Courtney has an aesthetic approach very similar to ours: keep it as simple as possible. Elegeance is found in such things, but only where the simplicity is derived from distilling complexities into the most palatable and digestible of forms and formats. The short version of that sentence is: If something doesn’t need to be there it shouldn’t be there, and if you need that something, does it have to be complicated?

Most of the time to answer those questions is to work in design. In the case of Courtney Summers’ websites, we wouldn’t call it work.

Unique

We’ll always advocate that there’s room in this business for guys like us who build custom websites. Courtney’s design is a perfect example of why this is: functionally it does everything she needs it to, and design-wise it’s unique and stand-out and perfectly her own. Those things are hard to get when you look at some of the cookie cutter services and products out there. Not everyone knows PHP and CSS and Photoshop, and that’s where we come in.

V2

This theme is a version two. It’s an evolution of Courtney’s previous site that we did together. There are refinements, elements were removed and elements more appropriate for what she needs added. It’s still familiar to those who visit regularly and yet different enough to perhaps excite them about the new UI and what it offers readers. Complete re-designs are for the desperate, the misguided, and those who like whims and whimsy. Evolution is for those who see the purpose, branding, and identity of a website as something that does not need to be torn apart to be improved.

We had a great time working with Courtney again and look forward to seeing her grow and develop as young author with a bright career in front of her.

We recently helped Ticketfly create a comprehensive WordPress MU plugin that allows their various clients to roll out concert sites with up-to-date information pulled in via the Ticketfly API. Each client can run one or multiple venues, all of which are managed via the Ticketfly WordPress MU plugin. The plugin includes a carousel to showcase upcoming events at the venue, information on each band (such as website, biographies, social media links, etc), integrated calendar (with iCal downloads), and various other widgets that a venue owner can use to customize the overall look and feel of the site.

It was a fun project, and we had a lot of fun working with the Ticketfly team. We’re looking forward to seeing all the great things they’re going to continue to do in the area of online Ticketing.

For additional information on our current projects, as well as cool tips and tricks about WordPress, make sure you sign up for monthly newsletter — the first issue is going out shortly.

Our Clients

We’ve been working on some exciting client projects like the recent re-launch of jaygrandin.com, home of popular internet podcaster and video publisher Jay Grandin. We’ve got several more client sites to launch in the coming weeks which we’re both proud of and excited about, and will share on our website.

WPtouch

We’ve worked hard on making our free & open-source WPtouch WordPress plugin even better, by shaving off size, speeding up load times, and hardening its compatibility with other plugins and different WordPress environments with the release of WPtouch 1.4 a few weeks ago. WPtouch is simply one of the most elegant, carefully considered and refined plugins in WordPress history. Don’t just take our word for it: we’ve been receiving heaps of praise around the globe, and making “best of” posts around the web like here and here and here.

New BraveNewCode Design

We’ve also been exploring the development of a new design for this website, which we hope get out in the coming week or so as well.

As the fall sets in we’re tightening our belts and rolling up our sleeves!

Best,
~Dale Mugford

It’s been an uncharacteristically long time since we’ve done an overhaul of MatthewGood.org. Over the last few years we’ve worked on over a half dozen versions of the popular Canadian musician’s website, and in the process Matthew has become a part of the BraveNewCode team, now contributing his design talents to future projects.

In this most recent re-design of his website we’ve added a couple key innovations which serve its long list of registered members well.

The first major addition is the ability to switch the main view of the website’s entries from the default listing of excerpts over to a full post view, something rarely employed on blogging platform-based websites due to its intensive code requirements. This feature degrades gracefully for those without cookies or javascript in use.

The next feature was the custom addition of a modified “My Favourite Entries” plugin. We added to the plugin and built it to work with MatthewGood.org’s community to add the ability for logged in users to save those entries they’d like to revisit or remind themselves of in the sidebar.

Design-wise Matthew ponderously selected every detail of its presentation, and (as always) it has resulted in a pixel-perfect design, which is clear, concise, and innovative. MatthewGood.org remains one of the progressive and unique homes for quality blogging on the web.

The whole project is chalk full of small but thorough improvements, changes, & feature enhancements. It is (in our opinion) arguably the best all around version of the site that we’ve collectively worked on to date.

We recently launched her new website for her, and are proud to have worked for such a talented performer. When initially contacted we jumped at the opportunity to create a unique site for her that allowed us to explore some new ground in design and development.

The site features a large header banner which immediately sets the tone for the layout, something which we wanted to be both memorable while also user-friendly, with a clear navigation list up top and a place for important updates/information to be shared.

The rest of the website follows an easy to understand layout, with a combination of pinks, browns, and dirty blues to give a modern chic mixed with a classically country feel.

We worked quickly to get the site launched for Jessie before the CCMA’s, and are proud of the end result. We still have more work to do on the site, and will be adding a few new features for Jessie in the near future, including multimedia features and an integrated store.

Jessie had this to say about our work:

I just wanted to send you a note and thank you so much for meeting the deadline before the CCMA’s and doing such a great job!

Thanks for creating such a clear, stylish, and effective design.

Thanks again!

Jessie

You’re welcome Jessie! And thank you for the opportunity- we look forward to our continued work on your website to make it even better.

As is customary in our working process, we really want the website to reflect what the client wants, whether it be personality, style and sensibility, or services and product philosophies. Sometimes, it’s a grab-bag combination thereof. Courtney clearly identified her wants and needs, and she expressed to us her enjoyment of our capabilities to take abstract concepts and turns them into reality.

As a client, she was exemplary, providing us with all the information we needed when we needed it to keep things speedy. As much as she knew what she wanted and was very particular about the end outcome, Courtney gave us some room to experiment and to produce some different concepts that she could select from.

After hearing from Courtney that she was 99% sure she wanted the home page to be the blog page, we knew it would be a daring act to propose a different solution, one which would break from her preconceived notions on the design direction and instead offer a fresh take on not only her written works, but on website design itself.

The idea was to have her blog entries pulled out onto the splash page, and shown in large Georgia font, pull-quote style. But not just her latest post’s excerpt- the feature would allow for visitors to browse backwards through her entries in the pull-quote style, 50 words or so for each one.

With a younger target audience together with Courtney’s fun and inviting writing style, we felt it would be appropriate to showcase excerpts to draw readers in. After crossing our fingers and showing her our proposal, she shared her surprise and welcomed the addition.

Courtney also wrote a nice launch article, in which she heaped some praise on us:

“Pretty sexy, huh? It was designed and coded by the talented guys at BraveNewCode, whose work I?ve been a big fan of for some time now. They were nothing short of brilliant and a total pleasure to work with and I would highly, highly recommend them to anyone in the market for a (sexy) website. You can?t do better than BNC…

BraveNewCode’s work process sheet speaks for itself. I personally had a great experience working with them for the relaunch of courtneysummers.ca and it?s going to make me feel warm and fuzzy inside to direct people who are looking for great designers their way. Dale and Duane are very meticulous and every last bit of code that shapes this site was typed by them. They don’t mess around with pre-existing WordPress templates or icky WYSIWYG editors and leave errant bits and invisible code gremlins to clutter up space and steal server resources. The work they do is specified, careful, clean, professional and, well, sexy (bringing the sexy back was very important to me).

Over time, people have commented on how much they’ve dug the minimalism of my site. I heart minimalism. BraveNewCode was able to retain that minimalim and step it up. In fact, one thing that really stood out for me was how they went through my blog so they could get a sense of my identity and bring me a new design that didn?t look like it was meant for someone else.”

Lastly, we took the opportunity to work with jQuery on this project, an alternative to the Scriptaculous and Prototype javascript framework which both Duane and I have used extensively. We’ve been interested in jQuery for a while now, as it offers a very lightweight and powerful method for producing javascript effects. After getting our feet wet with it we hope to use it for WPtouch and other javascript-based plugin and client projects. Our initial experience with jQuery was very good- one line effects and transitions are a welcome change from the more involved code required by Scriptaculous/Prototype.

Thanks again for the opportunity to work with you Courtney we’re very proud of the final result!