I’m pleased to announce the launch of TrakAx.com.  TrakAx.com provides multimedia creation software for both the PC and mobile devices, and also sells professionally produced music loops called “trakPacks” to provide the musical backbone for your multimedia creations.

The site runs, as you might expect by now, on ExpressionEngine, and is hosted by EngineHosting.  While most of the site is a fairly straightforward EE implementation (save for a custom query or two), the site includes integration with some 3rd party tools for the eCommerce functionality, the Flash-based playback of the sample MP3 files, and the Lightbox JavaScript for image pop-ups.

The most unusual aspect of this project was working with a very technically savvy client.  Catriona of TrakAx handled all of the content-area graphics, Flash development, loading of the TrakPack content, created the site logo and some of the other site graphics.  Catriona (and the rest of the clan at the family-based business) were ideal clients - flexible and open to suggestions, but knowing what they were after as well.

I have to give props to some skilled people that helped me out with this project:

• Derik Lolli of ShiftDesign did the visual design for the site - doing a far better job than I could hope to.
• Andy Ford of Aloe Studios handled the conversion of the visual design to working HTML/CSS templates
• AJ Penninga of PrettySquares turned me on to E-Junkie which fuflilled the eCommerce requirements of the project.

I also need to give credit to the suppliers of a number of plug-ins, tools and scripts used on the site:

• reEEposition EE Plug-in
• Find and Replace EE Plug-in
• Category Expander EE Plug-in
• Monoslideshow Flash Slideshow
• Lightbox Image Script
• Wimpy Audio Player

And of course I couldn’t very well announce the site launch having never played with the TrakAx software (although it just became available in time for the site launch).  So here is my first shot-out-of-the-box attempt at using it to mix an audio track to provide the background music for some screen captures of the website.  And yes - that is indeed yours truly providing the odd-sounding guitar sounds (Rick Ellis—cover your ears)....