"I've got better things to do than make my website look pretty"

Under construction image

Welcome to my photography site, where under construction is a way of life.

House of voodoo window picture

Site Design

Design

The pages in this site require a minimum display resolution of 1024x768, JavaScript, Flash, and broadband internet. 96 or 120 dpi supported.

My objective for this version of the site was a clean simple design that would not distract from the photography within. At the same time I wanted the galleries to be presented in slideshows that the user could browse at will. The maintenance effort of the galleries was to be streamlined as much as possible.

A three column fixed layout was coded for the site with a single ASP .NET master page. Page mark-up is styled completely using CSS.

The site was first laid out in Expression Web and then moved to VS 2008. Custom site logging functions were added next, including Email notifications.

At the sister site www.johngreen.ca, Graffiti CMS was used for the for blog functionality. Additionally, blog categories were created for 'Recent blog posts', 'Web site news', and 'Recent images' pages. A custom skin is used for the site and a simple custom module created to put new comments on hold until reviewed.

Technologies /tools Used

  • A multi-homed  (DMZ) quad core server with 8 gig of ram.
  • Microsoft Server 2008 R2 64 bit for the web and SQL server, active directory, DNS,xRM, and Sharepoint. This server is also my test/development bench.
  • Microsoft ASP .NET 3.5 as a framework for ASP
  • Microsoft Expression Web for page mark-up
  • GraffitiCMS for the blog functionality at www.johngreen.ca sister site
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 for code
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for database
  • ASP .NET Ajax
  • Adobe Fireworks and Photoshop CS4 for graphics
  • TopStyle for CSS management
  • Adobe Lightroom and SlideShow Pro for Lightroom used for album creation
  • Community Server 2005 for the GNPA group site at www.gnpa.ca