Actually, the whole project gave me a great idea – one that I should probably experiment on in my WordPress designs. Perhaps I can build a featured content box that utilizes custom fields to customize the box.

So far I’ve only built sections that turn on and off conditionally. Perhaps those sections could also have options and conditions within them. It could have a variable background, variable content links, and a variable featured image or text.

It would also be a kickbutt tool for the news business, where fast responses are so vitally important.

The move went smoothly and I’m happy to say that I’ve settled into my new routine well. I’m also enjoying my new city of Colorado Springs.

While my principal tasks have focused on the gathering and editing of content for our website, I’ve also worked on some page design within the confines of our template. Here are three examples that I’m particularly proud of:
11 Breaking Weather Alert is one of our signature positions. In addition to an increased weather portion in our newscasts, I’ve also created a short process for taking over the home page and putting weather front and center. We change our logos, theme colors and add a box containing weather maps, social widgets and a set of the most popular links.

When we go to breaking weather alert mode, we can always expect a traffic spike.

I’m particularly proud of how this project turned out and glad to say it’s been well received.

The next two projects weren’t as creative, but posed an interesting challenge.

Prior to my arrival, many of the station’s pages were built using large image files, even the text of the content was part of the image. In addition to making the pages unsearchable, it was also quite difficult to edit them when we needed to make changes.

To simplify the process, I rebuilt the Advertise page and a page promoting an educational offering called 11 Weather Class using css classes and html text. They look essentially the same as they always did, but they’re now easily editable and

In the news business, we have a lot of exciting (read: ridiculous) ways to say things. For example, who calls a fire a “blaze” besides Ron Burgundy?

And there are equally strange ways to describe what happens behind the scenes of a newsroom.

An earlier post on this website inspired me to create  a second page specifically to collect these newsisms. To date, I’ve collected 48 news-related buzzwords – and my collection will keep growing.

This project allowed me to practice some of my design and WordPress skills, in addition to allowing a fun release from the seriousness of working in the news business.

To be completed, it would have to include some .php or .aspx code to insert the headline where I currently use a piece of static red text.

Also note that the whole banner (text, timer and background) can be made a button to a special section or most recent story. For this example, it is a static link to my Google+ profile.

I also assisted in redesigning this lost and found pet page.