30 Jan 2007

Site Launch > Boyink.com

Well, here it is.

If you’re reading this entry you’re either grabbing the new site RSS feed or you’re visiting Version 4 of Boyink.com.  Version 3 was over two years old, and the site had been running on the now-discontinued pMachinePro for over a year before that.

So, what’s new?

Off the top of my head (and I’m sure to forget something), and in no particular order:

  • New Logo, designed by Turtle Interactive. This is the first real logo that Boyink Interactive has ever had.
  • New Content Management System (CMS) in ExpressionEngine. Yes, I’m finally “eating my own dog food” and using the same system I put most of my clients on.
  • Fluid design (which means it will stretch to fill your screen - using Yahoo! Grids as the foundation.
  • I’ve expanded the Portfolio.  Each project now has more detail about the work done by Boyink Interactive.  The home page also now has a featured client section which pulls selected projects from the Portfolio.
  • The Services section has been consolidated and moved to the home page - no one was reading the deeper level content anyway.
  • I’ve added other RSS feed options (full, summary, and comments).
  • I’ve re-written the About section to have shorter text, and added photos.
  • I’ve moved the weblog off the site home page.  As much as we web-heads grok blogs, I still find that most business people do not - and due to that I wanted to make sure that potential clients got immediate confirmation that Boyink.com was a business website.
  • I’ve consolidated the previous Articles section into the weblog as a category.
  • The Jeep, Bantam Trailer, and Photoblog move up to main navigation under the Hobbies heading.
  • The Photoblog is implemented in Flash using MonoSlideShow with a static option.  MonoSlideShow is integrated completely with ExpressionEngine so uploading one new photo updates both the Flash and static versions.
  • The Mailing List is back for getting notified of new site content.  EE mailing list is double opt-in which should eliminate the reasons for shutting down the mailing list previously.
  • I’ve added a form specifically to request a quote on a new project.
  • The site has a “Family Extranet” which isn’t available publicly.  The extranet has blogs for each family member and a photo gallery.  EE powers both the public Boyink.com website and this Extranet.

There’s still a bit of post-launch work to do - implement the search engine, fix in-site links that are broken since the move, etc.  And I already see a few places where I want to modify how things work, but I always tell clients to work with a site for awhile before deciding on changes, and I think it’s best to follow that advice myself as well. 

Besides, I think my family and clients would like to see me again—between all the items listed above plus moving the site to a new web host it’s been quite a large project involving lots of long hours.

I do need to thank my wife who put in a number of hours doing the “never a fun job” of content cleanup, and copying over some comments that didn’t make it in the import process.

At any rate, welcome to the new Boyink.com - and I hope you enjoy your visit!

Comments

1

January 30, 2007

nice Job Mike!!!!

2
Nathan Smith
January 30, 2007

Awesome job. I like the logo type too, with mixed case on the ‘i’. Though I’m not normally a fan of fluid widths, you did it well. The design feels like it has some room to breathe. I’d be interested in seeing some ExpressionEngine tutorials / writeups now that you’re fully switched over!

3
Michael Montgomery
January 30, 2007

Love the footer, including the subtle tonal zebra-striping.  Excellent colors in here.
I prefer fluid designs, and this is a good one.  Line-lengths seem a bit long for me.
Interesting two login areas for clients and family—cool.
Portfolio is very good.
Whitespace, wonderful!

4
(Author)
January 31, 2007

Thanks guys. 

Nathan - I plan to post more EE-specific stuff, but it most likely won’t be for a a week or so.  This move was a large project and I need to catch up on business and life in general - I’m getting too old for 12-14 hour days in the chair.

Michael - I agree on wider screen monitors that the line lengths get long. But in the research/reading I did in trying to decide upon a fixed vs. fluid design - somewhere - it mentioned that with the advent of widescreen monitors more and more people were running their browser windows at less than full-screen in order to use the extra desktop for things like IM.  This was one of the reasons I decided to go fluid - because if that’s the case then choosing an optimal width seems impossible.  Keeping the design variable/fluid really seemed to be the only way to match the current variance in desktop/browser widths.

The client login just goes to Basecamp - I keep saying I could replicate most of it’s necessary functionality in EE, but for the cost of BC it doesn’t make sense to spend the time on it. 

The family extranet has been working out well both for homeschooling purposes as well asl just being a “digital refridgerator” for family communication - I’ll probably do a writeup on it at some point.

5
salguod
February 01, 2007

Mike, I’ve waited to comment because I wasn’t so sure at first about the new look.  It’s growing on me.  I agree with Michael above, the colors are cool.  I love the blues.

The main page is a shocker in that the layout is so different than you’d expect.  Where are the columns?!? :-D

I wonder about the ‘meat’ of the main page - featured site, news and blog links - being ‘below the fold’ so to speak.  In other words, I’ve got to scroll to find them.  Do you think that might mean fewer folks will dig deeper?  I have a friend with an online business who had a link to a customer testimonials page on each product page with several reviews.  He decided to ditch that and just put one or two right on the page.  That one change boosted his sales, I’m pretty sure hes said doubled it.

On the other hand, the clean design, simple paragraph clearly describing your business, the whitespace and that beckoning blue band might draw people in to scroll down and see more.  The more I look at it, I see that there are plenty of links ‘above the fold’, the design just doesn’t scream ‘click here!’.  That’s a good thing.

Nice job.  Makes me think I really need to clean up my cluttered blog layout.  tongue laugh

6
(Author)
February 02, 2007

So, what do you really think?  wink

I stared at the home page design for hours asking those same questions.  In the end I realized—there isn’t much below the fold that isn’t available elsewhere on the site.  Pretty much only the Consulting and Development paragraphs - which I really tried to summarize in the opening text. 

My old site didn’t have client testimonials at all, and they are included here on the portfoilio detail pages as well - so it can only be better than what I had.

The really hard thing is to figure out just how important the specifics of the site are to me getting a job.  Most leads come in more or less “pre-qualified” either through personal connections or through the PM Professionals network - bu then again I never know about the ones that got away.

7
salguod
February 02, 2007

OK, now I’m insecure that I insulted you.  :D Didn’t mean to, I’m just the overly analytical (and naturally insecure) type.

I really like it.  I figured that you had done the mental gymnastics on the above/below the fold thing, and you’re right, the links are all there above the fold too.

BTW - I love your smileys, where did you get them?  Are they an EE only thing or something I could integrate into my MT blog?

BTW2 - Something about the comments box is odd.  Some of the text (one word, maybe 5-7 characters?) is disappearing under the right edge, but no horizontal scroll bars.  This is on Win 2K and IE6 based Maxthon 1.5.8 here at work.

8
(Author)
February 02, 2007

No offense taken....wink

The smileys are part of a pack released for EE (created by one of the EE tech guys, IIRC)—I had to implement them in order to have some that looked good against this dark blue background.  They’re also smaller than the EE default - which helps not upside the line spacing.

On the display issue - is it in the textarea that you type in, or once posted in the blue boxes?  I had some issues with IE6 and italics throwing off the design and it’s probably as a result of some of those efforts.

9
salguod
February 02, 2007

The one I’m typing in now.  For example, in the 3rd sentence of the next paragraph, “king “ of “I’ve been thinking about ...” is not visible.  Interestingly, whet I spell check with the Google toolbar, the problem goes away both during the spell check and after.  It returns again when I start typing.

Got a link for those EE smileys?  I might see if there’s a way to use them with MT, assuming the EE guy’s OK with it.  I’ve been thinking about trying to integrate some smileys, bub most are pretty bland and big.  There might be a cool MT plugin too, I haven’t looked yet, but these are cool.

10
(Author)
February 02, 2007

Well, poop.  Evidently IE6 has trouble with textareas that are set to dynamically resize.  So I had to fix the width of the text area.  Just one of the tradeoffs of a fluid design I guess.

The smileys are posted here:
http://www.pmachine.com/developers/blog/sweet_emotions/

You’ll need to do the javascript thing to get them to work well in IE, and I still note that they have a faint background when I use them in the white content area here on Boyink.com.  Frankly - if I could turn them off for the public site and keep them on for the family extranet I would—but it’s a EE-install wide setting and my kids just love using smileys…

11
Funhyun
February 09, 2007

Congrats on the redesign and the EE implementation. Beautifully done! I am about to launch my company’s website hopefully by next week with the EE implementation as well. So much to do… smile

12
(Author)
February 09, 2007

Thanks, and I know what you mean by “so much to do”....

13
WiL Laxa
July 26, 2007

Just want to say that your website is GREAT!  Beautiful and practical as well.  Great functionality to it.  It all ties in together really well.

14
(Author)
July 26, 2007

Thanks so much..wink

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