About Happy Cog

Founded by a visionary and staffed by creative superstars, Happy Cog delivers beautiful websites that never lose sight of the human being using them. From site structure to interface design, from branding to content development, Happy Cog’s people are the authorities. Happy Cog

Today we interview Greg Hoy, President of Happy Cog Phildaphila, on the work they did on Housing Works. Though Greg led the way, the interview represents the collective answers of Dan Mall, Robert Jolly, and Mark Huot. 

Please give us introduction to Housing Works.

Happy Cog: Housing Works provides homeless and low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and their families with housing, meals, medical care, drug treatment, social support, employment opportunities, and other lifesaving services fundamental to health and happiness. They are especially committed to serving those who have difficulty obtaining services elsewhere because they struggle with mental illness or chemical dependency.

How did Happy Cog get involved in the project?

Happy Cog: Housing Works approached Happy Cog to work with them to not only update the design of their main website, but provide a publishing platform that was open and could integrate with a variety of other web properties and back-end systems. During initial conversations, it became apparent that Housing Works needed to revamp their entire user experience to tell the compelling stories of how their organization works to improve people’s lives. Happy Cog worked through a comprehensive process that included user research, information architecture, design, front-end coding and back-end system integration.

Why did you choose ExpressionEngine for Housing Works?

Happy Cog: As soon as information architecture was complete, it was obvious that Housing Works would have a very “deep” site. They needed a CMS that would allow for unique sets of nested pages. ExpressionEngine, and its support of custom fields and the integrated Pages module was a perfect match. Coupled with an active developer community and straightforward learning curve, both from a publisher and an administrator point of view, we’re confident that ExpressionEngine will allow Housing Works to manage their new site with little fuss.

From a development & design standpoint, what aspect are you most proud of?

Happy Cog: The last thing Housing Works needed was a site where the technology got in the way of its powerful message. Clean code and a formidable content management system should only be supporting elements. ExpressionEngine allowed us to use the design and the code to support and enhance content, the real meat of the site.

The ability to generate dynamic templates based on administrator choices, made in the ExpressionEngine Control Panel, was a huge accomplishment for both Housing Works and Happy Cog. We created XHTML/CSS templates that can easily change the look and feel, simply by modifying a class name. This allows Housing Works the ability to create a site that feels unique without having to manage multiple unique templates. Inherent to this was the development of a plugin which displays dynamic page navigation, based on the structure of “Pages” within ExpressionEngine. This plugin drives about 90% of the site and is smart enough to be dropped into any template.

To further allow for client side customization, Happy Cog developed a “Snippet” extension which allows an administrator to dynamically include sub-templates in an ExpressionEngine entry. This allows authors a simple intuitive way to call dynamic content right into the body of a static entry.

What ExpressionEngine Add-ons did you use?

Happy Cog: Notable add-ons include:

• Akismet
• File Upload
• Better Pagination
• Snippets
• Simple Translator
• Pages Nested Menu
• Textile

Can you explain what the Snippet add-on does & give an example?

Happy Cog: Snippets work by giving control panel users the ability to “embed” ExpressionEngine templates directly into an entry. A developer simply needs to specify a template group to allow access to in the extension settings. Once that’s done, an editor can simply place a line of code like:

in the “Body” field of the entry. This will cause ExpressionEngine, at render time, to convert the snippet into the full blown out news-events template.

Authors can also provide attributes to each snippet, which are translated into embed variables that are accessible in the template. A more advanced snippet may look something like this:

Finally, with great power comes great responsibility, so we’ve taken care to ensure that each snippet is well formed and produces the expected result. If it doesn’t, we’ll fail gracefully and no one is the wiser. This prevents editors from accidentally introducing a broken embed tag into the template.

How does the Housing Works team like working with ExpressionEngine?

Happy Cog: From what we’ve heard, the staff at Housing Works are really loving ExpressionEngine. They have been able to redistribute content authorship and ownership back to non-technical staffers. Each business unit can make updates without involving the organization’s central IT and Communications group. In addition, Housing Works plans to place ExpressionEngine and their website in a central program role by offering job training and blogging capabilities for clients to learn new skills while telling their compelling stories online.

What’s next for Happy Cog?

Happy Cog: In early 2009, you will see a major redesign for a prestigious art & design school launch as well as an ExpressionEngine-powered site for another awe-inspiring non-profit we are lucky enough to work with. We also finished a site for a software firm that many ExpressionEngine users will likely find familiar. Other ExpressionEngine-powered projects you’ll see launch in Q1/Q2 2009:

• A complex site for an environmental magazine
• A site for a ‘woodsy’ client that are the best at what they do

We are also currently working on projects for a major tourism site, a global information powerhouse, and one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in the world.

Also in 2009, look for An Event Apart, our web design conference in:

• Seattle, May 4-5
• Boston, June 22-23
• Chicago, Oct. 12-13
• San Francisco, December 7-8