The job was a learning fantastic experience for both of us, as realised the awesome potential of working with VI into the future, they realised the true versatility of WordPress in the right hands and we both learnt everything that comes from developing to spec for one of the countries leading SEO specialists.

The project was a huge success with happy client, happy agency and happy me which is always the optimum outcome, and therefore the progression to working again together was a natural one.

Since then I have worked on a number of sites for VI such as:

Blakeofficial.com

PortmanHalthcare.co.uk

FEIyearofyouth.org

SecretCinema.org/windowsphone/

This culminated in VI deciding to move their own site over to WordPress in order to facilitate the biggest problem for those of us busy working for clients in the industry, maintaining our own sites.

Thankfully this has indeed been the case allowing VI stay involved in the blogosphere by providing an accessible platform for regular content creation. Also providing a platform to experiment with a vast array of social marketing techniques, the development of many unique features to the VI site written just for them, including a custom plugin based on Mashable’s ‘drag-to-share’ functionality that will be released in 2010.

Go and see what is going on at www.wearevi.com

This was indeed a choice I have become most thankful of, as in early 2009 Trampaboards decided it was time to both update their website and expand their product range to incorporate the manufacture of all of their own components.

It was clear that more than just a website would be required here, and as the current system running on os-commerce was already in place and being excellently run by Andy@snowdoniaIT.com it gave me the opportunity to focus on build the brand online and providing the consultancy required to allow Trampa to offer the same level of customer service online that they had become well-known for via more traditional means such as over the phone, by mail and at events.

The mission has been long, both fruitful and frustrating at times, but always a pleasure as I have cemented a firm business and personal friendship with both Ted@Trampaboards.com and Andy@snowdoniaIT.com form which we have all learned a lot about differing perspectives, stand-points and priorities where we have all had to remind ourselves at times who we are making this site for, …the customer. [some heated discussion as to whether the customer is Ted or his customers has been had late into the night over a number of curries on a number of occasions.]

At the time of writing this the commerce site is now live and ready for the Christmas wish list of many a kiter and mountain boarder, and the list for 2010 is growing by the minute with increased social marketing, team pages, and careful assessment and constant improvement of the customer process involved in using the system.

Something tells me there are to be many more heated curries into 2010 as the three of us continue to develop what has clearly become more than just your average project, and much more of a labour of love.

www.trampaboards.com

It was time to update the less mosquito commerce system. The old system had become dated and preventing evolution through social interaction and more importantly I found myself unable to satisfy some of the demands of the client due to software restrictions, a position I do not like to find myself.

It was time for action.

THE SOLUTION

The site continues to be powered by the WordPress platform which is ever growing in its popularity, thankfully proving me right as an early adopted and continued advocate. However the WP E-Commerce plugin we had gone with originally due to it suiting budget and being part of only a small number of commerce options available for the platform was not performing. Inconsistent bugs, an inability to upgrade due to a template system fatefully intertwined with the commerce engine mean’t as a developer I had had enough.

As far as i was concerned I would be prepared to migrate the site to a new system for free if it was a system that I could then continue to use in other projects, and more importantly, give this client what they needed, and what they deserved.

I did a huge amount of research into the prospective commerce systems before a single character of code was entered and the results were to both mine and the clients immense pleasure.

Of course as the site was now more than a few years old, and due to its development in the WordPress platform, it would have been a wasted opportunity not to build a new design that complimented the increased functionality of the commerce system and also bought the site bang up to date with current web trends including extensive use of JQuery and the implementation of social networking functionality.

THE FUTURE

The result is now a site that is a pleasure to use and to maintain, allowing the site to flourish, sales to increase and the added human usability factor to support the extensive work we have done with the sites SEO.

Moving into the future we will be continuing to work hard on the SEO, integrate and push services such as Google Base and ensure that the human usability is carefully maintained to maximise sales conversions.

You can see the previous lessmosquito project information here.

Visit the site:

www.lessmosquito.com

You can now get 10% off any product from www.lessmosquito.com by entering the promotional code ‘mogmachine’ at the checkout.

The client wanted to update his dated flash portfolio site with something capable of streaming high quality video, on a very tight budget, yet fully manageable by the client.

THE SOLUTION

Over recent months I have been championing Vimeo to my video clients for its ease of use and viral abilities, but also due to the extremely high quality of delivered video and once upgraded to pro, the vast array of embedding options. For video producers this enables them to stream masses of high quality video without having to worry about server loads or capacity draining their pockets.

The site itself is powered by WordPress enabling the client to take advantage of the ease of use of the back end management system and streams all video from Vimeo, although it is also setup to play locally hosted videos too should the client wish to keep them out of the public domain.

Having my site developed by mogmachine was the best thing I could’ve done.  Not only did they provide professional, speedy service, their suggestions complemented and improved on my own ten-fold creating a site that has improved usability and increased hits which means more work for me.

THE FUTURE

The site is now live and the client has taken over the production of content and is most pleased with the results.  www.claudiorietti.com

Approached by an agency needing a WordPress specialist I was asked to develop this site for one of the leading SEO specialists Latitude Group which functioned and conformed to strict rules regarding content structure and presentation.

THE SOLUTION

WordPress has often been put down by SEO agencies with regards to its seo compliancy so it was a most pleasant surprise to learn that Latitude Group, one of the leading companies in this field would like a WP powered site.
All of the design and PM was handled by the agency Vivid Image allowing me to develop purely to spec which was to be a pain free task.
As we all know nothing is ever as easy as first expected, but having overcome any hurdles and learning more about using Wordpress on an IIS server, the development process actually ended up being a pleasure as the site took shape.
We imported large amounts of data from their old Expression Engine powered site, and utilized jQuery to provide an intuitive graphically rich browsing experience.

“As a leading digital marketing agency, our website has to reflect our ability in SEO and online marketing. We also wanted to  have our website and blog integrated within the same CMS. We tested several CMSs but Wordpress was clearly ahead because of its flexible structure, its native SEO features and the numerous SEO plugins available. Latitude Group really challenged Marcus and VI but they had a solution for everything we asked them to do”.

Thibaut Pfeiffer

Latitude Group

THE FUTURE

The site is now live and the client is very pleased with the result. Check it out for yourself at www.latitudegroup.com

After previous work with the founder of Clever Diaries, we were approached to produce a commerce site that intergrates with a custom API for Outlook.
The site was aimed at the corporate market and so the design had to reflect this with a no nonsense approach to providing information supported by rich graphics.

THE SOLUTION

The writing of the Outlook plugin was performed by Ben@array[x] with whom I have worked on a number of previous projects, and as a highly accomplished project manager and programmer he also took on both of these responsibilities which provided us with an ASP commerce solution with which the distribution of his Outlook API would flow seamlessly.

We worked closely with the client through the design process which although not initially heading in the right direction was guided through good communication and relationship building with all parties to produce a final product that all parties are very pleased with.

THE FUTURE

At the time of writing Clever Diaries is yet to launch so i can’t spoil the surprise.

Avolus came to me in early 2008 through a reccomendation, requiring someone to take over the management of 2 sites from an errant developer. This continued until late in 2008 when it was realised that the 2 sites desperately needed a visual and structural makeover to ensure the maximum number of conversions for the company.

The main goal for the site is to drive traffic towards making a form based enquiry allowing Avolus to contact the client directly to initiate a transaction.
The secondary goals are to provide a stylish, multilingual online brochure that reflects the image of the company through information, marketing material and also the display of aircrafts for sale through the brokerage side of the site.

THE SOLUTION

For the design of the site I used a Japanese designer, Takashi Irie who I felt was best suited to the look and feel required by Avolus.
Once the design concept had been decided I built a custom site using a combination of XHTML/CSS/PHP/JQuery.
The enitre site had to be easily adaptable into any language with the initial langauges being English, French, German & Russian, therefore form an early stage every text element of the site and content was clearly separated form the design, allowing the simple editing of text files to control every single aspect of the interface.

For the forms we chose to use ShadowBox style overlays to ensure that maximum user attention and also facilitate the required form elements that we preferred not have present on every page.

The aesthic was then further enchanced through the use of a rotating image banner that utilized some stunning stock photography owned by Avolus, and setup to serve page dependant relevent images.

All of the content was authored with SEO and keyword analysis paramount, however to support this the site was built in a highly compliant manner, utilizing semantics and clean well structured code throughout.

THE FUTURE

Although the private aircraft charter industry is suffering in the current economic climate, Avolus continues to thrive through careful use of promotions which are easily manageable through the site, coupled with excellent SEO, Keyword marketing and analytics ensuring maximum visitor conversion.

www.avolus.com

• Web Design & Development Diploma, Qantm 2008-2009
• Private Custom Training, 2008-2009

These are purely for supporting reference to any accompanying lecture.

01. Introduction To AJAX

The fist lecture of the class, AJAX explained with introduction to the XMLHttpRequest object.

01. Introduction To AJAX – Download the PDF

02. My First AJAX App

Ok, so App. might be an overstatement, but we will be using AJAX for the first time to return data to the page, in this case returning the current time to a form field.

02. First AJAX App. – Download the PDF
02. First AJAX App. – Download the SOURCE FILES

03. Introducing JQuery & AJAX

Now we get to remake the previous app. using JQuery.

03. Introducing JQuery & AJAX – Download the PDF
03. Introducing JQuery & AJAX. – Download the SOURCE FILES

04. Animating Content With JQuery

Now we have the basics of pulling in content using AJAX it is time to really use JQuerys fancy potential, this time to load page content into a simple 5 page site using JQuery animation.

04. Animate Content With JQuery – Download the PDF
04. Animate Content With JQuery – Download the SOURCE FILES

05. Send An AJAX Form With JQuery

We all need to use forms, and we have covered passing the data back and forth using AJAX, however this time we are going to move forward using both server and client side validation (for demonstration purposes) and then process (mail, add to db) our data.

05. Send AJAX Form With JQuery – Download the PDF
05. Send AJAX Form With JQuery – Download the SOURCE FILES

*these notes are not intended as stand alone source material, rather they are supplemental lecture material.

• Multimedia Production Diploma, SAE 2005-2007
• Web Design & Development Diploma, Qantm 2007-2009
• Citigroup custom Corporate Training, 2007
• Private Custom Training, 2006-2009

Although getting slightly dated now, this collection of lecture notes are somthing i know past students and myself included do come back to for reference, so here they remain, for your viewing pleasure.

01. Introduction To PHP

The fist lecture of the class, discussions on what makes a dynamic site different to a static site, and then going on to discuss PHP & MySQL definitions with a look and explanation of the 3 tier application system.

01. Introduction To PHP – Download the PDF

01. Introduction To PHP – Download the IPOD VIDEO

02. Syntax, Variables & Strings

A look at basic PHP syntax, then moving onto talk about variables and strings.

02. Syntax, Variables & Strings – Download the PDF

02. Syntax, Variables & Strings – Download the IPOD VIDEO

03. Operators & Conditionals

A look at Arithmetic, Assignment and Comparison Operators, moving logically on to IF, IF ELSE and finally SWITCH statements

03. Operators & Conditionals – Download the PDF

03. Operators & Conditionals – Download the IPOD VIDEO

04. Arrays & Loops

Here we go, time for me to get out the boxes and start explaining Arrays, multi-dimensional Arrays, then once we have that hard-wired, it is time to get a little loopy with all of those lovely little PHP loops, WHILE, DO…WHILE, FOR and FOREACH.

04. Arrays & Loops – Download the PDF

04. Arrays & Loops – Download the IPOD VIDEO

05. Functions

Now it is time to look at functions, from creating your own simple functions, to passing parameters and returning values.

05. Functions – Download the PDF

05. Functions – Download the IPOD VIDEO

06. Forms & User Input

A Short set of slides here, but one of the most important, the fundamentals of passing data using Forms.

06. Forms & User Input – Download the PDF

06. Forms & User Input – Download the IPOD VIDEO

07. _GET & _POST

Now we are passing data with Forms it might be a good idea to take an in-depth look at both $_GET & $_POST, with even a little mention of $_REQUEST too.

07. _GET & _POST – Download the PDF

07. _GET & _POST – Download the IPOD VIDEO

08. Mail

A look at the basic Mail function in PHP, sending email via Forms. Also an introductory look at email injection and PHP Filters

08. Mail – Download the PDF

08. Mail – Download the IPOD VIDEO

08+. Mail Scripts

Also included are two mail scripts for download, the first being the most simple of PHP mail functionality, and the second being a NON-WORKING collection of all of the possible spam replacement, SQL injection protection and valid email checking, easily customizable for you usage.

08. Mail – Download the MAIL SCRIPTS

09. Introduction To SQL

A look at the basic features of SQL. This does not cover the more advanced functionality of SQL, but provides more than enough to get you through your first few projects and further.

09. Intro To SQL – Download the PDF

09. Intro To SQL – Download the IPOD VIDEO

10. _COOKIES & _SESSIONS

Cookies and sessions explained with an accompanying login system example showing basic, retrieving and deletion of both, and displaying ’selective’ user content.

10. Cookies&Sessions – Download the PDF

10. Cookies&Sessions – Download the IPOD VIDEO

10. Cookies&Sessions – Download the LOGIN SYSTEM FILES

11. Date / Timestamps

Cookies and sessions explained with an accompanying login system example showing basic, retrieving and deletion of both, and displaying ’selective’ user content.

11. Date – Download the PDF

11. Date – Download the IPOD VIDEO

11+. Deathclock / Fag Stats

Just a nice morbidly fun way to illustrate date and timestamp functionality, and maybe persuade a few people to smoke a bit less.

11+. Date – Download the FILES

*these notes are not intended as stand alone source material, rather they are supplemental lecture material.

This workshop is aimed at people with no experience or knowledge in Web Hosting and Domain management but know that they would greatly benefit from their own server space.

We will cover the following topics:

• Hosting Explained
• Domains Explained
• Setting up emails
• FTP and file storage/access
• Database setup
• Installing 3rd Party files/applications (EG: WordPress :) )

…and in my humble opinion that should be enough to cement in the mind in one evening.

If you do have any specific requests for additional items you ould like me to cover, then please mail me before the workshop and i will see what i can do to incorporate your requests.

The workshop will take place on 4th June | 18:30 @ Qantm UK, Angel, London (full address details on Qantm Site when you register.

To register for the Workshop please do so @ Qantm UK where you can view all other available Free Workshops.