We’ve just launched a new site for Backyard Playground, a custom wooden playset company located in Cary, North Carolina. The site is the our second collaborative effort with a local branding and marketing company, Holy Cow Branding.

We’re using a few add-ons in this site; Mark Huot’s file extension gives our client an easy upload form field for managing the gallery (which is the Moo Tools powered Multi-Box from Phat Fusion) and Sol Space’s Free Form module handles the submission form data.

Looks fabulous… great job.

Very nice design. Well done.

I think you might want to place some thumbnail images on this page as I noticed when going there that the images were loading quite slowly as they are linking to the full sized images so anyone on a slightly slower connection may have to wait a while for them to load. Also if you add any more images to that page then it will start taking longer to load as well.

One other thing, not sure if it is intended or not but on that same page the images overlap the footer image of the grass. Might be nice to have a longer page and then the footer at the end of the images but that is obviously down to your own choice just something that I noticed that may have slipped by the net.

Forgetting my moaning though (I wasn’t really moaning honest ) the site is really nice. Good colour usage and nice and legible which is always a good thing.

Keep up the great work.

Best wishes,

Mark

Great site and as always…..... great advise Mark!!!!!!!

Tim

Tim413 - 22 May 2008 06:27 AM

Great site and as always…..... great advise Mark!!!!!!!

Tim

Well not so much advice as just something that I thought may not have been intended. It may well be intended to have it in that way and so not a problem at all but just thought I would point it out

Best wishes,

Mark

Hey Mark!

We are hating on lack of thumbnails as well. Basically it’s a design/budget/user training combo thing. We’re using Mark Huot’s file extension to facilitate uploading of the gallery images because, well… the file upload feature in EE takes too many steps for most computer novices and our client is in that user category. With Huot’s extension, we can only resize the image once and we’re using that feature now to prevent him from uploading 2000+ pixel wide images to the gallery. The project budget ran out before we could properly address the issue. It’s our intention to go back to him in a couple of weeks with the tale of how we’ve placed his site up for peer review and all our associates think he needs to provide a thumbnail (with your permission, we’ll be using your comments as ammunition!). Then we’ll add another file field for thumbnails and explain nicely how uploading the image twice will solve this problem… and we’ll bill him for that extra feature.

The grass at the bottom thing was a compromise in design. The client wanted the grass to stay at the bottom of the browser window regardless of the size of the window or the amount of content on the page. Pulling that off consistently means making that a body bg image fixed to the bottom and blah blah blah.

The client is happy so I’m loopy with happiness!

Thanks again for the comments.

impdesigns - 22 May 2008 08:26 AM

Hey Mark!

We are hating on lack of thumbnails as well. Basically it’s a design/budget/user training combo thing. We’re using Mark Huot’s file extension to facilitate uploading of the gallery images because, well… the file upload feature in EE takes too many steps for most computer novices and our client is in that user category. With Huot’s extension, we can only resize the image once and we’re using that feature now to prevent him from uploading 2000+ pixel wide images to the gallery. The project budget ran out before we could properly address the issue. It’s our intention to go back to him in a couple of weeks with the tale of how we’ve placed his site up for peer review and all our associates think he needs to provide a thumbnail (with your permission, we’ll be using your comments as ammunition!). Then we’ll add another file field for thumbnails and explain nicely how uploading the image twice will solve this problem… and we’ll bill him for that extra feature.

No problem with using my comment at all if you want to. Remember if you make tons of money on this to find out my address though

Regarding using another upload field for the thumbnails - STOP!! no need to!!

You would be better off using the fantastic Image Sizer plugin which will handle all of this for you. That way then you only have to get the larger image uploaded and then the Image Sizer plugin can handle dynamically resizing them for you and creating the smaller image as well. This means less work for the client which should definitely keep them happy but also proves to them that as they aren’t doing any work to get it working (that was pretty bad wording wasn’t it!! ) then you must be doing something in the background to get it all working in that way therefore earning you your money!

I would definitely whole-heartedly suggest looking into that plugin as it will do all of this for you without the need for extra custom fields in the weblog.

impdesigns - 22 May 2008 08:26 AM

The grass at the bottom thing was a compromise in design. The client wanted the grass to stay at the bottom of the browser window regardless of the size of the window or the amount of content on the page. Pulling that off consistently means making that a body bg image fixed to the bottom and blah blah blah.

The client is happy so I’m loopy with happiness!

Thanks again for the comments.

I thought it might be wanted in that way. No problem. Works both ways I think. Excellent work.

Best wishes,

Mark