Introducing the New 8 Kinds of Smiles Website!

In the time that’s passed since we first started doing this whole wedding thing back in 2010, 8 Kinds of Smiles has had the great fortune to be able to grow with each year. With that in mind, I decided to spend the last two weeks giving the website a major overhaul in order to help continue that growth as we move into 2013 and beyond.

The focus was to give the site a modern look as well as functional user interface that translates naturally and easily to existing clients as well as potential clients and just people who are on the site perusing.

So here are the exciting, major new things!

Responsive, Responsive, Responsive!

You might have or might have not heard the term responsive thrown around in the past year or two. Basically a responsive website will scale naturally to accomodate different screen sizes. Before it wasn’t such a big problem with just computer monitor resolutions, but with the plethora of smartphones and tablets around it’s crucial to be able to cater to everybody’s screen size. The site is now incredibly more mobile friendly while retaining a full desktop look at that resolution meaning that no matter what device you’re on, the site will continue to be a pleasing visit across the board.

About

Most of the content is the same here, but the Team page has been updated with our 2013 team so be sure to check it out to get a look at the faces behind 8 Kinds of Smiles! :D

The Blog

Before the blog page would be on the homepage when you first visit the site, but it now has a dedicated blog page. The 2 most recent posts still show on the homepage so you still have quick access there if you need it.

The blog is now mobile optimized as well which means videos will scale down by device. Videos for each post are now the center of attention and appear at the very top. Heck, you don’t even need to go into an individual post to view a blog–you can just view it from the default blog navigation.

On the sidebar, we have cleaner looking, more functional widgets that will give you access to Facebook, recent blog posts, and general site pages like Packages & Contact.

Packages

Packages are now broken down into two pages: one covers the types of video services we offer while the other covers the types of final product options available. We’re looking to bring on Blu-Ray and premium packaging options this year so stay tuned for that!

The Portfolio

This is really one of the areas of the site that I’m most excited about.

Before, browsing for videos on the site meant you either had to dig through blog posts or through individual years and then individual couples. Now there are 4 different ways to browse our work:

Films
Couples
Packaging
Photos

By default you’ll be taken to the Films page, which show all our videos with an on page filter tool that breaks it down by year and video type. It’s kind of hard to describe so you’ll just have to try it out to see how cool it is. :) But basically this Films page is a theater gallery of all our video work right on the site!

View The Film Portfolio â†’

You can also continue to browse by couple like on the old site. The filter tool is available here to so you can break it down by year and also what videos each couple has. Each couple page shows all their videos as well as packaging artwork like before.

View The Couples Portfolio â†’

There is now a dedicated page to view packaging artwork too! Currently the selection is limited to just DVD since that’s all we’ve offered to this point, but we hope to change that soon with Blu-ray and premium packaging options in the works. Each image magnifies in a lightbox pop up so you can easily and quickly browse through different packaging artwork. Be sure to check out all the awesome photographers who provided the photos for the artwork. It really wouldn’t look that great without all their amazing imagery.

View The Packaging Portfolio â†’

Lastly, there’s a photography portfolio now. I know what you’re thinking… wait 8 Kinds of Smiles only does video! True! But we have on a few chances had the opportunity to do some photo shoots with people we know and so forth. It’s just a fun little side thing that I wanted to add on there so check it out if you have some time. :)

View The Photography Portfolio â†’

In Closing

There’s a bunch more new things with the site that are smaller and aren’t really worth mentioning so I’ll just let you check out the site for yourself to take it all in.

That’s it, folks! Enjoy the new site! And thank you to everybody who has supported 8 Kinds of Smiles since we first started in mid 2010! It always shocks me a little that we’re at this point now from when we humbly started just a few years ago, and I’m really grateful for all the success that has come our way courtesy of folks who have booked us, checked out our work, and referred us. Thank you, all!

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travis :D