to search their directory using the data in their custom fields. With this project we pushed the boundaries of using WordPress as a content management system and radically extended the normal WordPress functionality. Take a look around:
Based on our work on Flyfish.com we were asked by Name Media create video sections for two of their other sites: Biking.com and Cycling.com. You can check out the video sections by using the links below:
We've recently launched a redesign of the Palomino Ballroom website. As part of the reworking process, we changed the site over to using WordPress for content management so the client can edit and update their site. As you can see from a few posts back, we performed a few changes from the initial design at the last minute.
I thought I might post some recent work up here since we've been a bit negligent lately about putting up what we've been working on. In the completed work section we have a project for Lifespan: The Depression Initiative , a site with resources for patients and physicians for dealing with depression. The Depression Initiative is the first site we've used the Code Igniter php web application framework on. I found it to be pretty easy to work with and overall was pretty happy with how it functioned.
We also have recently performed some more work for Name Media , a site for paddlers of all types: Paddle.com . This time we were on the development side instead of the design side as we were when working on The Truth About Cars. Paddle.com runs on the WordPress platform. The template is pretty non-standard, including putting pages and posts on the same pages for the categories so the client could easily edit the category overview SEO text within the CMS.
And, now for some sneak previews of projects currently in development. The Palomino Ballroom's new website is nearing completion:
We’re also working on some additional development for Lifespan - their Health and Benefits intranet site. 
Wow! It's hard to believe that we haven't posted anything in the last 6 weeks. June was hectic, July hasn't slowed much. In the last few weeks we've added a couple new sites to the Redwing family. Coleman Realtors came online in mid June, and Picerne Homes went up mid July.
Redwing recently completed a re-design of The Truth About Cars website. We were hired by Name Media to perform the design but not the development of the site (a first for us), so the completed product isn't 100% ours, but fairly close. The in-house developer did a decent job of keeping to the design, although the gray color is not as dark as it should be (IMHO) and he or she used tables in the layout which is a great disappointment for me. Initially I had conceived of the design being scalable horizontally for people with resolutions lower than 1024 x 768, however that was not implemented in the development. 
My apologies to all of you out there with low browser resolutions, I tried my best. An interesting requirement from Name Media was the belt advertisement at the top. My initial designs had the ad above the header, however, they required it to be placed under the header as they saw a large jump in ad revenue when they moved ads on the site to below the main header. Ads in that location must be more difficult to ignore. 
Redwing recently launched a re-design of www.strobe.com for Nova Electronics, Inc. The new site utilizes the Joomla! content management system with VirtueMart as the basis for the online product catalog. We’ve customized the VirtueMart presentation extensively for Nova to give them a unique look.
We've just launched a new site for Jessica Strickland. The new site is for photographers looking for tips, tricks, new products, and answers to the many questions she receives on how she runs her business and achieves such great work. The new site uses PHP and javascript to randomly change colors with each new browser session. I'll probably post an example of how I achieved that soon. We also developed 3 email templates for Jess to use in conjunction with Campaign Monitor to notify subscribers about new products and whatnot. In the process of setting up the new site, Jess liked some of our modifications to the Photographers site so she asked us to tweak her existing consumer blog to reflect those changes.
We've just upgraded to the latest version of wordpress and apparently it doesn't like us. Please pardon the mess while we sort it out. Apparently there have been some changes to how pages, links, and blog categories are treated.
[UPDATE]
So I've dug through the code and things are back to normal. In the event that anyone else runs into similar issues with upgrading Wordpress to version 2.1, I'll post the problems and solutions I found:
1. Links (now called Blogroll). - Before, there were categories specific to the Links area and you could include links in your templates by calling the wp_get_links() tag. That is still true. However, when you upgrade to version 2.1, WordPress changes how it handles the links Categories. Now, link categories are tossed in with the other categories area under Manage –> Categories and the category numbers are altered to reflect that change. So you'll need to go back through and change the id in you wp_get_links() tag to reflect the new category number that was assigned to it.
2. BX_functions - If you use BX_functions.php or the Blix theme, it will not work with Wordpress 2.1. You can download a fixed version of the Blix theme here: http://www.utheguru.com/blix-krieg-info/ We use the BX_functions.php file in a couple of our templates so we can assign a class to the link of the page you are currently viewing. Wordpress 2.1 treats the queries a little differently and breaks the BX_functions. If you need the updated copy of BX_functions.php, you can download it here.
3. Home Page - In the past, you could use a file in your template directory called home.php to change your home page to a different look. We used this in conjunction with a little query to pull the text we wanted for the home page:
query_posts('pagename=welcome');
Apparently, that method no longer works. In Wordpress 2.1, you'll need to create a page template, assign that page template to your homepage text page and then in Options –> Reading Options, assign Front Page Displays to the page of your choice.
Ok, that's all I have for fixes/complaints. A big props to the developers of WordPress 2.1. I've found it overall to be a lot faster, particularly on the admin side.
I've recently found out about Picnik, a free online flash based photo editor. It's the perfect solution for folks who don't have a copy of Photoshop but still need to edit photos or you're somewhere that you need to alter a photo but don't have access to Photoshop on your computer. It's super easy to use and very friendly for newbies. Screenshots below:
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