We’ve done a little prep for this new “Private Access Area” on CSS-Tricks. We’ve looked at WordPress plugins to help us, we’ve even decided on one and set it up. But now we need to get into actually building the front end. We’re going to call it “The Lodge”. Funnily enough, as a viewer you already know all about it since you’re logged in and watching this video right now, but at the time of this screencast, it wasn’t built yet!
For starters, we’ll need to have a homepage for The Lodge. It will essentially be a sales page explaining what it is, what you get as a member, how cool it is, how much it costs, etc. It will likely link to a signup page. Then each individual series (this entire redesigning thing would be just one series, planning for more) would have a sub-home kind of page.
Another thing we’ll have to do is make a module for the homepage. As it is, there is no way to get to The Lodge from the homepage and that’s no good. We’ll probably expose a login form right there to make it easy for existing members.
As we get started with the branding, we go buy a photo from iStockPhoto of an old wintery cabin. I just like it. It feels like a lodge to me and yearns back to my Wisconsin roots =). More specifically, I like the way there is a horizontal strip of interestingness in the photo that we can use as a header.
Plenty to do!
Woah! This one is not available in HD, I think? Just a heads up! :)
Re-uploading now, thanks!
This download file does not have the same resolution as the others.
Hugs.
Uploading new copy now, thanks.
A couple weeks ago when I first started coming to the lodge, I told my wife that I loved the image of the cabin and the snow. It made me feel like I’m hanging out in a cabin in a pair of sweats and slippers just kickin’ back watchin’ some cool code videos.
In other words, you totally nailed the feeling you were going for. I love it!
That’s awesome to hear. I’m soon moving back to Wisconsin so it’ll be a heck of a lot more cabins with snow in my future.