Archive for the ‘web design’ Category

So is it possible to build a site in a weekend?

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

The answer to that is definitely yes.. did I manage it with my Turn off your Lights site? Err.. No! It’s not the end of the word, I spent a fair chunk of time working on it and I’m fairly pleased with the progress. I made a cake too!

cake

There is a lot of content ready to go into the site and there has also been a fair bit of customisation on the back end of the CMS. I really like using Silverstripe to build websites, it has been a fairly steep learning curve with some areas but not it is really starting to pay off. I’m using the latest 2.4.5 version too which came out a few days ago, which is, seemingly, exactly the same!

Anyone who wants to send in pictures to be featured on my site now have a pretty snazzy form to fill in. After its been styled should make things fairly straight forward. Most of the success of the site will rely on user generated content, so it will be important to make this process as simple as possible.

So.. I wonder what progress will have been made by next weekend!

Building a website in a weekend..

Saturday, February 5th, 2011

The Turn off your Lights website project is coming along quite well.. The CMS is installed, quite a lot of the pages have been created and the contact form is working. I have made a start on the content – I usually do this last, which normally means it doesn’t get done until weeks after finishing a site!

black candy screenshot

Anyone who has used silverstripe should recognise the default black candy theme!

Next up, I will carry on writing the text to go on the pages that I have created. When I get bored of that I will do the page templates and the CSS. As well as doing the Silverstripe theme, there is also a WordPress theme for the blog. There is a blog module in the CMS which I have used on other sites, but I think it’s a bit clumsy and doesn’t work as well as it could. The blog on my site has been set up on a sub-domain and has a couple of years of content on there – moving it isn’t an option.

Last night I even found some time to update bits on this site too.. I have added quite a few links and information about my websites the my stuff page.

Is it possible to build a website in a weekend?

Friday, February 4th, 2011

I have been working on one my Turn off your Lights website on and off for well over two years! It’s one of those things which always gets put it to the back of my to-do list, as other bits take priority over it. That is until now..

A few weeks ago I saw this, and it kind of inspired me..

I should have a good chunk of time over the weekend so I thought I’d spend it finishing the site,

The first stage.. finish off some small bits of work, which include:

  • A new landing page for a PPC campaign for L3 Living
  • Email a new prespective client about some SEO work
  • Publish some new episodes for the audiophile podcast
  • Update the audiophile page on the Subverb website
  • Empty the washing machine… bore!

After this I will instal Silverstripe and then get on with it! I think the biggest thing will be writing the content, so I think I will do this before doing the html and CSS for the pages. The site wont do anything particularly fancy to begin with, so that part should be pretty straight forward.. thats the plan anyway.

I wonder how its all going to pan out…

recktangle

Edward Lewis, Nottingham, UK | 2009 - 2024