A vendor (video producer) to the company I worked for, who had is office on the same floor as us, mentioned in the hall way that he had a friend who needed a website. His friend was an author who just had a book published by Simon and Schuster. Joshua Horwitz released “War of the Whales” in 2014. I built his website from scratch using Bootstrap CSS and HTML5 boilerplate. It’s responsively designed, so it adjusts for mobile devices.
I even implemented a custom CMS mechanism, powered by TinyMCE, that was super light weight. It allowed him to update a few pieces of small content through out the site. It used basic authentication, and wrote to a MySQL database.
<script type="text/javascript">
tinymce.init({
forced_root_block : false,
force_br_newlines : true,
force_p_newlines : false,
selector: "textarea",
plugins: [
"advlist autolink link image lists charmap print preview hr anchor pagebreak spellchecker",
"searchreplace wordcount visualblocks visualchars code fullscreen insertdatetime media nonbreaking",
"save table contextmenu directionality emoticons template paste textcolor"
]
});
</script>
I used some cool visual effects to add animation and make it feel like an immersive experience. The design process took many iterations, but we got it to a place that made sense for the project. The marquee jQuery plugin used the following code:
$('.marquee')
.bind('beforeStarting', function(){
})
.bind('finished', function(){
$('.marquee').marquee("destroy");
$(".marquee").css("overflow", "scroll")
})
.marquee({
//speed in milliseconds of the marquee
duration: 7000,
//gap in pixels between the tickers
gap: 0,
//time in milliseconds before the marquee will start animating
delayBeforeStart: 0,
//'left' or 'right'
direction: 'up',
//true or false - should the marquee be duplicated to show an effect of continues flow
//pauseOnHover: true
})
Project proposal
Looking back at the original agreement, this is what be planned before the project began:
“I will provide two initial design direction samples. You can choose either direction, request changes, and/or combine elements from each sample. Prior to this step, you can send me examples of what you would like your website’s look-and-feel to be similar to, as well as any other specific requests regarding functionality, style, and layout. Following this, we can go through up to two more rounds of revisions regarding the style, layout, and functionality of your website. You will provide any information, text, and images (photos, logo, etc.) that need to be displayed on this website. Any stock images that we may choose to purchase for this website will cost extra.”
It was a fixed price agreement, but I added this paragraph to our documentation:
“I know from plenty of experience that fixed-price agreements often limit you to your first idea about how something should look, or how it might work. I don’t want to limit either your options or your opportunities to change your mind. If you do want to change your mind, add extra sections or content or even add new functionality, that won’t be a problem. You will be charged an hourly rate.”