A week ahead of schedule and I’m putting the final touches on the Lotus Media Group website. I’ve completed everything except for the content copy being added in. Since I started this project with the goal of having it finished in time for the CSS Reboot, I’m quite happy to have finished it well in time for the event. Currently the only page publically available is the email notification page however. That will stay up until May 1st.
I ended up using a few different elements in this that I hadn’t been familiar with. First off was a far greater bit of attention being paid to the actual method of building each page. I made sure to keep the sidebar content as well as the navigation system be called via a php include to make editing that content far easier in the long run. Handling those items via php will allow far greater scalability in the future as a variety of scripts can quickly be added in without requiring a full rewrite.
I also used a slightly different method of Faux Columns than usual in creating the layout. I made sure to make things just slightly different in IE to illustrate to prospective clients why standards compliant browsers are better in a very subtle way. I’ve also used a twist on the “onion skinning” css technique on the Firefox version of the site.
Since part of the spec required a backend client management script I decided to go with a rather Basecamp-esque open source script called WebCollab. It’s an excellently written project management system with a whole slew of useful functions such as:
- Easy to read and intuitive screen layouts. Most users can use WebCollab without training.
- Individual users are assigned rights and permissions. Users can also be put into groups with controlled rights and permissions.
- Projects and tasks progress and approaching deadlines are graphically highlighted.
- Changes are personally highlighted for other users to see.
- Changes and new items can be emailed to affected users.
It took a bit of time to see how the system handled CSS and in the end I had to rewrite quite a bit of the backend in order to have the look I wanted. In the end it both complimented the front end layout and provided a secure area where clients can communicate with the dev team.
Overall the time invested in this project gave me the chance to sit back and really formulate how I wanted things to look as well as to continue to wrap my brain around integrating design ideas with existing Open Source software. One of the best parts is for everything I did the pages validate as xhtml strict using the application/xhtml content tag so it’s not tag soup in any way :D
For now head over to lotusmg.com and register for the announcement email.
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