Hiya,

Just thought I’d take a minute to do something I don’t normally do!

My wife (you can find her on this page here and also the main page) and I have just completed work on a new site for the company where my wife works.

There are still a couple of pages where the sub-menus sometimes plop beneath the main content area in IE6 but I am on to these!

An item that may interest some would be the experiences section of the site. Test out the shopping cart if you like. All created using ExpressionEngine. At the moment the items are just sent via secure e-mail to the company but I could theoretically send all the information off to Paypal if I so desired. All done with one plugin that I developed.

Hope people like it. Within the first 2 days of going live the company were already getting more hits than they have ever had in the whole sites history (design is completely different now) and they have already had a sale using the cart so all good!!

Best wishes,

Mark

Wow Mark, Really beautiful job. 

Great looking site.

<——- Imagine 2 thumbs up in my picture. 

Well done. 

-greg

I second the kudos, added it as a pick to get to 10, plenty of good stuff in the new sites threads.
The photography is well done also.

Nice Mark. Tell us how you created the cart.

Thanks!

just two things for me but i do like it…
the main menu looks a little tight on the white line beneath it, maybe needs some more negative space.
I also have a personal think about the submenu - when you hover the words move due to the added bored and padding on that side… I personally find it a little distracting, but that is just my taste…

***Just re-read your post and you are sending through a secure email… so i am guessing an offline pdq system… check the suppliers terms for this! They tend to assess phone order risk differently from web order risks…

on a separate note, i see your taking the card details on the site over a secure certificate, which then suggests these are being stored to be processed either offline, or through a specific payment system. If this is being done offline via the companies PDQ or similar then you might be in breach of the PDQ suppliers terms. Just a warning.
Alternatively if this is running through a payment gateway and the card details are being check behind the scenes… Did you, the company, and the host have to go through a security audit to permit this? Just curious of your experience with this?

Nice though, you have done well…

Nice site, agree with Nevsie on both navigation points though! Photos are very cool.

Would be interested to know how you did that shopping cart too for my previously mentioned Canvas site so if you need another tester for that plugin, you have one!

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

@nevsie & Andy - I totally see your point about the two navigation items. I originally wanted the logo to be smaller as well so that they wouldn’t be so close to it. That’s why the text is quite small for the navigation menu items. Then when I couldn’t make the logo smaller I wanted to bring down the amount of menu items but turned out we needed to have that many.

The main reason it is so close to the white line is because they wanted the menus to line up (the yellow parts) with the bottom on hover and didn’t want too much padding at the top and bottom of the menu items.

The sub menu effect is one that they wanted too so I have to go with their choice on that one I’m afraid.

Regarding the shopping cart, that was created using a plugin that I made after pulling my hair out for quite a few days

I’m pretty sure that it works 100%. There are a couple of functions I need / want to add to the plugin so that it does everything that a normal cart does. At the moment you can only delete all of one item and not just 1 quantity of an item so if for instance you had :

Castle Tour (2)

At the moment if you click the delete button then both are gone. I am going to make it so that you can delete just one of the items and still be left with :

Castle Tour(1)

That would allow for increments (already possible) and decrements.

Best wishes,

Mark

Well it looks good to me, and I’m happy to help you with testing if you need. It’s absolutely what I’m looking for at the moment with a site that’s ready to test.

Oops meant to mention in the last post. I will send you a copy this weekend Andy.

I need to write up some very simple usage documents but it should be fairly straight forward.

Also I’d rather keep this one to just you and me if that’s okay with everyone else. I do usually release everything I make to the community for free but this one was created for a client site and so I may charge for this one or ask for small donations, plus I really want to add in the last decrement function first before releasing it in the wild.

Best wishes,

Mark

Very nice Mark, finally someone has taken time to optimize images and loading. I like the navigation on events as well. One thing I would consider is conditional “active tab” for the main nav since there is no breadcrumbs -this is just my personal preference.

Kudos on shopping cart - do tell more if possible

Also, somehow I feel you had a lot to do with these images but either way first thing that came to my mind was = more panorama shots on products/tours pages. Videos are cool but there is something about a sharp stills that has its charm. Check out this application for some panorama ideas.

Congrats and good luck in the long run!

Hiya,

Thanks for the kind words there.

lebisol - 29 August 2008 10:49 AM

Very nice Mark, finally someone has taken time to optimize images and loading.

Yep all images are optimized first in Photoshop and then I am using the Image Sizer plugin to create smaller images from larger ones wherever needed.

lebisol - 29 August 2008 10:49 AM

I like the navigation on events as well. One thing I would consider is conditional “active tab” for the main nav since there is no breadcrumbs -this is just my personal preference.

This is definitely on the books to be done. Unfortunately time constraints got in the way but I will definitely be doing that as soon as possible.

lebisol - 29 August 2008 10:49 AM

Kudos on shopping cart - do tell more if possible

Thanks for the words. Not much to tell really. It’s just one plugin that handles everything and works fully in conjunction with the Weblog and Simple Commerce Module tags to give a full shopping cart. I still need to add in a decrement function but other than that it works 100% and allows you to spit out what is stored anywhere you like and in any way you like also. A quick hint as to how it was done would be Sessions!

lebisol - 29 August 2008 10:49 AM

Also, somehow I feel you had a lot to do with these images but either way first thing that came to my mind was = more panorama shots on products/tours pages. Videos are cool but there is something about a sharp stills that has its charm.

Yep that would be myself and my Wife. We are both professional photographers too and nearly all the images on the site were taken by one of us at one point or another. I agree that it would be nice to have more imagery on the site and that is definitely something that will happen over the coming months as more and more items get added to the site. Not sure about video at the moment but they (the company) are going to be offering photos and videos of peoples lessons and events so will probably have some on there at some point in the future.

lebisol - 29 August 2008 10:49 AM

Check out this application for some panorama ideas.

Congrats and good luck in the long run!

Will check out that link now, thanks!

Also I hadn’t said it before but meant to - THANKS to EllisLab for creating such a fantastic product in ExpressionEngine. The original site was created using some horrible CMS system which basically had one template and we had seen other sites that the person who had created the original had done too. All were created using the same system and the same template! Euuch!!

Using ExpressionEngine made this site a total breeze to get up and running. There were a couple of difficult parts such as the Shopping Cart and I had quite a few nights where I literally couldn’t sleep without seeing the code floating around in my head but we got there in the end!!

Best wishes,

Mark

Nice site Mark.
So how did you meet the wife? Did she say that yours wasn’t the biggest chopper she had seen this week?

Now that is exceptionally naughty Simon and you should be ashamed of yourself

We met just over 10 years ago at the music college where I was working. 3 years later and we were married. I learnt to fly first (as a hobby) and then Sarah got bit by the bug and has now become a Commercial Pilot working from Coventry and she is a very very good instructor.

Thanks for the kind words.

Best wishes,

Mark

This is pretty slick work, I especially enjoyed the photography and I can see where you got your color scheme from

The big padlock on the “secure checkout form” was just awesome! Kudos!

Hi e-man,

Thanks for the kind words. There will be a lot more photography on the site as and when more items get added so keep a watch

If you take a look at the Special Occastions page then that is a place in the Lake District that Sarah (my wife) and I went to on one of our wedding anniversaries, by helicopter of course

When we got there they had a wedding going on (definitely the best date for one ) and we were landing and there were loads of kids outside that were guests of the wedding so what do they do? They start running towards the helicopter!!

I had to get out, rotors running, and get them all to stand back whilst my wife shut down the heli. A pretty scary moment especially as the parents of the kids were just standing (quite a way back) and not stopping their kids from running into rotor blades that are going at over 400MPH. That would have truly given them a haircut had I not stopped them!!

Anyway a fantastic place to go to and literally just 10 minutes after we had landed and we were sitting inside two military fast jets went whizzing down the lake that the hotel is situated on (in between two mountains) in a sideways position. There’s no way they would have seen us if we had been in between the mountains at that point with the speed they were going at!! Scary!!

Anyway there will be more where that came from when we all go on more trips. I think there is one upcoming for Luchon fairly soon so there should be some good pictures from that too.

Best wishes,

Mark

e-man - 29 August 2008 07:25 PM

I can see where you got your color scheme from

Oops forgot about that one, meant to mention that the color scheme comes from their existing logo but I see what you mean

Best wishes,

Mark