Gorilla 76

It takes just the right problem to make me dust off my JavaScript book. Gorilla 76 happened to have just the right problem - a large portfolio of branding and marketing material that had to be showcased online. So I wrote a custom slideshow script that wasn’t as cumbersome as SlideShowPro. The site as a whole is WordPress-driven and uses several custom queries to fetch images and text. The design and content are by Joe Sullivan and Jon Franko. My responsibilities also included migrating the company to Google Apps and creating a branded, Apache-based file repository.

K2 Asset Development

Opportunities to write a dynamic site from scratch are rare. Frameworks and content management systems are taking over. But this site for a land developer in St. Louis is a refreshing exception. I coded everything by hand in PHP/MySQL: database design and integration, the contact form, KML output for Google Maps, even a script to calculate how far to zoom in, given only the coordinates of each property. The design and content are by Joe Sullivan and Jon Franko.

Claire Applewhite

During my last year as a copywriter, an author in Saint Louis asked me to build her website. For a while I shot all the photography myself. As more books were added, that became impractical and we started using stock too. The site is driven by my true love, WordPress. Since Claire doesn’t update that often, her posts are distributed to a subscriber list using the life-saving Subscribe2 plug-in. Yes, there is some JavaScript too.

My former life

Since January 2001, danrashid.com has been my place to rant and show off. Here is a snapshot of the last revision from my advertising career. The code is a custom application I wrote to automatically fetch video, images, PDFs and plain text from the file system. That way, if I was undergoing an unprecedented outpouring of creative energy, all I’d have to do was drag-and-drop files over FTP. Of course, an outpouring of that magnitude never happened, but writing the script was great practice.

Sell something simple.

Small-scale financial websites often feel dated and off-putting. The type is too small, whitespace is eaten up by forms and disclaimers, and any representation of humanity is rare. This project was a chance to turn that around. While I couldn’t do much about the content or imagery (both pickups from print work), I did my best to create a site that feels current and refreshing. This was a confidence-building project that really made me think about architecture, navigation and content per page.

“It ain’t brain surgery.”

OK, the context is brain surgery, but navigating the site didn’t have to be. The first version of this site was almost 20 pages. It was a pickup from a brochure — every section was given its own page, even if it amounted to 3 bullet points. Months later, I rebuilt the whole thing. I paid special attention to usability and elasticity. The layout is em-based to assist those who need larger type, without sacrificing line length and readability. Try resizing your browser’s type and you’ll see what I mean.

Only the beginning

I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg and all those other clichés. Truthfully, I want to learn everything I can. I want to push my sites into the top tier. I want to challenge myself daily with new trials, tribulations, solutions and skill sets. This is only the beginning, but it’s one step closer to where I want to be. Crap, another cliché.