Launched the really cool website www.indulgeinavalon for the folks at the 7 Mile Business Community Association, it’s showcase for businesses in Avalon, NJ. This project was a lot of fun to work on, and the clients were great. They approached me with a very solid plan and and visual design, theyreally knew what they needed done.
Since they needed a site that they would be able to easily maintain, and this is 2010 after all, we decided that building it on the Joomla! CMS would be best for them. I’ve been using Joomla! a great deal recently to meet clients needs, and it’s really worked great for them too. It truly is amazing what open source offers.
The client also had a unique need to manage their properties in a way that didn’t exist in the Joomla! CMS. So I built them a custom component to handle that functionality. It was great, it makes use of Joomla’s built in admin, so it looks completely like the CMS interface, the client didn’t have to learn something completely new.
The component allows the client to add/update/delete business listings, and upload a photo that is automatically resized for them on upload. I used the WideImage library to handle the image resizing. I was thoroughly impressed with WideImage and highly recommend it and will surely be using it again.
The greatest part about this component to me was that I didn’t have to explain how to use it to the client, they just logged in and knew exactly what to do. As a developer, that’s the highest compliment I can think of is when somebody doesn’t notice your work because it just worked.
The site also makes use of the YUI2 CSS Grids for the site layout. I’ve been a huge fan of the YUI library in general, and found myself using them in yet another project (actually can’t think of the last project I haven’t really used YUI).
Since launching, the client has extended the text in the main navigation bar. It’s bumping a link to a new line, so I think I might contact them with a way to improve that. But besides that they’re doing an excellent job managing the site and it was a true pleasure working with them.
Check out www.indulgeinavalon.com