Building this site - January 12, 2009
When setting out to do anything, I find that a little planning goes a long way. Since we're a web development shop specializing in Drupal, there were a few givens.
- we'd be building in Drupal
- easy to build, populate and maintain
- good showcase piece
- all the bells
I wanted to build a site which is easy to navigate. For that, I chose to leverage Drupal's menu model. I've got some custom modules which help me to split the primary from the secondary and tertiary menu system. It has been honed to a point so that each active menu knows about highlighting itself. It also leverages Drupal's theming layer so any customization you would like to do before presentation can be done.eshoreli
I wanted to implement some nice administrative features so I could use this site as my example when sitting with clients. You'll notice the sexy little javascript menu up in the top bar which only contins items that the current user is allowed to access. That's build leveraging the Administration Menu module for Drupal. For users who like the key features right there at their fingertips, we implement a simple push button interface. Of course, these items are only seen by authorized users.
From there, we have a few slick uses of views. The front page is a series of speciaically gathered blocks which are powered by Drupal views.This is like having the power of a query building tool running behind of your precious data. The goal for you is just to get the data in there with the flexibility to do many things with it.
I'm also using Taxonomy to flag some items in to the news feed etc. Those will be generating some RSS items you can pick up by clicking the RSS feed icon in the front page tool bar.That's a good way to engage people to stay in touch with what we're doing. Some people find this kind of geekery to be interesting.
There are some definite custom tweaks in how we theme menu items. I'm also doing a custom search using basically the same jQuery text swap technique we use on many sites. This way, people don't have to swipe away text when they want to search for something. I know. It's the small things.
Then there's a site map. This is key to any site. This gives people a way to come to see your site at a glance. Not to mention the google love involved in having a site map. Every site should have one.
So - with all of these ideas in mind, I approached Jeff at Brightwhite for a new site design. I put forth a few parameters and he came out with a revision 1. It was pretty close to the money. I liked the design, but there was something not hitting home with me about the colors. After some revision and surfing the web for some good color choices to base a choice on, we were off. The templates were built and I was unleashed on my own site and a fresh download of the Drupal framework.
The goal of the site is to share some of what Shoreline Consulting has been up to this past while. We feel there are some interesting projects we're taking on that may get you thinking about an application for your business. We're always up for the challenge. Just like building this site. Sure, it's simple and concise, but for us, that was the challenge. How to make a really solid, usable site that was consise, easy to navigate and vibrant enough to show what we're really about.
Thanks for popping to the blog area of our site. As projects roll on, we'll be posting stories of our zany adventures in Drupalling as well as other lifestyle, opinion and tech tips.
Best regards,
Adam