Reference:
http://news.hmmm-uk.com/
Description:
Anthony Marsland from hmmm...media Ltd, London, wanted to build together a news section for the hmmm...media company Web site.
Project Details:
The project executed for hmmm...media involved coding the reference design provided by the customer in web page format, as well as movable type installation and development services. Later, over the time, we've relocated the client movable type installation to our hosting solution and continuously upgraded the client installation.
Technical Specifications:
Anthony Marsland which is not anymore with hmmm..media Ltd for a few months now, wrote me on November the 21st, 2007 asking to build together a news section on the company Web site using either wordpress or movable type.
I've recommending movable type and then we've started the work.
Web Site Layout Coding
Anthony wanted to adopt a look and feel similar to his company newsletter, so we've exchanges a bit about the extra features we need to add to that layout starting point. Soon after, he supplied me the look and feel he would like to adopt on this new blog section.
Anthony sent me the design in .tiff format. I've hand coded it in web page format using xhtml and css, making sure the work is compatible against the world wide web consortium (w3c) specifications, cross-platform compatible and optimized for search engines.
Movable Type Installation and Development
Once the web site layout coding was ready, I've installed movable type on the client hosting server and then proceed with the movable type development by basically integrating the reference design within the movable type publishing platform.
The development was a bit tricky, as the client needed to display a list of artists, sponsors and useful information links. I've development the movable type backend to allow all these functions and make them easier to use and administrate by the client.
Movable Type Relocation and Hosting
There were some issues with the hmmm...media hosting provider, in the sense that the server the client was using didn't include some of the most important movable type modules, for instance the Image::Magick module and also that their hosting solution custom support was very sloppy on handling very simple matters such as .htaccess configurations, mime type etc.
For these considerations, I've advised hmmm...media to switch the hosting solution for this blog to us and forget about all these problems, plus benefit of the advantages we are offering for the movable type customers we are hosting in partnership with Pair Networks Inc. (see the movable type professional hosting service we are offering).
In the beginning we've tried to host together the whole project, but hmmm...media main site is made of some custom flash and the flash developer asked a very high price for updating his work to work also on our server, as the image uploading facility was hardcoded to work only with that hosting solution.
This being the case, the client still wanted to host the blog with us and so we've implemented the blog under a 'news' sub-domain. http://news.hmmm-uk.com/.
Movable Type Upgrade
Among the advantages of hosting their movable type project with Pair, the crew from hmmm...news got email notifications every time a new movable type version was released.
I've basically personally presented the movable type new release advantages and the reasons to upgrade. The client had only to approve the proposal to upgrade their installation.
As per the cost, sometimes it was done for free, some other times it was done for a very small fee.
hmmm...news screenshot
I would now display for you below two screen captures from the hmmm... news Web pages, specifically the main page and the individual article page.
Go to news.hmmm-uk.com to see the Web site at full parameters.
hmmm... news main page
hmmm... news individual article
Technologies used:
XHTML, CSS, Movable Type, PHP, mySQL.
Contracting:
Contracting from hmmm...media Ltd, London, United Kingdom
Period:
Ongoing since November 2007