Featured UWD Designs
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Sechelt Visitor Centre NEW SITE May 3, 2010
Nancy Baker of the Sechelt Visitor Centre contacted us to request a quote for a
redesign of the Sechelt Visitor Centre web site. The Centre wanted to improve the
design and the content of their site to better showcase their members and the many
attractions of the Sechelt area. We worked closely with them to identify the requirements
and develop the design, created a custom Joomla site for them, and provided a detailed,
customer-specific, comprehensive manual on how to maintain the site and several training
sessions at their location. We also purchased and installed the necessary FTP, PDF-creation
and photo-editting software on their computers.
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Quilt Web Design NEW SITE March 3, 2010
Quilt Web Design is one of Usable Web Design's ventures. Lead designer/developer
Alison Taylor is an avid quilter and looks forward to helping quilt-related
organizations, including guilds, quilt shops and quilting artists, showcase their
efforts. If you are a quilt or fibre-art related organization, we welcome your
enquiries, and would be happy to provide a no-cost no-obligation telephone consultation
and quote.
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Maple Art NEW SITE November 13, 2009
Andres Schneiter of Maple Art wanted an update to his web site to make it more
contemporary and easier for visitors to navigate. We hand-coded his site
and created a database and custom PHP code to display his many product photographs\
in a gallery. We also helped him to redesign his logo and created a flash slideshow
for his home page.
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Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden Society
The Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden Society had collected over 100 pages of useful information
on their original web site, and invited us to redesign the site. In their words, "the change in design
was primarily intended to improve ease of navigation, with a contemporary appearance and functions, while
featuring our new logo." We created three designs for them to choose from, and populated the new site
with all their content. We created an interactive calendar to showcase their many events, past and
present, and incorporated an online event/membership registration form. We recently integrated a customized
CubeCart shopping cart into the site (see section below on eCommerce). SCBGS Volunteer Amanda Offers keeps
the site up to date, with careful attention to detail.
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Signboom: Your Online Print Engine
Signboom contacted us looking for a redesign of their web-based print ordering system, to
achieve a more "corporate" look, as they target larger clients.
We integrated the design into their powerful existing ordering system, and expanded the
ordering system to handle many new products. We also created custom internal web-based software
which allows Signboom staff to track all the active jobs on the shop floor,
increasing their productivity and enabling more responsive customer service.
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Joy Coghill
Veteran Canadian actress Joy Coghill was persuaded by her writer friend Susan McNicoll that
she should document her career in a website. Joy's goal was to have a definitive record of the
productions she was involved in, with accurate dates, locations and personnel. Susan collected
and collated the information, and we created a classy and sophisticated design to communicate
the stature of this significant performer, and some of the history of Canadian theatre.
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Kensington Cabinets
Kensington Cabinets has been expanding rapidly during the past two years, and approached us about
creating a web site to showcase their new capabilities. We provided them with three designs to choose
from and created an interactive door selector so that clients can view the many doors they carry in
the various available colours. (The door selector is not yet online, pending photographs of all doors
becoming available.) We also created a specialized web site for their commercial clients, and maintain
both their sites.
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Sunshine Coast Conservation Association
The Sunshine Coast Conservation Association contacted us to redesign their site, which had
accumulated so much information that it was difficult to navigate. They wanted to be able
to maintain content themselves, so we created their site using Joomla technology. Joomla
allows clients to edit content using a text editor similar to that used to format emails.
It also allows clients to create new pages for their web site without knowing HTML or other
web development technologies. The site is beautifully maintained by SCCA employee Donna McMahon.
We have also integrated a password-protected document management system, which allows the SCCA
board of directors to share private documents with each other through a web-based system.
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Recent UWD Designs
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Gardens by Design NEW SITE June 17, 2010
Garden Designer Ayuko Inoue called us after seeing our work on the
Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden Society site. She wanted a simple, contemporary site,
with clean design that would showcase photographs of her work. We worked closely
with Ayuko every step of the way, and photoshopped most of the photographs to adjust
exposure settings and compensate for difficult lighting situations. We are currently
designing her business card and brochure to match the site.
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Drowned City Press NEW SITE April 18, 2010
Writer Donna McMahon was familiar with our work on the Sunshine Coast
Conservation Association web site, a Joomla site we created which she maintains.
She wanted a WordPress site that she could maintain herself, and was willing
to do a lot of the leg work to keep costs down. She searched through catalogs
of free WordPress templates and chose the Underwater theme for her site. She
also searched iStockPhoto for a
new background image, and photoshopped it the
colours she wanted. Following her instructions, and some of our own discretion,
we adjusted the theme to give her a unique site. We also assisted her with
adjustments to her logo.
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InvestWell NEW SITE November 23, 2009
John Halme of InvestWell was familiar with our work on The Mastery website.
He contacted us to update the InvestWell website to introduce a more contemporary
appearance, to change the banner to match that of his AdviseWell site, and to port
the site over to WordPress so he could maintain the contents himself. We installed multiple
WordPress instances so that the individual advisors could each have a customized
appearance to their areas of the site and maintain their own sites, while retaining
the overall look.
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Andrew Scott
Writer and editor Andrew Scott was familiar with our work for the
Sunshine Coast Conservation Association
and approached us to recreate his web site in a technology that would allow him to
maintain it himself without knowing HTML or CSS. We introduced him to both Joomla and
WordPress technology and he selected WordPress. We designed and implemented his site,
which included a randomly selected banner photo each time the visitor changes page,
a flash animation on the home page showing his book covers, and a site map.
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eCommerce Sites
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Coast Raven Design NEW SITE January 22, 2010
Richard de la Mare had been recommended to us by the Sechelt Visitor Centre,
whose website we were working on at the time. Richard had a few of his many
products on his web site, but wanted to put them all online. He was not ready
to start selling online, but it was a possibility for the future. We created
his site using CubeCart ecommerce software, but left out the shopping cart pages,
giving Richard a site that he could maintain himself if he wished (using the
CubeCart administration account) and which could be easily updated in future
to move to online selling should he wish. We also photoshopped all of his
product photographs to correct lighting conditions and dust on the lens and background.
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P.V. Carswell (Roundabout Market)
Writer and world traveller Pat Carswell approached us to create a site that would feature
her new novel Jumping to Conclusions, her magazine articles, and her vacation exchange home.
She also wanted to be able to sell her novel, and other Canadian and Sunshine Coast themed products,
through an online store. We implemented her whole site in CubeCart eCommerce software. Pat entered
the product information (text and photographs) herself, while we styled the content of the informational
pages. (After a year of operating the site as an ecommerce site, she asked us to turn off
the eCommerce option and now uses the CubeCart administration interface as a user-friendly way
to maintain her site without eCommerce.)
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Alderspring Design
Susan Fletcher, owner of Alderspring Design, came to us to set up an online shopping solution for her wholesale
sewing pattern business, after finding that the free web-based shopping carts she was using did not provide
enough flexibility. We installed and configured a CubeCart shopping cart for her, customizing its appearance,
and adding features such as a minimum limit on each purchase. The original design we created is shown to the
right. We have since updated the banner of
the live website to
include the new logo Susan designed, and photographs of some of her products. We have also installed and
configured her new eCommerce site About
Furoshiki and a WordPress
blog for that site. Susan now maintains both eCommerce sites and her blog.
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Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden Society
After their web site had been live for about a year, the Botanical Garden Society decided
to add an online store to sell memberships and event tickets, and accept donations. We customized
a CubeCart shopping cart to blend seamlessly with the rest of the site.
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Poppin's Quilt Parlour
After their web site had been live for about two years, Poppin's contacted us to add eCommerce
to their site, in hopes of selling product throughout British Columbia, Canada. We customized
a CubeCart shopping cart to blend seamlessly with the the rest of the site. To their surprise,
their first two orders occurred prior to officially launching the site, and came from northern
Ontario and Australia.
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SunCoast Gallery
Photographer Fred Garner contacted us to create an online store showcasing
his photographic prints, and other art work he has obtained copyright
for. The goal of this site was to feature the photographs themselves, with
minimal text.
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Imperial Vending
Sunshine Coast design firm Phitted Design contacted us to assist them with
the addition of an online ordering system for their Ontario client Imperial Vending.
They were expecting we would have to code this from scratch using PHP; however, we
suggested starting with a CubeCart shopping cart (for $140 US) and modifying it,
to achieve their requirements more cheaply. We customized the shopping cart to blend
seamlessly with the client's existing site.
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Software Development
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Design and Software by UWD: Aboriginal Child Care Society
A business acquaintance introduced us to the Aboriginal Child Care Society of BC,
who were working through mountains of paperwork each time they needed to submit quarterly
reports to granting agencies on their successful
Moe
the Mouse project. We worked with Lynn McBride of ACCS to get familiar with the project
and identify the information that should be tracked in the database and the reports that should
be automatically generated using that information. The database is expected to reduce reporting
time down from weeks to hours. The image to the right links to an image of the home page.
You can also view an image of
one of the password-protected database management pages.
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Software by UWD: Prix Aurora Awards Voting and Payment
Clint Budd of Prix Aurora asked us to integrate
DemoChoice's
single-transferable vote software and PayPal's payment methods into their existing web site,
to improve the voting experiences for their visitors. (Visitors pay a fee to vote, and then
rank their preferences across multiple categories of sci-fi writing and art.) We installed
DemoChoice on the Prix Aurora host, configured it to blend in seamlessly with the design of the
site, and wrote PHP code to link together the registration, payment and voting in an automated
experience. (The live site only supports voting for a few months of the year.
To see a screenshot of part of the registration process, click the thumbnail image to the right.)
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Coded and Maintained by UWD: Clearmind International
Clearmind International's web site was designed by Bruce E. Skipper of Radical Clarity Communications.
We recoded the complete site to move away from its table-based layout and frames, to the newer
CSS technology. Getting rid of the frames has helped the site's ranking in search engines. All code
was written by Usable Web Designs, and we maintain the site. We also create layouts for Clearmind's
quarterly publication The Ripple (PDF) and prepare their monthly HTML-formatted mailouts,
magazine ads and brochures.
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Coded and Maintained by UWD: Independent Retail Success
Motivational speaker and retail expert Roy Prevost heard about us through the
Unity of Vancouver church,
whose WordPress site we provide technical assistance with, when required. He contacted us for web site
maintenance and help with various online marketing technologies. We maintain his
site www.royprevost.com and also recoded and maintain his site
www.independentretailsuccess.com
following its original design by another webmaster. We prepare HTML email newsletters
and EventBrite listings for Roy and have created the minisite
www.losspreventionmatters.com.
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Coded and Maintained by UWD: Josephine Harrison
This site was designed by Fiona Raven. We recoded the complete site to move away from its table-based
layout to currently recommended CSS technology. We also created the interactive order form and
set up her PayPal account so that she can sell her art works over the internet. All code was written by
Usable Web Designs, and we maintain the site.
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Other UWD Designs
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Sonya MacDonald
Sonya asked us to redesign her web site to reflect the expanded scope of her services and to allow her
to maintain site content herself. We implemented her new site using Joomla technology (described below
under the entry for the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association). She provided close direction as to
the appearance she wanted and selected stock photographs for us to create the banner with.
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Bob's Home and Yard Services
Rob Kayce wanted a web site to communicate to potential clients the many services his company offers.
He had his content prepared and was ready to move quickly. With a one-week turnaround, we provided a
single design, which he approved, and we created and populated the site with his content. His site
includes a custom contact form, which allows clients to submit emails to him indicating which of his
services they are interested in. We also sourced stock photos for his site, located a stock graphic
for his new logo, and designed his new business card and some newspaper ads.
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Language101.com
The developers of this online language learning software
contacted us to develop an aesthetically pleasing and highly usable
visual design for their site. They wanted very small file sizes to
ensure fast download times. We developed the design shown
and created a Joomla template of it. All pages on the site whose URLs
start with http://language101.com are implemented in Joomla with this
template. The pages with URLs like
http://learn-french.language101.com are implemented in PHP and HTML
by Language101.com (not UWD), and are gradually being modified by
Language101 to match seamlessly with the template. We are currently
helping them to optimize the most frequently visited pages on their
site, such as the
Pimsleur
and Rosetta Stone Reviews pages.
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Azure Kitchens
Eddy Trampus (who partners with us to provide graphic design) owns and operates Azure Kitchens, a
Sunshine Coast company that installs kitchens for developers, kitchen cabinet companies, and individuals
who have purchased cabinets retail. He designed his own site and provided the photographs.
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Poppin's Quilt Parlour
Poppin's Quilt Parlour, located in Penticton B.C., had been using email to communicate
information about new products, class schedules, and sales to their clientelle, sometimes in the form
of quarterly newsletters. They wanted an online repository for this information, which would be available
to a wider audience, and wanted to maintain their site themselves, without having to learn HTML.
We coded a client-managed site using PHP and an SQL database. Poppins maintains their inventory in
Excel spreadsheets on their PC, and then uploads those spreadsheets to the SQL database on their host,
where our PHP code automatically creates the web pages using data from the database.
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Sashiko Stitchers
Susan Fletcher of Alderspring Design followed up her two eCommerce sites (see above) with an instructional and community
site on the Japanese art of Sashiko stitching. We installed and configured
a forum using SimpleMachines
forum software, and customized WordPress to provide an accompanying site that Susan could maintain herself.
We also integrated Amazon affiliate links to monetize the site by linking to relevant books that visitors
might wish to purchase.
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Sonya MacDonald [ copywriter ]
We developed Sonya's site before she partnered with us to offer her copywriting skills to our customers.
Sonya came to us with a very clear image of what she wanted. She pointed us to a site with a style that
she liked, faxed us a hand-drawn picture of the layout she wanted, and emailed a photograph to be used.
We implemented her design, and provided her with examples of six different colour schemes to choose from.
We also located a "crumbling typewriter font", which she had requested for her logo. Sonya, of course,
provided the copywriting for her site.
We have recently worked with Sonya to redesign her site to reflect the expanded scope of services (see
her entry above), so the original design is now available to view as a graphic instead of a live site.
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Springbrooke Retreat Centre
Clearmind International, whose website
we maintain, wanted to rebrand their 16-acre retreat center with a new logo and website. We worked with
Springbrooke staff and their logo designer/photographer to develop a design that communicated their vision
of the centre. We have designed printed
brochures for them and are currently developing an HTML-formatted email newsletter to keep their clients up to date.
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The Mastery Workshops
The Mastery is a set of four personal development workshops which focus on self expression. Their leadership
team wanted a web page which would give potential participants the opportunity to learn more about the workshops.
The specifications were very open ended at the beginning. We provided several designs for them to choose from,
and multiple revisions of the chosen design, as the leadership team searched for the appropriate look. We
created a text-based logo and provided the graphics for the site. We also assisted in copywriting
and provided high-resolution versions of the graphics for use in their brochures.
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Newman Research Services
Freelance genealogical researcher Amy Newman was looking for a simple, affordable site, that would
communicate information about genealogical research in general, and her business in particular.
We sourced stock photography and created the banner collage of the home page,
and identified a suitable font for branding her business name. Shortly after her site went
live, Amy was contacted by a new client, on the far side of the country, who had found her through
her web site.
The image on the right links to the site as we designed it. We also made two variations on the
design: variation 1 and variation 2. The live site is online at www.nrsfind.com.
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Global Scavenger Hunt - Blog Page
Global Scavenger Hunt already had a web site, which owner Bill Chalmers
maintains himself. He contacted us to add a blog to his website. We customized
a Wordpress blog to coordinate with the banner image on his web site. (The
banner of his site has since changed, so the blog no longer coordinates.)
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La Brocante Books and Antiques
Bertrand Michel, owner of La Brocante, had been selling his books
and antiques through a physical store and selling his books online
at ABEbooks.com. ABEbooks only handles books, and Bertrand was
looking for a way to sell his antiques, videos, records and ephemera
online. He did not want e-commerce, but he did want to maintain
the site himself.
We designed a client-managed site using the technologies mentioned above
for the Poppins Quilt Parlour site. As usual, we provided the client with
comprehensive documentation on how to maintain his web site.
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Kestrel Books
Kestrel Books wanted to redesign their web site, while retaining certain elements (their logo, a
textured paper background, and the image which runs down the left hand side). We worked with them
to retain the flavour of their site, while improving readability and navigation. This site has a
"fluid" design, which means it adjusts its width (within limits) to the width of the browser window.
The "Featured Items" page was designed to allow the client to add/remove featured items by updating and
uploading an Excel spreadsheet. We have also customized a Wordpress blog to match their site.
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Wendy Taylor, Assistant Professor, York University
Dr. Taylor is a professor in the physics department at York University in Canada.
Her web site is used to communicate her research activities to colleagues and the world at large,
and it links to course information for her students.
We were responsible for the design of all pages, selected the
site colours, and sourced free fonts and copyright-free images for this site.
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Alison and Eddy's Wedding Site
This site was created in the months before Alison Taylor and Eddy Trampus
of Usable Web Designs got married. As almost all wedding guests were travelling
here to attend (some from overseas), the site was designed to provide information on
the destination as well as the wedding itself. In coming months, wedding photographs
will be added to the site so that friends and family can view them.
Usable Web Designs offers special design packages for wedding web sites. Please
contact us for details.
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Usable Web Designs
We have, of course, designed and implemented our own site, the site
you are viewing now. Free copyright-free photographs were sourced from the
stock.xchng.
We designed the logo and wrote the copy.
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