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Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 11:11 am
by JimboDavies
Well, I've finally got most of my biggest (to date) website working. Stormforce Coaching is a UK based training company, offering courses afloat and ashore, on sailing boats, powerboats, JetSki's, dinghies etc etc.

To build the site we used a graphic designer to give us the 'look' (some of his ideas/plans still aren't quite incorporated), which he produced as four layered .png files for me to dissect! CMS Made Simple and associated modules has provided the back end, and I have been implementing and maintaining the site.

It is at http://www.stormforce.biz/

It's been a pretty big project, not helped by the fact that the companies 'in house' IT man left very early on to take on a new job, and wasn't replaced, leaving me carrying the can and outside my comfort zone!

On the front end, we've used a few JavaScript widges, mostly based on JQuery, to get things like the news ticker, sliding images, and pop up boxes working, but other than that it's pretty standard.

Beind the scenes, we are using the following modules:
  • CGEcommerceBase
  • CGExtensions
  • CGFeedMaker
  • CGPaymentGatewayBase
  • CGSimpleSmarty
  • CMSMailer
  • Cart
  • CustomContent
  • FRTaxes
  • FileManager
  • FrontEndUsers
  • JQueryTools
  • MenuManager
  • MicroTiny
  • ModuleManager
  • News
  • Orders
  • Products
  • Promotions
  • Quizzard
  • SagepayGateway
  • Search
  • Selfregistration
  • ThemManager
  • TinyMCE
Some of the interactions are not ideal - for example the main drop down menu has hard coded elements as many of the products appear in more than one category - I've not yet found an elegant solution to accomplish what I need.

Jobs still to do:
  • Improve Overall loading times - CSS images need to be combined into a sprite, other images need optimising better. Redundant code needs stripping out.
  • Get SagepayGateway working properly, to include full eCommerce functionality within the site. This is the big one at the moment.
  • Find a better solution for the Mega Menu.
  • Introduce Hierarchy menus on each product page (I've got a forum post asking how to do this, have been given good answers!) and breadcrumb links
  • Get the 'Dates' Product Attributes to appear in order, possibly include a 'calender' selector rather than drop down box.
  • Replace all 'triangle' images with ones generated using css borders (as the flow charts on some of the pages use)
  • Produce a mobile friendly version of the site
  • Everything else I've forgotten!
The end user is pretty happy with the website, and loves the fact that he has total control through the admin console, and can add users restricting what they can and can't do. I've enjoyed pushing my boundaries on the site, as you can see from the above I still have a lot to learn and implement, so it's a struggle since Sam (the Stormforce IT Manager/Developer) left the company, but we're getting there!

Any suggestions on improvements gratefully recieved.

Jimbo

Re: Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 11:12 am
by JimboDavies
Forgot to say, it's running 1.10.3 "Hyacinthe"

Re: Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 1:40 am
by Dr.CSS

Re: Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 9:51 am
by JimboDavies
Hi Dr.CSS,

Yep, I'm on the case with that. Some of the errors are unavoidable as things like the rounded corners are proprietary css, but they're staying in as they degrade nicely.

I'm working on complying though!

Jimbo

Re: Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:00 am
by JimboDavies
Nearly there Dr.CSS, I've changed the Doctype to HTML 5, as I'm using some HTML 5 features.

I still have some errors (3) which I can't get to the bottom of - if you have a chance and feel like looking at the validator again, any pointers would be appreciated.

Re: Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:06 pm
by Dr.CSS
Don't think you can have these 2 items in the same " " ...

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

Re: Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:16 pm
by JimboDavies
Thanks, I've fixed it after a quick check of W3schools!

http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tag_meta.asp

Re: Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:43 pm
by JimboDavies
Ok, all validates now. I've discovered a problem where TinyMCE wraps a global content block call in <p> tags, producing content inside a paragraph, that shouldn't be inside a paragraph...

Is there a way of avoiding this?

Re: Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 9:33 am
by dropster
Hi JimboDavies

You should also take a look at this http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.stormforce.biz/sZvWOOGx
wih regards

Re: Marine Training Company Website

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 9:45 am
by JimboDavies
Cheers dropster, speeding up loading times is a big job on my list.

Thanks!

Jimbo