The design
The design was a two way process with the company. The brief was to faithfully represent the company and present a smart business like, organised, operating worldwide, but based in the UK feel. We feel we have achieved this

We used a crisp readable typography, which follows through to the article editor on the backend. This allows new articles, to have a consistent feel to them

The build
This was a fascinating build for us. Partly we migrated content from the old site. We then restructured and re-formatted the content to fit the new site. We created a template, and then the content framework. We created templates for the content, and the corresponding CSS for the templates. Once the content was dealt with we concentrated on users. Firstly we modified the registration process, to collect specific customer data.

As the site is aimed at a global market, and because the laws and regulations and paperwork vary form region to region, we implemented an ACL, allowing different users to be presented with different content. Depending on if they are a customer or not, the size of the account, and the region they are in

Once we had sorted all the customer issues, we dealt with the SEO and security side of things

The Platform
This was based on Joomla 1.5. We migrated some content and users from the company’s previous Joomla 1.0 website
Dealing with users

APS Global wanted a system where registered users all over the world can be presented with different content. We have provided a structure and framework to facilitate this. We are using ACL (Access Level Control) systems to manage users in pre-determined groupings. This is especially useful for ensuring content relevancy and very useful for marketing. The site is set up to automatically contact users that have not logged in for a while etc.
Content management

We are using a ACL, we also created templates with the relevant CSS in the back end, to enable the company to add new content, including coulombs etc.

SEO
The site as we type is too young to report back on search engine optimisation. We have done some structural on-site / on-page SEO and put in systems to ensure new content gets the same treatment. Titles and URL’s are dynamically generated for optimum SEO. We have implemented a clever URL re-writing regime which creates pretty, readable URL’s. We are also doing some off-site SEO to drive targeted visitors to the website. Down the line we will be doing a SEO analysis, looking at site stats, Google analytics + commercial data, and we will tweak out the site as needed

Feature list
- Multi user CMS site
- Owners can update content as needed
- One touch site backup (database and files)
- Firewall, and other security features
- Automatic CRON based database backups
- Specific user data capture on registration
- Features to promote user loyalty
- Newsletter manager
- ACL – for granting differing users different rights to view content
- Form management (stores forms contents on database and also e-mails)
- Document management
- SEO by design
CSS
We spent a lot of time setting up the cascading style sheets (CSS) for this site. This has provided a uniform framework for user content. Typography was something we looked at carefully, which included the introduction of coulombs within content articles

Technologies
This site uses PHP, SQL, DHTML, XML, AXAX, CSS, HTML and JavaScript

Security
We spent a long time closing doors, adjusting server settings and generally locking the site out from attack and spam. We are using a firewall, white list and black list protection and obfuscated administrative login etc..

We won’t discuss security details here, but would be happy to discuss the issue as a topic on the phone with prospective clients

Hosting
We are providing our unlimited commercial hosting package for this site

Working with the clients
We worked really closely with the clients, listening to their needs, and delivering features and ideas that will allow the website to evolve with the customers business as it expands. It was a pleasure to be involved with this very two way process

Static sites
Firstly we can produce a static site or “brochure site”. A static site has pages that are fixed and unchanging.  If you want to change something, you need to contact the designer who will alter the site for you.  Static sites are very suitable for companies that have information that never changes very much.  Where price updates are done every few years, or for presenting long term factual information

Static sites are not dynamic, they dont really interact with the user, thry presrnt information, and that is it.  There is nothing wrong with a static site, infact static sites are a very good platform for a small business, and even on larger sites, can work very well.  An example of a static site we have produced is www.journeyafrica.co.uk

The Journey Africa website is a good example of a larger static site, and even though the site owners can not update pages themselves>  Just because we cal the site a static site, doesnt mean the content is not intersting or dynamic.  The individual pages themselves can have dynamic content – look at one of the hotel pages for example: http://www.journeyafrica.co.uk/one-and-only-hotel-cape-town.html.  On this page there is a slider containing nested content, a slideshow of images that is user reactive, a form feeding back page specific info to the site owner etc.  On the rest of the site you will find liknks to on the fly currency conversion, video streaming, and other DHTML slideshows and image scrollers

Blog style sites
This site is a blog style site.  The framework is provided by generic blog software, and the design and template was done in house.  The advantage of this style of site for a small to medium sized business is that information can be added, subtracted, amended very quickly.  We chose this format to cope with the way we present portfolios.  Essentially each portfolio is a new page, which we can add when ever we want

You will notice a few differences between this site and your average blog.  We don’t have calendars.  Articles are not dated and don’t display an author name.  There is no facility to add comments.  In essence, all the standard blog features have been programatically removed, leaving behind the same features that you find on a static site, that is – menu’s, and pages of information

We provide a lot of these blog based sites for small businesses, especially businesses who want to invest the time in continuously adding content to their websites

Blog style sites are quite limited in the way they present information, and don’t do some things very well.  This is why for example on the www.caronphotography.co.uk website; we integrated a blog into a static site and added a separate gallery system.  The customer uses the blog in the traditional sense, the rest of the site deals with the customers other requirements

If you want to keep amending your sites information, and the information you want to present is very simple, a blog style site has a lot of advantages for you

Content management systems (CMS)
Content management systems suit companies and organisations which have a lot of content to present and organise.  You can add, remove, and even time content.  You can have multiple authors, and a person who supervises or moderates the addition of content

A content management framework can deal with other activities, like e-commerce, galleries, forums, blogs, polls, questionnaires etc.  We used a content management system on the www.lencarta.com site.  The site in this instance streams video’s, offers downloads, and sells products.  The staff at Lencarta keep the content fresh and up to date themselves

The major advantage over a blog style site is scalability and extensibility.  A CMS system can scale up from a few pages to being absolutely enormous, with thousands of pages, managing thousands of users, and offering a plethora of functionalities that can be easily added and removed as required

One advantage of a CMS is the separation of structure, content, and design.  In other words, you can re-design the site in a year or two, and the structure and content remain the same.  You can easily re-structure existing content, or just amend existing content.  The power of adjusting the template, while everything else remains constant can not be underestimated.  Example – Christmas sales – you can re-brand your whole site, for Christmas, or the summer holidays, just by switching templates

CMS sites are not exclusively for larger businesses, they are for business and organisations that want that extra organisational layer, or require the additional features that the basic blog system does not offer

Conclusion
If you want a site that presents fairly unchanging information, and you have no desire to update content yourself – a static site is probrably your best bet.  If you have content that needs to be added to on a week by week basis, and you are happy to add the content yourself, using a simple editor, then a blog based site is possibly the best option for you.  If you have a organisation that is spread out, with lots of content, or you need a site to expand with yoru business as it grows,  or you are looking for a fluid reactive site that is scalable, then a content managment (CMS) type of website will be your best option

About the Author

Richard King has been producing websites for over 15 years, and will be delighted to discuss your business needs with you.  We do not have a one size fits all approach.  For a no-obligation, free consultation and chat, just call Richard on 0115 845 8953  The least he can do is make sure you are on the right track

The site
www.merlinswakefield.com

The design
We had a bit of fun with the design, and it encompased a few features that really spring life into the site. For the background we heavily styled one of our stock photographs. We wanted the header to be fun, but not get in the way, letting the user concentrate on the page.  We designed the header in house using FLASH.  We worked a dark moody style by using careful typography

The Platform
This was based on a really good open source CMS platform – Joomla, with a modified Virtuemart store.  More about that later

Dealing with users
The site does some quite clever things.  To begin if a user is just shopping, they can register, and they automatically have an account in the forum, the store etc.. or if they register for the forum, a shopping account is created automatically.  The site remembers abandoned shopping carts, and offers them back to users on a re-visit.  The site can also automatically recognise users that havent visited for a while and send “come back” emails

The forum
No need to re-invent the wheel, we used Fireboard, and re-wrote the templates to give a totally homogenous style with the rest of the site. Users are managed via the CMS system

The store
This is a specially modified Virtumart installation. The store presented us another challenge – the previous site was a 1-off database, with a 1-off structure.  To top this, the previous host, and designer wasn’t allowing Control Panel access.   Fortunatally, we managed to figure out how to mount the database, using just FTP access (dont ask), extract and convert the data and import it into the new installation.  That took a lot of work, but a lot less than typing in about a 1000 products!  The import included dealing with the 1000’s of iamges, which we had to bulk re-size using Lightroom.  The store presnted another chalenge – Postage.  We had to develop a specific postage module to allow a split postage method in-house

SEO
I can’t stress enough that Search Engine Optimisation is something that you need to keep re-visiting, and changing, but only when the data really is telling you something.  The site as we type is too young to report back on SEO, but we have put together the same superbly performing system as we used on the Lencarta site.  Titles and URLS are dynamically generated for optimum SEO.  Combined with a clever URL re-writing regime which creates pretty, readable URL’s we are sure we have another winner on our hands. Down the line we will be doing a SEO anaysis, looking at site stats, google analytics + commercial data, and we will tweak out the site as needed

Feature list
- E-commerce based on a heavily modified Virtuemart set up
- Forum
- Community based user management
- Automatic CRON based database backups
- Manual full site (with database) zip backups
- Multi user CMS
- PayPalX credit / debit card integration
- Security by design
- SEO by design

CSS
We spent a lot of time setting up the cascading style sheets for this site.  This has provided a uniform framework for user content.  At the templating stage we spent a lot of time and attention to ensuring cross browser compatibility, and ensuring the more interactive features gracefully depreciate for older or non compliant browsers.  Like all of our builds, the site was rolled out in phases – Template, store, content and backend features

Technologies
This site uses PHP, SQL, DHTML, XML, AXAX, CSS and Javascript

Security
Clearly a high profile, user oriented site needs some level of security.  We spent a long time closing doors, adjusting server settings and generally locking the site out from attack and spam.  We wont discuss security details here, but would be happy to discuss it in general on the phone with prospective clients

Hosting
We are providing our unlimited commercial hosting package for this site

The launch
We launched the site, and within minutes we had a sale!

Working with the clients
We worked really closely with the clients, providing 1-1 remote desktop training (we take over the clients machine) and telephone support.  We will continue to support the clients over the next months, providing training as needed

Client testimonial

We are delighted with the way Richard and Elizabeth from www.placeofdesign.com have produced our website. Richard is always there with help and guidance, and I would not hesitate in recommending their services to anyone thinking about a website – first class!

Phil
Merlins of Wakefield (UK)

Address: www.lencarta.com

Building the site
The build was to a very specified time scale, and included formatting all the product images.  The build involved very close cooperation with Lencarta on a day to day basis during the build, and then some followup work with customers after the build.  The build was done in phases, with a server move and dealing with the existing site to minimise downtime and disruption

Content management
This is a CMS site.  That means the staff at Lencarta can edit content themselves from all corners of the country, and access the back end of the store and process orders remotely.  It was important for our client to have a site that was instant and reactive to their very flexible needs

Feature list
- E-commerce based on a heavily modified Virtuemart set up
- Automatic CRON based database backups
- Manual full site (with database) zip backups
- Multi user CMS
- PROTX credit / debit card integration
- Clear efficient organisation of information
- Security by design
- SEO by design

CSS
We spent a lot of time setting up the cascading style sheets for this site.  This has provided a framework for user contents which is uniform.  At the templating stage we spent a lot of time and attention to ensuring cross browser compatibility, and ensuring the more interactive features gracefully depreciate for older or non compliant browsers.  Like all of our builds, the site was rolled out in phases – Template, store, content and backend features

Technologies
This site uses PHP, SQL, DHTML, XML, AXAX, CSS and Javascript

SEO
We used a really neat system on this site – the site automatically generates some of the SEO, by design.  Som is more manual and pinpointed.  The result is a broad spectrum of very individually marketed and high ranking page.  Considering that google and firefox had blacklisted the previous site on the same domain, We are very proud to say we had a few page 1’s placements, not to mention the No. 1 placements on Google in under 3 weeks!

Hosting
The previous site we replaced was hosted on an un-patched old server with PHP 3 on it.  This explains why it was unfortunately hacked and full of viruses.  We provided the client with a superb commercial hosting package on fully patched servers with unlimited SQL databases, unlimited bandwidth and a clever e-mail solution

Training
You can’t provide a site like this without providing training.  We have set up a totally separate training site in another domain for the Lencarta staff to learn how to edit and add content, and how to use the web store.  We also provided one-to-one remote desktop training where we instructed on the basics even though we are at different ends of the country.  After a few hours, the staff at Lencarta learnt the backend.  The provision of a training site is a real bonus, as ideas and processes can be tested away from the real site, allowing user errors to be ironed out before they are able to edit on the main site

Systems integration
We provided a method of exporting orders into a third parties remote warehouse computer system.  This involved formatting the orders into .CSV files which are feed into a warehouses back-end computer system

The future
Over the years we expect the Lencarta business to grow.  By design the site can evolve with Lencarta’s growth, which will come with 100% support from the Place of design team

Customer testimonial

Historically, Lencarta has relied on Ebay sales for several years and when we decided on a new e-commerce website for our new range of studio lighting products we simply didn’t understand the value of a professional web designer and we didn’t realise the importance of good hosting either.

As a result, we bought an expensive and totally useless website that both we and our customers found impossible to use. Sales plummeted and we then asked Richard King to start from scratch, with what turned out to be a very complex, highly technical operation that needed to both work well and look good.

The new website was completed on time and it works brilliantly. We have no hesitation in recommending Richard, who is extremely helpful as well as being creative and producing technically excellent work.

H Liu – Lencarta
Contact lencarta