Portfolio

Friends Meeting of Washington

This site is for a Quaker meeting in Washington DC and will help them keep members informed of events and news within the community and also introduce members of the public to the faith and practices of this religious community. I did a lot of writing on this site, adapting language from printed materials to more simplified website style writing.

This site features:

• A rich text editor.
• An online calendar and detailed scheduling system that allows staff to easily see when a room is being used and when it's available.
• A way to distribute newsletters electronically, saving the meeting large printing and mailing costs.
• A 'Printer-Friendly' link on each page to allow easy printing by visitors, even those who don't have a PDF reader.
• A way for staff to easily enter announcements and to generate lists of announcements by date for inclusion in weekly bulletins and newletters.
• A detailed user's manual and in-person training for staff and volunteers.

Writeousness

This site was a collaborative effort with the owner, writer N. Jeanne Burns, who had a design that she liked and wanted to use. My job was to create a theme that would look like her design and then to create a site that would allow her to maintain her content easily.

This site features:

• A rich text editor.
• A RSS feed so the writers fans can easily get her new content when she posts it.
• A share button so readers can easily post the content from this site onto their social networking pages.
• Integration with Google Analytics.

Hemingway's Cat

This site is for the band, Hemingway's Cat, which I also happen to be a member of. The most difficult challenge in creating this site was finding time between doing work for my paying clients to get it done.

Aesthetically, I was more daring with this site, using vibrant colors on a black background, design elements that I created for other promotional materials using Photoshop, and a customized Drupal theme that I made using the Zen Starterkit.

Neat features of this site include:

• Widgets that leverage the band's social networking activities on facebook and reverbnation.com
• Streaming of music so curious listeners can hear what we actually sound like rather than just read descriptions
• A calendar that maps the geographical points of our shows
• A blog where the other members of the band and myself can reflect on our shows and what we're working on
• A way for fans to comment on the blog, but with CAPTCHA challenge to prevent garbage from Spambots appearing on our site
• Search Engine Optimization and integration with Google Analytics

Mawenawasigh Healing Arts

This site is for a healing arts practitioner in Salt Point, NY (Dutchess County). Aesthetic considerations were of the primary importance to this client so this site features unique design elements such as the logo and the left sidebar graphic, that began with digital photography at her location and continued with the creation of the elements using Photoshop. This site features content that is easily updated by the owner with a rich text editor, image handler and calendar system.

 

 

 

The Melanie Group

This site is for a professional educator in the real estate business. It features content that is easy for the owner to update, including a rich text editor and a calendar and events scheduler that is customized to handle her specific classes and webinars.

In January 2010, the owner asked for new features to be added to the site. Because the architecture was open, it was easy to add these:

• A 'members only' section so that Melanie's students may create their own user accounts, log in, and download Powerpoint slides for classes they have attended.
• An easy way for the owner to upload files and index them by class for access in the members-only section
• A page that automatically aggregates all of the owner's blogging activities on many different external sites
• A 'Quote of the Day' display that allows the owner to enter a lot of quotes in advance and indicate on which day they should be displayed
• New tools for the owner to view and manage the members of the site.

Balanced Pools

This e-commerce site is for a start-up company based in Clearwater Florida that sells an environmentally-friendly swimming pool product.

BalancedPools.com needed an easy way for website visitors to calculate the volume of their pool and how much product they need and also to estimate their energy savings. For this site, I used Drupal 6.14 and wrote two custom modules using PHP and Drupal's Form API.

Other cool features include:

• A system for wholesale customers to create their own log in accounts.
• A rich text editor so the business owner can easily update text and graphics.
• An easy-to-use interface for the owner to approve wholesale accounts and interact with customers
• Shopping cart and order management using Ubercart
• Integration with UPS Shipping Tools to calculate shipping costs.
• Integration with PayPal API's to handle transactions
• Handling the county-specific Florida surtax and state salestax for retail and non-tax-exempt customers.
• Search Engine Optimization and integration with Google Analytics

William Penn House

This organization came to me because, although they had a functional, well-constructed site already, the person who had been maintaining it was leaving the organization. They needed a solution that would allow people with less time and inclination for technical stuff to be able to maintain the site easily.

Some of the coolest features of this site include:

• a rich text editor, so that staff members can enter and format content, including images, with an interface that looks a lot like Word;
• a powerful calendar and date system, so they can enter an event just one time and have it appear in multiple places on the site, and then disappear when the event is past; and,
• a rotating slideshow on the home page that is easily updated with new photos

I created this site for them using Drupal 6.10.