WordPress

Using Livefyre Sidenotes to make lyrics more interactive

Posted on by Kurt

Lyric websites have been a staple of music-related search results since the start of the millenium, but the format of presenting lyrics on many of these sites has remained mainly the same since their inception: plain text with no supplementary information or interactivity. Perhaps the most notable innovator in the genre is Genius — formerly known as Rap Genius, the site’s sidebar annotations now extend to multiple genres and even outside the music sphere to news and entertainment, and infrastructure to help “annotate any page on the Internet” is currently in beta. Google recently began showing lyrics in their search result pages as part of their Knowledge Graph, but beyond requiring a click through to the song available for purchase in their Google Play store for access to the full lyrics, their method of displaying lyrics is no more advanced. Even despite sidebar-comment approaches similar to Genius in other industries, including notes on content platform Medium and annotations on Quartz articles, most lyrics-dedicated sites have been stagnant and unimaginative.

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Throw the Dice and Play Nice – WordPress Theme Customization and Content Migration

Posted on by Kurt

Kira Grunenberg, the music journalist behind the blog Throw the Dice and Play Nice, contacted me to move her site from Blogger to WordPress with a fresh design. After choosing the Watson theme, I provided theme customization to match her site’s color scheme, add responsive breakpoints for mobile visitors, and adjust thumbnail image sizes. I also provided content migration services to transfer the site from Blogger to WordPress, including redirects to maintain search result placement.

Graffiti6 – WordPress Theme Design

Posted on by Kurt

As the largest part of a series of updates to multiple digital platforms to help promote the band’s independently-released sophomore album, The Bridge, I redesigned the WordPress website for Graffiti6’s official website. The site is responsive for both tablet and mobile displays and focuses on Graffiti6’s discography, with custom post types used to build a discography of music releases and a lyrics section. The two sections are connected to link each song on a release to its lyrics, and in order to provide interactivity, I used Livefyre’s Sidenotes plugin to allow fans to share and comment on their favorite lyrics. (Read more on my implementation of Livefyre Sidenotes here.)

Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures at Michigan State University – WordPress Theme Design

Posted on by Kurt

I completed this website redesign for the Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures department at Michigan State University. Objectives included the use of a fresh and bright color palette, responsive breakpoints for tablets and smartphones, improved navigation, and a more useful homepage layout. Previously created calendar widgets were also updated for efficiency by using CSS linear-gradient instead of images to build a zigzag pattern, and a custom web font (Asap) was included in headlines for a more modern, updated look. Theme built using WordPress’s Twenty Thirteen theme as a base.

MSU Writing Center – WordPress Theme Design

Posted on by Kurt

During my final semester as a Website Coordinator at the MSU Writing Center, I was asked to redesign the theme of the Writing Center website, using the original site design as a reference while removing unnecessary code and focusing on sustainability and accessibility. Beginning with WordPress’s Twenty Thirteen theme as a base, I recreated the original design, improving accessibility and simplifying custom code.

MSU Impact Sports – Website

Posted on by Kurt

I was contacted by the staff at Impact 89FM, the student radio station at Michigan State University, to build a sister site for the growing sports vertical being covered by staff online and on-air. After creating the site using WordPress Multisite, I adapted the design of the original, music-focused website, including a scoreboard section for easy access to campus sports results and a front-page layout that improved structure and readability for the faster-paced sports content.

Kurt Trowbridge – Personal WordPress Theme Design

Posted on by Kurt

I developed a personal website to discuss my interests in music, web development, and social media using WordPress, creating a custom theme focused on responsive design and clean typography. I included a custom post type for Reviews, as well as custom taxonomies for Artists and Record Labels that extend across the various types of content on the site. Original written content resulted in 16,000 pageviews during the first year of operation.

Built using the Less theme by Jared Erickson as a base.