A few friends and associates may know that I've been up to some intense Joomla! development over the past several months. In fact, we have a major Joomla project underway at the moment that we're looking forward to launching and discussing (at length) here on this portfolio/blog. It's pretty exciting stuff, and will represent quite a demo site for potential clients to review (a fact I'm really excited about, as it's a massively technical implementation).

In the meantime, I thought I'd demonstrate a much more straightforward Joomla! implementation. This is a web site called HealthyGourmetChefPDX.com, which is roughly 90% complete as I write this. My wife, Wendi, is a health coach and personal chef here in Portland. We'd decided recently that May 1 should represent the official launch of her personal chef business here, so naturally she wanted a web site.

The result is a relatively basic implementation of the new "Diametric" template by RocketTheme (a Joomla design and development firm). I like it because it demonstrates rather well just how quickly one can get a nice Joomla site developed and launched (provided one has the text, graphics, and know-how to put it all together quickly). I'm sure we'll tweak things as we move forward with this site, but it's all largely there (and, really, is meant to be more of an online marketing brochure-style site, although with some slick features).

As far as the techie side goes, I'd say it was a fairly easy install and configuration. I'm not so thrilled with RocketTheme's RokTwittie (Twitter) feed application (although, to be frank, I'm not really a big Twitter fan, anyway -- perhaps the topic of a future blog post). So, this is the one module that, as you may notice, is not yet fully configured.

A few other notes, for anyone searching for RocketTheme Diametric fixes / tips:

• Favicon: As in other templates, this one likes the Favicon file to appear in the root of the theme, as opposed to the root of the site. So, pop your .ico file into the theme root and you'll be jake, okay? Also copy the file to your administrator folder, if (like me) you care to see your favicon on the back end, as well.
• Logo Element: As usual, you'll need to customize this PNG file to your liking. Don't forget that you can easily move it left or right (although it looks nice centered). I only mention this to remind people that modules and menu items are easily positionable in Joomla!
• Slow-Loading Images: If you're having trouble with molasses-speed images on your RocketTheme web site, try turning off the "Smart Load" feature. Ostensibly, this "feature" is there to help speed things along -- and indeed it probably does do this for anyone non-savvy enough to load up a web page with megs and megs of imagery. But, if you think of things like optimizing photos beforehand (which, I hope is the case for most designers), then you probably do not need "Smart Load." The web site being profiled here is nearly non-functional with Smart Load enabled!
• Page Titles: Okay, this is a tricky one! Here's something hilarious: Do a search online for "Diametric - April 2012 Template Demo" (including the quotes). There are nearly 2,000 (so far) results for this! This means that there are ~2,000 Joomla administrators who do NOT know how to customize the page titles. But, I don't blame them... It's a really tough setting to find, buried deep in the system. Here's a hint: Go into your MENU module and check in your home menu settings. Look for "Page Display Options." I'm fairly sure this is where I found "Diametric - April 2012 Template Demo" lurking, and was able to delete it from my entire site.

Well, if I think of any more tips / tricks for that template, I'll return and update this post. Aside from that, stay tuned for a major Joomla!-reveal in the coming weeks!

Here's another site by MarketingPortland.com. This one was for a Portland-based commercial real estate company called North Rim Partners. We're super-excited about this web site because this is really one of the early adopters of a fundamental, over-reaching web strategy that we've been preaching here in Portland for a while now. It's not "just" a SEO web site; it's much more than that. In fact, it's a comprehensive approach to the problem of standing out in a crowded space. Here's the site.

As many people know, real estate is a particularly competitive field. As internet marketers, we often finding ourselves studying Google's Keyword Tool to gain insights into advertising trends. This means that we've been more or less building a lot of awareness about where all of the competition is online for your customers' eyeballs. As in any field, just trace it all back to the money and you'll get a clue as to what's hot.  Obviously, there is a lot of money to be made in real estate. This naturally translates into a rather heated and competitive web war going on in the world -- whether you're aware of that or not.

Portland is no exception, of course. In fact, users here are generally more savvy than elsewhere, which only makes matters more serious if you're a local agent hoping to gain any kind of work via the web. Simply put: You can't just adopt a "build it any they will come" attitude, as popularized by the 1989 movie, Field of Dreams. (Then again, that movie did take place in rural Iowa. So, if you live in rural Iowa, maybe you'll be okay if you just launch a web site sans marketing strategy!)

Strictly speaking as marketers, this site is to date the one we're most excited about. It's simply got too much insanely advantageous potential, in our view. A lot of that has to do with the nature of real estate, of course. For example, real estate sites by their nature, receive a ton of incoming links. This may not be very remarkable to a non-savvy internet marketing firm. But, we've implemented measures to harness that power in innovative ways. I actually can't even go into all of it, as I'm hesitant to "give away" some of our best rocket sauce. But, let's just say I ahve enormous expectations for this web site. If you want to know more about that (and, it's relevant to ANY competitive business on the web), then just call me (503) 891-7153.

As for the architecture of the web site, it's a basic PHP site, hosted sustainably (100% wind powered!). I liked this project a lot because we utilized a Wordpress content management system for most of the site (allowing, for example, the client to easily go in and edit things -- which was important to them), and then a special custom-coded CMS for their property listings (also coded so that they can self-administer, if they so choose). I did that using HTML, PHP, and MySQL, a powerful combo. The theme is fairly seamless whether you're on the Wordpress end or not.

One trick that I like to do (and which I don't mind divulging here) is the following process, which makes sites like this one rather easy to implement: Start by designing your theme in pure HTML/PHP. I like to use a lot of "includes" -- which means breaking the template file up into things like "header," "footer," "sidebar" and other components used by most pages. This allows me to go into a single component and edit the content just one time, and it'll affect the entire site at once.

Then I port that theme over to Wordpress. Now, a lot of design firms screw this step up because it can be tricky to design a whole theme in Wordpress. But, one great trick for overcoming that is to use one of their basic, unstyled themes. There's a good one called "Starkers" that I like. So, you install WP, fire up the "Starkers," theme, and then customize that theme for your needs. Since Starkers contains virtually no preexisting styling, it's super-easy to transform it into the web template you've just designed -- and, voila -- seamless stand-alone HTML/PHP web pages and Wordpress/CMS-run pages. Yes, there are a few different ways to achieve all of this, but the above is, in my view, quite convenient and effective!

Today we'll feature another portfolio entry, focusing on a web site called HolisticHealth.Me.  This is a site envisioned by Wendi Dee of Marketing Portland, designed to offer a diet and weight loss program centered around a holistic approach toward health. Instead of simply offering a diet or exercise plan to achieve weight loss, this program aspires to treat the whole person -- body, mind, spirit, and emotion -- to achieve lasting weight loss and happiness.

Naturally, it took a fairly grand site to live up to this grand idea. (And it all started with a great domain name -- http://www.HolisticHealth.Me -- the first "dot ME" site we've ever done, yet a very fitting name for a site like this because, to its users, the site is "all about ME"!)

The web site works in two ways. For those just visiting (or not yet logged in), the site offers information about the program (e.g., benefits, marketing language, pricing information, payment links, and so forth). The ecommerce scenario runs through a site called ClickBank, which is arguably the leading web site for handling electronic product sales. (In this case, the electronic product is a membership to the web site.)

Once member make their purchase and register with the site, they may then login on the home screen and gain access to the premium content.  Inside, the site has 52 levels of membership. Each week, a new level opens up containing an entire week's worth of content, activities, and resources, as well as weekly dietary guidance. Members also gain increasing access, over the life of the program, to various online tools for their own use -- things like self-assessment tests, private journals, health and weight monitoring areas, and much more.

The web site uses Wordpress running a really great theme called Graphene (highly customized for our purposes), a member-management Wordpress plugin called Wishlist Member, and tons of custom PHP and other scripting. But, the end product is a super-slick online product that is unparalleled in its category.

We're happy to post this third item on our web design Portfolio series. The previous two were both Active Server Page (ASP) projects, hosted on Windows servers. This one -- the largest site we've done -- is a PHP site on a Linux server. PHP, of course, is great for running the Wordpress content management system (which this site uses for roughly 900 pages).

The site itself is basically standard HTML, styled with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS is great for setting things like font families, font colors, spacing, and so forth. It allows us to style the entire site with just our CSS file.

We're big fans of being able to make global changes to things, actually. So, presumably like many other shops, we use a lot of "includes" in our web designs. This means that we can use stand-alone components for global elements like masthead links, column contents, and other elements that appear site-wide (many of them back-end enhancements such as certain SEO elements). Many of these things are industry best practices; others are trade tricks we innovated over the years. Either way, the ability to globally style and/or fundamentally alter a very large web site easily is a huge deal. Where clients are concerned, it's a huge time saver (and, in turn, helps us keep fees in check for everyone so that clients can spend their web development money on things like features rather than site administration).

The Pure Jeevan web site features include:

• custom 3-column CSS layout
• 10,000+ registered readers (sign-up form on the top right of each page -- although we've done other internet marketing techniques such as popover ads)
• nationally ranked by Alexa
• 500,000+ pageviews to date
• blog with nearly 900 articles to date, mostly well-produced with custom graphics
• blog utilizes a 100% custom Wordpress template, to make this portion of the site seamless with the rest
• a large interview archive (others interviewing us, us interviewing others -- written, audio, and video)
• affiliate marketing relationships
• social media integration in numerous ways (including an innovative fan page on Facebook where users can get a free eBook for Liking us)
• SEO best practices throughout (Facebook, Twitter, 100+ YouTube videos produced, etc.)
• autoresponders
• Google ads
• RSS syndication
• ecommerce enabled
• numerous back-end tools and enhancements for administrative purposes

Sites like this don't happen overnight, of course. The above project reflects considerable effort over time. But, with patience, tenacity, and creativity, all goals are reachable!

The AllRawDirectory -- at www.AllRawDirectory.com -- is a particularly good example of MarketingPortland's capabilities in terms of handling complex, multi-user MySQL databases. Wendi Dee conceptualized this database project in 2008, as there were no other comprehensive, categorized listings of resources for those interested in the raw foods diet. (All of the others were simply static HTML listings, which all rarely thorough and quick to grow outdated.) She envisioned a site in which anyone could submit a listing, rate and/or comment on listings, edit other listings, and send messages to others -- in short, a true community-run database.

We looked at a number of open-source community platforms available at the time. But, quite frankly, this project merited full development, from scratch. So, we coded the entire thing from the ground up! Features include:

• a robust user database, with the ability to create accounts (and with various levels, such as administrators and moderators) and all of the related functionality of such systems (e.g., "forgot password" scripts and functions like that).
• the ability to create user profiles
• the ability for users to add and edit content
• the ability for moderators to edit and delete content
• the ability for anyone to rate and comment on existing entries
• the ability for users to message each other
• the ability for users to flag content for moderators
• numerous user controls (such as email preferences and so forth)
• database paging (to show only so many listings per page)
• various sorting options (listing by date added, by rating, alphabetically, etc.)
• dynamic functionality (functions actually change depending on what category users are viewing)
• numerous security protocols and measures
• numerous filtering (such as for profanity and so forth)
• numerous back-end tools and reports for administrators
• highly complex and innovative "intelligent" SQL queries throughout -- often dynamically generated (e.g., the database itself generates database queries)
• rotating banner ads (all completely custom programmed)
• robust search functionality
• social media integration and dynamically-generated meta-tags

It's actually a fully functional social media platform, 100% custom programmed (which helped us keep the code absolutely clean and super-fast performing!). Few programmers ever attempt anything as ambitious. But, it was actually a lot of challenging fun. To date, more than 1,000 users have submitted links to resources for this community.

Understandably, potential clients like to look at a web designer's current and previous work while in the selection process. We wanted to share a few sites with our readers as examples to review -- starting with this one that I (Jim) did for composer, writer, and visual artist David Thomas Roberts. (It's not, per se, a "Marketing Portland client" site. But, it is a web site that I authored and coded /designed, so I include it among my own qualifications.) The web site is live currently at www.DavidThomasRoberts.com.

As a musician myself, I've admired David's compositions since my teens. I knew he had quite a lot of information to share, so a few years ago, I offered to build an expansive web site for him. The timing was right, so we took up the project over a few months. David wanted a web presence that would accomplish a few important goals:

• For one, it should represent not only his musical career (itself a vast undertaking!), but should include his writing and visual arts work as well.
• Another emergent theme was that it should serve as a digital archive.
• It would need to feature galleries for writings, artwork, and music -- and some of those should be ecommerce-enabled so that visitors could make purchases of prints and sheet music.
• As a fairly large web site, it would need an intuitive navigation system (and, as a bonus, one that would fit in well with the overall theme).

In time, we decided that the image of a library card catalog would be a fitting and attractive metaphor for the web site's intents and purposes. So, to begin the user experience, we incorporated all of the above into an interactive welcome or "splash" screen. Mousing over the picture highlights all of the items that link into the site. And then mousing over any of the lit-up links displays information about what kind of information is found therein.

The navigation system is a highly customized version of a Javascript script called TreeMenu. I really liked how this system could be tailored to reflect the overarching metaphor of this web site. File drawers may be opened or closed, sometimes revealing further levels.

While opportunities yet exist for some expansion (such as SEO optimization and social media integration), other notable features of the site include:

• A good representation of Roberts' artwork throughout the site (incorporating it into mastheads, for example).
• Database-driven composition database, artwork galleries, and photo galleries.
• Ability for users to purchase prints and sheet music (calculated on the site, and then integrated with Paypal).
• Email list sign-up.
• Well hyper-linked throughout, including links to sources where users may purchase CDs (for those in print).
• An enormous archive of interviews and downloadable recordings.
• Dedicated pages for more than 20 albums / CDs, along with full liner notes and cover images for nearly all of them.
• Built using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) architecture on a Windows platform.

All things considered, it's a vast resource of information -- one I'm proud to have been involved with.