I am two weeks into my Forrst membership and I am loving it. I can not fault the site mechanics which work on an a user approval process, so basically you do not get the normal “I have just done my first ever web design project and I need help with my bold, centred, red, comic sans marquee”. It is really refreshing to talk to like minded professionals in design and development realms that provide ever helpful advice and pointers on submitted work and new techniques.

Inspiration for the masses

There is a huge variety of work showcased in the community that allows people to get inspiration for their current projects from other designs. This is not to condone the copying of designs, but simply the appreciation of good design. It has inspired me to think outside the box when creating websites, buttons, logos and print media.

Fresh thinking nerds

Essentially the code development parts of the site are populated and assisted by people with technological know-how. This a refreshing change compared to many web design forums, instead of getting multiple ‘How do I do…’ you get people showing off new skills to get around problems that people may not have even posted yet. People seem to take a great amount of pride in what they post on Forrst and that results in a polite show off contest, providing nerdy and artistic insight into the world.

A slick, pleasant and professional community

To conclude, I would recommend Forrst to any professional designer / design company as a vital stage in project development, allowing you multiple second opinions on work for clients in terms of design, functionality and future developments. Sign up to Forrst to see for yourself.

I have just finished creating the new look for matthewfreeman.co.uk. I have incorporated a dark style for the website with a clear font face that invites the user to read content. The main reason for the redesign was to optimize content for clearer on screen reading. The site is considerably longer on the page than my previous site and contains a separate page for ‘Contact‘.

Out with the old, in with the new

There is a brand new look logo which facilitates the new green and blue colour scheme, this gives the site a fresh look. I have kept the design clean and simple with 100% width elements containing constrained width classes.

Fontain of joy

I was dying to use some new fonts created for the web on my site, and once again I think Google seems to have nailed this. Consequently I used two of Google’s web fonts that are completely free (of course). I can not recommend this enough, obviously there are many other solutions out there; TypeKit, Fonts.com, and of course the standard @font-face statements, but Google just make everything so easy, as usual. Pick your font(s) and add them to your site with a single line of Javascript / CSS include. Then simply reference the fonts in the CSS file(s) for your site. Check out Google’s web fonts.

Visual interest

I am eager to keep the site visually appealing and interactive. My previous site contained a portfolio and drafts section, the new site combines the best of both of these, showing both live sites and pre-launch concepts in the work section.

Content management systems have clear leaders in industry. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal have been carrying content management systems for many years now. The problem is there seems to be a lack of well documented, supported, free e-commerce systems.

The Existing Solutions

There are e-commerce systems out there that are turning over £millions but none of them seem to meet the flexible requirements of the average client willing to part with £10-20k. Solutions such as OpenCart and ZenCart are free and easy for the simple sites, but the flexibility and support on them is not adequate to provide complex developments and customisations to the paying end user expecting the marvelous end product.

Limitations & Shortcomings

I think the main limitations with these systems seem to be a lack of planning in the first place. That is not to say that current systems have had no planning whatsoever, but with experience comes hindsight, and hindsight, wisdom. Working with a wide range of online shops, I have witnessed first hand the limitations of such systems and want to mention just a few of them.

1. Category based product listings
   Categories, and subcategories are a vital part of any online catalog for sure, but they should not be the core constructs of product data. A system I have used in the past required a product have only one compulsory top level category and an optional subcategory. This provided limitations when the client wanted single products listed in multiple categories.
2. Limitations of page structure
   A lot of systems have confined variables in set places on certain pages, with messy dependent variables in and around them. A huge advantage of systems such as WordPress are their ability to used a multitude of variables and functions at almost any point on any page. This freedom is a must for a flexible product listing system.
3. Javascript dependent core functionality
   It still surprises me to see so many ‘addToCart’ javascript functions. Fair enough if you have some smooth AJAX functionality, but make sure there are reasonable, tested fall backs in place for those with javascript disabled (rare though that is now of course).
4. Skinning and themes
   This has got to be another area of free reign in terms of customisation. Systems that limit amounts of style changing via admin interfaces usually prevent a lot of more advanced CSS features.

Target Audience

This is obviously key when creating any system, and an e-commerce catalog system is no different. A lot of sites make use of fairly comprehensive product management and order tracking systems. This presents an issue with target audience, who will use the system? Webmasters, web developers or general administration staff? There needs to be a certain amount of knowledge assumed for each scenario.

Over the last few weeks I have been working on a new site for a professional photographer (also my brother) Daniel Freeman. The project involved creating a gallery script that would show the large version of the image when the thumb was hovered over, this was a very simple bit of jquery that I coded to achieve this. The full javascript code can be seen below:

The Simple Gallery Script

$(".GalThumb:first").addClass('active');

	$(".GalThumb").mouseenter(function(){
		$(".GalThumb").removeClass('active');
		$(this).addClass('active');
		$("#gallery img").stop(true, true);
		TheImage = $(this).find("img").attr('src');
		TheImage = TheImage.replace('small', 'large');
		TheCurrentImage = $("#gallery img").attr('src');
		TheAlt = $(this).attr('alt');
		TheLoadPath = 'gallery-loader.php?image=' + TheImage + '&alt=' + TheAlt;
		if (TheCurrentImage == TheImage){}
		else
		{
			$("#gallery img").fadeOut('slow');
			$("#gallery").append('

Loading ...

');
			$("#gallery").load(TheLoadPath, function() {
			  	$("#gallery img").fadeIn('slow');
				$("#gallery p").remove();
			});
		}
	});

The client was more than happy with this method implemented on both galleries.

The Design

The dark, clean, simplistic design allows the photos themselves to be the main focus point on every page. The colours in the photos themselves bring the pages to life and draw attention to the key points on the page.

Gallery Management

Daniel has full control over the images he wants to display. It was important to him that he could upload new images as well as remove previous ones to make room. He can now automatically upload images to a directory based on which gallery they are assigned too and the PHP code will automatically find all the images in that folder, displaying them on the designated gallery page(s).

The Outcome

The project seems to have been a huge success. Daniel has already had a variety of different positive feedback comments from friends and colleagues. I look forward to how the site will evolve and develop over the next few months.

Check out the site here: www.danielfreemanphotography.co.uk