Word 11 WordPress Design & Development

With the art direction of Finesilver Design, Kobayashi Online developed and designed the website for Word11, Toronto’s 24-hour blogging festival.

Based on the popular WordPress platform, the Word11 website is highly customizable for site editors, who can easily update event information and post blogs. All the content of word11.com, including its sidebars and header, is easily editable using the WordPress dashboard — no HTML or programming knowledge required.

The site also includes some unique design elements.

• The theme changes from day to night colours, reflecting the fact that it’s a 24-hour festival.
• Social media icons (linking to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and RSS) use the CSS image-replacement technique so browsers with limited image capabilities can still show regular text links.
• Compelling header fonts were incorporated using the Google Font API to enable the use of typically Web-unfriendly fonts. In this case, the Yanone Kaffeesatz font was used.

Visitors are also able to share content on more than 300 social networks and aggregators using the AddThis social bookmarking plugin.

The website was awarded the Consulting Standard of Excellence by Web Marketing Association, scoring above average scores across all criteria of website design. The award ranks the firm’s website among the best designed in the industry.

Site Info

URL: http://word11.com
Client: Word11
Completed: January 2011