Irving Design revamps London church site with ExpressionEngine

Adam Khan, Thursday, June 25th, 2009

After designing the new web site for the Golders Green Parish Church, Mark Irving of Irving Design asked EngagingNet to deploy the site in two steps: first as a static site, then as a content-managed site powered by ExpressionEngine.

Wisely, Mark conceived the site to have only two layouts; every page (except the homepage) would conform either to a words-focused or a pictures-focused template. This elegant approach helped reduce the workload and therefore the cost.

First, we coded the HTML/CSS from comps supplied by Mark. There were only three pages: the homepage, a page about children’s activities using the words-focused template, and a page about the church staff in the pictures template. Thank you “The” Danny Barnes for the HTML/CSS mark-up.

After launching the static site we began the dynamic setup, populating the EE installation with channels and fields. The EE channels were grouped into two types, core and multimedia, where entries in multimedia channels—such as photos, PDF documents and sound files—can be related to any core entries. Thanks again to Yvonne Martinsson of fellow EE Pro Network member Studio.Freewheelin for implementing this build-out so smoothly.

Another way we kept costs down was by relying on jQuery. Many of the site’s design wheels would have taken much longer had clever javascripters not already invented elegant ways to do them.

To wit, in Mark’s design all photos have dropshadows and photo sizes can vary. The jQuery Dropshadow plugin by Larry Stevens handles this nicely.

Mark wanted the homepage intro photo to be a slideshow. For this we recycled the trusty Cycle jQuery plugin by M. Alsup.

For the main menu, the corners of the first and last entries were to be rounded. There are a number of jQuery plugins for this, but I went with David Turnbull and Steven Wittens’s Corners because unlike others it handles transparency, which was required because behind the menu is a gradient background.

The menu itself runs on the Menu jQuery plugin by Marco van Hylckama Vlieg.

And in order to display photos fullsize from the photos layout, we added the Lightbox jQuery plugin by Leandro Vieira Pinho.

With extensive use of jQuery plugins on the client-side, a well-architected ExpressionEngine deployment on the server side, and a fresh and flexible design serving every page, this is an inexpensive yet powerful contemporary web site that the church staff members themselves are now operating.

Chicago arthouse and film distributor Music Box deploys ExpressionEngine

Adam Khan, Thursday, June 18th, 2009

It was a very pleasant surprise indeed when Chicago’s Music Box Theatre contacted EngagingNet to deploy ExpressionEngine for their two web sites, musicboxtheatre.com and musicboxfilms.com. Not only are movie-related sites fun to work on, but I actually knew the theater from back when I was a student at the University of Chicago.

My previous-century patronage is not however why Music Box made contact; instead, what happened is that Chris Welch, then Music Box’s web designer, had read about EngagingNet’s role in the EE conversion of subtraction.com and figured that what’s good enough for Khoi Vinh is good enough for them. So thanks again, Khoi!—this one was a satisfying bit of personal continuity.

Converting MBT and MBF to EE wasn’t only fun, it was also quite challenging, as Program Director Brian Andreotti and I discovered during numerous Skype conversations in which we hammered out the sites’ publishing business logic, which became more subtle and complex from an EE perspective the closer we looked at it. But that challenge—pushing EE to places I’d never taken it—was also fun. Really!

The result is two web sites that appear the same as ever—except where Music Box wanted design changes and additional features—but that are now regularly updated with ease by Music Box staff.

Thanks to the bright and generous Yvonne Martinsson of fellow EE Pro Network member Studio.Freewheelin for helping with the build-out.

Securosis migrates from WordPress to ExpressionEngine

Adam Khan, Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

A security industry analyst, Rich Mogull also writes on security-related issues for TidBITS. When TidBITS’s sister-site Take Control Ebooks was recently migrated to ExpressionEngine, it was EngagingNet who did the job. So when Rich decided to move the web site of his independent analyst firm Securosis from WordPress to EE, he contacted EngagingNet.

To implement the migration, we imported scores of tags, hundreds of posts and members, and thousands of comments. For the posts, we used the new Solspace Importer module, which made that part at least easier and even fun. For tags, we first converted WordPress tags into EE categories, then in turn converted these into EE tags. And we set up a method to 301-redirect all old WordPress URLs to their new EE equivalents. EngagingNet also advised on the EE architecture—fields, channels, categories, URL structuring, etc.—and installed the standard clutch of controlpanel add-ons.

The new site was designed by Insight Designs of Boulder, CO. Rich did much of the EE templating himself.

In the period since the site was launched back in April, we’ve developed some additional functionality, including a consolidated comments management screen.

Snooze rolls over to ExpressionEngine’s side of the bed

Adam Khan, Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Once upon a time there was a funky Brighton bed & breakfast called Snooze. In fact, Snooze was so funky that it won Runner-Up in the national AA Funkiest B&B of the Year award for 2009-2010. Snooze had a funky “OnePage” web site designed by the funky Brighton Websiteforall creative web agency that was powered by a bespoke content management system. All was well, until one day Snooze owners Paul & Tony asked to be able to sort the photo display at the site.

You see, with bespoke CMS’s, sometimes seemingly simple additions can require surprisingly significant work and expense. And this is apparently how it was for sorting photos at Snooze.

Now, since Websiteforall had already decided to standardize all client sites onto ExpressionEngine, this photo-sorting problem seemed an opportune moment to switch Snooze over to EE, particularly since EngagingNet could rebuild the entire backend—including sortable photos—for pretty much the same price as what the original developer wanted for the photo sorting feature alone.

The resulting EE site hasn’t changed much for its esteemed visitors, but underneath it now sits a very powerful engine.

The End.

That is, until Paul & Tony next call Stephen, because from now on the Snooze web site will be ready and waiting for lots more funk-tionality.

Mashing up Google Maps with ExpressionEngine search

Adam Khan, Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

After succeeding on a previous job for Vector Media Group of New York City, co-principal Matt Weinberg tapped EngagingNet to build out the ExpressionEngine back-end for a new restaurant web site, alwayshungryny.com. The job contained a particular challenge: a geographical search facility—since dubbed “Create-a-Neighborhood”—wherein Google Maps are integrated with ExpressionEngine’s search.

The formation of a rectangle within a Google Map had already been coded using the Google Maps API; EngagingNet built on this, integrating a coordinates-based clause to the EE search module that limits results to the area circumscribed by the rectangle. The geography-based search results can then be mixed with keywords and any of scores of categories.

Launched in April 2009, Always Hungry is a valuable resource for New Yorkers and visitors to the city.

Schools association adopts web system to manage teacher training

Adam Khan, Friday, February 20th, 2009

Built with Engaging on ExpressionEngine and launched February 2009, the Christian Schools of Florida’s Master Inservice Program is not a web site but a web system, a secure area within the larger christianschoolsfl.org site produced by WebLadyBug.

Though the system does have some content, it serves primarily not as a publication but as a tool to help manage ongoing teacher training for CSF’s 25 member schools. Actively used by hundreds of teachers and dozens of school administrators, the MIP system demonstrates that ExpressionEngine—usually considered a content management system—can power a growing set of an organization’s business processes, and that a public-facing web site can become merely one facet of an integrated and streamlined browser-based organization-wide information management system.

That such a setup can now be produced at unprecedented low costs by small web development shops is a game changer. Organizations that previously considered both a dynamic web presence and an organization-wide management system to be beyond their means can—and should!—now consider developing both.

TidBITS takes control with ExpressionEngine

Adam Khan, Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Educate your customers, they say, but once again EngagingNet found there was no need as the job was for people smarter and more knowledgeable—educators themselves. Adam Engst, co-founder of the venerable Macintosh newsletter TidBITS, publisher of Take Control Ebooks, contacted EngagingNet to help redeploy the takecontrolbooks.com web site using the ExpressionEngine content management system.

Takecontrolbooks.com had grown organically on the powerful Web Crossing platform, but Web Crossing is not really a CMS, and posting new books to the growing Take Control catalog had become an increasingly labyrinthine ordeal. Adam wanted a setup that would make the process painless.

No visual redesign was involved; in fact, visitors to the new site will be hard-pressed to notice that a completely new engine now powers their treasure trove of Macintosh knowledge. Instead, what they’ll hopefully see is more ebooks as the TidBITS mavens spend less time updating the site and more of it, to paraphrase the site’s homepage, helping leading experts provide us with the answers we need now.

See their brief take on the switchover at “Take Control Site Now Running on ExpressionEngine”.

Deploying ExpressionEngine for a French charity gateway

Adam Khan, Friday, January 9th, 2009

Now standardized on ExpressionEngine for content management, Brighton-based creative web agency Websiteforall won the assignment to build Email Solidaire, a new web site on French charitable giving. The site’s owners, Paris-based internet marketers B2D1, wanted the ability to manage content themselves, mainly to add and edit charitable organizations and news stories about them.

After designing the site, Websiteforall principal Stephen James handed the HTML/CSS/Javascript files to EngagingNet and we converted them into ExpressionEngine templates and built the ExpressionEngine deployment to support them.

The work went quickly and the B2D1 folks were pleased with the results.

Update: The site is beginning to gain attention, with a mention in Marie Claire, “L’e-mail solidaire : un nouveau moyen d’aider !”.

Websiteforall relaunches home site using ExpressionEngine

Adam Khan, Saturday, November 8th, 2008

Always pushing to improve offerings to clients, award-winning creative web agency Websiteforall set out to standardize content management onto a single system—and selected ExpressionEngine. The first step: to convert the Websiteforall site itself to EE. Websiteforall principal Stephen James asked EngagingNet to implement the EE deployment while he redesigned the site.

The result is an extensive portfolio that conveys Websiteforall’s services and track record more immediately than before. Indeed, so streamlined is the site that it’s produced by a single EE template. Continue to article

2008

• Helping Khoi Vinh migrate Subtraction.com to ExpressionEngine
• Coral Ridge Church launches new web site
• Bestnetworksecurity.com switches from Joomla to ExpressionEngine

2007

• “Perfect” new content management system for fabric fashion site
• Archaeological Center auction #40 biggest yet