Creating and managing Websites
I have been tinkering with Websites for quite some time. The Web is an incredibly diverse medium and I love it.
Here is a sample of projects that I've worked on:
Captive Audience
Captive Audience helps their customers to find the right speaker or entertainer for conferences and events.
It is a Drupal website, specially designed to make it easy to add new speakers, and have them show up in the correct categories.
I had to migrate the speaker profiles from Captive Audience’s old site into the new one; this involved saving each profile as an individual file, and using the Text Pipe data conversion tool to collate around 500 files into a single spreadsheet, which I could then import into the new site’s database. It was tricky, but good fun!
Entrybox
Entrybox is a site that makes it easy for New Zealanders to find and enter competitions.
The coolest part of creating Entrybox (using the Drupal CMS), was the challenge to stay true to the awesome grapic design, using the Zen theme as a starting point.
The site has changed ownership and these days it doesn’t quite look like it used to though.
View the original Entrybox design
Robokits
Robokits sells robotic kits to New Zealanders.
I constructed the website using a combination of the excellent Ubercart open source e-commerce package and the Drupal content management system.
The website is maintained by Robokit's own staff.
Visit the Robokits online shop
St Margaret's Church
Because St Margaret's is one of those churches that is quite active in it's local community, they wanted a website that focus on what's on, when, for who.
As a result, my Information Architecture for the site focused more on activities and groups than the church itself.
Matt Galloway created a visual design that is, while not traditional for a church's website, spot-on for a small modern congregation with a huge heart for it's local community.
Tell Tails
Tell Tails was an online shop that sold children's books. It was a fun website that I loved working on, and it stocked many of the books that my daughter and I have read together.
I co-developed this site with Felicia from Tag Design, using the Drupal content management system, with online ordering provided by the e-Commerce package. Online credit card payments are processes through PayPal.
TellTails closed their doors in 2010, but here is a screen-shot:
Cornerstone Business Consulting
Towards the end of 2004 Gus Walkden started up CornerStone Business Consulting and asked me to take care of the design of his Website. (A mutual friend, Digby Scorgie, assisted with the editing.)
Then, in early 2008, Gus wanted to add a section to market his "Build Your Own Road To Success" seminars. I used the Drupal content management system to add the new section, so that visitors can view upcoming seminars and then register online.
Cornerstone is not currently actively in business, but here is a screenshot of their site:
View the design of Cornerstone Business Consulting Website
Rainbow Cooking
Rainbow Cooking is a collection of mostly South African recipes, in English, that my wife and I created for people that like the tastes and flavours of migrant cooking. We started with this project because so many of our Kiwi friends asked for South African recipes. My wife documents the recipes and I take the photographs and publish content to the site.
Rainbow Cooking is build with the Drupal content management system.
Rosebank Estate Winery and Restaurant
Our friends Johann and Hanna Scholtz bought Rosebank Estate Winery and Restaurant in 2007, and asked if I can help with a website for it. We had only two weeks to built it, but it was loads of fun. I popped over frequently to discuss the site, take photos, discuss concepts, and to get feedback on the work-in-progress.
I maintained this site until Rosebank changed ownership again in 2008.
I used the Drupal content management system to build this website, which makes it easy and affordable to perform maintenance and structural changes.
Funds 4 Photos
Funds 4 Photos was a four-page website for a business that took photographs for fundraising events. It included a slightly customised version of the PhotoStack PHP album, making it easy to add photos over time. The site was handcoded. I used Bluefish to write the code, and the beta of Firebug 1 to debug the CSS.
Funds 4 Photos ceased doing business in 2007, and their website was therefore decommissioned.
TaitWorld
TaitWorld is the global website of Tait Electronics, the Christchurch based radio communications company. As Website Manager I was responsible for a comprehensive redesign of the website that began in February 2005. It took 12 months and the involvement of about 80 Tait staff members around the world, plus the services of four Christchurch agencies, to complete the project.
TaitWorld was built using AssetNow.
Free Time: the movie
In 2003 my old friend Eben Wassermann sent me the script of a short film that he was producing, and asked me to design and build a Website for it.
My first concept, based on child-like chalk-on-blackboard drawings, was not a success and I went back to the drawing board. By this time Eben had sent me some photographs taken on the set. One of these had a striking background: vertical shadows on a dim wall, as of sunlight penetrating the dusty window of a room inside a prison. This photograph seemed to capture the mood of the story and it inspired the look of what are now the Free Time Webpages.