Client profile
The StuffedOnline website is an online resource to accompany the ‘Stuffed’ book by Pat Thomas. The book is a collection of essays by respected experts presenting a global perspective on sustainable food production.
The site in funded by the Big Lottery Fund (www.biglotteryfund.org.uk) and the Food for Life Partnership (www.foodforlife.org.uk).
Site: www.stuffedonline.org
Brief
The brief for the StuffedOnline site was to produce new site based on DotNetNuke (DNN)technology stylistically consistent with the original book. Being resource focussed the site would need to host video clips and be organised around a number of categorised articles.
The site development was sponsored by and to be managed by The Soil Association. The decision to use DotNetNuke naturally followed from the recent successful developments of the Soil Association and the Food for Life Partnership sites that also were built using DotNetNuke.
Chord9 was contracted to provide site configuration, custom DotNetNuke skins development and video integration. A key requirement for this resource focussed section was that non-technical site editors could ‘add video’ simply and without the need for any technical knowledge.
The visual design work was undertaken by Bristol based creative agency Wiresky. Chord9 was briefed to create custom skins reproducing these new designs.
Solution
A custom DotNetNuke skins package was developed comprising several distinct page layouts to accommodate the homepage, landing page, general content, search and admin views. Custom menu components were developed and integrated into the skins to improve search engine visibility and intuitive navigation.
The resource articles featured throughout the site were implemented using a highly customisable 3rd party news/articles module. Custom fields were added to the articles entry form to enable editors to easily incorporate video and other media. A versatile video player (Flowplayer) was integrated into the skin package and configured so that editors need only to enter a simple URL pointing to the video file.
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