Tell us about yourself:

Joelle Reeder: I am the brunette half of the lifestyle design team, The Moxie Girls, co-owner of blog and website design firm, Moxie Design Studios and co-author of The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie (Wiley Publishing, 2007). I like White Russians, Yanni and men with hairy backs. Just kidding. Seriously, who likes Yanni?

Tell us about the site:

Joelle Reeder: Our client, Dara Fleischer, former editor of LOULOU Magazine from Canada, came to us last fall for a redesign for her prominent fashion and shopping site, FashionJunkie.com. Now based in New York City, Dara was looking for something fresh to expand her business in one of the world’s biggest shopping meccas.

FashionJunkie.com is a premier shopping site for all things beauty, fashion, and style. It offers several sections, including a “Re-Tales blog” which is Dara’s own first-person perspective on shopping and deals about town.  Dara also offers personal shopping tours she calls Shopping Safaris, as well as detailed shopping guides for major fashion hubs around the world.

She needed a complete overhaul to her site, originally built in 1999. Dara had a handful of detailed illustrations by Micho Illustrations that she wanted included and we drew our palette from those. Dara also required a fresh logo and a complete rebranding, so with her gregarious personality in mind and the Micho illustrations to work with, we went for a bold, fun, vaguely 80’s feel.

Why ExpressionEngine?

Joelle Reeder: ExpressionEngine was ideal for this project, as Dara required many goodies that ExpressionEngine already had available out of the box, most obviously the weblog module, but a major draw for Dara was the potential exclusivity the member features could provide.

Ideally, Dara wanted to be able to manage her site almost completely on her own and with ExpressionEngine’s custom fields, we were able to set up everything so that even an HTML novice could update everything with just a few clicks.

ExpressionEngine’s dynamic archiving allowed us to create newsletter templates just like those used in her Constant Contact newsletter blasts so she could archive her newsletters on her site and link them directly.

Are you using any add-ons on FashionJunkie?

Joelle Reeder: Yes, indeed! Plugins, extensions and modules, oh my! Since FashionJunkie.com heavily relies on traffic generated by multiple weekly newsletter blasts, we really wanted to streamline how users subscribed to newsletters vs. how they registered for the site.

Our first stop was Solspace where, after speaking with Mitchell, he and his team put together a fabulous ExpressionEngine extension that utilizes the API of the newsletter service Constant Contact to allow users to register with FashionJunkie.com via ExpressionEngine and subscribe to the newsletter with just one form.

Using PHP, we also created a stand-alone subscription form for those who wished to subscribe to the newsletter, but not register for the site, along with several varieties of submission, reservation and contact forms required by the client.

In addition to more commonly used goodies like Extract URL and Word Limiter, we also incorporated the LinkList module so that Dara could showcase links to favorite stores and boutiques she’s built relationships with, as well as the Metaweblog API so that we could integrate Hipcast for future podcasts and video podcasts.

How did the client receive the site?  What training was needed?

Joelle Reeder: Very minimal training was needed.  Dara and I met on the phone to go over certain portions, but since ExpressionEngine is so simple to understand, once we set up the separate weblogs with custom fields, all she needed to do was click, type and publish.  That’s pretty easy!  I think I’ve spoken with Dara several times since the launch of her site and I can’t think of one question she had that involved ExpressionEngine.

What is your favorite part of the site? 

Joelle Reeder: This is a tough one… working with so many large images, which the client really wanted to showcase, and a wide palette was challenging, but it really was so fun! I think my favorites are the “About” and “Shopping Safari” sections.  The image transition on the about page, along with the straightforward, easy-to-read layout is a highlight and on the opposite end, the Shopping Safari section makes use of ExpressionEngine’s custom field and conditional functionalities to display many images and content based on what’s entered by the client.  Plus, I’m rather partial to that wee shopping bag icon.  Oh! And I like how the member profiles turned out, See one here.  Dara wanted a lot of custom fields added which we were happy to accommodate.

What was your client’s favorite part of the site?

Joelle Reeder: You know, I’m honestly not sure! I know Dara was thrilled with the project, but don’t take my word for it. Why don’t we ask her ourselves?

Dara said, “I’m far from tech savvy and the ExpressionEngine site (thanks to Joelle’s magical touch!) has been incredibly easy to use. I had one quick phone tutorial with Joelle and ever since then it’s been smooth sailing.

I love how everything can be completely customized to fit your needs - in my case, everything from archived “FashionJunkie Fix” email newsletters arranged by date and category (i.e. clothes encounters, beauti-fixation and shop talk nyc), pre-publishing email newsletters, blog posts and shopping safari stories (a life saver!), ROS ads, to icons, etc.

Another major issue for me: I’ve rarely (if ever) had any technical issues with the CMS - it’s easy to navigate and most importantly, reliable!

Thanks to ExpressionEngine, I’ve been able to turn FashionJunkie.com into a small, yet profitable business!”

Did you get treated to a Shopping Safari?!

Joelle Reeder: Oh, I wish!  But, alas, I’m in San Diego and Dara is in Manhattan, so it just wasn’t in the cards. But if I’m ever in New York, I know just who I’ll be calling for some fashion advice.