For example, the video you see embedded on this post was supplied from within the WordPress post editor like this:

How to set the size of automatic embeds for your entire WordPress site:

Login as the WordPress admin and go to Settings: Media. There you’ll see boxes for setting your maximum embed height and width. This will change the width of your embeds throughout your whole site. It’s retroactive so if you change theses settings, they’ll impact embeds even on posts and pages you authored before making the update.

Login as admin, look for Settings: Media

How to change the size for an individual embed:

If you need to make an embed bigger or smaller for a particular page or post, you can override the global media settings by adding a little code to your post, like this:

[embed width="390" height="300"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYZ[/embed]

Please consider making a donation to this organization, whose fundraising is conducted by The Tibet Fund (a four star charity as rated by Charity Navigator) and whose mission is personally endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet.

www.breathefreetibet.org

www.unitywoods.com

“I engaged Canton for a complete redesign of the website for Unity Woods Yoga. It’s hard to know what to praise first. His expert technical knowledge of WordPress and his creative design advice made the site far more attractive and user-friendly than before. His skill in automating a connection to the studio’s online registration system will save the staff many hours of work each month. I especially appreciate the value he consistently added above and beyond my expectations with extra tweaks and improvements that I didn’t even know to ask for.”

– Sue Lyn Schramm
Marketing / Outreach for Unity Woods

Highlights from this marathon design session included:

• Creating the two minute promotional video featured on the home page
  Because a good video is essential for promoting a band
• Automatically importing over six years of blog posts from blogger.com
  Because splitting your content across 2 sites hurts your Google ranking
• Promoting Facebook and newsletter signups (via iContact)
  Because having a website is not enough: you need to ‘push’ your news to your audience because they may not return to your website on their own

www.RoundMountainMusic.com

This website is powered by our custom CMS which allows Asia Foundation staff to edit virtually every page of the website without any special tools. Certain areas of the website are seamlessly integrated with WordPress, YouTube, and SlideShowPro to take advantage of these industry-leading tools for news, video, and photo publishing.

www.FuturePrimitive.org

To extend the reach and audience for FuturePrimitive.org, the website is now connected to Facebook, Twitter and Feedburner (email) so that followers are automatically notified whenever a new episode is broadcast. Furthermore, fans can embed individual episodes as streaming audio widgets on their own websites by copying and pasting a single line of code (as is done with YouTube videos). For example, the episode you see below was embedded by inserting this single line of code:

<script src="http://futureprimitive.org/embed.php?show=142" type="text/javascript"></script>

And now (as of WP version 2.9) it’s also possible to crop and rotate your images from within WordPress. No Photoshop required! Watch this video to learn how.

Deva Foundation

www.deva.org

I started off with this freely available WP theme. Then my client found a nice stock image of clouds on iStockPhoto.com that I converted into an ephemeral background. Finally, I popped in a new header graphic, improved the font styling (and IE compatibility) and integrated  iContact for email newsletter signups and and PayPal for ecommerce.

Ta-da! Deva Foundation’s brand new site was completed in less than 20 hours, from concept to completion.

Maria Benitez

www.MariaBenitez.com

This website for the legendary Santa Fe flamenco dancer Maria Benitez was completed in even less time by taking advantage of the excellent — and freely available –  “Yoghourt” WordPress theme.

I interest myself in how the structure of our site will influence our behavior … As the website design develops, so does my clarity. It’s obvious to me that “site review and evaluation” will be an opportunity for us to reflect on our goals … I mean that the site is, for me, kind of like a biofeedback device that informs me about myself and helps me develop my goals. At least that’s how it feels at this stage in the process.

This is a great reflection on how the actual process of making a website helps to make more concrete the actual project or work that the website is supposed to communicate. This kind of thinking caused a seismic shift in the philosophy of webdesign and web programming a couple of years ago. It’s called “agile design” and I think it’s fascinating.

The basic idea behind agile design is that you minimize the amount of forethought and planning on paper, and instead take advantage of technologies that let you easily update the website once someone has actually clicked through the Real Thing.

Before agile development we said to our clients: “Get it right on paper, or else we’ll bill you astronomical fees for change-orders.” Now we say: “Let’s just get the basic sketch online, play with it, and then keep tweaking things until it feels right.”

This is one of the reasons I build a lot of sites for my clients using WordPress. It means that we can change our minds about lots of things — even the fundamental look and feel — without having to build everything over again from scratch.

http://henshallphoto.com

This was a super-basic blog redesign for a friend and former colleague of mine. The assignment was to create a look and feel that kept his existing branding requirements (color pallette, logo) while making a new frame for his blog that would provide an elegant relief for large animated photo slideshows and sparse text.

http://beautythroughbalance.com

“I had the most wonderful experience working with Canton. He made designing my website fun and very easy. From our very first meeting, the entire process was quick, and understandable. During our work together, he taught me how to manage my website on my own which is so important for my small business.

Canton is such a great mix of many different qualities; he’s very technical, a great designer, easy to talk with and a wonderful teacher of his craft. I highly recommend his expertise to anyone!”

– Shannon Plummer, DOM