September 12th, 2008
I have completed the production and implementation of a new site design for Matt Wreford, which can now be viewed on the website at http://www.mattwreford.com/, with only a few significant changes to my initial idea.
I have based the site on Wordpress, using it as a Content Management System allowing for the quick adding of portfolio entries and amendments.
Essentially the pages have been used for each section with their own templates, and posts can be categorised so that they will fall into each of the three portfolio sections and with a bit of PHP will display in the right portfolio page.
Read the rest of this entry »
August 31st, 2008
Having received some images and instructions on content, I am quite pleased with the way the design is going. Here is a screenshot of the Home page, featuring simply his three rules:
It is still featuring the fluid two column layout where both sides expand and keep the content in the centre, and the tabbed menu holds itself at top right.
August 24th, 2008
Because I didn’t like the way a large comment form appears at the bottom of every post and page on my site, but I still wanted to keep the comment functionality available, I started looking into ways AJAX (and preferably something that uses the mootools library which I added to my site a long while back) could be used to make a form that is hidden until needed, for example in an expanding div like my Flash header.
While using Drupal during my work placement I had seen the likes of forms inside a lightbox style script called Thickbox, so I began searching for a Mootools compatible lightbox that can contain any HTML I want, such as the commenting form, knowing it was possible to find. In the end I came across Phatfusion Multibox, a great variation on Lightbox that allows a number of different things be displayed inside a lightbox.
It was easy enough to implement as well, adding my comment form to a HTML link, however I needed to make a slight change to get it to work in IE7 (and one would guess 6 as well). Basically there is a bug that specifically applies to displaying a HTML element in IE7 and is explained and fixed in http://forum.phatfusion.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=149
July 25th, 2008
I thought I would try and make some category images for the main shop categories for the Ocean Addict site, and here are some of the first ones:
I felt vector images better suited the general style of the site, since previous graphics like the SAS Beach Cleanup image looked so good the moment it was planted in the sidebar.
June 28th, 2008
I have started work on a new design for http://www.mattwreford.com/, the owner of which felt that his existing site wasn’t really up to scratch. Knowing only that the client likes very simple and minimal designs, here is a screenshot of my initial layout and general concept for the site.
It will be quite a simple structure of 5 pages (four plus a link to a CV download) as requested, tabbed, and with two main content columns that serve different purposes on each page. For the CSS aspect of this design I have experimented with fluid column widths on both sides, where the content is grouped clearly in two blocks but they centre and expand within their columns with the resizing of the page.
Read the rest of this entry »
May 31st, 2008
I have felt a little bit discontented with the way the Ocean Addict site has been going from an architectural point-of-view, particularly since adding the shop which is using the ancient system of OSCommerce and its flakey table-based layout and template system. The Ocean Addict site was always going to be an online store but initially started off as a related news and information blog with the view to expanding it. However my choice of using a blog as the core of the site (even one as expandable as Wordpress), and knowing very little about what open source CMS’s have to offer, is looking more and more limiting.
Read the rest of this entry »
May 23rd, 2008
Here are some new buttons to replace the horrific GIF images that came with the clean install of oscommerce on Ocean Addict. In order, they are Accounts, Shopping Cart and Checkout.
Read the rest of this entry »
May 12th, 2008
I have decided to start redeveloping my own website’s design again, this time finishing the things I wanted from it in the beginning but couldn’t quite achieve the first time around, from the design through to the administration.
While visually the difference will be pretty unnoticeable (still black, dark purple, light green and golden-white), underneath there is all change again as I shift everything from separate templated pages to an entirely Wordpress-driven site, hopefully allowing me to quickly and easily update things when time becomes a much more valuable commodity in the final year. Of course, this has required some serious customisation but should hopefully make the site much more robust.
And then finally I might get around to producing some nice flash content to fill in that dynamic header section at the top of the pages!
The flash actionscript behind this is flexible enough to allow for any size
puzzle to be created and jumbled as many times as I like. In addition to this,
the difficulty of rotating pieces is also a feature.