TikTakToe (Yes, This Site!)

A quick and easy Wordpress site, with a few mods!

I needed something flexible, quick to install and with a good choice of themes and plugins - everywhere I turned it was 'Wordpress this' and 'Wordpress that'. Fair enough, even though I'm more a Microsoft kinda guy, I had a look and came away impressed! Now I'm a convert - it's so easy to use, the admin suite is a dream and there are more plugins than you can shake a stick at. The perfect solution for the busy person!

Technologies Used

Wordpress
A sprinkling of JQuery and JQuery plugins for a bit of bling!
Usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

TikTakToe (Yes, This Site!)

Blog, Brochure, Content Management

Bibijis

Ecommerce, the easy way!

What do you do when you want to get an online shop up and selling your products online as quickly as possible? Use a hosted online shop solution is the answer! With not much time to evaluate the many offerings out there, ekmPowershop was chosen as it offered a cheap monthly price plus was fairly easy to style as required. Once the products had been added, integration with PayPal and Google Checkout setup, all that was required was to add some nice styling and branding to make the site a little more attractive! Now that's what you call a turn-key solution!

Technologies Used

ekmPowershop
Usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

Bibijis

Ecommerce

Bibijis, New Website (Coming Soon!)

A brand new look and more powerful online shop.

While the existing Bibijis website fulfilled a need, as the company grew a more powerful ecommerce engine was required. Having looked around at the offerings, Magento was chosen as far and away the best currently on the market, with the added bonus that it was free! Throw in the fact that there are an ever increasing number of plugins/extensions to cater for most eventualities, Magento seemed the natural choice to increase sales online. Simple to setup, easy to style, with a fully featured admin suite allowing full control of inventory, marketing and payment - every shop owners dream come true! Still work in progress, with a launch date sometime early 2011...

Technologies Used

Magento
A sprinkling of JQuery and JQuery plugins for a bit of bling!
Usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

Bibijis, New Website (Coming Soon!)

Ecommerce

The Soupery

A turn-key online shop to bring soup to the masses!

The remit? An online presence plus ecommerce capabilities but without the 'bloat' from a normal commerce application. With only a limited number of products and an existing retail customer base, this client didn't need the normal bells and whistles associated with a full-blown application - all they needed was to manage a simple product inventory and take orders online, nothing more, nothing less. I decided against an off-the-shelf ecommerce platform like Magento or nopCommerce, due to their complexity; I also decided against a hosted shop such as ekmPowershop or Shopify, again due to complexity and high cost/use ratio. Better a bespoke solution that I could rollout quickly and be able to tweak as needed - this was realised in ASP.NET using SQL Server with integration with PayPal. A simple cart solution was implemented, allowing the customer to browse products, add to a basket and purchase. For the admin, a basic product and order management system was created. A quick turn-around, a happy client and soup all round!

Technologies Used

C#
ASP.NET
Visual Studio
SQL Server 2008
The usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

The Soupery

Ecommerce

NetRent

Data-driven property portfolio and marketing portal

5 websites in one; a searchable property database, blog, forum, resource centre and marketing tool make this website a thriving portal for both landlords and tenants alike. Budget constraints and the need to react to the market quickly but effectively all called for some pretty inventive solutions atop a legacy ASP site, with new development being carried out in .NET, but also the need to support existing Classic ASP - ouch, but then I like a challenge!

Technologies Used

C#
ASP.NET/Classic ASP
Visual Studio
SQL Server 2008
3rd Party data feeds
Blog
Forum
The usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

NetRent

Data Driven

WelshSlate Store

A customised ecommerce solution.

Take one client, add in a dash of ecommerce, blend with a short timescale, sprinkle with a limited budget then fold in some bespoke development. What have you got? A customised nopCommerce online store, offering both the power of a fully featured ecommerce engine and a good deal of flexibility! The remit was pretty straightforward - they needed an online shop, simple enough, but they also needed to incorporate a 'sign designer' to allow customers to create their own designs online and send. I chose nopCommerce as I felt comfortable changing the code to integrate the custom designer, due to my experience with .NET and SQL Server; it is also becoming a more mature product with an active community and good support; it's one of the better ecommerce platforms out there for .NET currently; it's free!

Technologies Used

C#
ASP.NET
Visual Studio
SQL Server 2008
nopCommerce
A sprinkling of JQuery and JQuery plugins for a bit of bling!
The usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

What is nopCommerce?

nopCommerce is a fully customizable shopping cart. It's stable and highly usable. nopCommerce is an open source e-commerce solution that is ASP.NET 4.0 based with a MS SQL 2005 (or higher) backend database. The easy-to-use shopping cart solution is uniquely suited for merchants that have outgrown existing systems, and has everything you need to get started in selling physical and digital goods over the internet. Find out more here.

WelshSlate Store

Brochure, Content Management, Data Driven, Ecommerce

Alex Thornton

A Flickr-driven gallery website for a Glasgow artist!

Showcase gallery site required! Minimal budget! ASAP! I choose Flickr and Flickr.NET to ease the pain and reduce the costs - no need for a bespoke admin area as Flickr does all that and more, giving power to the artist to create and edit his portfolio with ease (and no maintenance fee!) - a simple yet elegant solution that made this artist happy indeed!

Technologies Used

C#
ASP.NET
Flickr.NET
Flash
Visual Studio
SQL Server 2008
The usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

Alex Thornton

Data Driven

Spectrum Light & Sound

Ecommerce, disco, disco, disco!

A straightforward nopCommerce implementation, with a slight tweak to improve SEO and conversions. This busy site was launched just a few months prior to Christmas and saw a high number of sales for the festive period and continues to grow daily.

Technologies Used

C#
ASP.NET
Visual Studio
SQL Server 2008
nopCommerce
A sprinkling of JQuery and JQuery plugins for a bit of bling!
The usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

What is nopCommerce?

Spectrum Light & Sound

Ecommerce

Talking Point

Social networking, industry focused!

A total rewrite of BlogEngine.NET to cater for this clients' requirements, with the addition of a 3rd party data feed. With an emphasis on coding standards and security, this site proved to be a challenge, especially wrestling with BlogEngine.NET and it's idiosyncracies!

Technologies Used

BlogEngine.Net
C#
ASP.NET
Visual Studio
SQL Server 2008
A sprinkling of JQuery and JQuery plugins for a bit of bling!

Talking Point

Blog, Content Management, Data Driven, Social Networking

The Textile Studio

A simple brochure website!

A straightforward website, with a JQuery gallery.

Technologies Used

C#
ASP.NET
Visual Studio
SQL Server 2008
A sprinkling of JQuery and JQuery plugins for a bit of bling!
The usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

The Textile Studio

Brochure

Miss P Photography

A Flickr-driven gallery website for a Coventry based photographer.

This basic brochure-ware site was pretty standard except for the gallery component - the customer To reduce costs to the customer, I advised that rather than write a proprietary admin system to manage the photo portfolio, it would be a better idea to utilise Flickr (see 'What is Flickr?' below for more info). Not only did Flickr offer a full admin suite to manage photos, collections and sets, it also improved search engine rankings due to people linking to the photos via Flickr. The result? One happy photographer!

Technologies Used

C#
ASP.NET
Visual Studio
SQL Server 2008
Flickr.NET
A sprinkling of JQuery and JQuery plugins for a bit of bling!
Usual HTML/CSS
Photoshop

Link

www.misspphotography.com

What is Flickr?

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community created by Ludicorp and later acquired by Yahoo!. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by blogger. Find out more here.