It had been a while since we did Susan Chastain’s original site in Movable Type in 2004. Lots has changed since then.

We needed to get some new photos up, a new snazzy logo, some new editorials that her business was featured in. I wasn’t sure if I still had the MT login or if it still worked. I’m not even sure if MovableType is still in business. ;-) So it was time to make the big switch from MovableType to WordPress. And not just vanilla WordPress but a souped-up, accordion-slider, portfolio sporting, tricked out power WordPress. We found an excellent theme from Imaginem and got to work.

I often get the question, when converting an old site, if it helps to try to convert an old site’s code to the new site. The answer is 97.4% of the time: no. It just doesn’t make sense unless there’s a gigantic database that can be exported and imported, but in most cases, it’s cleanest to start from scratch.

We cropped images to fit into the Gallery (using WP Galleria) and made mini magazine covers for the editorial page. The accordion took some doing to get good cropped shots of hi-resolution images. From now on, Susan and her staff can add images on their own using WordPress’s built-in gallery (which Galleria uses). The built-in gallery from the theme wasn’t working for us, so we found Galleria. Galleria does a nice job of thumbnails + large image. Sounds straight forward, but not so easy to do nicely.

In the end, Susan has a delicious new site to promote more shade styles that I knew existed.

Susan Chastain circa 2004 in MovableType

Susan Chastain in her Sweet Silky Suped Up Site circa 2011