Description

MOSAIC is a lifestyle blog that is powered by the most creative minds in the blogosphere.

Tasks

First Version

• Wordpress Plugin Development
• Wordpress Theme Integration
• Hosting

Second Version

• Django-based Platform
• Rich Frontend
• Hosting

Description

SPort of Kings is a website about horse racing, punting and everything connected to that like discussions, tips, news, photo galleries, etc.
It was my task to develop a tipping system that would allow members of the community to place tips on real races with virtual money. This way they could test their strategies and compete with other users. Later iterations of the project exploited additional data to allow for tracking of certain horses or breedings.
There were two challenges in this assignment. Firstly, data sources had to be replaced multiple times to gather more information or to overcome usage restrictions that would have made a close-to-realtime experience impossible. There was a CSV-based format, a XML-based format retreived via a HTTP Session, a SOAP-enabled XML data source and data provider that would return XML to REST queries. These various sources had to be used in combination with or as a replacement to others without invalidating existing data.
Additionally it was a challenge to manage thousands of events, horses and jockeys, hundreds of thousands of runners and equally as many odds effectively and efficiently within the limitations of a shared hosting plan.

Tasks

• Theme integration and adaption
• Module development for PHP-Fusion
• Parsing of structured text data
• Parsing of XML
• Querying of SOAP and REST Services
• Combination of various data sources
• Rapid, backward compatible interchanging of data sources

Description

In the summer of 2008, perfectly matching the cold weather, a frosty design was to be done. A norwegian girl was in search of a new design for her PHP-Fusion-based website. Actually, it was more of the first design, because at that time there was no WOW related theme for PHP-Fusion 7 to be found at all. That was the point where I came into play, creating a design for her on the occasion of the imminent release of the World of Warcraft Extension “Wrath of the Lich King”.
I was happy to accept the request for I could use some texture- and graphics-rich theme after all the clean designs I made for PHP-Fusion 7. I started with it right away and looking at the finished product, I think of it as one of my best graphics-foxused designs. That is somewhat surprising as my customers budget and thus the time was scarce. Additionally, we had to spend a bit of that time explaining to me the world of World of Warcraft as I did not play the game myself. However, thanks to my perfectionism, I just could not waste the basic potential of this theme due to lack of time and spent soe unpaid extra hours and, looking on the result, that way certainly not in vain.

Tasks

• Theme Design & Integration for PHP-Fusion 7

Description

Nav-User is an active Danish site for Owners and Users of navigation devices. Consequently, you’ll not only find a vast number of testimonials about the latest navigation products, but also discussions about the best datasets and downloads of this and other kinds of software.
Via a marketplace devices and acessories can be traded. For a small membership fee the so-called VIP-Members get access to editorial articles, tipps and guides, quality datasets and other services.
The site developed around a phpBB forum. However, the articles and downloads soon became the centre of the site of the site and a more versatile content managment system was planned to replace the forum software. After the decision to use PHP-Fusion had been made, a new design had to be created as well so that the new site could be launched with a shiny new look. This is where I appeared on the scene.
Ivan Fræer, the owner of the site entrusted me with creating the design for the site. Thanks to his fast response time and detailed specifications I could finish the order within 48 hours.

Tasks

• Theme Design and Integration
• Logo Design
• Forum Buttonset based on the Crystal Clear Iconset
• Special Frontpage Layout
• Modification and creation of PHP-Fusion Modules
• Guidance and Support with the Adaption of PHP-Fusion

Description

While some sites of muscle car enthusiasts did close in times of soring gas prizes and growing environmental consciousness, Mathew Hutchison was only now getting ready for take off with his site. He asked me to take care of the design and coding for him.
As his site is mainly a platform to advertise and distribute the e-magazine of the same name, it was of special importance to get rid of all of PHP-Fusion’s unnecessary community features and restructure content and navigation to allow for a single-column design with enough space for the magazine if necessary.
Additionally, a very complex form generating and handling script should be implemented which could be used to create, display, fill out, submit and process forms. File and image attachments, all normal html form fields and a special product field that automatically calculates prizes for a selection of products are available. Readers of the magazine, who are interested in trading cars or parts can submit their ad via a custom form. The saved from data can be displayed to an administrator, who can approve it with one click and send out an automatically created PayPal-invoice to the submitter.

Tasks

• Theme Design and Integration
• PHP-Scripts for rendering texts from truetype-fonts used in menus and captions
• Removal of unnecessary PHP-Fusion functions
• Creation of a complex form-generator and -handler with simple shop features

Description

Sandro Bassi is the owner of one of the largest sites based on the PHP-Fusion CMS: Lunar Wars – a browsergame which puts the player in midst of the conflict about the colonisation of space. Ten thousands of signups proved that the well thought out yet not overcomplex gameplay and the pleasant yet functionional and unobstrusive design appealed many user – although Sandro had started the development of the game “just for fun”.
After this surprising success of Lunar Wars, Sandro Bassi wanted to create a new project that should learn from the mistakes of Lunar Wars. This new project was named “Galava” and is set in a medieval-like szenario.
While Lunar Wars got by with a default PHP-Fusion theme, a custom theme had to be developed for Galava, because no existing design did meet the requirements:

• attractive, yet unobstrusive graphics
• archaic flair
• extremely low size and loading time

While I had already gained some experience with ultra leightweight themes for PHP-Fusion, the requested unobstrusive style caused me some problems as the design should be based on one colour and work with the pixel style banner and icons. Despite this limited possibilities, I could meet Sandro’s requirements with a parchment-like background and wood-like frames. Although we live in totally diffeent time zones, his quick and precise responses helped me finish this design within three days.

Tasks

• Theme Design and Integration

Description

Website: Andreas Malz has recently been elected best butcher of the German state Thuringia. Looking forward to the great public interest, his outdated website had to be replaced by something more shiny and easier to administrate. Tecbehind, a firm specialising in ASP Scripting was engaged for this purpose. When the original designer quit the project and took the prepared design with him, I was consulted to finish the site in time. It was the first time I worked with Dotnetnuke, an ASP.Net based CMS.

This System took a lot of getting used to, not only because it produced horrible output, something particularly bad for me as a HTML-Fetischisten. Setting up a local testserver also caused me some problems due to my operating system. I was still able to fulfill my tasks which were extended to some general coding and administration work facing the very scarce time (Looking back, I somehow think the direct work with Dotnetnuke might have been the reason for the other design to leave).

Shop: To be able to sell their Gourmet meat products outside of Thringia and improve their presence on the Thuringian market, a shop, also based on Dotnetnuke was added to the Website. Once again, I had to replace a colleague (who himself had replaced another one) who could not get used to Dotnetnuke and its complexity and finished the work after freeing up some time.

Tasks

Website:

• Development and Integration of a design and header using the corporate colours
• Modifikation of the Dotnetnuke Templates
• Adaption of raw image material
• Integration of image material
• Creation and Design of a prepended start page

Shop:

• Modification of the hardcoded shop design to match a ready-made Dotnetnuke design
• Integration of a Dotnetnuke design into the partially incompatible shop system
• Modification of the design
• Design of a fitting Header
• Removal of unnecessary shop functions and their template backing

Description

“Fisted Films” is a Project of mainly two cool guys, Omid and Felix, who until then ran their own film sites, Opti Films and Omidia-Fantastica Entertainment joint forces and founded Fisted Films, where they since then would show their own films, review commercial films and provide community features such as Party Pic Galleries, Bets, Forums, etc. for their friends and inclined visitors.
Apart from helping out with everything PHP-Fusion related, I created several custom Mods for this site and integrated existing Mods smoothly into the site to make them comfortable to use and administrate.

Tasks

• Theme Changes
• Header Assembly
• PHP-Fusion Update to v5.x
• PHP-Fusion Update to v6.x
• Front Page Layout
• Category functionality
• Upload Script
• Advanced Spam Protection via Akismet and custom methods
• Several Panels
• Tons of smaller Mods

Description

Venue is a Sweden-based but international community to just hang around, play games, watch videos, chat with others and have fun. Apart from that, there is also serious discussion about web development, especially for PHP-Fusion. This concept has brought hundreds of members to Venue and many new extensions to PHP-Fusion, some of which are most popular.

Tasks

• Logo Design
• Theme Design and Integration
• Header switching according to context

Description

With “pressefotoverteiler.de” one big annoyance of working as professional photographer is nearly completely removed at last. Most press agencies, newspapers and magazins are using FTP-Servers for receiving photo-submissions by their photographers. The thing is, that most photographers do not just send their images to one but many agencies, mags or newspapers. Consequently, they have to upload the same, often high-quality material on one FTP after another. This consumes much time and patience.
The Idea of pressefotoverteiler.de is to do this work for the stressed photographers. For a reasonable fee, they can upload their photos to pressefotoverteiler.de and pressefotoverteiler.de automatically uploads the photos to all the FTPs they want.

Tasks

• Logo design
• Theme design
• Theme assembly
• fitting letter-head and banner graphics

Description

Onlinezeitung24 is a reader-edited online-newspaper. Everyone can submit Articles to be published and is even paid for it. There is no limitation of what category the article fits into, all articles are welcome and a rating of the articles by viewers gives authors an impression about the popularity of their articles.

The site runs on a modified PHP-Fusion Version.

Tasks

• logo design
• theme design & assembly
• MySQL support & troubleshooting

Description

IO ist another Project of Felix of Fisted Films. It’s mostly a site for his friends to hang out, plan and chat about Parties, share and view Pics and Videos of recent activities, etc. As with Fisted Films, my task was to modify php-fusion in order to comply Feli’s ideas and to provide all the needed functionality.

Tasks

• theme assembly
• buttons
• gallery mods
• some panels
• spam-protection
• various small mods

Description

The “Autopark Bad Waldsee” is not just dealing in cars but also providing various services all around vehicles. My Task here was to create a Theme similar in shape and color to the SsangYong main site. Apart from the Theme I also wrote a formmail Script that manages the contact and testdrive form and redirects the data to the appropriate recipients.
For I could not complete the Theme in the promised time, I made a small flash animations showing the SsangYong car portfolio in the page head for them in compensation for the delay.

Tasks

• Theme design and assembly
• Flash header
• Formmailer and corresponding forms

Description

This page was first intended to be a Horde Community site for the record breaking MMORPG Word of Warcraft, but the Owner donated the site, design and domain to his Orc clan known as “Grol’dom”. I changed the Header for this purpose, the original Header contained an other Logo subscript and a batrider instead of the second Ork.

Unfortunately the interest in an individual game is hardly lasting for ever and thus gamer communities like this are not permanent. Consequently this theme is not used online anymore. As the work with this theme was a lot of fun for me and I still find it particularly beautiful, I might release an adapted version as a free Theme at some point.

Tasks

• Page Design including Header
• Third Version fo my Renderer developed for this site
• Forum Buttons
• Changed Forum Layout
• Gallery Modifications