New Zealand String Quartet

Size: 15 WordPress template pages

My professional status: employee at Shift

Website client: New Zealand String Quartet

Dates: November 2007 - January 2008 (phase 1) and July - September 2008 (phase 2)

Brief: Phase 1: to build a new WordPress website for the New Zealand String Quartet. The old NZSQ website was built in DreamWeaver, and required NZSQ team to edit the templates by hand. A WordPress website would make it easier for them to edit, and would allow a wider range of elements to be included in the site, such as a music player, recordings section and tour schedule. (January - March 2008)

Phase 2: addition of the New Zealand music, photo gallery, Adam Summer School, donors and friends and blog sections of the site - plus rearrangement of the information architecture to accommodate these and design of the new pages and sections. (July - August 2008)

Shift has a 50:50 sponsorship agreement with NZSQ, where half of the work is done for free. They also have an ongoing maintenance and upgrade relationship with NZSQ.

My responsibilities included:

Phase 1:

Development of 15 template pages in pure CSS and HTML 4.01 Transitional, which were then broken down and integrated into a set of WordPress templates by my Shift colleague, Dominic Collins
Liaising closely with Dominic to ensure that all templates could be easily integrated into WordPress
Hand-coding in HTML 4.01 Transitional to a reasonable level of accessibility
Extensive testing of the templates (and later the WordPress site) at all stages of the development process, ensuring complete consistency across the following browsers and platforms:
- PC: Internet Explorer IE6, IE7; Firefox
- Mac: Firefox, Netscape, Opera, Safari
Ensuring that every page and stylesheet had been validated using the W3C Markup Validation Service and that it conformed to HTML 4.01 Transitional requirements
Integration of the Wordtube music player which is utilised in various places across the site
Development of a comprehensive WordPress training document for the client, and participating in the training process itself
Development of an ongoing working relationship and liaison with the client.

Phase 2:

Review and alteration of the existing information architecture in order to accomodate a number of new sections into the site
Design of all new pages, sections and widgets, to fit seamlessly into the existing design while retaining an identifiable "look" of their own
Integration of a New Zealand music section into the site, including rearranging the IA of this section, and consequent wrangling of the PHP in order to display and style the current navigation and subnavigation item correctly, whatever the level within the site-tree
Research and selection of an appropriate WordPress photo gallery widget, and integration and styling of this into the existing site
Integration of the new Adam Summer School section into the site, including links to the Adam Summer School Facebook page which had been set up by my Shift colleague Anita Funnell
Integration and styling of the new donors and friends section
Integration and styling of the new blog section
Ongoing maintenance, updates and assistence as required by the client.

In phase 1 my job was mainly to build a series of HTML templates, replicating the beautiful (and very unWordPess-like) design of my Shift colleague Chris. It was Dominic's job to wrangle the templates into some kind of working shape within WordPress during phase 1, but in phase 2 this was my job, and not being an expert in PHP I had to do quite a bit of research and learn fast. I feel pretty proud of what we achieved, and I'm particularly pleased that my dogged determination to "make it work" in phase 2 resulted in the proper display of current navigation and subnavigation elements - something we hadn't achieved in phase 1.