A portfolio and marketing site for Mike Smith a professional MC, compere and voiceover artist.

Through iterative user centred design and develpment process Mike obtained the site he wanted matching his already established print media.

Visit Unbelieveable Scenes

[...] quick thinking, inventive, practical and enthusiastic. Hundreds of hours of diverse live event experience, and a background in schools theatre and stand up comedy; means I make ‘dead time’ a virtue, I don’t complain when I’m not spoon fed, and I thrive on situations where anything can happen. 90% of my work is repeat, and by recommendation and that’s because I offer an offbeat but professional approach which helps make an event or production, on any scale, memorable and convincing.

Launched on 26th February 2010
PHP, MySQL, SEO

Having wrangled a little with JQuery to obtain data from SharePoint lists I stumbled across SPAPI; a fantastic library to aid you in development. Do check it out over at darrenjohnstone.net 

The ajax function of JQuery had meant toying around with the SOAP packets one was trying to send to get them to work correctly. Tiresome and really not that productive! Big relief that Darren had actually gone through all the pain to create this library as I could see the mountain in front of me and wasn’t personally that keen!

Combining the SPAPI library with JQuery to deal with the returned web service XML however, has proved to be a very successful marriage. To extend this, the below prototyped function has allowed me to only require one hit to the server per request to play with the returned XML. The UI in how its presented to the user is down to your artistic flair ;)

Do note you are required to update your access to your uploaded SPAPI files and JQuery + you’re going to have to write the CAML query you want and add in your own column names etc. to display per item. It’s there, but not for your particular list ;) Enjoy.

The Camera Centre – Reboot!

Visit www.thecameracentre.net

The Camera Centre website’s last incarnation had been turning over since 2004 and it was time to launch into the 2010 new year with a vibrant and easy to use system not only for members but for administration also. Tieing more succinctly with back-end shop operations the new website cuts out tedious stock filling across multiple systems whilst providing an easy to use interface for not only members but for guest shoppers also.

An easy to use one click shopping basket facility provides users the ability to choose and purchase items without getting bogged down in multiple pages of payment processing. This simple feature provides a substantial reduction in abandoned shopping baskets and invertly an increase in sales; what everyone want’s! With several successful Search Engine Optimisation techniques running throughout the site, The Camera Centre is now even easier to find.

Press Release

Local Shetland retailer The Camera Centre has just launched a new internet store with some international help.

Owner Cecil Hughson and Manager, Ben Mullay knew that to extend their business a fresh online initiative was needed. This was especially important as many of the Camera Centre’s customers are in the outer islands and don’t travel into Lerwick often. There is also a large expat community who like to order photos for delivery to relatives in Shetland.

Working with New Zealand based marketing strategists, First Retail Ltd, Canadian software developers Dakis Decision Systems Inc and Cecil’s son in law John Smith, owner of yadUK, The Camera Centre has developed a product range that includes home-wear, gifts and décor – all created using customer’s own photos.

First Retail’s Director, Chris Wilkinson knew the Camera Centre’s dilemma well. With clients in many island territories including the Channel Islands, The Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Fiji the web has been a key element in helping these businesses engage with their community.

Up until recently, many of the products needed to be sent away for production. New technology has allowed stores in remote areas to create these on-site. The Camera Centre has invested in equipment, systems and training that will ensure work can stay within the Islands. In the future it is hoped the store will also develop export markets to the mainland and beyond.

Timed to launch in the key gift giving period leading up to Christmas, the site has already proven popular. Within hours of going live, orders began to arrive. Most popular lines so far have included photo collages, coasters, placemats and mousemats.

Launched on December 4th 2009
PHP, MySQL, e-commerce, SEO

Ben Mullay is continually looking to create eye-catching and striking images to convey what is viewed through the lens. Ben’s home village of Bigton, Shetland, is the site of the famous St Ninian’s Isle, reputably the largest tombolo in Europe.

 
XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL
Hosted by yadUKHosting
goto site http://www.benmullay.com/

 The Lerwick Boating Club has over the last 25 years changed from the days when it only organised summer sailing races and a regatta in Shetland. Today, in addition they have yacht races, dinghy races, a yoal team and lots of training sessions for beginners and junior members.

[edit]
Reboot of the Lerwick Boating Club Website
[/edit]

(previous – 06/06/2006)
To reflect this they required a re-vamped site from which they could easily update their pages and news through a web based interface. This was achieved by providing a PHP / MySQL based CMS system.

The top image on the site was obtained from www.panphotos.co.uk – specialists in producing high quality panoramic photographic prints and images of Shetland and further afield.

XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL
Hosted by yadUKHosting
goto site http://www.lerwickboatingclub.co.uk

This was a continuation of previous contract from November last year again involving many differing Information System (IS) processes to achieve final products.

Projects included Lead Developer role to new-build database driven Business Intelligence & Management Information reporting tools; Corporate Intranet sub-websites;

• Intranet based be-spoke interactive Intranet Mangement Information Dashboard fed from business accessible MS Access database driven backend fed to Intranet SQL Server XML driven Flash/JavaScript frontend;
• Intranet Leadership Commitment web portal;
• Web enabled risk data integrity checker;
• MS Access based reporting tool for IFRS7 data display of entire Corporate balance sheet;
• Basel II compliance reporting application with full Corporate balance sheet drill down;
• Be-spoke Corporate Cost Allocation model for entire Corporate book and associated reporting built in MS Excel;
• First Corporate web enabled Debt Instrument drilling tool;
• Ad-hoc Business Objects Reports;

Tools used included:

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MS Access, MS Excel, XML, VBA, Business Objects

Anderson Solutions offers a comprehensive range of specialist consultancy services. Their research and facilitation services “support high quality decision-making in the creation and development of economic development initiatives” with each project “tailored to meet the specific needs of the client”.

Anderson Solutions is based in Edinburgh and is active throughout Scotland and England. Clients include the Scottish Government, Local Authorities, NGOs, Enterprise Companies and Private Enterprise.

XHTML, CSS,  JavaScript, Custom PHP, MySQL
Hosted by yadUKHosting.
goto site http://www.andersonsolutions.co.uk

Intranet development and client-side web enabled applications development.

Excellent contract involving many differing Information System (IS) processes to achieve final products.

Client-side web application utilising Internet Explorers Data Island technology to hold source and data bind dynamically built resultant data for on-screen viewing. Heavy use of JavaScript to build dynamic search drop-downs and to traverse the DOM of an XML source document held within a source XML Data Island.

Utilised JScript to traverse the dynamic result display for exporting via ActiveX to Microsoft Excel. XML Source document built from 6+ Business Objects reports output; manipulated; cleaned; and combined within a bespoke MS Access database before exported to XML.

Creation of a Intranet “Portal” for the Business Intelligence department within Corporate Finance & Planning.

The old site due to it’s initial build of a hybrid version of PHP-Nuke CMS software was consuming ever more time to ensure it’s safe upkeep. For this reason the boys over at Shetlink decided it best that the site should be moved over to a custom built Content Management System.

With the implimentation of the new CMS a brand new clean and modern stylish design was included. The site also includes a custom Events Calendar with RSS feeds.

XHTML, CSS,  JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, RSS
Hosted by yadUKHosting.
goto site http://www.shetlink.com

Old Site – 26/12/2005
I was approached for advice on how best to proceed and to assist in the technical setup of a PHP-Nuke based community portal.

Due to security issues regarding PHP-Nuke, a hybrid version of the software was created with the most secure aspects of two versions ported into one. This ‘branch’ of the PHP-Nuke development tree will ideally be replaced with future official secure source.

I was also approached and commisioned to build a screen scraping utility to “scrape” the latest headlines from the shetland-news.co.uk website. This was achieved using Perls XML::RSS; LWP::Simple; and HTML::Entities libraries to scrape and parse RSS to be picked up by the shetlink.com CMS. The end product can be viewed on the Shetlink site.

Through raising awareness of the cultural activity in North Glasgow the northglasgowculture.com website hopes to encourage more people to take part in localised cultural activity, so leading to a better, brighter, more vibrant future for the area.

Coinciding with a billboard marketing campaign in North Glasgow the website is the culminiation of the action-research project “Culture Matters” carried out by NGARN: North Glasgow Arts & Regeneration Network, and the Cultural Business Group at the Caledonian University.

The University’s audit of all current arts & cultural activity in the North Glasgow area was turned into a catalogued database – utilised as the back end to the website – “a one stop shop for all of North Glasgow’s Cultural Needs”.

In addition to the linear searching ability of the search engine additional php coding was implemented to pull out organisations to display on the home page. This will ultimately engender organic user searches to organisations and venues they may not have otherwise been aware of and is as titled – “One of the projects currently on the go in North Glasgow is:” – go on, have a look! Theres some very interesting projects on the go.

XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL
Hosted by yadUKHosting

http://www.northglasgowculture.com