Following a series of Intranet Working Party meetings I co-chaired for Leeds College of Art, it was decided that the horizontal navigation menu should be dropped and substituted for a large graphical UI, with sub-sections navigated via a hierarchical Jquery menu in the left sidebar, admittedly this new navigation system results in a higher clicks-to-content, but the general reaction to the changes has been very positive.

Other features added: a tailored quick links bar was to the head of the page (different content for authenticated and unauthenticated users). Integration with Google Calendar in the form of a upcoming events block, accessibility controls for text size and page styles to help comply with current legislation, and some minor tweaks to the CSS for colour schemes and spacing.

portal.leeds-art.ac.uk

Developed in WordPress using a modified two column theme and a combination of several plugins. Migrated partial content from an existing static HTML website.

Leeds Community Foundation is a charity dedicated to bringing about real and lasting change in local communities. They believe in helping make Leeds a place where everyone is able to make the most of their life and fully explore and develop their potential, where local residents feel valued and respected, and are proud to contribute to the city in which they live.

Leeds Community Foundation

A promotional video I shot for Mark Moorby Entertainments, edited and finalised in iMovie.

www.markmoorby.com

Developed in WordPress using with a custom-designed CSS one column homepage and two column site/blog pages and a combination of several plugins. Migrated from a WordPress-hosted blog and a stand-alone flat PHP website. Home page features latest blog post and a sliding ‘top 10 reasons’ widgets built into footer.

Spark is Jennifer Holloway who, with a career including 15 years in PR and communications, is a personal brand specialist, using her knack for spotting someone’s USP and her way with words to help them promote that in everything they say and do.  Known as ‘The Antidote to Yes-Men’ her down-to-earth, straight talking, honest style delivers real value by helping today’s leaders discover how, by being themselves, they can be even more successful.

Spark

Migration to WordPress-based business directory website with custom CSS layout.

Website taken offline due to split in chamber membership

A selection of the various email marketing campaigns that I have created for Colin Appleyard and Luscombe Suzuki Leeds. Created in Photoshop.

My wife, Helen, is a primary school teacher in Bradford. Last week she attended a seminar led by Wes Magee (author and poet) and rediscovered her love for creative writing.

She started writing a children’s story called ‘The Underground Experiment’ and I thought it was pretty darn good! Fun, very descriptive and engaging. So, to encourage her to continue with this, I set her up a WordPress-based blog website for her to express her thoughts, and add more chapters to her story.

Helen Wray

The all-new Leeds College of Art Intranet Portal was launched in September 2010, built from the ground up in Drupal with custom PHP and Ajax.

Originally, the College Intranet consisted of two Silverstripe CMS websites – one for staff, one for students. Keeping both sites up to date was time consuming, and the CMS itself is not very user friendly. Designing themes for Silverstripe was also proving difficult as the code and CSS syntax was non-standard.

I did some intensive research on the web to find a suitable alternative CMS, eventually narrowing it down to Moodle or Drupal. Moodle (abbreviation for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a free and open-source e-learning  software platform, also known as a Course Management System, Learning Management System, or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). However, Moodle is not designed to be used as a CMS system, it would haver taken a lot more development time to get it into a state where it would be suitable, add to that the file upload and document repository is non-existent as is site-wide search.

It was decided that Drupal would be more suitable.

Drupal is an open-source content management system.  It is a widely used back-end system for websites worldwide, ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites, including whitehouse.gov and data.gov.uk. It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.

The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features common to most CMSs. These include the ability to register and maintain individual user accounts within a role-based permission / privilege system, create and manage menus, RSS-feeds, customize page layout, perform logging, and administer the system. As installed, Drupal provides options to create a websites ranging from simple to complex multi-user websites.

Drupal is extremely developer friendly, at first it was a very steep learning curve to set it up but once all the relevant plug-ins, extensions and themes were installed, I‘ve found the end-user experience to be very rewarding, with plenty of scope for further customisation.

The site was launched in September and has been met with fantastic praise. I am providing CMS training and am finding that users feel that the system is far more intuitive than SilverStripe. Furthermore there is no longer any confusion as to whether content is on the student site or the staff site!

http://portal.leeds-art.ac.uk

Globe Motors based in Keighley, offers a first-class service at a fraction of the price of main dealer servicing – without invalidating car warranties.

This is a small 4-page WordPress-based website with a basic CSS theme applied with a small amount of Photoshop customisation.

Globe Motors

Military Gardeners is a non-profit company offering an exciting challenge to help service personnel readapt to civilian life on leaving the Armed Forces. This can be a difficult transition, particularly for those with a long service history, amputees and those who have suffered from combat stress.

This site was built in PrestaShop, which is an open-source PHP-based shopping cart CMS with a small amount of CSS customisation.

Military Gardeners