Best Deal BC
URL: http://bestdealbc.ca
Project Objective
The team at Working Design were approached by the BC Federation of Labour to help with creating an identity and website for their new anti-HST campaign. The focus of the campaign is on promoting ‘fair’ taxes, and does it with a twinkle in its eye having sarcastic videos and a Walmart flyer look and feel.
My Involvement
My involvement in this project ran from initial proposal development through to final build.
Given the campaign’s requirements, I did some initial concept sketches which lead to a design concept which I collaborated on with the design team. The site is built using WordPress and features an online quiz and signup form both of which I accomplished by customizing a couple of standard plugins. The theme is one of many recent child themes I’ve developed using the Genesis framework from Studiopress.
This was a fun project, mostly because of its promotional nature. Building sites where the purpose is clear is always easier.
WorkingFolio
URL: Workingfolio.com
Project Objective
Kris Klassen, principal of Working Design, wanted to create a really good wordpress based artists portfolio template. He wanted to make sure it had cutting edge photo gallery functionality, while preserving ease of use and not straying far from the familiar blog format.
My Involvement
I was involved with this project from its beginning, and as such, I was able to make contributions to the overall concept of the project, as well as to its design and technical implementation. It is primarily a wordpress theme, but has some very flexible gallery functionality built right in from scratch. The best part of the gallery is that it uses a WordPress Custom Post Type, instead of the usual method of dealing simply with uploaded files, or the media gallery. This enabled us to create a gallery experience without sacrificing the ability to have a new post for each piece in the gallery with its own unique url and text content.
Working Design
URL: Workingdesign.net
Project Objective
When I started working with the Working Design shop, the first project I was put onto was the creation of a new and modern looking website for the shop itself. Their existing site made for a strong foundation on which a design refresh with a focus on providing web services became necessary as Working Design began to expand their capacity in this area.
My Involvement
I was able to take part in the project from the beginning and had a strong influence in the direction the design of the site took, in collaboration with the WD design team. I was also able to directly contribute to the design with a final design revision which included a type treatment and some color palette adjustments.
The site build was done as a WordPress theme with a custom post type for the portfolio section. I also put together a custom slideshow plugin for the site using Javascript, in order to provide Working Design with the ability to include HTML markup as part of the slides.
Never ruin a turkey dinner again
A good friend recently lamenting his slightly overcooked turkey dinner said he was going to double check his math with me for the next one. I told him I’d do better than double check his 20mns per pound. I told him I’d make a website — and I did! I’ve called it turkeyti.me – the turkey bake-time calculator on the internet! It’s all javascript/css/html in one file. It only took a couple of hours to make, but I’m pretty well enamored with it.
Dust The Knuckles
URL: http://dusttheknuckles.com/
Project Objective
I was approached by one of my partner graphic designers to create a pixel perfect WordPress theme conversion of an artists website design. The website’s main purpose is to promote the artist and his new novel.
My Involvement
I often hear clients tell me they don’t want their site to look too “boxy” like other wordpress sites. This is why this project was a particularly fun challenge as I had to work with the artist’s existing site design mockups created in photoshop, and turn them into a WordPress theme which looked exactly the same. I created two page templates, one for the main navigation page, and one for the main content, and I also created a static splash page. The navigation, heading, and content on all pages is standard wordpress output that I managed to style with CSS to look like the artist’s design. Have a look at the site with CSS turned off in your browser to see what I’m talking about.
Lark
URL: lark.me
Project Objective
Lark is a very popular clothing store on Main St. in Vancouver. Through Binary Environments, I was approached by them to design and implement an entire point of sale, back-office management, and web-store system that could handle their complex products, that would be faster and easier to use than their existing system, and that would allow them to showcase and sell their products online to customers world wide.
My Involvement
This project was entirely mine to complete. From planning and design, to writing the point of sale and back-office software to designing and implementing the online store website. This allowed me to build an entirely integrated system on one platform.
The core of the system is written in object oriented PHP5 with a MySQL data model; The user interface is built using AJAX for speed and simplicity, and makes heavy use of Javascript with jQuery and jQuery-UI; The front end website is built using HTML4 and is laid out with the assistance of the Blueprint CSS framework.
Completing Lark required all of my skills. It was a special challenge and is a project I am very proud of.
Barley Legal
URL: barleylegal.ca
Project Objective
Barleylegal (pun intended) is a magazine website maintained by home-brewer, writer and illustrator Saul Moran. I was approached by Saul to develop a platform which would allow him to publish articles, full page comic strips, and brew log entries.
My Involvement
This project was mine to complete with heavy design input from Saul. I started by modeling the site after the popular Penny Arcade website which served a similar purpose for its authors. I built a simple content management system with categories and special tags for document hierarchy, image embedding, and presentation of converted units. I themed the CMS with the basic layout you see on the site which was later filled in with illustrations and a flash banner by Saul.
Barleylegal is built using object oriented PHP5 with a MySQL data model. The front-end website is constructed with basic HTML4 and laid out with some simple CSS. The peculiarity of its requirements, and the terrific illustrations provided by Saul made Barleylegal a lot of fun to work on.
Lola Augustine Brown
Project Objectives
Lola approached me to rebuild her static flash website into a custom wordpress theme. This would allow her to more easily make updates to her content and would improve her website’s searchability, as well as make for a friendlier user experience.
My Involvement
Her original design was done by Tiffany at Kinky Creative. I had to adapt Tiffany’s very fun design in order to make it more suitable for a vertically fluid html layout. I ended up rebuilding the site template entirely from scratch, but keeping the spirit of the original design. After building the static template, I wrapped it up as a custom WordPress template and handed it off to Lola.
JerseyApp
URL: apps.facebook.com/jerseyapp/
Project Objective
A friend and I decided to do a collaboration for our own personal interest. He is a marketing whiz and a sports fan, and I am a web developer and so when he managed to get more than 20,000 members in his Detroit Lions facebook fan group, we decided to do a facebook app that we could target to them. Unfortunately, as has often been the case with having too much success on facebook, the powers that be at facebook took away his fan page. The Detroit Lions wanted control of it. We decided to carry on with the project anyway, and widen its reach to target fans of all sports.
The concept is simple. Through a series of steps, create a picture of a custom sports jersey and display it on your profile. Show your team spirit.
My Involvement
The design of this project was a true collaboration. My partner and I fleshed it all out over several evenings drinking beer. We wanted it to be as simple as we could make it for the user, and we wanted it to keep a facebook look to help users feel comfortable using it.
The application is written entirely in object oriented PHP5 with a MySQL data model. The frontend makes use of facebook’s canvas and FBML platforms. It was a challenge using facebook’s platforms which are poorly documented and very very limiting. There’s a reason most of the major apps work from an iframe.
We managed to pull it all off in the end, and even hook it up to a payment provider just incase anyone wanted to pay us $1 to make more than 5 jerseys. We’ve yet to receive a cent, but have over 14,000 monthly users as of April 2010.
For Peat' Sake
URL: forpeatsake.com
Project Objectives
For Peat’ Sake is a personal project of mine. I saw a need for a specialized whisky reviews website. There were sites on the web in which people recorded their own reviews of whisky, but there wasn’t one which allowed readers to submit their own whisky reviews. Building such a site also allowed me to assign ratings to whisky entirely based on the reviews it was receiving.
My Involvement
As this is an ongoing personal project, it is entirely mine to tinker with. It includes a user signup and authentication component, whisky reviews collection, and a main catalog of whisky to be reviewed. Users can very simply sign up and start reviewing whisky, and readers can easily find reviews of the whisky they’re considering. The site very quickly gained notoriety has become an important resource for whisky drinkers.
I wrote the core software using object oriented PHP5 with a MySQL data model. The front end website is built with XHTML1 and CSS.
Dot Solutions
URL: www.dotsol.net
Project Objectives
Dot Solutions is a simple domain registrar. I was approached by Binary Environments Ltd. to produce a domain registration website that they could promote to their clients. It handles all major domains, and gives Binary better control of their clients domains, simplifying customer support.
My Involvement
I was the primary designer and developer on the project. An initial design concept was proposed by the then president of Binary which I used as a basis of my design. I was asked to use the Tucows OpenSRS domain reseller system for the actual domain registrations. The backend software is written using the OpenSRS SOAP interface with client software I wrote in object oriented PHP5, and payment is handled using the E-Xact transactions system. Since OpenSRS handles all of the record keeping, no data model was necessary.
Davis Trading
URL: www.davistrading.com
Project Objectives
Davis Traing is a leading metal recycling company in Vancouver. I was approached by Davis Trading to provide them with a new brand, company website, and a custom customer pricelist management system.
My Involvement
I approached Jennifer at JazDesign to help with re-branding Davis Trading. After she had completed the re-branding process, I redesigned the website from the ground up using Jennifer’s new brand treatment as a starting point. Once the website was completed, I constructed a new price listing system which allows Davis Trading staff to keep a list of its client, assign price lists to those clients and update all of the price lists. Clients may then log in to the system with their own username and password, and view up to date prices.
The Davis Trading website is constructed using HTML4 and CSS. The custom price listing system is built using object oriented PHP5 with a MySQL data model.
XO Digital Courier
Project Objectives
I was approached by Binary Environments Ltd. to build a self serve large file storage and distribution system for its clients. They wanted to use FTP as the transmission medium and they wanted to include a user management system so that clients could setup sub-user accounts which they would manage themselves.
My Involvement
XO Digital Courier was entirely my project to complete. I started by writing a custom module for the popular ProFTPD FTP server, which I would use as the main file transfer system. The module implemented per-user file transfer traffic accounting, and stopped serving clients who had exceeded their traffic allowance. I then built the client administration system in which clients could sign up, add users of their own, and buy traffic credit to use the system.
I wrote the ProFTPD traffic accounting module using the C programming language. The rest of the system is written using object oriented PHP5 and a MySQL data model. This project required a very high level of systems integration, and was a very interesting challenge.