Developing the Sites

Melissa started out as the team lead for this project.  When she dropped the course I took over that role and spent most of my time working on this web site.  I created a template based on Kristy’s mock-up that would be used to create all of the other pages.  Inner pages were based on my original designs but with the new template. The "What We Do" page was dropped ant that information moved to the home page. Lynn asked that we add a page for an email signup list. Although not in the original proposal, thus technically "out of scope" of the project, we decided that implimentation was an easy enough matter to not affect our timeliine.

We went through several iterations of buttons before we found a design that seemed right for the page. Jen did the graphics work on those buttons and she also created the FAQ page and helped with the Home page.  Aside from the buttons, Kristy provided most of the graphics that were used in the template.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were my biggest challenge.  CSS makes it easier to create the look of a page and to maintain it in the future.  However, it can be quirky and not all browsers display it the same way.  Getting buttons, images and text positioned exactly where I wanted them and then making it work the same in all of our testing browsers was quite an undertaking. But it was a task I relished, as being versed in CSS is a key to successful web development.  My other exciting endeavor with YrdSale4U was creation of the mapping pages. When a user clicks the “Map It” button on the events page, it brings up a Google map of the location within our own web pages.  At that point if they enter their address and click a button, it will bring up a Google Maps page with driving directions to the yard sale. I was looking forward to learning how to do this, and I was not disappointed.

I used PHP, a scripting language for the web, to build our template files for both web sites.  Used in conjunction with CSS, coding and maintenance is greatly simplified.  YrdSale4U also included a Contact Us form and an email signup, both of which must send information to Lynn to act upon.  With the aid of a program that Kristy has, we created PHP files that handle both of those tasks nicely.

With everything tested and working correctly, our final task was to move the program from our testing platform to the new Go Daddy account which had been created for Lynn. Unfortunately, Lynn discovered as couple of incapabilities with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. There were quickly fixed, but I was embarased to have miss these in our regular testing.

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Kristy took on the role of Team Lead for Petite Boutique.  In order to give them what they needed, we were going to have to use a content management system.  That was a new concept for all of us.  Since Kristy was already developing web sites in her own business, she stepped up to the challenge of implementing the content management system.  WordPress is an open source package originally developed to create blogging web sites.  It has now evolved to handle content management.  Dale was already familiar with it, so we decided to go that route.

I created the page that would be used as a template for all of the Petite Boutique pages and did the home page.  Jennifer created almost all of the graphics that we would be using and optimized the huge number of product photos that Laurie provided us.  Each picture needed to be in three sizes, a thumbnail, a medium and a large size. Using my template, Jen also created many of the product pages and several of the inner pages.  Kristy did the rest of the product and inner pages, as well as work on parts of the template.  However, the main thrust of her work was getting WordPress to do what we needed it to do.  Everything that we did had to be loaded into WordPress and there were several formatting and functionality issues that she had to address.  It became quite a challenge for her and she handled it well.

Due to my work on YrdSale4U, my work on Petite Boutique was minimalized.  In building the site template, using CSS for page design was once again a continual challenge.  Kristy and I worked together to solve many of the issues that cropped up and we became quite comfortable in relying on each other for help.  One issue that we regrettably were not able to solve was the placement of the puckered border around the images on the home page.  We ended up having to use a more conventional frame.  At the moment, a holiday promotion has replaced that frame and the images, but it will surely return in the new year.