This particular site is more of a personal project than a true client site, but it does showcase some of the development work that I do, so I’m including it as a portfolio piece.
Contempora Corner started in 2004 as a very small project to research and document the history behind the particular brand of trombones that I play, that being the Reynolds Contempora models. Curiosity and the Internet got the better of me and I started to research everything I could think of about Contempora trombones. Not finding much of permanent significance, I turned my collected notes into a couple of web pages and, encouraged by some of the early visitors, kept at the research. The site quickly grew to include other Contempora instruments, then all Reynolds brass instruments. I’ve since added major sections on the company history and namesake, as well as built a small library of collected marketing materials, mostly from the 1950s and ’60s.
Until this update, the site was primarily coded in static HTML and CSS, initially managed by Namo WebEditor, but the last few updates were handcoded, especially as I had large blocks of time on my hands during several bouts of unemployment. It’s been pretty stagnant for the past few years as I’ve been busy with work again, as well as learning WordPress and PHP. It was only natural to migrate the site to my new platform of choice.
This is the second site to launch using my new “blank theme”, which is also being using on this site. I am planning a post around the details, but essentially it’s built on the Thematic Feature Site theme, with elements borrowed from the Power Blog theme.
For the site, I’m making heavy use of the Simple Section Nav plugin widget, as well as Justin Tadlock’s new My Snippetss [sic] widget, which puts a front end on custom fields, allowing for post-specific material to be added to the sidebar. I’m also using the combination of the Section Widget plugin and the PHP Shortcode plugin to create custom page and post queries for the different pages without having to define custom functions and shortcodes.
This was the site that I was exploring the concept of Mega Menus for. However, for this initial release, I’ve chosen to forgo that approach in favor of something that I recently just happened to come across. I am using Nathan Rice’s Redirect Parent to First Child plugin to do a 301 redirect on the top-level pages, which appear in my main nav bar, such that the first child page is displayed instead. I’ve arranged the child pages so that the page within each section that people were hitting the most (based on my previous site stats) is now automatically displayed when the user clicks on that main nav item.
Jumping immediately to a child page allows me to skip at least one loathsome index page in each content section. However, there are still pages where the user must select from a set of child pages. As such, I’ve created a custom page template that parses the immediate child pages of the active page and displays a gallery of page thumbnails and page title links [example]. I’m using the new WP2.9 Page/Post Thumbnail feature to set the desired image rather than monkey around with copying/pasting URLs into custom fields.
There are still some things that I want to add to the site:
The feature area of the home page will eventually be updated to either include a photo slider or feature different kinds of content, possibly including brief stories on where people are using Reynolds instruments today and/or stories from their family’s past.
I hope to enable comments for almost all pages on the site. Being able to leave comments about specific instrument models will greatly enhance the interactive possibilities of the site and contribute to the overall community of information.
I am still undecided about the best way to manage all of the photos on the site, so I’ll be experimenting with different gallery software from time to time.
Contempora Corner
Contempora Corner started in 2004 as a very small project to research and document the history behind the particular brand of trombones that I play, that being the Reynolds Contempora models. Curiosity and the Internet got the better of me and I started to research everything I could think of about Contempora trombones. Not finding much of permanent significance, I turned my collected notes into a couple of web pages and, encouraged by some of the early visitors, kept at the research. The site quickly grew to include other Contempora instruments, then all Reynolds brass instruments. I’ve since added major sections on the company history and namesake, as well as built a small library of collected marketing materials, mostly from the 1950s and ’60s.
Until this update, the site was primarily coded in static HTML and CSS, initially managed by Namo WebEditor, but the last few updates were handcoded, especially as I had large blocks of time on my hands during several bouts of unemployment. It’s been pretty stagnant for the past few years as I’ve been busy with work again, as well as learning WordPress and PHP. It was only natural to migrate the site to my new platform of choice.
This is the second site to launch using my new “blank theme”, which is also being using on this site. I am planning a post around the details, but essentially it’s built on the Thematic Feature Site theme, with elements borrowed from the Power Blog theme.
For the site, I’m making heavy use of the Simple Section Nav plugin widget, as well as Justin Tadlock’s new My Snippetss [sic] widget, which puts a front end on custom fields, allowing for post-specific material to be added to the sidebar. I’m also using the combination of the Section Widget plugin and the PHP Shortcode plugin to create custom page and post queries for the different pages without having to define custom functions and shortcodes.
This was the site that I was exploring the concept of Mega Menus for. However, for this initial release, I’ve chosen to forgo that approach in favor of something that I recently just happened to come across. I am using Nathan Rice’s Redirect Parent to First Child plugin to do a 301 redirect on the top-level pages, which appear in my main nav bar, such that the first child page is displayed instead. I’ve arranged the child pages so that the page within each section that people were hitting the most (based on my previous site stats) is now automatically displayed when the user clicks on that main nav item.
Jumping immediately to a child page allows me to skip at least one loathsome index page in each content section. However, there are still pages where the user must select from a set of child pages. As such, I’ve created a custom page template that parses the immediate child pages of the active page and displays a gallery of page thumbnails and page title links [example]. I’m using the new WP2.9 Page/Post Thumbnail feature to set the desired image rather than monkey around with copying/pasting URLs into custom fields.
There are still some things that I want to add to the site: