The recently-launched Re-Inspiration Store web site was a fun project for one of the most unique businesses I’ve worked with in quite a while. Store owners Brooke and Julie have created and gathered hundreds of pieces of art and artsy-but-functional items in their West Midtown Atlanta store. Everything was once something else, and the creativity with which their pieces are re-purposed is quite amazing.

As with most start-ups, resources – time as well as money – were tight. The pair needs to maintain the site themselves, and the hand-crafted origins of their merchandise mean constant changes – to the store as well as the web site.

We started with a funky design, but a relatively simple layout. When it came to creating content and maintaining the site, I put Brooke and Julie in the driver’s seat with the installation of WordPress as a Content Management System, as well as SlideShowPro and SlideShowPro Director for their image gallery. These tools enable them to quickly and easily add store events to the calendar page or photos of new pieces to the online gallery, keeping it fresh.

I built the entire Re-Inspiration Store site to utilize WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS). WordPress is a powerful open source platform with a solid track record and incredibly broad capabilities. It’s ideally suited for small businesses who need to maintain their web sites themselves, but have limited resources.

In case it’s not clear by looking at the Re-Inspiration site, there’s no need to settle for a company web site that looks like a blog, or vice-versa. Virtually any site can be a WordPress site.