Posts Tagged ‘Website’

Greener Journeys site

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

screenshot of The Greener Journeys website

www.greener-journeys.com

A massive gap between posts there for which I apologise. It has been a busy couple of months for me though. At the end of June i said a tearful farewell to my colleagues at Anywhichway and moved onto pastures new. As of July i have taken up the post of Senior Interactive Developer at The Crocodile, but more about them later. This post is about my final project at Anywhichway (which actually went live shortly after I left – compounding the delay on this post).

Greener Journeys is a campaign website aimed at encouraging people to get out of their cars and onto buses and coaches. The site contains loads of information on the cause, who’s involved in it and how they’re going about achieving their goals.

The site is built in Expression Engine – version 1.6 as sadly version 2 had not come out of beta when we started development. The site is fairly straight forward, content wise, and uses mostly static page types. There is, however, a news and events section, both of which automatically archive content, and a password protected ‘user resources’ area with downloadable goodies. Site pages also display related pages and documents on the site and the home page displays the latest news stories.

This is a really nice looking site (designed by the creatives at AWW of course) and was a great project to end on. See you around guys, i’ll miss you…

Mayday Network site launch

Monday, April 19th, 2010

screenshot of The Mayday Network website

www.maydaynetwork.com

This week, after a month of hard work, late nights and gnashing of teeth, The Mayday Network website finally went live. A social network aimed at businesses who want to reduce their carbon footprint and do other good environmentally things, the site is entirely built and updated in Drupal. The website was designed by Anywhichway and I was responsible for initial front end template build and subsequent Drupal theming.

The site, currently in phase 1, has member profiles, news feeds and events listings with member sign up functionality. It’s main draw at this stage is ‘The Journey’ a tool that helps guide members, step by step, through their own ‘low carbon journey’. Members are able to tick off steps as they go and periodically upload stories of their progress for other users to see.

A great deal was acheived in a short time here so well done to everyone involved and thanks for putting in the hours :) .

Viral revolution or webvomit?

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

screenshot of Yvette's bridal something or other website

Recently I’ve been coming across sites that utilise such hideous design and nightmarish HTML that i’ve felt compelled to bring them to the attention of a wider audience and, in many cases, that’s exactly what i’ve done.

Recently as I prepared to Tweet this gem – it occured to me that perhaps lurking behind this terrifyingly poorly executed facade is in fact an ingenious and fresh viral marketing idea. After all it only takes one smug, superior media type (i.e. me) to stumble across it and publish the link on some social network somewhere and bingo – instant traffic.

Of course there’s a danger, as in this instance, that you take the concept too far and all your content is hidden behind an impossible to navigate front end awash with random, blindingly garish links. Handled in the right way, however, this could be rather effective. Imagine a website which on first glance is pure HTML abortion, hideous enough to get an instant mention on media boards across the web, and yet on closer inspection incorporates a surprisingly intuitive navigation which in turn leads to well designed and structured content. Food for thought my friends, perhaps we are witnessing the birth of a new viral phenomenon – one that will eventually result in a mass turnaround in the way we design and build websites. Retro web design – God forbid!

Anyway, sorry for the almost actual blog like nature of this post. Back to standard postings next time. In the meantime here’s another one for you to point and laugh at. Look at his ponytail – LOL!

British Soap Awards website

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

screenshot of the British Soap Awards website

www.britishsoapawards.tv

This week the British Soap Awards website 2010 website went live – built by me and designed by the good folk at Anywhichway! The site is built using the CodeIgniter framework and includes a basic vote authentication function and a reporting back end utilising the PHPExcel plugin. The voting aesthetics are coded in JavaScript.

Traffic on the site is extremely heavy and as of this post has attracted more than 9000 unique voters (in two days). With more than quarter of a million expected by the end of voting it’s, with the exception of the Orange Intranet (which doesn’t count), my highest profile and most visited work so far.

Get on there and vote people and make me look good.

LDJ Sheet Metal Engineering website live

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

LDJ Sheet Metal Engineering

www.ldjmetal.co.uk

The LDJ website went live last night. It’s a small website I designed and built for a sheet metal engineering company based in Middlesex. LDJ has a highly skilled workforce who manufacture a wide variety of products.

This was a follow up project to a site I designed and built last year for Middlesex Laser Cutting, one of LDJ’s partner companies.