With the help of a friend's 56k dial-up modem and Pentium Pro computer, I started on my first website using Geocities. Lots has changed since then, and even more continues to change at fast pace. The web is a constantly evolving medium, which means the more flexible your design is, the better. Making a website has many different facets: making sure the design holds up in different browsers, obtaining good ranking with the popular search engines, delivering content in an engaging way, and most importantly... pulling it all together and making it work.
I enjoy creating highly dynamic and interactive websites using a variety of tools, languages and standards. While I feel at home coding things from scratch in php, mysql, html, css and javascript just using a simple text editor, I also make use of popular frameworks and management systems like WordPress.
HipHopProduction.com is a personal website that I have been running since 2003. It originally started out as a place to host music and lyrics for online competitions. Since then, thanks to constant updates and smart use of SEO, it has evolved into a top search engine result on google, yahoo, bing and other engines, aside from being a valuable resource for a large community of music producers. The site runs off a highly customized WordPress theme, which I also integrated into a custom Simple Machines Forum theme. I commissioned my good friends Hope Krokidas and Andy Koconis of Main Sail Design to come up with the artwork, while I got to play the role of creative director and programmer. After a few months of hard work, revisions and long nights of coding in php, mysql, html and css, I'm very pleased with the result - which is a seamless integration of wordpress and a third-party forum, which loads in all major browsers.
Originally created as a personal tool for finding new music to sample, I eventually wrapped my code in some nice graphics and posted it for public use. Dubbed "SampleDig," this is a flash app that searches online music blogs and RSS feeds for links to files (mp3s, zips, etc.) and presents them in an easy format. It was created with Actionscript 2 using the Flash IDE.
One of the most ambitious, and important jobs I've had the pleasure of developing at IDEAS, FloridaEvacuates.com is Florida residents one source of evacuation shelter information on the web at home and on the phone. The purpose of the website is to inform residents of nearby shelter openings as they become available in the event of an emergency along with basic shelter preparation information along with links to numerous other resources.
I worked closely with the Florida Department of Emergency Management and Red Cross, and integrated a long list of government requirements and standards. The final result were two websites - one with a dynamic map and another website made just for mobile phones. I also designed and programmed mobile applications for both the iPhone and Blackberry. For the websites, I programmed everything in PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript and mySQL. The map technology used included Microsoft MapPoint (Bing Maps), MapQuest, Yahoo Maps and Google Maps.
I have been bouncing between wordpress, joomla and expression engine for the past couple years trying to figure out a decent way to integrate a streaming audio player into my forums, without altering the database, or intruding on SMF at all.
Anyways, long story short, I ditched all the “bridges” and just made a non-intrusive package (well, started to make it at least) that feeds data into flash using a series of php functions, that connect directly to the smf database.
I’ve put together a practical example of using this class here:
It will load a given topic (in this case, each drop-down item is associated with a topic that has lots of replies with attachments), search that topic for mp3 attachments, and add them to the list. Then by clicking on any of the names in the list, that user’s mp3 will begin to stream.
The functions that I’ve got working so far are getNews, getMembers, getMemberGroups, getPollEntries, getPoll, getBoards, getBoardCategories, getBoardModerators, getMemberInfo, validateMember, and getTopicAttachments.
Read on for the source code and a functional example. read more...
At IDEAS, we created a series of children's books for the Florida Department of Emergency Management. After huge demand for the printed books, our solution was to recreate all of the books into a digital format using Adobe Flash, and posted on a public website for anyone to download and enjoy for free. I was in charge of organizing all of the data on the website, along with the full website architecture and all programming (HTML, PHP, CSS, Javascript, mySQL, Flash).
Another project at IDEAS, where my art director worked with me to create a design which could be easily updated by the client. This took lots of preproduction and creative planning in both the design and programming stages. After the artwork was created, I edited all of the image assets and content, so that HTML and CSS templates could be created. The final website was created using WordPress to manage content, along with custom HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and Flash (Actionscript) assets.
In addition to my coworkers at IDEAS producing an animation broadast on 60 Minutes, I implemented a new website design along with additional media elements to help Energetics Technologies tell their story to the world. The design and content of the website was provided for me, and I took the role of organizing the information into meaningful categories and producing the entire site using WordPress and lots of custom HTML, PHP, CSS, Javascript and mySQL queries.
The Head Chefs are a revolutionary new line of children’s cooking utensils by Fiesta Products. At IDEAS, the client asked us to create a suite of tools to be used at their tradeshow that would assist them with buyer relations, media relations, and brand support for their upcoming product launch. I was in charge of developing and creating the website, along with a store locator, flash games, and custom tracking software. The art was provided to me by my art director and then implemented using HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Flash and mySQL.
Another IDEAS client, C-iT was conceived by a physician with a fascination for cartooning and direct personal experience of the effectiveness of key-word association tools as an aid to learning scientific concepts. The website artwork and overall layout was created by my art director, with the programming and implementation left up to me. I created the website using HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, mySQL and Flash.
