I recently completed my first fully Responsive WordPress site for Journey Jottings. Linda contacted me from Australia to ask me if I’d be interested in helping revamp her website.
Linda sells a unique product that combines a map with a journal and allows you to track your travels so that you have a unique record of your journey. She was kind enough to send me samples of some of the maps and magnets that she produces to help inform the direction of the design.
I had worked with Justin before on revamping his Free Clep Prep website.
This time, however, he was looking for something a lot more ambitious—an application that would allow users to prepare degree plans detailing all of the CLEP/DSST exams they would need to take in order to gain enough college credit to earn their degrees.
This was a complicated project as the universities all had different courses and requirements so it needed to be super flexible. Given his large existing user base, it also had to be scalable.
The Test Selection Screen
I started, as always, with research. I looked through all of the catalogs that the different colleges had to get an idea of how they structure their degree programs. I also had long email conversations with the ever-patient Justin as I wrapped my head around all of the nuances of this project.
Then I set to work designing the database. In order to make it scalable, I harnessed the power of the ‘R’ in ‘RDBMS’ (Relational DataBase Management System), making sure that pieces of data only appeared once in the database (also known as ‘normalizing’).
Having multiple users, multiple schools with multiple degree programs and many tests that had to span degree programs and schools meant that planning the data structure was critical in order for the application to be quick, scalable and flexible.
The Application's Degree Plan Page
Having designed the data structure, it was on to the construction.
Because of the nature of the content, it made sense to build the application using Object-Orientated PHP as objects could be used to represent the various elements—schools, degrees and tests. This would allow a great deal of flexibility.
Once the foundation was there, it was on to the fun stuff! Justin had said that he wanted certain JavaScript effects (e.g. the test name to be scored out when the user marked it as done) but because of JQuery UI’s power I decided to throw in quite a few neat little features to make the user interface easier to use and more instructive.
This was my first attempt at building a fully-featured web application from scratch and was certainly a learning process but both Justin and I are very pleased with the results. Hopefully it will help many people on their paths to achieving their degrees.
I recently had the pleasure of redesigning Free-Clep-Prep.com, an insanely detailed guide to Clep and DSST college examinations in the US. Justin, the owner, had done a stupendous job of putting together one of the most comprehensive online guides I’ve seen on almost any subject and, as a thank you to his many visitors, he hired me to redesign the site.
I thought this showed incredibly good judgment and taste, and liked him immediately.
The client for this site contacted me again after I had finished his business website and asked if I could redesign his entertainment site. This site was a homage to Sherlock Holmes, but with a very creative twist – it was written as if the writer were Dr Watson living in the present day.
I love having the opportunity to do sites like these because they offer a lot of creative freedom. The brief was bashed out over a few late night dinners – my favourite kinds of meetings because they are always a bit of a creative free-for-all (and generally involve copious amounts of wine). Plenty of great ideas were thrown around and we both left very excited about the possibilites.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a big fan of WordPress. I use it as a base to build all of my websites and here’s why:
1) It’s only good for blogs, right?
I think the upcoming release of WordPress 3 takes it closer to putting that debate to bed with a resounding ‘No’. WordPress 3 allows custom post types and taxonomies, which makes creating different content editing areas for different parts of the site a breeze.
How #Yahoo killed #Flickr http://t.co/cEcDLY4M. We haven't used Flickr in a long while.
Hi! I'm Simon Fairbairn and I am very fortunate because I love what I do!
I spend my days designing and building websites and teaching people about Search Engine Optimisation, traffic analysis and conversion rates.
In other words, I help people create beautiful websites and then I help make those websites perform.