by Jacob @ 21st Webb | Nov 7, 2022 | Clients, Portfolio
This summer we were thrilled to launch a brand-new e-commerce and e-learning website for Victoria Northbrooke.
This project is not just another WordPress-based site however, with a large volume of digital products, online courses, mail flow integrations, and even a free onboarding quiz; the size of this project quickly grew and presented a few key challenges.
The integration of an e-commerce platform is not a new one but tying that into authentication for the self-hosted e-learning platform is where a new challenge arose. After trialling several different e-learning platform options, Thrive Architect became the platform of choice.
With the e-commerce and e-learning platforms integrated, the final biggest challenge experienced here is the capture of users at all points throughout each of the integrated platforms, populating the relevant mailing lists, for targeted product delivery. Introducing FloDesk into the mix! Whilst this platform offers nice minimalistic e-mail templates, the integrations it offered were minimal; further adding to the complexity of this part of the project.
Along comes Zapier! With this online subscription being on our radar for several years, we have always strived to produce our own webhooks in-house or would opt for Microsoft Power Automate where possible. However, this was the only option for integration with FloDesk, as that was one of the few mailing list platforms, we’ve experienced to not offer an API. Even with Zapier it wasn’t easy, as we had to combine user interaction within WooCommerce, Thrive Architect, the onboarding quiz, and the rest of the website. Fortunately Zapier does offer the option to integrate custom code, which proved to be the most efficient option for tying all these interfaces together into a small set of condensed mailing lists.
Finally, this project is another one we have enjoyed collaborating on with Richard from Lovely Stuff Studio. Richard is the artist behind the branding and styling of many of the pages on the site, as well as the logo and social media banners used by the site. If you’re a fan of the graphics design demonstrated on this site, be sure to check out some of his other works.
As always, we enjoy any new challenges presented by our projects as any new challenge is an opportunity to learn something new! If you’re looking for a new website built, or maybe have one in need of an overhaul – be sure to get in touch.
by Jacob @ 21st Webb | Oct 4, 2021 | Clients, Portfolio
We are thrilled to have worked with the launch of a brand-new Party Tent and Events company this summer. Marquee 4U is the latest addition to our portfolio, launching earlier this year following, during what could only be described as a challenging time for the events industry.
Marquee 4U is a bold addition to our portfolio, with a colourful content and stylish layout setup to deliver concise information about the array of services on offer, whilst maintaining the fun aspect every events company would want.
This site features a custom icon set, promoting the wide array of services Marquee 4U has to offer, in a fun, colourful but clear way.
We always enjoy helping a client launch. Working on developing their brand and complete online presence (as well as their website) is not a new challenge for us, but a process we enjoy working with clients through.
We would love for you to check out the site, and for your next event – why not give Marquee 4U a look.
by Jacob @ 21st Webb | Aug 2, 2021 | Clients, Portfolio
We are delighted to announce the launch of a brand new independent travel agent. Avenzi Travel is the latest addition to our portfolio, launching earlier this year following, what could be described as a rocky year for the industry.
Avenzi Travel is a content-rich site, promoting a wide variety of destinations, trips and excersions, all beautifully illuistrated with breathaking graphics and unique designs.
Helping a client launch, developing their brand and complete online presence (as well as their website) is not a new challenge for us, however the variety of industries and applications is always something we enjoy – this site was no exception.
The site offers dynamic front and landing pages, with an easy to maintain backend for regular content publishing, allowing the client to dynamically populate top-level pages and relevant landing pages whenever a new promotion is published.
We would love for you to check out the site, and why not have a look at what amazing destinations are on offer while you’re there.
by Jacob @ 21st Webb | Jul 5, 2021 | Clients, Portfolio
We are delighted to announce the launch of a brand new website for The Gateway Church, Wrexham last month.
This project involved a complete overhaul of an existing WordPress site, redesign on both the front and back-end; and then a final security review of the site and it’s hosting.
The site has been brought back up-to-date, with a comepltely new theme installed, replacing the once outdated theme, and over 20 plugins providing basic functionality to the users.
The new theme not only offers tonnes of functionality built-in, but is also much more user friendly for the team at GWRX to edit and maintain pages with.
Finally, all members of the team were offered training on using and maintianing the updated site, bringing everyone back upto speed on getting the most out of their fantastic site.
We would love for you to check out the site with it’s new look and feel.
by Jacob @ 21st Webb | Mar 1, 2021 | Clients, Portfolio
The way that you’ve liaised with Gareth regarding content updates and Richard for the design and branding consistency, has ensured that the site has a totally professional look and will be a point of reference that we as an organisation will be proud to present to the banding community, not only in Wales, but globally! It is everything (and more!) that we could have possibly hoped for.
Andrew Jones, Chairman for Brass Bands Wales
Last month we supported the launch of a new organisation here in Wales, with a new, purpose-built, and fully bilingual website.
Brass Bands Wales is a brand-new organisation established to promote and support Brass Banding in Wales. The organisation is run by a voluntary steering group with a wide range of backgrounds and is ultimately supported by its members.
The initial launch of the website on February 4th was met with great interest from Brass Bands, their members, as well as other people and organisations from the Brass Banding world. Needless to say, this project is one with that has been met with great interest, making the perfect project to start the year with.
This project is not just another WordPress-based site however, with a large volume of data, dynamic data display and filtering, as well as a feature-rich community system for collaboration between members are a few of the key challenges this project had to offer.
The number of Brass Bands in Wales is something that projected the first hurdle this site would have going forward. Whilst having as many bands onboard as possible is great in one respect, the volume of data that would have to be added to the site, maintained, and consistency of styling between all those pages would soon create a maintenance-heavy task as the membership increases. To overcome this, custom post types have been created, consolidating all Brass Bands records, Supporters records, and Directory entries into their own sections within the Admin dashboard. What’s more, each of these custom post types has their own purpose-built forms, allowing the team at Brass Bands Wales to easily input just the required information for a Brass Band, Supported or Directory contact, making data-entry a self-explained and efficient task.
With the database structure clearly defined through the use of custom post types, the consistency of how that data is displayed on the front end, especially when it comes to page structure and styling was the next hurdle. Fortunately, the latest version of our theme of choice (provided free to our Designer clients) gives us the ability to define templates for individual post types, meaning we only have to design the one page how we like it, and the Brass Band or Supporter information is pulled from the databased and presented in a perfect, consistent structure and style. And should the layout of all Brass Bands or Supporters ever need to change, the use of templates for these custom post types means only one page layout has to be altered, rather than potentially hundreds of individual Brass Bands or Supporters pages.
Building on top of the custom post type defined for Brass Bands, we looked at how the site could be made more interactive. One of our favourite features on the site is the Band Map, a dynamically populated map of Wales, with a pinpoint for each Brass Band registered on the Brass Bands Wales website. We can’t take credit for all of this part however, thanks to the simple but effective plugin produced by Lodovic Riaudel, we were able to include a completely dynamic map, populated from our custom post type’s records, just by adding a couple of extra fields to the purpose-built form for that post type in the admin dashboard.
Looking at the last major requirement on this project – the community platform is another one of our favourites, and one used on a number of other sites we have developed. Vanilla Forums is the feature-packed community application empowering the users of this site, allowing the team at Brass Bands Wales to easily share news, offers, files and other resources exclusively with their members via a completely private forum application. Separating this functionality into a separate web application also proves to be no issue when it comes to styling, with the forum seamlessly embedded into the website itself, and also offering single-sign-on for the administrators of both the website and forum.
Finally, working on this project hasn’t been something done alone. This has been the first of what we hope to be many future projects collaborated on with Richard from Lovely Stuff Studio, the artist behind the branding and styling of many of the pages on the site, as well as the logo and social media banners used by the site. If you’re a fan of the graphics design demonstrated on this site, be sure to check out some of his other works.
As always, we are grateful for every project we get to work on, and especially enjoy the challenge of something new. If you’re looking for a new website built, or maybe have one in need of an overhaul – be sure to get in touch.
