cre8d design

We have many prospective clients come to us saying they would like “Social Media Integration”. This means different things to different people (and often people just want it “all”, even if they don’t know what that is).

Here’s some of the common meanings of the term social media integration:

• Facebook like button for the group’s Facebook page (without leaving the site)
• Twitter auto-follow button for the group’s Twitter account (without leaving the site)
• Social sharing of blog posts via Facebook/Twitter
• Social media buttons to link over to Facebook/Twitter pages
• Blog post commenting using Disqus (enables commenting using Facebook/Twitter accounts, and monitors Twitter replies), or using Facebook comments (which syncs comments and notifications between Facebook and your blog)
• New blog posts are automatically tweeted and added to the Facebook page
• Displaying latest tweets and Facebook status updates on the blog
• Newsletters containing ways for people to like, tweet and share blog post content

In the list above, I’m just focussing on the two heavyweights of the social media world, Facebook and Twitter, but often these other social media networks come into play (whether via a generic “Share” button or otherwise):

• Google Plus
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn
• StumbleUpon

Of course, not all are necessary or useful for all sites, but it’s helpful to have a list of what these all mean.

Are there other meanings you have for “social media integration”?

About six months ago, I decided we should stop buying bread so that it would force me to learn the art and science of bread making. Since then, I think I’ve perfected making a lovely wholegrain loaf in our bread maker and mixing it up with different seeds and grains. I’ve experimented a little with focaccia with decent results – doing the mixing in a bread maker, then shaping, rise and bake in our oven. I’ve made doughnuts with my husband (twice, they were so nice).

I wanted to give bread making from scratch a go and got The Bread Baker’s Apprentice out from the library. It’s rated as one of the best books out there for amateurs wanting to learn how to make artisan breads. The book is a little daunting to read but it’s far more than a cook book of recipes: it’s really as if you’re a student in a class learning everything there is to know about bread so you can understand what’s going on at each step.

Last night I created a biga (starter) and tonight cooked two loaves of Italian bread, here’s one of them:

The loaves are still cooling so I’m patiently waiting to give it a try. The process was quite involved (Smitten Kitchen blogs about the same recipe/process) but enjoyable. There’s something so rewarding about creating something from scratch for yourself and seeing it come together, almost like magic. It’s the first time I’ve done kneading – I thought it would be too time consuming (it’s not), tiring (it is a little, but in a good way) and boring (it is actually nice to have space to think while doing manual work).

Bread is something we just take for granted: we consume it and enjoy it but going through the whole process makes you realise that even seemingly simple everyday things can be deceptive!

That’s what I love about blog design: the entire creation process, all the little seen and unseen details that makes the end result just work.

I’ve been following a fascinating discussion led by Anil Dash entitled How do blogs need to evolve? (on a soon-to-launch platform called Branch) along with Dave Winer’s posts Relative writing, What kind of blogging do we want? and What I learned by turning off my comments. I encourage you to go read them.

It has been an absolute pleasure working with Rochelle and her team on the redesign of Kiwi Families. We are fortunate to work with a lot of incredibly lovely clients, but Rochelle would be right up there at the top of our favourites.

Kiwi Families has been completely revamped with new bright and fresh branding: old logo on the left, new on the right:

The site has gone from running on a custom content management system to being WordPress-driven with tonnes of new functionality and integration with external systems such as Highrise.

The homepage has gone from this:

… to this:

The site has transitioned from using separate forums to using Disqus’ commenting system on all the blog posts and articles.

The site is packed full of helpful and friendly information… I think I’m going to become a regular over at Kiwi Families now!