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The Raging Spaniard
Communicating closely with the artist behind this website portfolio, we chose to modify Blogger to fit within a design that suited a modeler/illustrator. I also developed a simple gallery browsing utility in PHP.
Together with Xavier Garcia, a 3d modeler and illustrator from Spain, the goal of this project was to visualise his unique and complicated artistic style in a site design that was easy to update, didn't require much server side coding, and to which he could post new artwork.
The challenge in this case was to balance simplicity and ease of use for the person managing the website, who has minimal computer expertise, while still keeping the website confined within consistent stylistic boundaries and a usability threshold. To achieve this, I chose to allow him to update the website efficiently without having to learn a new content management tool or spend time learning how to code.
To prevent him from having to use HTML to markup his updates to the site, I pointed him to Blogger, which is Google's weblog tool and provides its users with a seamless, free, WYSIWYG interface to make updating entries transparent. This solved the issue of updating the website, and integrating it into the design was not an issue. I then created a gallery using a simple php script that reads a level of directories and contained images and creates thumbnails. This would allow Xavier to use FTP to add images and other media to his site, which was something he was already familiar with. I also made the rest of the pages on the site essentially journal entries which could be fully edited using Blogger.
