Journal

extreme makeover: homepage edition

Building a complete* site in 4 days

posted: Mar 22 2005

Client: Fathom Ministries (youth group website)

*By “complete” we mean “ready to go”; what we are building will only be a shell since we do not yet have any content.

Synopsis

We have four days to build a complete working site, not because the client is on crack, nor due to an over-booked working schedule, but, really, because we’d like to see if we can do it.

The client is out of town for the week, so we’re attempting to surprise them when they return.

So check back to see the progress. I’ll try my best to post updates here during peanut butter cup breaks.

Using:

  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • CSS
  • XHTML
  • CMS: Textpattern
  • Custom gallery script

Tools:

  • Fireworks
  • Dreamweaver
  • Crimson Edit
  • Web developer extension for Firefox
  • Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
  • Heavy iPod rotation

Day 1 – Tuesday (3/22) – official start time: 4:30pm

TASKS: Planning & Design

So far we have most of the planning and initial design direction done. I should have the final design ready for template coding tonight.

Day 2 – Wednesday (3/23)

TASKS: Design & Template Coding

The design phase hit a little speed bump; we got back from dinner last night and looked at what we had and both agreed it was wrong. So we went back to the drawing board.

Finished the new design this morning. Off to code-land…

Day 3 – Thursday (3/24 – Happy Birthday April!)

TASK: Systems Development

The primary template coding is done and so far all the tests in browser land are passing; except for Mac IE5.2 (is anyone still using that thing?) The CSS has passed with zero errors or warnings, the mark-up validates as well.

Browsers tested:

  • WinXP SP2: IE 6, Firefox 1.0, Netscape 7.2, Opera 7.52
  • Mac: Safari 1.0.3, Netscape 6.2, IE5.2
  • Linux: Firefox 0.8, Galeon 1.2.13, Konqueror 3.1-15

Until I get a chance to set up an old Windows test machine, is there anyone out there who still has an older version of Windows IE (around v. 5.x), I’ d love to know if everything looks ok.

With the design and template structure pretty much wrapped up, I hope to have the backend system (Textpattern, photo gallery, etc… ) up and functioning tonight so day 4 can be mostly final tweaks and stuff.

Day 4 – Friday (3/25)

TASK: Anything not yet done :o)

System installations went smoothly last night, for the most part. Not much to mention yet. We are now at the “God is in the details; the devil is in the details” part of this project. There’s quite a bit of formatting that still needs to happen (within Textpattern’s templating system), and now that the shell is accepting content in the right places we need to come up with some content guidelines for the various document structures and information flow.

Let it be known that tonight is the second half of the season finale for Stargate Atlantis so i hope to be done by then. It is almost 5pm now.

Oh, almost forgot to mention: Jen has been super girl today. She not only has the kids with her all day on her “day off”, but there’s been an ongoing problem (dead air) that started this morning at the radio station where she works. She’s had to go in and fix the computer system that controls the commercial breaks and promo spots and stuff a couple of times today—on her day off. She rocks.

Last update in this post

It’s about 3:30am now at the end of Day 4. And aside from not having any content (including pictures) I’m about done. There are still a handful of things to work out in the CMS, but I’m toast now. Time for some sleep.

Thanks for playing!

-- jase

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