Samples of projects I’ve worked on over the years for a wide variety of clients.
Current version of saywire.com.
Highlights
Description
Technical
Early versions of saywire.com were based on Fusebox in a LAMP environment. We used Subversion as our code repository and incorporated a variety of client-side technologies (CSS2 and JavaScript).
Highlights
Description
Carolanfiestas.com is a “bricks to clicks” solution for Carolan, a party supply store in the Canary Islands. With more than 40,000 items in their inventory, Carolan needed a online store to expand their presence to other parts of Spain. Furthermore, they wanted to improve their ranging in the search engines and sell, sell, sell!
Technical
Carolanfiestas.com was a Zen Cart store with a custom theme and a few minor tweaks to improve search engine optimization. On the back end, the server would receive updates to articles in XML and update the Zen Cart database every few minutes with the changes. Likewise, whenever an item was sold, an XML file was sent to the backend database to keep inventory accurate. This site made extensive use of Bash scripts to move the data from XML to MySQL and to manage the creation of images with their watermarks (a minimum of 4 sizes per image). During the busy season, the site was very busy with more than 10,000 visits per day. You can read more about this project here (in Spanish).
Home page of the CGIAR Newsroom. Please note that the page did NOT look like this when I worked on it. This is a NEW design that I had nothing to do with.
Highlights
Description
I created an RSS aggregator with an option for receiving updates via email. The CGIAR, part of the World Bank, desired to centralize their communications through the CGIAR’s newsroom and web site. When the project started, the varied departments of the CGIAR all had their own web sites, designs, CMSs, and ideas about how to get the word out about what they were doing. In 2008 I worked with the CGIAR Newsroom staff to consolidate the RSS feeds from all of there centers (where available) into a single feed on their main Newsroom web page. For centers that did not have their own web site, we included created an RSS feed for the Newsroom’s own CMS and they were encouraged to use that. In the end, users could subscribe to a single feed for all the CGIAR news.
Technical
The entire solution was done in ASP.NET in Visual Basic using XSLT to transform the XML news feeds into HTML. The ability to receive alerts whenever a new article appeared was a web form that included a CAPTCHA test to minimize subscriptions by robots.
Highlights
Description
Extranet where clients can access a wide variety of legal documents and advice. The Document Database can be easily managed by the lawyers responsible for the site. The system also offers workflow management tools including user password retrieval and search index updating when documents are added or modified. Custom logging system tracks a variety of information on system usage and provides site managers with an interface for generating reports. http://www.hrlawmanager.com/
Technical Info
Written in Cold Fusion and using the Fusebox application framework (http://www.fusebox.org/), the system runs on a Windows 2000 server.
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Description
This is the first version of the firm’s intranet. The Managers and Directors provided the required input on the type of content they wanted on the intranet and how they hoped to be able to update it. Self-publishing was a requirement as was Role-based security. The system includes a variety of content management features like custom display order of section contents, recategorizing entire sections (and their children), attaching documents to a given section, limiting access to a section to members of administrator-defined groups and much more. The system was first released in the summer of 2002 and remains in active use.
Technical Info
The system was built in PHP with the Fusebox application framework (http://www.fusebox.org/). The database is SQL Server. Access to the database server is provided by the ADODB Database Abstraction Library (http://php.weblogs.com/ADODB/). The WYSIWYG editing functionality is provided by Interactive Tools (http://www.htmlarea.com/). The system uses the Htdig search engine (http://www.htdig.org/). The system is served on Windows 2000, IIS 5 and all pages are valid and compliant XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Highlights
Description
Extranet where clients can access a wide variety of legal documents and advice. The Document Database can be easily managed by the lawyers responsible for the site. The system also offers a variety of management tools including user password retrieval, online engagement agreements, and search index updating when documents are added or modified. Custom logging system tracks a variety of information on system usage and provides site managers with an interface for generating reports. http://www.lawyeringlaw.com/
Technical Info
Written in Cold Fusion and using the Fusebox application framework (http://www.fusebox.org/), the system runs on a Windows server.
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Description
Intranet for all members of the Monroe Manor condo association. System allows site administrators (usually the president of the association or her delegate) to maintain a document repository for all types of association documents. Additionally, the management company has limited access (to help maintain the document repository) but is unable to access the user forums (so the owners can complain about the management company without their knowing about it). All owners have access to the system and can participate in a variety of ways including adding a listing for their unit if it is for sale or rent, posting other classified adds in the Garage Sale section, and commenting on any issue regarding the community in the Owners Forum. Owners can also update their profile indicating, among other things, the units they own. This was one of the first password-protected sites I ever developed (2000).
Technical Info
Written in PHP with MySQL database. Also uses the ADODB PHP database abstraction library.
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Description
Created in 1999 and still in use today, the Employee Directory constitutes one part of the company’s intranet. All users are allowed to modify the data as needed. The system logs add/edit/delete activity for security purposes. The directory can be updated via the intranet or via FileMaker Pro directly and changes are reflected immediately.
Technical Info
Database: FileMaker Pro 4 Server with the Web Companion running on a Macintosh (OS 9).
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Description
Static web site that showcased the work of the artists represented by Aldo Castillo. This was one of my first web sites and has since been updated (and looks completely different). http://www.artaldo.com/
Technical Info
Apache web server. Static pages maintained using Dreamweaver.
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Description
Chicago Philanthropy magazine, in circulation starting about 1996, went online in about 1998, including archived versions of every issue of the magazine. The site was created and maintained using Dreamweaver and its templating system, but the main menu was generated by a PHP script. The site structure reflected the organization of the content, e.g. /1997/01/interview.html. The site is no longer active.
Technical Info
Apache web server. Mostly static pages. Htdig search engine.