Working with design agency Pollen London, I developed this simple, eyecatching flash banner for client Project Associates' website home page.
The banner shows a constantly moving, rotating array of their team, each image linking to the specific person's profile on the site.
Check out their home page to see the banner in action:
I have recently been working on a highly versatile premium theme for WordPress which is due for release soon. As part of the project I wanted to test how the theme (and WordPress itself) could work with sites of various different genres. My intention was that the theme would be configurable enough via it's Options Menu that it could easily be styled to suit corporate sites such as recruitment, blue chip company, technology site & product portfolio, media sites such as magazine, news, image & video gallery and also youth oriented sites such as music / band website, games website.
The theme also features simple integration for banners and advertising, so creating a couple of 'working example' sites was not only a good way of testing the theme's versatility but also a potential source of a few extra quid!
I had been wanting to do a games & videos website for a while, and I had built the theme's default settings around a 'corporate magazine' look & feel, so I decided the games site would be a great way to test the theme. Here is my wordpress games arcade site so far: Zap Gamez
I decided to look around and see what articles I could find about creating a games arcade website with wordpress, or if there was a plugin that allowed you to easily insert games into your WordPress blog. I found this article by Emanuele Feronato:
It describes a method of populating your WordPress blog with games via a feed from MochiAds (A source of free games for websites) using custom fields. However, for my site I wanted to be able to integrate games from various free content suppliers and host games on my own server as well as embedding games hosted by content suppliers. What I really wanted was a plugin that could embed games into posts or pages using shortcodes.
THE PLUGIN
The prototype plugin I have built includes the following features:
4 Different views:
Different embedding modes:
The beta version of the WP Game Embed plugin can be found here.
With the recent creation of my first games website www.artanoid.com (hopefully the first of many as I have two other games currently in development), I have been looking into various advertising strategies and in particular at the various link and banner exchange programs being offered specifically for games websites.
I have signed up for a few of the different banner exchanges out there and have found that although they are mostly based on similar technologies and business models, they actually vary quite a lot in terms of the quality of service they provide. In this article I intend to compare and review three of the best known games banner exchanges on the net.
As a web designer one of the most frequent questions I get asked is : who shall I host my site with? With so many potential web hosts out there the answer is not always that simple.
If I am building them a site through my web design company 76 Creative, I would always recommend that they use our fully managed hosting service, as it requires no work or knowledge on their part. However, the 76 Creative managed service is reserved for clients of 76 Creative only. You can only get it if 76 are designing and building your site for you.
For many private clients, and friends who are looking to get started with creating their own site or hosting a WordPress blog, I have recommended 1 and 1 hosting. I myself host with 1 and 1 and find that their prices, customer service and the range of web services available through their hosting control panel make them a good choice.
The main factors that people seem to be attracted to in a web host are price and amount of server space allocated. These 2 factors are often used as a means by which to compare different offers and packages available. I guess this makes sense in a way, as they are both very tangible factors that can easily be compared. However, most websites take up less than 100MB of space on the server, so is server space really the most important factor?
Other factors that are often compared are the server's uptime and connection speed.
Two factors I find most important which seem to get less attention are the quality of customer service, and the quality of the hosts control panel. If a host doesn't offer any kind of control panel for you to manage your websites, email accounts etc. then I wouldn't reccomend them.
Many hosts offer the cPanel control panel which is packed with features and easy to use. Other hosts offer more bespoke control panels which range from extremely good to absoluteley useless. I won't name any names, but I have seen control panels from some hosts that offer absolutely nothing, you have to email them every time you want to create a new email address or anything.
Here is my list of factors to consider when chosing your web host in order of importance:
Notice that I didn't include price in my list. The reason for this is that I would compare price against all these factors together. Price is obviously the most important factor in getting a good deal, but you also need a web hosting package that will suit your needs.
1&1 Hosting and Domains. 99.9% Uptime Guarantee, 25 GBit Connectivity & 24/7 Support! www.1and1.co.uk
I have updated my site with my new 76 digital remix theme for WordPress.
The new theme is built on a model I have created for a highly configurable, versatile set of premium themes which I will be releasing this summer. The premium themes will each come in three different versions – Editorial, Media and Ultimate (which combines the features of both editorial and media versions). The themes features will include:
Editorial Version
Media Version
I will also release a free 'light' version of the theme set, so watch this space!
[...] Burdge is currently working on his 76 digital remix theme, which he is using on his blog at the moment and plans to release in the summer. The theme will be [...]
Hello is this theme (76 Digital Remix) Theme for sale ? I didn’t find the price here , I like it a lot thanks , Daniel
Privacy Policy | Site powered by WordPress | 76 digital remix by Sam Burdge | © 2012 Sam Burdge
good article, thanks for this useful info, I have dug and stumbled this article. I will keep visiting for more useful information.
great article. thank
this game is so good I have played it several days ago
Keep it up man! Now, when I need useful info I’ll come here.
Smarter than an average blog…cheers
Nice Kindly visit my site
[...] Games Arcade Website powered by WordPress Sam Burdge Posted by root 19 hours ago (http://www.samburdge.co.uk) 4 responses to games arcade website powered by wordpress comment by ashish date march 17th 2009 at 7 58 am good article thanks for this useful info Discuss | Bury | News | games arcade website powered by wordpress sam burdge [...]
This is a great game. Great info
[...] Games Arcade Website powered by WordPress Sam Burdge Posted by root 6 hours ago (http://www.samburdge.co.uk) 5 responses to games arcade website powered by wordpress comment by ashish comment by budi date april 23rd 2009 at 1 34 pm keep it up man reliable web hosting linux amp windows hosting starting at just 1 99 per month Discuss | Bury | News | games arcade website powered by wordpress sam burdge [...]
wow i think wordpress just for blog, but im wrong, good idea bro
visit mine i have lotz of free games too -yay-
Nice plugin, made myself also a mochiads wordpress plugin, its still in decelopment.
i heavily cusomized a video theme for the layout.
you might wanne check it some times.
god job…
grts,
chris
Hey, this is cool free stuff
Awesome post. Very informative
This post must contain keywords that are attracting too many spam bots. Sorry but comments are now closed on this post.
i am new to wordpress but i like this site, good article… and i like the sound od the flash arcade….
i have downloaded your beta plugins, nice plugin mate, thanks
So, this is interesting for me, I will translate it and post to my saite http://grang.info Thanks, Alex
Great article, adding it to my bookmarks!
Great work with the blog mate let me know if you want to partner up with my blog as well! =]
Nice your beta
I’ll gonna translate in romanian language this post and i will put a direct link to your site. Thank you
Very cool. I finally got around to changing my own games site, http://www.kwikgames.com over to Wordpress earlier this year. After years of updating static HTML pages it was high time I made the switch and was thoroughly worth it…
I love your thumbnail “grid”! You might want to use a rating plugin, there are quite a few good ones, so you can show most popular games and encourage more user interaction, but overall it looks great. And to anyone thinking of using WP for a games site I highly recommend it!
that is what i need
thanks!
Very nice articles. Thanks men.
Nice article. But there are other sides which are based on wordpress and use mochi games: http://highscoregaming.net
Cheers idic
The wordpress site looks good. I especially like the huge thumbs.
Very cool. I finally got around to changing my own games site
i heavily cusomized a video theme for the layout.
you might wanne check it some times.
god job…
I like playing Games..So I make blog and include many games..In order that if I want to play game just open my blog.
Regard
Ali Mustika Sari
How has this theme been going? any updates on this one? There has been lots of game themes now and I`m hoping you were successful on this.
I love your thumbnail “grid”! You might want to use a rating plugin, there are quite a few good ones, so you can show most popular games and encourage more user interaction, but overall it looks great. And to anyone thinking of using WP for a games site I highly recommend it!
I think is a great idea, keep up the great work. Looking forward for some updates on this.
Thanks.
Nice article. But there are other sides which are based on wordpress and use mochi games: http://www.ccymx.com/
Cheers idic
wow, I rarely ever have to scroll down this much just to comment on a post before. Great post, keep them coming!
What will they imagine next? In many instances, They’ll guarantee you
yep. still waiting for some new info. A game theme would be great adition to all of us.
Awesome, im testing this on my site, thanks for making it!
Thanks alot mate, this is a really nice info about WordPress game
I’m bookmarking this page!!
My website http://playmspacman.net is also powered by Wordpress and I can say that it is doing very well.
i love this thing wordprees is now in games also