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DOTT (Design Of The Times) Eco Design Challenge

The Designs of the Time (Dott) Eco design challenge is a Design Council Project.

A year long programme which fits in with the National Curriculum, in particular Year-8 pupils and involves them understanding not just the size of their school's carbon footprint, but in how design can reduce it. This is achieved through community projects, events and exhibitions, in a way of seeing both what sustainability might really look like, and the part design plays in achieving it.

We were asked to build the site, designed by Leap Media to create an innovative map, using Open Street Map data to give us full creative control in the look and feel of the map.  We also created a user friendly content management system which features various dynamic flash elements. 

The site also  includes a custom blog, downloadable resources and a page for the site,which allows the editors to compose their own newsletter. This newsletter is unique in that it converts to an email template that is then forwarded to subscribers without the cost of using a third party email provider.

We've also added an accessability option key. This will enable the viewer to change the feel and look of the site for easier viewing for each individual, from increasing the text size and changing the colour of the background to black/white, white/black and yellow/blue.

 

Click here to open the site in a new window. 

Build Center

Build Center is one of the UK's largest building supplies companies, owned by Wolseley Group PLC, Europe's leading building supplies group.

Their website was in need of a refresh, and we were approached to provide the Drupal-based content management system to power the new site.

Working with Wolsley's external design, seo, and business logistics companies we implemented a solution which;

  • Improved site structure and code to improve the search engine rankings of the site.
  • Updated branch information from a feed generated by their existing business systems.
  • Allowed users to search for their nearest branch by entering a postcode or address.
  • Provided an interactive mapping and routing application, powered by Multimap, giving users easy access to directions all from within the Build Center site.
  • A full content management system, allowing Wolseley staff to update the site's standard content pages.

 

The new site has been well received within the company, improving the online image of the brand, and also achieveing the core requirement of improving search engine results.

www.buildcenter.co.uk

Wolseley Intranet Site

Wolseley are a FTSE100 listed company, specialising in building supplies and logistics, with a market value of over £2bn. After the earlier success of the public site for one of their leading brands (Build Center), we were asked to develop a large Drupal based intranet site.

The site imports data and documents from Wolseley's existing business systems, and provides a searchable platform to allow staff to find data quickly and easily from thousands of individual items.

We provided users with multiple methods of finding their data. A slding heirarchical menu that allows users to drill down through categories, an alternate column-based menu performing a similar function, and a text search function.

Given the amount of data that would need to be searched, we recommended using the open-source Solr search engine. This is a true enterprise-level search application, offering the speed and power required to make search simple for users. Our implementation included

  • Synonym based search term matching.
  • Spelling suggestions directly from the search bar, as you type.
  • Alternate spelling suggestions if no results are returned by a search.
  • Filtering of search results by category, allowing users to drill down after an initial search.
  • Indexing of documents in pdf, word, excel formats.

 

Solr search is the leading enterprise search solution for Drupal based platforms, and we would recommend it for any enterprise application where user search is critical to the succes of a project.

 

 

Somerset Art Works

Somerset Art Works is an arts promotion organisation promoting working artists in various fields. With an existing Coldfusion CMS with over 1600 users & 2000 content pages. We worked directly with the festival administrators over a 3 month period to develop and fine tune the new site.

Amongst the many features included in the project were;

  • Flash based slideshow powered by an auto-generated XML feed.
  • The site was optimised for search engines, and the transfer ws perfomed in a way that kept the google rankings of the legacy site.
  • Multiple levels of administration & reporting access were provided.
  • Custom reporting on memberships, viewable online or downloadable as excel spreadsheets.
  • Email newsletter capability was included, saving the costs of the external provider that was previously used.
  • Calendars and maps for events organised by the organisation.
  • Training sessions for staff and members.

www.somersetartworks.org.uk

The Olive

The Olive was a family orientated restaurant based in St.Austell, Cornwall and specialising in Mediterranean cuisine. 

Analogweb were approached to code the site from initial designs supplied by Leap Media.

The site itself utilises some large flash elements coupled with text to convey the restaurants orgainic, fairtrade and sustainable ethos.

Click here to open the site in a new window.