Graduate School of Business and Government

School of Business & Public Management - view screenshot

Link: vuw.ac.nz/sog (site has since been redeveloped) - view screenshot

Size: 50 pages, 1MB

My professional status: contractor at Mission Hall

Website client: Victoria University Wellington

Dates: September - October 2000

Brief: to build a new website for the VUW Graduate School, following the design created by Mission Hall designers.

My responsibilities included:

  • Development and colour-matching of graphics (photos, logos, titles) to maintain consistency across the site and to look good on monitors displaying 256 colours
  • Building site (architecture, navigation, HTML, JavaScript, content, popups)
  • Building templates for pages which would become part of the Visual Basic web-based publishing solution designed for use by VUW staff
  • Liaison with client, designer and programmers
  • Testing site thoroughly for browser compatibility on Mac and PC, and including a range of monitors sizes and resolutions
  • Development of an efficient working process with the Mission Hall designer who was inexperienced in producing design for HTML
  • Running a seminar for Mission Hall staff to enable them to design more effectively for the web, and to work more efficiently with web developers.

A tight deadline and intense testing process made this site an interesting challenge, especially as the initial JavaScript was incompatible with Netscape 4.0x on a Mac - and I had to do a good deal of research with Toolbox to find a script that would work across all platforms. I learned heaps more about JavaScript in the process!

The look and feel of this site has since changed - it has been transferred to the templates I built for the School of Economics & Finance and the School of Business & Public Management.