Web Development Samples

Civil Air Patrol New York Squadron 292

Our daughter's Civil Air Patrol (CAP) squadron wanted a fresh new site but did not have the in-house talent to create it. Their requirements were somewhat unique. They wanted photo galleries, a events calendar, and a number of pages that would educate visitors about the history of CAP and the squadron, information for parents of cadets, and for it to help with recruiting. Additionally they wanted a password secured area to have information available only to members of the squadron, such a email and phone contact lists. I gave them a site that they loved. They provided much of the content and I provided other content by creating FAQ for parents of cadets and by researching and creating links to a lot of CAP and non-CAP sites that provided info and places to buy uniform related items. I also created a flash header for the home page that dramatically shows some of the aspects of the organization focusing on the cadet side of the operation. I customized a free web calendar application to fit the site's look and feel. I included a on site Google map that allows visitors to get directions to their meeting location. While we donated our work to this worthy cause, if charged for the site would cost $600-900.

Country Gourmet Recipes

This was a site I made for sharing my recipes. The unique aspect of this site is that I integrated a blog application with a custom designed recipe entry and display system. Additionally I created a recipe search system that allows a significant ability to filter searches on dozens of criteria from cuisine to main ingredients. The advance search also allows the visitor to determine what is displayed and in what sort order.

Another unique aspect of the site is the large amount of dynamically generated content based on what is in the database. This includes items like the list of cuisines, methods or recipe types (entree, appetizer, etc.) represented in recipes in the database. Add a new recipe from a cuisine not included before, and that new cuisine automatically appears in the cuisine list. The system also allows us to tie recipes to blog posts and visa-versa. The blog system is used to comment on recipes and I also created a method to rate recipes. One of the useful management features is the ability to list one recipe as a ingredient in another, like a spice mixture. This means that once you have entered a marinade etc., you can include it in other recipes without re entering it. If a recipe has another recipe included in its ingredients, that recipe is automatically appended to the listing of the first recipe. Because of the large amount of custom code and database design the cost is higher. cost $3000-5000.

Susquehanna Valley Mycological Society

This site was a complete rewrite of their previous site, which had been constructed using Frontpage. This caused all the navigation to be java applets which slowed the load time for every page. I reworked the site to reorganize the content and make use of a tool to create the photo galleries quickly. The custom graphics gave it a more exciting look. Since there was load time to spare, I provided an animated gif for the left side buttons (links) that sweeps a mushroom across the button when it is pressed.

The new site has a cleaner and less gimmicky look, which adds to the impression of SVMS being a capable organization. I also tuned up the keywords and text in order to increase the chances of being found on a search. The hope is the newer look and feel combined with the a better chance of the "mushroom interested" finding the page, will increase membership for the organization. The site also has a large photo gallery from the groups forays. In the future I hope to add a forum to the site, and a listserver to allow mushroom hunting alerts to be quickly sent to all the members. This site would cost $600-800.

Top Notch Equestrian Center (DaniPinto.com)

Dani Pinto has been completely immersed in the “horse culture” since she was 11 years old. Her Walton, NY equestrian center is simply gorgeous, but its remote location wasn’t getting her the business. Dani hired Clay to not only create a web site but to harness her passion about horses. Since Dani wanted to spend her time working with horses and riders, we interviewed her, took lots of photos and knuckled down to work.

Her web site features an equestrian quote at the top of each page. The quote is chosen randomly from a list of quotes that Dani selected. I worked with Dani to select the optimum display of her facility and conformation of her horses. Lori’s own experience with horses helped us highlight the information that horse lovers want to know about horses, facilities and trainers. With us creating most of the content, and all the pictures, this site would cost $900-1100.

Northeast Pennsylvania Equine Clinic

Northeast Pennsylvania Equine Clinic (NPEC) wanted a web presence to both advertise their services and new location, and to provide information to their customers and all horse owners. They wanted to have forms available for download by customers. They also wanted lots of informative articles and links to other equine services. They also wanted to use lots of images.

I used optimized thumbnails to speed load time of the pages that had many pictures, with links to larger versions if the visitor was interested. I also converted many of their forms to PDF versions so that they could be printed by anyone, weather they had Word or not. They currently maintain their own site, making updates to the pages and adding more photos. cost $900-1300.

Mountain Aire Cottage Care

Mountain Aire Cottage Care wanted to reach out to new and existing customers, and showcase some of the new services they offered. Their previous site lacked impact and offered very little information. In this case the customer was very specific about the wording of the text on the site and insisted that I use exactly what they provided us, without the normal clean up I do to customer provided content.

The previous web developer had registered their domain name in the developers name and then did not want to release the domain. I helped this customer pursue this though InterNic and regain control of their domain. When the ruckus started the previous web developer pulled the site. Luckly I had captured the content and then I helped this customer find a economical web hosting service. As the content and pictures were provided, this site would cost $300-400.

Abby's Lake House

This site was created to show the amenities and activities available for a vacation rental. Because most of the functionality, such as booking calendar, was provided by HomeAway.com's web site, this would be considered a static site. When a visitor wants to see what weeks are open or the rental rates, links take the visitor to the HomeAway site. I provided rental agreement documents in PDF format so the visitor can print them off, sign and mail to the owners. I included a on site Google map that allows visitors to get directions to a prominent intersection 2 miles from the actual location. cost $400-600.

EZRTools

This is the web site that I use to sell our EZRTools software product. It has been reworked recently for a more modern look. Because the audience is programmers a high-tech look was used. Other new additions include super fast loading animations that demonstrate how our product is used. The site also includes an automated system for the newsletter.

Because of our concern about spam, I created this PHP powered fully automated "double opt in" system for users to sign up for the newsletter. A secured listserve is used to distribute the newsletters. The site uses a cost effective merchant service to allow users to purchase the downloadable software product. Because of the large amount of content, search engine optimization, custom navigation and the animations, this site would cost $1000-2000.

The Susquehanna School

I were very happy to create this very large site for an Independent Private School in New York. The site's purpose was two fold, to help with marketing the school, and to be a resource for teachers, parents and the children enrolled in the school.

It would have forums for each of the classes that would allow for student discussion, posting of assignments, teacher-parent communication, and weather/school closing information. Additional forums would allow teachers from TSS and other Independent Schools to discuss teaching phylosophys and methods. Also the site would have galleries that the students and teachers could post photos to. The schools calendar and each classes calendar would be online, and email list servers would simplify the sending out of the weekly newsletter. Older students would have FTP accounts so that they could upload assignments. The web server would also provide for the common storage of student files allowing access from home instead of only at the school (LAN). Automated scripts would bring new or updated files to their mirror locations on the school's LAN.

By placing lots of information about the school's methods, goals, curriculum and teachers on the website, with good SEO techniques I hoped to increase enrollment by insuring that searches done for schooling in their geographic area would find them both in open search and local search. The marketing side of the site was designed to quickly provide a picture of what the school was about, its facilities, and then walking visitors through the enrollment process. The information was organized to allow a prospective student's parent to immediately focus on the class that their child would be in, and then flow directly into any particular education topic (Art, Science, etc.).

I used FAQ boxes in each area of the site with questions relative to that area. The answers would show in a pop up when the question was moused over. I felt that visitors who did not wish to read through the longer narratives could quickly find the answers they needed to make a choice. The site also had a lot of in-depth content that delved deeply into the schools methods, describing how the schooling would happened and why that contributed to a better education.

Of course part of the contract was to provide instruction to the school staff and students on how to use the facilities of the site.

Unfortunately as the project was nearing completion, financial pressures and low enrollment caused the school to close. To see a variety of images of the pages in the site highlighting some of the technical features you can look at this page of examples. cost $7000-10000.

Borough of Susquehanna Depot

Clay created the Borough of Susquehanna Depot site as part of the Pennsylvania Main Street Program. The site has an online forum and a calendar, both driven by SQL databases. The HTML for the organization and business listings are generated by text based reports generated from a Excel spreadsheet. After the spreadsheet is updated, Clay executes custom code to generate html that is pasted into the appropriate pages. With the calendar, forum and directories, not to mention lots of content that I provided, this site would cost $2000-3000.

The Boro had us update the look of the site and remove the forums. They wanted a new organization of the navigation and to move to drop down menus. They also wanted some form of photo gallery that could be administered by a Boro office worker. I were able to set this up for them and provide training to the worker on how to create new collections, add photos to the gallery and upload the new galleries. The site image you see is of the new look, here you can see the original site's look.

Freedom's Heroes

Clay originally created this web site to garner support for an Army Officer, Lt Col. West, who was getting raw treatment for doing his job. After the situation was resolved, I converted the site into a general resource site for supporting our troops. It features many links to support organizations for deployed troops and veterans. I also added a forum to facilitate communication between people interested in supporting U.S. soldiers, and as a private discussion area for a specific "local" unit that I support. The forums look was heavily customized. And the links represent a lot of research. Of course I would not charge to help our troops, but a similar site would cost $300-500.

TREHAB

The TREHAB site showcases this community support organization's coverage area and programs. They saw the TSS example (see below) and wanted their site to have similar aspects. Since the TSS site never went live and TSS as an organization no longer exists, I agreed. Because this was a rewrite of their old site, almost all the content already existed in electronic form, this reduced the cost of the site. All the new content was provided by them, further reducing the cost of the site.

I created a small flash presentation for their home page (it is shown where you see the TREHAB logo on the thumbnail to the right) that shows some of their projects and people. If you visit the site and explore it in depth, you will see how I used technology to allow visitors to delve deeper into the information about programs and projects without leaving the page. I also provided Google maps for their county offices that allow visitors to get directions to the offices from their location. TREHAB has a maintenance contract with us to update and maintain their site. Because of the large number of pages this site would cost $1000-1500.

Trehab Renewable Energy

The folks at TREHAB were so happy with the work I did that when they needed a site for their renewable energy division, they contacted us. This site is a static site, without dynamic content (like forums or blogs). I did need to make up a number of flash slide shows to demonstrate the installation process and to show the range of products. They also wanted a photo gallery. They provided all the content. They still have us maintain and update the site for them. cost $400-600.

County Recovory Service

County Recovery Service (CRS) asked us to remake their existing site as it was dated and they could not get the content updated by their previous web design firm. In addition to redesigning the site, I needed to integrate it with the service that they used to allow visitors to lookup parts to see if they were in stock. Because of their distance from us a lot of the work was cleaning up the photos they had and the new ones they provided. They provided us much of the content, although I needed to clean it up for readability. I included a on site Google map that allows visitors to get directions to their recycling yard. cost $500-700.

Wicked Women Choppers Store

Wicked Women Choppers Store is the official online store for Wicked Women Choppers. The store sells apparel sporting the Wicked Women Choppers logo. Metro Racing, Inc. supplied graphics for the basic design. Clay implemented the design entirely in Miva Merchant 5 shopping cart software. Then Lori worked with Peg to teach her how to update the products and storefront, process orders, and take care of basic maintenance. Please note, Martin Works did not produce the product graphics, but did have to clean up and manipulate the supplied site graphics. This site would cost $2600-3000.