What’s New and in the Queue
In the past month or so, I’ve been able to finish up a few projects, as well as get started on a few more. If I’ve been slow to respond to one of your emails… this would be the reason.
First up were a couple of redesigns for Anstar Products and Bulb Reminder. These were both “design only” projects and the finished sites are currently being coded up. This past weekend HearItFirst.ca also went live, which represents the final installment in the CMC Distributions “trilogy”. Now YourMusicZone.com, CMC Distribution and HearItFirst.ca are all running off of and sharing data from a single Expression Engine installation… how’s that for flexible?
I’m currently in the middle of a redesign project for the Orthodox Union. The design phase has been completed (view the process) and I’m now working on designing the secondary pages, as well as finalizing the code on the home page.
Next in the queue is a project that is a little more personal and close to my heart. The Dalit Freedom Network is an organization that empowers approximately 250 million people that are born outside India’s caste system in their quest for social freedom and human dignity. I’ve just completed the design phase so be on the lookout soon for a full new site at www.dalitnetwork.org.
What are you working on?
Comments
I’ll second Ben’s comment.
You did a great job of controling the content on the Orthodox Union design. It’s a lot of content but you’ve managed it well.
So YourMusicZone, CMC Distribution, and HearItFirst are managed through one control panel? What challeges did you face to accomplish that?
Sick. All of it. I especially love the OU site. You’ve done a phenomenal job of packing tons of information into a really great lookiing grid.
Hey Josh, I faced quite a few challenges building these 3 different sites. One of the larger ones is that the different sections of the CMC site need to be downloadable. With Expression Engine, everything is in a database, so this was pretty tricky.
The other thing I had a real tough time was with the amount of conditionals and custom fields needed to be able to display a potential 5 CD’s per album, with a max of 20 tracks per CD. On the album weblog I have almost 200 custom fields.
Wow, Jesse that’s a lot of custom fields going on there. How slow does the control panel load with that many fields in there?
Great work on those sites though. I really love what you’ve done with the work. I found myself scouring Hear It First without even realizing it.
I just loaded it up to test it out. It takes 3.5 – 4 seconds on broadband.
Jesse
I’m glad to see that it’s still speedy no matter what the amount of data is needed to be inputted. Should’ve figured ExpressionEngine was up to it.
I just have to say that this is top shelf work. I loved all of it, especially looking at your different stages of mockups. Don’t just take this as lip service – I was actually inspired to write about your work in my blog (which desperately is calling for a redesign BTW).
Take care,
Rick
I’ve always appreciated your sort of open-source design approach, Jesse, and although I know your designs have been ripped off, I also really admire how you handle it. With that in mind, I’m truly looking forward to more EE tips/hints like your dynamic CSS trick.
As for me, I’m not working on anything near as cool as the Dalit Freedom Network. You know what I’m doing, and it ain’t that special. ;)
Wow, you are my hero Jesse. I really appreciate the fact that you share all these behind the scene work with us readers of yours. What am I working on? I am working on my band’s http://downsizersband.com website and after looking at your skills, feeling a bit depressed all of sudden…
Don’t get depressed looking at my stuff Hyun, I could never pull off the style of work that you’re doing. Take a look at Sean’s work (one comment above yours), and then get the depression medication out.
Wow, that’s some seriously talented stuff by Sean! Great use of colors with radical effects. I was just recently asked by my church here in Berlin to design their site. I think I will use EE for the back-end. Anyway, thanks for the cure ;). I feel a bit more motivated now to finish up my band’s site. Also, if you have sometime in your busy schedule, if you would show us how you made your commenting system would be great (EE tutorial request!! ;) ). I love how the background colors alternate, commenter’s picture shown, and the instant preview feature!! Your site is bookmarked! :)
Excellent work! I saw a very strange thing regarding the fonts on http://www.dalitnetwork.org/. I mail you a print-screen…
Take care / Henrik
The Dalit Network concept is beautiful—the tone is spot on.
Do all your projects have as many wireframes and concepts as the OU one does? That’s an impressive amount of them, but for a site of that magnitude, it’s understandable.
I admire and am daunted by your EE execution of the CMC “trilogy.” I have a project now with some custom fields that require conditional statements more advanced than I’ve done prior with fields, and I can’t imagine doing it for 200 fields.
Thanks for sharing your process—I found it quite inspiring :)
Hey Jesse,
Great blog! I check back every few days to see if there is an update. I guess you must be busy with projects. Take Care.
Shannon
Gorgeous. That OU site is a major accomplishment and sets the bar a notch higher than the latest nytimes.com redesign.
I can’t see your point!!?
Sounds like your workload is as heavy as mine Jesse! Think im handling it though… Arghh!
Hi Jesse!
Your designs are brilliant – and yet somehow simple. I am a web programmer by trade, and I am so bad at design I had to get an external company to to the design of www.beefstockmarket.com.au, one of my clients. However I am still not happy with it. Are there any sites, or books where you learnt to design? I would love to get to the stage you are at.
Thanks!
Hey Dale,
Thanks for the kind words. I don’t really have any schooling or formal education, and have always just watched the designers around me and basically copied them. Here’s a good article by Cameron Moll, entitled Good designers copy, great designers steal. You can probably tell from my work, that Cameron had been a big influence on me.
Hope that helps.
Jesse,
All I have to say is brilllant work, I was inspired by your City Church site and have applied some of your concepts to a redesign I’m currently working on found here.
I hope you don’t mind, I loved the idea of having the site map located in the footer, it helps with site navigation and indexing – having all those good links on every page.
Well I’ve rambled enough, great work! Your designs are always an inspiration!
BTW I was looking into EE and it’s seems pretty daunting to setup, especially on the level of your sites. Is there anyway to also include a shopping cart?
Hey Chris,
Thanks for the kind words… and I don’t mind at all that you were inspired by some of my work. Nothing that you mentioned were my ideas in the first place… :)
Hey Jesse, have you seen http://www.shadows.com/tags/agency ? Is that your work?
Afraid not JoeBogus. I did find some helpful links on there though :)
how easy is it to get EE to share data among multiple domains? I am in the very begining stages of a project that will need that capability.
Not too tough at all… read up on it here
I assume that one of the 3 sites actually has the EE database install on it. Does it produce a significant performance hit having the other 2 domains constantly accessing it?
All three are actually on the same server account, but just in different folders / subdomains. I haven’t noticed much of a performance issue. But these sites don’t tend to get a massive amount of traffic either.
Jesse
I too appreciate you sharing the stages of your work. It emphasises, as an architect friend of mine always says, that first you need to know how something will work before you know what it should look like.
What do you think are the main objectives of a home page? I’m thinking this through, and feel there are 4:
1. To be attractive so people want to return
2. To give an idea of what the site is about.
3. To give quick links into the site to encourage people to explore.
4. To provide easy navigation to all parts of the site.
Generally people seem to find it difficult to be attractive and achieve the other functions, but your sites seem to do all of these.
Any comments?
Exceptional job! I’m continually impressed with the work you’re able to put out. I look forward to hearing back from you concerning my web project. Have a great day.
This site is interesting and very informative, nicely interface. Enjoyed browsing through the site.
Keep up the good work. Greetings
good good good! good looking i will look up for your new projects!
Hi,
First off all, let me tell you that you have great feeling and good stuff :p
Can you explain in more deep way the process stage from the OU Wireframes (Main Concepts) to the Design Options (Main Concepts) ?
The OU Wireframes are all made in photoshop, correct? How you build the “divs” and the css from the design (Wireframes – PSD) to the Design (html + DIV) ?
Can you explain more about that ?
Thanks
Hi Jesse,
Can you make one tutorial about that (process stages) ?
It would be great !!!
Note: For example we can use the Photoshop+ImageReady to generate the css+html code.
http://www.duclaux.net/blog/how-to-convert-your-photoshop-document-to-a-css-in-less-than-30-seconds-a-precise-tutorial-with-illustrations/2006/02/08/
Using this approach we get sure the CSS is dead dirty but you can clean it up and convert it to a proper layout.
How you do Jesse ?
Cheers…
I would recommend against using ImageReady to code your pages.
I’m sure Jesse would agree that you need to have a good understanding of XHTML & CSS and code the pages yourself.
ImageReady is just going to produce the most bloated gobbity gook code. Then when it comes time to make some updates or edit your clients site, you’ll have no idea what’s going on.
Just my 2 cents.
Yeap, I agree with Chris !
Let’s wait for some post/tutorial from Jesse to clear our mind ;o)
I too appreciate you sharing the stages of your work. It emphasises, as an architect friend of mine always says, that first you need to know how something will work before you know what it should look like.
Keep up the good work. Greetings
Enjoyed browsing through the site. Thank you for your article very interesting. Keep up the good work. Greetings
Expression Engine lets you run multiple domains off the same installation? Is this hard to do? EE seems like a much more powerful solution than WordPress, particularly for developing non-blog sites. Your thoughts on this? Great work, btw!
I can’t believe I posted this almost a year ago! I’m such a slacker.
And yes… you can run multiple sites off of one EE install, and have them share data. Check it out in the docs.
EE is incredibly flexible and powerful… definitely give it a try.
Exceptional work especially when it comes to the Orthodox Union site. I really like the way you have packed all that information, that third site impressed me the most.
Keep up the good work!
Help Wanted
Beautiful designs Jesse. I particularly like the gradients you’ve used on Bulb Reminder, and the colour scheme on Hear It First. Work to be proud of.
Ben - March 20, 2006