The brief
We were to design and develop a bespoke site, which represented the way the customer sees her business, both in terms of style and delivery.  The site would have a portfolio, secure contact form – along with a tightly integrated gallery and blog

Site history
Caron previously had an incomplete Joomla installation, which was attempting to sell and show photography using a Virtuemart store.  Joomla + Virtuemart is normally an excellent combination, but as a vehicle for showing and selling photographs, it really doesn’t work

The design
We worked really closely with the client to produce a template, and the typography for the site.  We bounced around ideas for a few weeks, fine tuning some ideas, and resigning others to the recycle bin.  In the end, we produced a really clean fresh airy template, that lets the customers photography shine out

We wanted the blog and gallery to have a total visual integration with the site

Working with the client
We had a very close working relationship with the client allowing us to produce exactly what the client asked for.  We developed some ideas, demonstrated them to the client, and then had a 2 way discussion with the customer.  We then modified these ideas, taking onboard the clients comments.  Working like this allowed us to produce a unique site, which the client is delighted with

Feature list
- Customer updatable portfolio – with a beautiful slideshow
- Static information based site
- Fully integrated, secure, fully featured photo gallery with e-commerce
- Fully integrated blog
- Security by design
- SEO by design

CSS & Typography
The typography for the site was developed in-house, and then tweaked to the client’s specification.  The seamless integration of the very diversely different dynamic parts of the site with the static parts of the site is due to the smart way the template and CSS are put together

Cross browser support
By design the site is coded to support and display correctly in Safari (on a Mac + PC) IE 5,6,7 Firefox 2, 3 and Opera

Technologies
This site uses HTML, PHP, SQL, DHTML, AJAX, A server firewall,  CSS and Javascript

SEO
As with all of our sites – the site has SEO built in – across both the static and dynamic parts of the site

Portfolio’s
The client shoots a range of different types of photography.  The portfolio section is simple, and to the point, allowing the work to showcase itself.  We used a particularly pretty reflection slideshow which we heavily modified and crafted into the site design

Photography gallery
We used a standard installation of Gallery2, and then got to work on the templates to fit the site design.  This has produced a visually unique installation of G2 retaining all of the backend and front end functionality.  One feature that is particularly excellent for photographers is Gallery Remote – which allows drag and drop of images from the photographers desktop

Blog
We used an installation of WordPress, and then wrote a template for it, to match the sites template

Training
We don’t just install and run.  We install, and bring our customers up to speed with the front and back ends of the website.  WordPress and Gallery2 have fairly steep learning curves, and we are there all the way through the learning process with the client, ironing out issues, and explaining how to use the site

Total integration
It might seem that we are banging on about this, but a bespoke static site, with a blog, and gallery, with a seamless integration between all of the component parts is a big deal, and not seen very often.  Often, sites have 3 different looks, as users jump between the different sections.  We are really pleased with the overall look

The future
We will continue to support and work with the customer over the following months and years, providing further training, minor tweaks and updates as required

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