Tell us about yourself

Tom Ashworth: Tom Ashworth’s the name, Technical Director, at NuBlue Web Solutions. Basically if anything goes wrong around here (perish the thought!) I get the blame. Most unjust.

So, the sites?

Tom Ashworth: They’re a life saver. Okay, that’s a possible exaggeration, but the SHS sites do help people improve and maintain their lifestyle. It’s all about having the life you want. That spiel over, I’ll explain the sites.
We created two sites, shs-nutrition.com and lowproteinliving.co.uk. Both are completely powered by ExpressionEngine, using the Multi-Site Manager (MSM) expansion. This meant SHS could update as and when they needed (which is pretty often). We included plenty of smooth javascript effects and UI enhancements to ease the use of the site and make it feel as slick as possible, and also slipped in a couple of flash photo montages for dessert.

SHS-nutrition holds information about rare diseases and SHS’s huge range of products and Lowproteinliving contains a large directory of articles, papers, healthy living guidelines and upcoming events. It also sports multiple snazzy ExpressionEngine forums where consumers can discuss conditions, products, healthy living and anything else related. The icing on the cake is the ‘Home Delivery’ service, which provides prescription management, stock checking, home delivery, stock rotation and product availability advice’ to consumers, meaning they can stop worrying about purchasing and picking up medication and get on with their lives.

The free, instant online sign-up is powered by the SolSpace ‘Users’ module and all the information on both sites is fully searchable using ExpressionEngine’s search utility. The SolSpace ‘Ratings’ module was also included to allow users to rate articles and recipes which appear on the website.

Why did you choose ExpressionEngine?

Tom Ashworth: Honestly? We love it. The flexibility is something we haven’t come across in any other system, and despite being super-powerful, the client front-end is amazingly easy to use. What clinches it for us is the critical-mass user base; if we have a problem or can’t figure out a way of doing something, we just log on to the ExpressionEngine forums and find an answer. If it’s something no-one’s encountered before, there are always people happy to discuss it and come up with possible options. It’s hardly surprising ‚Äö√Ñ√¨ with the power, flexibility and ease of use ExpressionEngine offers, we’re not quite sure why everyone isn’t using it. We considered putting all those heretics not using ExpressionEngine to the flame, but after considerable legal consulting, decided against it and poured our fire into this showcase.

What part of the site are you most proud of?

Tom Ashworth: The search-ability. The search actually spans both sites, using the MSM module. After grinding our teeth a little, we got a wonderful search utility that worked seamlessly across both sites, allowing consumers access to as much information as possible, even if they weren’t aware of the sister site.

We’re also pretty chuffed with the rating system (thank you SolSpace ratings!). Mainly we like it ‘cause it’s cool and shiny.

You mentioned Users and Ratings - any others add-ons?

Tom Ashworth: We try wherever possible to make use of add-ons as it speeds up development considerably and means that SHS can access all the information captured in a system and format they know and understand.

Modules we are using include User, which is used to provide an account management area for members and also a web based admin area for SHS and Ratings for members to rate information and recipes on the site. We are also making use of FreeForm to allow healthcare professionals to request research papers from SHS.

In terms of plugins we are using CSVee on a private section of the website to allow SHS to download information collected from members. Finally extensions, we are using Geo Coordinates so that SHS can add locations of their offices in the backend and it shows a nice map of all countries on the main contact page and a specific map to each country contact page (one of my favourite little features!).

How has your client received the site? What training was necessary?

Tom Ashworth: The client has been very pleased with the site and the response that they have had from both consumers and healthcare professionals has been very positive. SHS wanted to build an online community and the use of the forums along the huge amount of information on the site has really created a buzz.  We initially gave a single one-on-one training session on how to use the ExpressionEngine backend and from there it has been telephone support if and when they needed it, but mostly they have been able to get on with publishing information with no issues.

What are your future plans for SHS Nutrition?

Tom Ashworth: We have already released two country specific sites: Low Protein Living and Low Protein 4 Life. These are duplicates of lowproteinliving.co.uk with a few style changes and the ability to add their own consumer information. We have also added extra functionality, using categories, so that products will only show if they are available in that country.

We also recently released www.myketocal.co.uk which is a product specific site for SHS. Ketocal is an epilepsy product so the site only shows information relating to the product and epilepsy.

All these sites are run through the MSM and we are hoping to do more like this for them in the future.