New Horizon for Elegant WordPress Themes

Semiomantics innovative WordPress based website developments have explored a new level: a Glossy Elegant WordPress Theme based on the combination of the Semiomantics tuned Thesis Theme with Semiomantics Evolution Flash developments.

Semiomantics first priority in developing WordPress has always been the performance and SEO of the sites. Media and media related semantics are less efficient on Google than text; therefore Semiomantics has focused for media development outside WordPress, namely in connection with Flash developments.

Customers and visitors of Semiomantics Evolution sites are amazed by the quality of the media, display and effects. While flash offers the most stunning visual effects, their semantics is less SE efficient than traditional html.

The idea was now to associate the flash developments with the WordPress developments and to use flash media to shape the look of WordPress. Inversely, one could imagine to import WordPress content into Flash environments.

At the bases of the development there is always a Semiomantics WordPress script.

Traditionally, commercial customers have to choose between a smashing flash website, a SE efficient HTML site or some sort of a compromise of both. Compromises are rarely satisfactory, that’s why people often use two sites and interlink them.

The purpose of the project was therefore to associate the advantages of both extremes under one Semiomantics WordPress CMS to let visitors of the High Performance Semiomantics WP experience the smashing media delivered by Semiomantics Evolution.

The test run this past week-end was run on this website in combination with Semiomantics Evolution and EVO2.

A first shot was to integrate Evolution right below the header banner of the WordPress site. As the image results from a heavily zoomed out screen, the full width of EVO2 is not displayed on the screen shot. In reality we see the whole display of EVO2. Also the Logo on EVO2 moves down to the menu, just because of the Zoom effect:

The second shot was to display only EVO2 on the Home Page, giving the site a look of a glossy magazine. This screen is not zoomed and displays the content correctly.

Here it is where things get interesting: the menu in EVO2 can serve as a WordPress Navigation and inversely, the WordPress Navigation can be associated with the menu of EVO2. Here is how it works:

If on the EVO2 menu we select ‘HOME’ we are directed to the home page of the blog, there we would see the Homepage content of WordPress as well as the corresponding Media from EVO2. The same applies to every category of page. Further development would be needed to create associations to posts with custom media.

The EVO2 Navigation would allow to select categories for example and the WordPress navigation could display menus featuring the contained posts and related media.

In the end, EVO2 can serve as a fully integrated multimedia box for WordPress based websites!

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An elegant, yet modern B&W version of the Evo2 Home Page:

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Evo2 Home Page B&W

A first screen-shot of the Evo2 About Page. The page is customized with one of my latest photos taken in Vouliagmeni at the Kavouri Beach.

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About Page on Evo2

Evo2 is expected to be released before end of June 2010.

Have a look at the new page we have just added to Evo2. The page displays a horizontal image gallery; when an image is clicked, text expands.

The page can be used for News, Products or any content which is focusing mainly on text.

This is one more step in our effort to realize elegant web design.

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Semiomantics Evo2 News Page

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Elegant Evo2 News wide screen

Elegant Web Design with Evo2

Semiomantics Evo2 Preview

semiomantics_evo2

Semiomantics Evo2

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Semiomantics Evo2 wide screen

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Semiomantics Evo 2 BW

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Semiomantics Evo 2 BW wide screen

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Semiomantics Evo2 Gallery

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Semiomantics Evo2 Gallery wide screen

Banner Rotator for Semiomantics

I know, you have seen them all and there is nothing exciting about banner rotators … until you see the new Component we use in Semiomantics scripts:

This rotator can be customized for sidebars, posts, pages, headers, footers … you name it.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Banner Rotator for Semiomantics

I know, you have seen them all and there is nothing exciting about banner rotators … until you see the new Component we use in Semiomantics scripts:

[banner-rotator-fx][/banner-rotator-fx]

This rotator can be customized for sidebars, posts, pages, headers, footers … you name it.

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Semiomantics Flash Components for Ycademy May Seminar

The upcoming Ycademy Seminar is focusing on Flash, Flash Components and user experience enhanced by Flash. The Seminar is designed for Website Designers and Developers, who want to take their skills to the next level. Find out more from HERE.

Flash is releasing a plethora of flash components this month. While they are originally designed to be used namely with Semiomantics XO and News Cast scripts, they can be used on any website. Check it out in the Semiomantics Shop later this month.

Ycademy Seminar Participants will be introduced to the use of one of the most exciting components. It’s the unique Semiomantics Accordion which in fact is more than just an accordion; it’s also a sideshow, a menu, a slider … most anything you want to make out of it.

[accordion-fx][/accordion-fx]

Now this is something: you can even test the sideshow by clicking on the button at the bottom right.

[accordion-fx settings="settings2.xml"][/accordion-fx]

The Semiomantics Accordion is probably the best out there since its development is based on the second best :-).

As you see, you can load it vertically or horizontally,  you can modify the number of images, even the effects and much, much more. You see an autoplay version and you can play with the mouse on the images … just try and find out what this script jewel can do for you.

Join tonight’s Call at YorgoTalk to find out more about the Ycademy May Seminar.

PS: The Semiomantics Accordion is included in the Seminar ticket price:-).

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Ycademy Seminar May 29-30, 2010

The use of Flash components in Web Design is popular and increasingly requested by customers. Flash is used to enhance the user experience by adding dynamic content, media and interactivity to a website.

The Ycademy Seminar will focus on understanding flash basics and Flash Editors and Converters for the purpose of manipulating flash components and to build them into web sites.

The basic features of Adobe Flash Pro CS4 or 5 and Workshop: Symbols, Graphics, Actions – Workshops

[kml_flashembed publishmethod="static" fversion="10.0.0" useexpressinstall="true" movie="http://yorgonestoridis.com/flash/s/ReorderByZDepthExample.swf" width="550" height="500" targetclass="flashmovie" play="false" loop="false" menu="true" quality="high" scale="noborder" devicefont="false" seamlesstabbing="true" swliveconnect="true" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allownetworking="all"]

[/kml_flashembed]

Basics and Workshop: add a flash component to Semiomantics XO.

Basics and Workshop: Edit Semiomantics Evolution.

Workshop: automate the conversion using a PowerPoint plug-in and embed the result in a blog post.

Workshop: After the intro builder, let’s expand the exercise to build a flash website.

Flash Pro CS4 or CS5

All materials, scripts and literature are included.

Tickets: $80

Ycademy Pros: $25  (the Discount code will be sent to you)

Please Register from HERE

After registration, contact Bianca (bianca -at- ycademy.com) to get download links for the course materials as they become available.

Join our call tonight to get more details.

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Embed PowerPoint in Flash

While we are focusing on Flash these days, we are also interested in tools which can make our life easier, namely PowerPoint to Flash converters.

Ycademy May Seminar Participants will be playing with an advanced PowerPoint to Flash converter. The below sample is how a light and relatively low quality Flash PowerPoint looks like.

[kml_flashembed publishmethod="static" fversion="10.0.0" useexpressinstall="true" movie="http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/yorgo_design2.pptx.swf" width="480" height="360" targetclass="flashmovie" play="false" loop="false" menu="true" quality="high" scale="noborder" devicefont="false" seamlesstabbing="true" swliveconnect="true" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allownetworking="all"]

[/kml_flashembed]

• powerpoint flash scael

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Create your First Flash Document Tonight

At tonight’s Ycademy Flash Workshop we will finish the intro to Flash and create a first animated Flash Document.

We will continue working with the Live Conference tonight; please login from HERE.

[kml_flashembed publishmethod="static" fversion="10.0.0" useexpressinstall="true" movie="http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/sample2.swf" width="480" height="360" fid="Flash Sample" targetclass="flashmovie" play="false" loop="false" menu="true" quality="best" scale="noborder" devicefont="false" seamlesstabbing="true" swliveconnect="true" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allownetworking="all"]

[/kml_flashembed]

We will create step by step a similar flash as above tonight.

Download the above sample files from HERE.

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Lightroom Presets for Landscapes

Presets area handy start … to create your own presets, adapted to your needs, taste and the purpose of your visual communication.

Landscapes are just an example and if I just use here another mediocre picture from the cheap $50 cam, it’s to demonstrate that for the purpose of basic online publishing, most any lens will do.

Here some of the presets we will use at tonight’s call:

By the way: the above images can be better viewed in the Photo Ycademy Gallery: HERE

For the purpose of tonight’s workshop, here are some more presets you may want to grab:

[download_box]Download Lightroom Presets 2[/download_box]

Enjoy!

• lightroom presets for landscapes

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Create your Photo Gallery

Nice, your work! What’s next? We need an attractive and accessible way to share our photo- or other graphic work.

Looking at Photo Galleries online, you will notice: most of them look alike with a typical flow from the thumbnail to a medium sized image (often not bigger than 500 pixels wide).

Lightroom lets you generate such galleries.

The purpose of presenting Photos is to maximize the power of the image by allowing for optimized display on viewers monitors. In other words: think big!

Personally, I just cannot get a real kick out of thumbnails and the greedy presentation of great images in small size. Sure, if you want to sell your photos, you don’t just want to give them away by putting them up for grab on your site.

But then, you could do with the thumbnail or a watermarked version and show a full size, maximum quality excerpt of the picture by cutting out a captivating part of the pic.

Ycademy Gallery

The main format we have selected for the Ycademy Photo Gallery is based on the image height of 600 pixels. This will fit and look good on any current monitor size. The width is not important as the scrolling is horizontal. The human eye prefers to scroll or scan horizontally rather than vertically.

Looking at the above picture for the purpose of the blog: I use the “thumbnail” size of 480 wide and load the image with 1680 pixels width. The thumb looks somewhat cropped, while the magnifying glass presents the original size view with astonishing detail. When you click on the pic and it opens in overlay, it will then go as big as your browser or full size depending on how I embed it. As a visitor to the post, you get really quite some views for your money :-).

The image in the header of the post expands first to browser size and then to original size, even if that is larger than your screen (top right click). Smashing!

Back to the Ycademy Gallery: the Gallery is a great piece of script for visual presentation of most anything you can pack on to an image.

Have a look at it from HERE.

For the time being we will only deliver the script to Ycademy Pros and Seminar Participants. The Commercial Version will be available shortly. The difference being: the educational script we deliver for your personal use can be branded and and configured without editing flash, which makes it comfortable to use, the content, editing and configuration cannot be protected and secured. It’s therefore definitely not something you want to give out of your hands.

If you purchase the script from the Semiomantics Shop, please contact Bianca after the purchase by mail for delivery: bianca (at) ycademy.com

PS: The above image can be viewed live on site HERE

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Ycademy Easter Contest

Editing xml text is not all that difficult … once you get used to the format. In Semiomantics Evolution you can edit straight HTML code into the text tags, which makes it a Sunday walk.

HTML editing

Ute Schaedler has used plain HTML to edit her about page:

ute

Using HTML allows you to embed … pictures … for example :-).

Play with transparencies

Your image and text backgrounds can be modified easily by adjusting the Alpha values to taste. The Alpha values concern transparency; setting Alpha to 100 means no transparency while the value 0 (zero) would mean full transparency or no visible background layer.

An example of 0 values: Click HERE

On the home page there is a suite of images on the right site which are set on a zero transparency layer.

ydesign

The same applies to the showroom: you may place transparent png files on a more or less transparent background.

Try and enjoy the results.

I am looking forward to tonight’s session at 8 pm London time.

PS: More smashing stuff is under construction!

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Ycademy Easter Contest

Editing xml text is not all that difficult … once you get used to the format. In Semiomantics Evolution you can edit straight HTML code into the text tags, which makes it a Sunday walk.

Ute Schaedler has used plain HTML to edit her about page:

Using HTML allows you to embed … pictures … for example :-).

Your image and text backgrounds can be modified easily by adjusting the Alpha values to taste. The Alpha values concern transparency; setting Alpha to 100 means no transparency while the value 0 (zero) would mean full transparency or no visible background layer.

An example of 0 values: Click HERE

On the home page there is a suite of images on the right site which are set on a zero transparency layer.

The same applies to the showroom: you may place transparent png files on a more or less transparent background.

Try and enjoy the results.

I am looking forward to tonight’s session at 8 pm London time.

PS: More smashing stuff is under construction!

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Implement your Flash Showcase

Once your script is cleaned out and reduced to what you actually need as described yesterday and as done at last night’s Ycademy call, we can implement our project.

Before uploading you may already edit the index.html file and add the title of your site as well as the font as the case may be.

Also you can edit style.css to define link colors and other details if needed.

You may also want to edit your site logo:

Ideally the logo file is a transparent PNG image which in this case can be rather wide since we have just a few menu items. The bottom border of the logo is in line with the bottom of the menu items; therefore it is indicated to use capitals for the site header and align them with the bottom of the PNG file.

Example:

Semiomantics Header

For better visibility I have added a background layer on the above. The dimensions are 592 x 60 pixels.

Before uploading the evolution folder you may want to rename it to the folder name it should take on the server; if you upload the site to the domain root (public_html) then you just load the content of the evolution folder without the folder itself.

Once uploaded you may want to start adding a background image (photo of graphic); I have loaded just a background pattern:

Background

For this project I keep a uniform background throughout the whole site; however i would be nice as well to create a nice graphic grunge or photographic background.

Edit menu.xml from your xml folder: define the menu item titles and backgrounds as well as the copyright notice in the footer.

I start now by adding images to my showroom. In fact I am using for this project a showroom gallery instead of the about page: I will oad there graphic images representing my bullet list and then add text to the image legends.

About Semiomantics

The images are created in photoshop in 2 versions: jpg and transparent png. I load both versions to select later the images to keep – may be a mix of jpg and png images. To create the images I just created two layer sizes: 400 x 600 px and 800 x 600 px. Important: the images must be 600 px high. I drop my messages into the pictures using some grungy Times font and using background colors based on my usual color scheme.

The idea here is to use a gallery to replace the About page by graphically representing the main message I want to deliver and allowing for more information attached to each image. (This way of proceeding is not in line with the terms of the contest!)

For the show case I selected screen-shots of websites I have designed and built for Semiomantics. I have selected 30 screen-shots to see the effect and to measure loading time. I will trim this down later and make a representative selection out of the lot. There are also others I may want to add …:-).

Semiomantics Showcase

The screen-shots are mega sizes from 100 kb to over 400 kb, whereas they will be adjusted for faster loading. I am testing flash compression and loading them as swf files which is one of the advantages of this gallery script.

A legend will be associated with each screen-shot; each image is based on a Semiomantics script type or module and can therefore be linked to a category or product in the semiomantics shop.

My recommendation: try to keep the image size as compact as possible for fast loading: ideally below 100 kb per image.

More later.

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Build a Flash Showcase

Based on yesterday’s post with the terms of the contest, I will try to guide you step-by-step through a possible way of proceeding.

a. Copy your Semiomantics Evolution script into a new Folder on your Hard drive.

In my Case: I have a folder called Ycademy in My Documents, where I create a sub-folder Ycademy Collection. I Then copy the whole evolution folder into that new folder.

b. Clean out the Evolution folder by deleting all videos, images, thumbnails and sound files you don’t need for your new site. Take out namely all images and videos and your script will be 20 MB lighter to load.

Cleaned out Evolution

As you may not need all the sub-folders under your image folder, just delete whatever you don’t need; the same applies to video.

Now your folder should be just over 1 MB big and easy to load.

c. Load your evolution folder to your server.

Decide on your Theme and Title

Organize the category content on your hard drive.

More later.

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Best Flash Website with Semiomantics Evolution

Subsequent to the Ycademy March Seminar, I would like to launch an Easter Contest for all Seminar participants.

Here is what we are looking for:

Based on the Seminar materials you are able to build a small and beautiful flash website using the Semiomantics Evolution Framework.

Semiomantics Evolution Art

You are free to choose your topic.

Menu Items:

Home Page

About page

Showroom

Contact Form

External link to your blog, shop or other website.

DO NOT ADD ANY OTHER MENU ITEM OR SUB-MENU BUT YOU MUST POPULATE ALL OF THE ABOVE!

Media

You may use images, videos and sound as you like and within the above structure.

Number of images

The Gallery in the Showroom must feature between 8 and maximum 12 items (images or swf).

I will publish a step by step tutorial or sample on the Semiomantics Evolution Website.

Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 8 pm London Time. (This is no 1st of April joke!)

The winner: $50 in cash.

Good Luck!

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Fouchtra – les Volcans!

The Auvergne is one of the very beautiful regions in France, shaped by volcanic activity of the past. Laetitia Paris is featuring the beauty of the nature, people and lifestyle on her site Fouchtra.com to which she added this week-end a smashing showcase built with Semiomantics Evolution.

All words in the world cannot express what great images can say, and no image can express what well displayed pictures can trigger. The frequently encountered dilemma is the following: in order to gain visibility we need websites which perform well on Google Top 10 and which therefore need to focus on optimized scripts and contents; on the other hand we notice that the nicest way to expose impressive visual media is by using video and images embedded in flash.

Laetitia Paris has added to her site at Fouchtra.com a new flash show case which allows her to offer the most smashing images and views to  Visitors of the Auvergne online.

In fact, the new Auvergne Showcase features multiple photo galleries with original photographs by Laetitia Paris. Best of all: the high quality of the content can be viewed in smashing full screen mode providing the feeling of walking through the lands of the Auvergne. The site is still under construction but offers already a great surfing experience.

Enjoy the screen-shots and then head over to Fouchtra’s Auvergne Showcase from HERE

Bienvenue dans les Volcans d Auvergne

Volcan Auvergne

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Editing Flash Content for Semiomantics Evolution

Ycademy Seminar Participants are becoming rapidly familiar with editing xml code as well as with populating the Semiomantics Evolution Framework. During the first leg of the Seminar yesterday, image editing was the main task during the workshops.

The PowerPoint savvy participants at the seminar will get a little unannounced surprise today: a PowerPoint to Flash converter.

The tool will allow to convert PowerPoint to flv as well as to swf movies. Images can also be converted individually to swf in order to reduce the output size and to protect the work.

yorgo design

Image number 2 above on yorgodesign.com is a converted Welcome PowerPoint in swf. The Semiomantics Evolution Showcase feature can hold images and or swf movies :-).

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