CoachK.com Redesign Launched
August 11, 2009 by Jeff Klein
Filed under Web Design
I’m proud to announce the launch of the redesigned CoachK.com website. CoachK.com is the Official Website of Duke Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski. The site has been redesigned and updated to provide easier site navigation and incorporate database technology to automate content management, site navigation and more.
The new design, shown below, replaces the original look launched in April, 2004. Advances in web technology over the past five years along with the site’s growth (over 300 pages) made the redesign necessary. In addition, I wanted to give the site a cleaner, more modern look. Having worked closely with Duke’s athletic department on the site’s development, I am thrilled with the result.
Some of the new website features include:
- rotating flash banner ad for featured stories
- redesigned “Share Your Story” feature allowing fans to share their Coach K stories
- site search
- added social bookmarking icons to promote sharing of information
- dynamic menus and site navigation
- a number of other back-end enhancements
The new site is powered by WordPress . I’ve done a lot of work with WordPress lately and love the ease of use and flexibility it offers.
Check out the new CoachK.com website and let me know what you think.
Related posts:
- CoachK.com Added to the WordPress Showcase
- Duke’s Championship and CoachK.com
- Web Design Best Practices
- The Many Faces of Facebook
Hi Jeff,
Nice work, minimalist look, but it’s so great!
I just want to notity you that the latests links for the navigation into blog entries doesn’t show entries anymore (take a look at http://CoachK.com/page/93/ and http://CoachK.com/page/94/
See you
Thanks Ange. Glad you like the site. I’ll check out the links you mentioned.
Hi from google Google-TCW
Hi Jeff,
This looks great! I like the simple design/navigation and quotes on the sidebar. I’m doing a site in WordPress and was wondering 2 things if you have the time…
1. How did you handle category archives? For example http://coachk.com/category/coach-k-stories/ has a little intro text and http://coachk.com/category/coach-k-news/ does not, but has a little “Archive” note at the top. Did you just do that using category descriptions, a plugin, or did you just customize the archive page in your theme?
2. How did you get external links to goduke.com in your navigation (especially opening in a new window)? That’s a cool trick!
Thanks for any inside info
Andrew
Thanks for the compliments. I’m glad you like the site. WordPress is awesome. In addition to the technology, the user community is amazing. I’m happy to help in answering your questions.
1. Category Archives
This is done using conditional (if then) formatting. Each theme is different but if you open your archive.php page you will likely see some conditions dependent upon the type of archive it is. I simply added another condition to test if the page was a particular category
< ?php if (is_category('category name')) { ?>I then inserted my HTML code for the intro text and also removed the word “Archive” as I didn’t want that page to look like an archive page.
2. External Links
I used a plugin called “Page Links To”. You create a page which appears in your navigation and then in the page options you can specify a URL that the page links to. You can also set the page to open in a new window. Great plugin. The open in a new window is a new feature recently added that was a big improvement.
I hope this information was helpful.
Let me know if you have any additional questions.