My original site was borderline ugly.  Frankly, I hated it so much that I took down all but two pages. Ever since, I’ve been looking for a new site design that would make me happy. I never could find anything.

Until now.

Neil Weinberg and I were working on his new site, Ithaca Acupuncture.com, and really liked the results. The signage on his clinic is great, and made for good graphics on his website. Nobody who saw his site could fail to recognize his clinic, and for some reason it feels more alive than just some graphic.

I’m very happy with how it turned out.

I used WordPress to set it up. Even though WordPress was originally a blogging software, it turns out to be fantastic for a CMS (content management system). Neil can add pictures and pages however he wants. He doesn’t have a nerd bone in his body, and thanks to WordPress, doesn’t need one.

Even so, I was going to redo my site similar to the site for Made to Stick (which happens to be an excellent, excellent marketing book).   I actually paid a fair bit of money to have a similar look created for me.  The designer did a fantastic job too.  But I wasn’t all that excited about it.

I went to bed a few nights ago thinking about all the beautiful clinics I’ve seen. Almost all acupuncturists are proud of their clinics, and it shows. I’ve only been in one clinic I didn’t like, and that was 9 years ago.

At 3am, I woke up and realized that I’d found the perfect design. It was under my nose the whole time! I’d rather have beautiful clinics on my site than any design, no matter how pretty.  So here you have it!

I’m so happy, if I were a puppy, I’d sprain my tail.

I’ve installed about 7 different plugins, but one I wouldn’t do without is OneClick by Anirudh Sanjeev.  The WordPress theme is based on Cutline by Chris Pearson, but is heavily customized.  (I -am- a bit of a perfectionist.)   I’ll be adding to this and customizing it more - but since it’s Wordpress - it’s much easier to do this without breaking anything.

A content management system separates the content from the presentation.  I could switch the site to something that looks like Halloween in less than 10 minutes.  Think about it… if you can do that, you can do just about ANYTHING with your site.