Temporary sites are a necessary evil if the client doesn’t have anything but a domain. If you have a long production to launch schedule, it’s important to have something temporary at the domain to bridge the gap until the new site launches. Depending on the client’s budget and business objectives, the temporary site can be anything from a simple logo with contact info to a full fledged teaser site with email sign up, sneak peaks, etc. For limited time and budget sites, I’ve found the Launching Soon script to be a great asset.

With the redesign of dotp, I decided early on to redesign the site in public. Thus, the temporary site has to serve two functions: 1) provide potential clients with access to my portfolio and contact information and 2) give me an easy to use platform to share the redesign process as I go through it. I certainly want whatever time I invest in the dotp temporary site in the way of content creation (text, images, applications, etc.) to be easily transferrable to the new site.

To meet these functional requirements, I felt a WordPress solution was in order for the entire site. WordPress has evolved from a blog platform to a very flexible CMS. Plus, I knew there are quite a few WordPress templates I could use to get things up and running quickly. I feel no shame using a template that someone else has created for my own design, as long as licenses are heeded and the designer is given due credit. What I needed was a free, GPL theme with minimalist design that would get me 90% of the way home yet offered the flexiblity to customize. After an hour of looking through various minimalist WordPress templates, I decided on GridFocus by Derek Punsalan at 5ThirtyOne. It’s just the right mix of form and function for the dotp website. Here’s a screenshot of GridFocus out of the box:

After setting up WordPress and installing the GridFocus theme, I began the arduous process of transferring content into the WordPress database structure. Most of my old posts needed to be imported from Blogger (yes, I was one of the first folks on blogger I’m sure of it). I quickly sketched an information architecture and plugged the old content/copy in. It wasn’t too painful. Then all the screenshots and such for my portfolio work (I’m still working on this) had to be linked to each portfolio post. That was a bear. I also wanted to integrate into WordPress the SlideShowPro/Director flash based version of my portfolio from the old site. It worked well with the help of the free SlidePress plugin for WordPress (yet another reason to love WordPress…the free plugins!). Finally I made some design tweaks to GridFocus and voila! The dotp temporary site is born. All told, it took me about 24 hours to get everything to the point you see now, and of course write up the process as I went along.