They do some truly amazing work in the print field and have an impressive client list.

The design of their site was their creation and with a little bit of guidance to make it web-ready it came out pretty neatly. Tailor made to be viewed no lower than 1024×768, it fits nicely in most screen resolutions.

The tabbed navigation is even semantically coded (plain text in a bulleted list) through some nifty CSS tricks. The site is powered entirely through WordPress with XML files to edit all flash content.

The portfolio items feature a dynamic crumb-trail navigation and pagination on all the sections. The identities section pulls a custom field thumbnail icon onto the page for each item and links it to it’s respective post.

The site is now done with phase one, and soon we embark on the FTP section which will feature a revolutionary file transfer interface. Both uploads and downloads.

A great client, and the site is already showing promise.

Time to watch…

Well, that actually looks like a decent set of new features. I especially like the ability to restore previously saved versions of your posts. I will upgrade shortly, but as I often do, I’ll run it locally for a week or two before committing it to my live site.

That twist is that it comes more in the shape of a cellphone contract than a huge once off or phased costing. Starting with 3 packages, you get a host of features and special services which you’d otherwise pay no less than R10 – R15k for.

It’s an idea that just could bring quality website design, development and consulting services to small and medium sized businesses, or even individuals. It’s a concept that poses a certain element of risk to me, but with things planned out properly, I have minimised this risk and with me not out to “get” anyone we can settle into some good productive design work.

My one aim behind this is to minimise the crap that is currently being spewed out by the hoards of newbie web designers and moonlighters that clients seem to be so readily commissioning for quite an important, powerful part of their business. At the same time making it affordable with the option of payments split over your choice of term (6, 12 or 24 months).

Whether or not this will pick up, I have put a fair deal of effort into it’s modelling and planning. I started with a business model document which outlined the offering, the conditions, the pricing and what ever else needed to be put in writing from a business perspective (this is still a work in progress, but will probably never be “finished”). I had Cobus over at Fresh01 integrate my design which I created using some of the content I wrote in the business document into WordPress and the legal side of things is underway by my lawyer.

I’ll most certainly post updates on the progression of this endeavour as and when they happen.

I’ve just installed the Google Analytics plugin by Wilfred van der Deijl. I’m yet to experience any problems. It was a mere task of uploading a PHP file to the plugins directory and some activation and configuration from within WordPress’ admin interface. Honestly couldn’t be simpler, aside from maybe uploading the file from the admin area.

Actually everything has been pretty straight forward and bug free from the get go. I made one mistake in installation by using the incorrect URL to run the installation, but I quickly flushed and re-started. The setup couldn’t have been easier.

A New Platform Looming

That having been said, for more advanced requirements, including support, training and a seemingly endless list of features, I still have my eyes set on the looming public release of Platform by Realm Digital. I have had a few meetings with the director Wesley Lynch of Realm already and they seem to be the way of the future for serious webtreneurs. Unfortunately for systems like Joomla, this platform is what you do best, only better, and then a whole lot more.

I have no reason to pimp Realm’s Platform, but in my personal honest opinion, most anything else doesn’t come close at this stage. More on this in time.

I’ve chosen to use a theme for now and it’s called Cutline. A nice basic theme that allows you to focus on content rather than the frilly edges. To coin a rather old phrase in saying “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”, I intend to make things a little more worthwhile for all by steering a little more away from unnecessary frills and embellishments. I’m not scrapbooking here after all am I?

Well, I hope you stick around, bookmark, subscribe to my feed, or do whatever you do to keep up to date with your favourite sites. I’ll post again shortly.