This project features information about festivals on Kauai. This is a complete update of their previous site that I built in 2004. The new site features a simpler navigation system and larger images to reflect the larger monitors and higher resolutions that are used by modern web surfers.

The site was built using my customized Zend Framework. It uses Blueprint CSS, Smarty Templates, ADODB, jQuery, Pear and HTML_Quickforms.

The Kauai Festivals web site features a floating navigation panel on the front-end and a custom made CMS which allows festival editors to edit information about their festivals and the web master has an interface for approving the festivals and assigning editors for each festival.

I would of liked to have Tsunami Marketing design my site but I really couldn’t afford them and I didn’t want to have to build the front-end and a CMS as well. Robert, my former boss, was experimenting with WordPress and he found it to be quite good. That’s a huge endorsement coming from him since his designs are usually quite challenging to build. I was sure if he could live with any of the limitations imposed by off the shelf software so could I. I also thought it would be a great way to learn WordPress so I could use it in future projects. I quickly found out how flexible WordPress is without any coding. With my existing capabilities and skills I found I could do just about anything I wanted to a web site. WordPress and Zend Framework are now my tools of choice when creating new sites.

I built this site using WordPress as a CMS. I used PHP, HTML and CSS to customize it. Not being a designer it was easy to build this using a theme and then modifying it. The screen captures of the sites I’ve done really stand out against this themes neutral colors.

I like the many plugins, widgets and themes that are available for WordPress allowing you to customize the look and add functionality to the site without having to directly edit the code.

Their web site was a redesign to take advantage of the higher resolutions and larger monitors used by web surfers today. We also streamlined the checkout process so users could make a reservation from Holoholo’s site using their secure server and Paypal without leaving their site.

To achieve this we integrated their reservation system from Atco Software into thier new site. We used Atco Software’s Javascript API to populate a Mysql database with the availability of their different tours. The database was queried and the data was used to populate calendar date pickers with only available dates for each of the tours. Once a tour was selected we checked the availability in real time to assure that the tour was still available, if it wasn’t, a selection of dates that were available for that tour was displayed. The user could then fill out forms to collect all the necesarry data to make the reservation. The reservation was paid for using Paypal’s Website Payments Pro API and curl as the credit card processor. Once a successful transaction was completed the Atco reservation API and curl was used to reserve the tour and update the availability of that tour. A confirmation page was displayed and an email was sent to the user and Holoholo Charters.

The site features lots of photos. Different slide shows are viewable through out the site. Some load and play automatically while others are loaded on-demand to reduce page download size. The site also features passenger contributed photos and allows passengers to upload photos from their tour. Photos are cropped and or re-sized to fit the layout of the site using ImageMagick. There is also a weather page which displays current weather and surf conditions updated onload.

The site also features a custom CMS to allow Holoholo’s staff to make changes and approve passenger submitted photos.

Their site features masthead graphics that play as a slide show on load. There is also a slide show popup that uses smarty conf files to load graphics and captions. The reservation system integrates with A3H a third party reservation system to check availability and make a tour reservation. jQuery is used through out the site to create interactive components and customized heading elements.

This site uses Atco Software to book their rides. We query their API using SOAP to get the rides availability and then block any days that are booked from showing in the calendar date picker for all their rides. We store the availability info in a Mysql database which we then query to create the calendars. When a user decides to book a ride we then query Atco’s API to confirm that the rides is still available. We then collect all the information required to reserve the ride on our secure server. Once all information is collected we use curl to post the reservation to Atco’s secure servers. A confirmation page is displayed and email is sent to the user and to Silver Falls Ranch.

Aside from the e-commerce capabilities of the site there are slide shows and inline pop-ups to enhance the users experience. Javascript is also used to provide compatibility with older Microsoft browsers and display the PNG graphics which are absolutely positioned over other elements of the page.

They wanted to redesign their website to take advantage of users larger monitors to showcase their great designs. There are lots of layers and javascript used to create a interactive site that encourages users to view the next page. The site features navigation thumbnails that entice the visitor to click on them. An animated graphic is used as a background layer and displayed while the next graphic is loaded on-demand to increase the speed at which the page loads. The pages are centered vertically and horizontally on the page with a fixed width and height.

A CMS is used on the back-end to allow Tsunami Staff to update the site without having to know HTML. Images are cropped and or re-sized and thumbnails are created using ImageMagick to ensure the sites layout is maintained.

They needed a new site for this Kapa’a restaurant. The navigation features a pull down fly out menu using jQuery. All menu items are update via smarty conf files. There is a CMS for adding items to the merchandise section. The merchandise section uses javascript to populate pull down menus based on selections made in other pull down menus. So choosing a color only shows sizes available in that color. A shopping cart is implemented to allow customers to purchase logo wear online. Checkout is done via a secure server and PayPal’s Website Payments Pro is used for the credit card processing. Express checkout is also implemented to allow PayPal clients to checkout as well.

This site uses a custom CMS based on smarty conf files. The site editor can log in via ch-rooted ftp and edit the conf files that create the site. Each page has a Hawaiian version and an English version. SIFR is used for the headline of each page and allows for changes to be made in the conf files as English and Hawaiian text.The page displays a flash image of the text in a font that isn’t a web font. A jQuery plugin is used to add shadows to images uploaded by the site editor.

Their website’s designer wanted to use a stencil style font which is unavailable to most users. The site content is dynamic and editable through a custom CMS. Creating graphics for all the text elements using the stencil font was not practical. Enter sIFR, sIFR is a technique that replaces text elements on a page with flash graphics set with the specified font and size. Thanks to a jQuery plugin, sIFR was easy to implement. The site also features a tab navigation system that loads section pages. There are gallery pages to showcase their truss designs and projects. The gallery images display an inline popup window when they are rolled over. Like all of our contact forms I use a spam prevention filter that doesn’t require the user to prove they are human (captcha).

This website was a redesign of their site built in 1999. The site was built to take advantage of the larger monitors and resolutions enjoyed by web surfers today. The custom CMS was updated to allow the site editor to place teaser widgets on specific pages. There is also a weather widget which displays the current conditions and a search widget. jQuery is used for the pull down navigation and inline popup windows. There is a map section that uses Goggle Maps API and a pull down menu to show you where members and places of interest are located. Member listings also feature a link to the dynamic map section. The contact form uses a filter to prevent robots from using the form to send

This is a portal site for Oceanic Time-Warner. This site features rounded corners and css sprites and a tabbed navigation system. Editors can add widgets to any page or page template using a drag and drop interface via ajax magic. It’s basically a custom blog where editors can upload content and members can comment on articles. This site was built with my custom framework which uses smarty and mod rewrite.

They wanted to redesign their Kauai Discovery site to use lager images which would better show off the beauty of Kauai. Their previous site was designed with smaller monitors and resolutions that users had at the time. Their stats reflected that the majority of their visitors could support larger page sizes. The custom navigation for this site has a thumbnail image for each section in a pull down menu with rounded corners over a large image. The only way to achieve the rounded corners in all browsers including MSIE 6 was to put the menus in tables and place transparent gifs in the corners. The thumbnail images for navigation also presented a problem with the number of concurrent request per page load. This was solved by using a technique called css sprites where the images are combined into a single image and then background position is used to select the image for display. Ajax and iframes are used to display navigation elements and member thumbnail images without page reloads.

All information comes from the Hawaii Visitors and Conventions Bureau database via a xml http post to a script on the Kauai Visitors Bureau site. Kauai members update their information on the HVCB site and that information is then used to create their Kauai page.

This site features a e-commerce section which allows them to sell logo wear and merchandise. The pull down menus are dynamic and use javascript so choosing a size populates the colors menu with only colors that are available for that size. Items can be added to their custom shopping cart for checkout later or they can checkout right from their cart. This site was built with my custom framework which uses MVC to separate code, reduce redundancy and make the site easier to update and maintain. This site also uses mod-rewrite to create SEO friendly urls.

This was one of the most complicated sites I’ve ever built. It’s a member site where members can be either a protege or a mentor or both. The Ingage Zone section of the site is where all the magic happens. Mentors and proteges interact with each other using a series of forms to schedule assignments, track time usage, upload materials, update their profiles and manage their accounts.

The e-commerce section of the site allows proteges to purchase courses via a custom PayPal integration that uses PayPal IPN to provide instant access.

Their Client Intranet is one of the coolest sites I’d done to date. It features a drag-n-drop interface and inline editing to simplify the user interface. This was my first ajax intensive site, thanks to the scriptaculous and prototype libraries it turned out well.

Scott wanted a redesign to take advantage of larger monitor sizes and higher resolutions. The site features a unique way to search for property, Scotts listings are shown on a map of the area with colored push pins which can be rolled over to view more details or clicked on to display all the details. The search area is embedded in an iframe and has tabs for searching by map or form. Users can save their favorite properties for easy viewing. All data is updated from their local mls service. My custom framework using smarty and mod-rewrite for SEO enhancements was used create a easy to maintain site and reduce code redundancy.

This was built using my custom MVC/OOP framework. All content is updated using smarty .conf files. No database is needed for this site.

Kauai Film Commission uses a flash intro animation which was very popular at the time.

This site was developed for the Kauai Film Commission, which was sponsoring this event, to introduce Internet technologies to writers, artists, musicans, film makers and other story tellers.

The site features background patterns, tables, animated gifs, and the Netscape center tag. People attending the workshops were loaned digital cameras and given a space on the website to write their own story. Once their page was approved it was uploaded live during the conference. I also functioned as webmaster for this event.

This site was the first ecommerce site I developed. It used cgi-bin and a perl script to total the items and send an email to the client. This wasn’t a true shopping cart, when you selected an item it took you to a form which listed all the items for sale.

We upgraded the site to use mini-vend.pl, a perl script that provided a more modern shopping cart experience, and then, when the project was nearing completion, we had a problem because mini-vend didn’t support netsite server maps. We were able to salvage the project by cutting up the graphics and adding them into cells to the newly introduced Netscape table tags.