Canopus Marketing cc

This is a WARNING to all Web Developers and Designers. Please exercise extreme caution when dealing with Core Catering, especially their CEO Marcel Fuchs. I got burnt when I ignored my usual procedure of 50% upfront payment and started the job because Mr Fuchs wanted a new site 'yesterday'. Looking at their old (well, current at the time of writing) site, one can understand why: it's fuck-ugly, uses frames and Flash, and is therefore not only invisible to the search engines, but also inaccessible to handicapped users, plus it's a user-interface nightmare.

Deneys Reitz are a firm of attorneys with offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban.

The main chunk of this project was completed within four weeks time, then fine-tuned to perfection. Their previous site was done in ASP with an Access database behind it. I took over all the tables, optimised the data structure, and rewrote it in PHP/MySQL.

The content administration is based on an enhanced version of my own admin system.

Client Cape Info Africa is also issuing a gay and lesbian guide called "Pink SA". This guide also required a website, so the current code-base and template system was used and adjusted to create the pinksa.co.za website.

Sunpath Sacred Site Tours offers transported day tours, hikes and full moon experiences around the Cape Peninsula. They are visiting burial caves, rock art and the mysterious Sun & Moon shrines of the ancient Cape People.

The site, donning an earthy look and feel, has been built using a blog-type display, and also highlights the most important sections on the left hand side, namely the tours, events, Dean Liprini's book and the frequently asked questions.

As with all my sites, this one is database-driven, giving Dean and his team the opportunity to add or amend content wherever they are.

You'll have read all about it by now already, I'm sure, but it never hurts to repeat a good thing, and Qunu is a good thing indeed!

The site is up and running and has had way over 50.000 hits in the 2 weeks following its launch on 8 June 2006.

Although I didn't sign responsible for the logo and icon design, pretty much everything else comes from me, including the scripting. As of writing the site is available in English, German and French, the latter courtesy of Yannick Arnaud.

There is lots more to tell, but nothing beats a visit, so head over to Qunu.com and see what the buzz is all about - I'm sure you'll like it!

Pertiwi Gallery is based in Humansdorp, in the Eastern Cape. Cecile Potgieter, who is importing furniture and other products from Indonesia, needed a new site - the old one's webmaster stopped being responsive, and the design and functionality just sucked. So I went about redesigning the site to befit the company and its products, and by adding my CMS as a base, added a whole new dimension to it.

New here: the entire menu is database-driven. It shows the product categories up to 3 levels deep, automatically handles the menu opening, closing and display and beyond that has a number of very neat features, like required and optional accessories, multiple colors or versions of the same product, but with differential pricing, a shopping cart module written from scratch, account management and a lot more.

Rosie's webmaster went incomunicado, so she needed someone to redo her site and also add more pictures of her bronze sculptures. Her friend Sybi Rousseau then pointed her my way, so I went about doing the job.

The site again uses my database framework, but this time I employed a mod_rewrite to have search engine friendly URLs, rather than index.php?p=this.

On the design side I was for the first time capably assisted by Stéphan Theron, a Cape Town designer I unearthed on the CES. He provided the overall design, which my friend Solveigh then fine-tuned.

This is my latest project. Cane Time does have a website, but it has been rather neglected. As they are dealing with high value products, they needed to do something, and that's where I've come in.

In order to have something 'new' right away, I quickly went about doing some small visual modifications, including a new page logo (see left); in comparison, their existing site is shown below.

This was fun. Again not my project and design. The site used the open source Mambo Content Management System (CMS) to display the content. Nice idea, indeed, but with a problem. First of all the system was total overkill for the actual content. Nothing wrong with that, unless you need customization or additional features. Then it's a schlepp to change the Mambo code. Also, they are using a dark background with white text for the copy. In Mambo's WYSIWYG editor, this gives you a lovely white text on a default gray background. The URLs of Mambo were pretty meaningless, so you didn't really have an idea which page you were looking at by looking at the URL.

So without much of an order or authorisation from the Q2 South Africa folks, I threw out Mambo and replaced it with my own, trusted CMS. ;) Much simpler, much more flexible, easier to administer and far more appropriate.

I took over the overall design, but improved it in useability and looks. Among others, I moved the menu to the left side, gave it subtitles and just prettied it up.

I created extra database tables for frequently asked questions and testimonials, stuff that was previously just plain text. This then also enabled me to display random quotes on each page. It also makes the administration of the content much easier.

I redid the product display and added links to the Health Shop Online site.

I also reorganised the text content after sourcing additional information from the US and UK sites, including the eQuine Q-Link for Horses, a page that also needed a complete overhaul. It now makes much more sense and should make for a far more satisfying visitor experience. Besides that, the site loads a lot faster.

Overall, the site now looks the part and will undoubtedly contribute to the success of the Q-Link products in South Africa.

I also didn't develop that site, but it was so ugly that I just had to help them make it look a little prettier. So I did quite a few changes to the style sheets that govern the look of the site and also marked up the text on the home page.

The design still doesn't look the part of the product and its price, but it's certainly a lot better than before.

The Q2 Energy Spa, by the way, is quite an amazing machine. I've used it a number of times at their office (usually before fixing something for them). I'm still in my information gathering phase, but apart from that, the testimonials are staggering. Have a look at the site to find out more.

I didn't sign responsible for the development of the site, but helped the owners to make the site load faster by resizing most of the product images to an appropriate size. Some of them were uploaded at more than 2mb, which is obviously an absolute killer, especially as the images were reduced to fit the screen. Now it's loading a lot faster, which should result in higher visitor satisfation and subsequently more orders from the site.

I also rewrote the home page introduction and reorganised the image locations.

This one was different. Huenu Solsona, a Volleyball friend of mine, needed a website, but already had one - well, sort of. She had two templates of an existing boot camp website, but wanted her content on it. Not only that, but she wanted to be able to do the updating herself, and needed improvements on some of the template's aspects.

I used my trusted database base template again and plugged it into the design. I made several cosmetic changes and completely revamped the registration and calendar pages. Just like with the News page, they are PHP scripts that offer a lot of flexibility and power.

Adventure Boot Camp for Women? If you are female and have never done it, why not pay the site a visit and give Huenu a call?

Cape Info Africa is a travel and tourism centre in De Waterkant, Cape Town. This gay-friendly outlet specialises in bookings, but also features an Internet Café, retail displays, as well as travel desks of associated travel partners.

The site uses PHP and MySQL as a foundation. "Highlights" of this site are random image picks with image information taken from the ITPC tag of the JPG files, a very flexible search script, random expert tips, map search, and a completely database-driven menu structure.

Also new and neat: as fonts are still PC-specific (with no useful generic font-loading process in place), one is limited as to which font one can use. This wasn't good enough for me, so I wrote a script that takes a string, creates the bounding boxes using a particular truetype font, then does a check for disallowed characters, and then writes this string into an anti-aliased, transparent PNG image. This way I can use any TTF file on any browser, no longer limited to the fonts installed on the client computer.

Another neat 'trick'. Cape Info Africa wanted to allocate more than one type to a particular object, ie "Bloemendal Wynhuis is a restaurant, accommodation and wine tasting establishment". So I extended the type field in the object table to cater for more entries, rewrote the admin section to allow for the selection of multiple entries, and also for the display of them in the admin interface. The search script was then adjusted using MySQL's FIND_IN_SET() function to locate objects. Finally the search form's script was changed so that the proper list of types is displayed, even if an object has been allocated more than one type. A very elegant solution indeed!

4wayfinsystem (4wfs) is a multipurpose fin system that allows surfers to not only remove their fins for travelling/replacement purposes but also allows for further simultaneous adjustments to three critical areas of fin functionality, comprising toe-in and out angle, splay angle and horizontal adjustment.

And another site goes live, this time Blommenhuis Bed & Breakfast. Run by Irene and Wim Blom, this delightful accommodation establishment in Montagu, 2hrs from Cape Town, offers a peaceful and tranquil retreat with lots of personal attention.

Blommenhuis had a website, but this one has more content, more pictures, a proper enquiry form, and -of course- is database driven with a complete web admin interface. Enjoy!