HK are a local restaurant which provide great food including the amazing cupcakes which you’ll see if you ever pass their window, all cooked on-premises!

The site has been in development for a while but we are now glad to unleash it upon you all :)  The site includes an image gallery and menu pages with a slideshow background, all of which are easily editable using the Joomla 1.5 content management system which it is based upon.

We have just launched http://www.theperformancecollective.co.uk, a new website for a High Performance specialist company which provides basic information about the company and what they do as well as who they are.

The site is stage one of what TPC have planned.  At the moment they will be offering free articles on their website however longer term they would like to offer secure content to registered users only, either for free or via a membership system and thankfully Joomla easily allows for this sort of expansion without any significant rebuild.

So if you are interested in having a website developed but don’t want to jump straight in at the deep end then why not consider starting with a simple site and then adding more features as time goes on?  Contact us now for more details on how this can be achieved!

Aaron and Jim did a superb job in creating a cake for Andre and you can now see an image of it on their website.

Why not keep an eye out for the new series of Andre’s show to see if their cake is featured?

Highland Hot Cakes (confections of a domestic goddess)  is a small, locally-run business in Inverness which specialises in making scrumptious cupcakes, wedding cakes, novelty cakes and much more.

It features information on their products and services plus a gallery chock-full of images of their delicious creations.  Check it out now by visiting http://www.highlandhotcakes.co.uk.

The SCLC are the only Law Centre in Scotland that works exclusively for children and young people. They help children and young people, their families and carers, and professionals working for and with children by providing expert advice and information through our advice line, email and text services.

We have worked with them for several years now and up until now they have maintained their website themselves, however earlier this year they approached us to get us to professionally redesign and revamp their site to give it a cleaner, more professional look.

You can view their new, Joomla-based website at http://www.sclc.org.uk/ now!

However we recently had the need to create a site which, although it did not have specific functionality needs, did have specific requirements for the nature of the pages and how they would be displayed/edited. Not to go into too much detail but essentially the site will list books, separated into various categories and possibly subcategories, and with a set of custom “fields” to hold the information on each book – ie ISBN, cover image, Publisher and (most specifically for this site) custom links to affiliate sites.

Although this could have been fairly easily achieved by just getting the site owner to type in the information themselves (deleting links to affiliate programs which they didn’t want to use on a book-by-book basis) we wanted to ensure that the site was as easy as possible for the client to update themselves.  Therefore we decided to look into the various CCK components available for Joomla!

In short, CCK stands for Custom Content Kit and it is a component which allows you to define your own types of content, rather than having to use the default Joomla content editor which only allows you to have certain default fields such as Author, Modified Date and one level of Section/Category.  In this case of this development site we also need other fields such as Publisher, ISBN and various links to the affiliates so what we needed was to use a CCK to first define our content type (ie a book) and then to create as many custom fields as we needed so that the client could easily enter the information into these fields, rather than having to hand-type it all.

We investigated just about every CCK that is currently available for Joomla 1.5 including:

• Zoo
• K2
• FlexiContent
• SOBI 2 and finally
• JSeblod

The main features we, as a design and development agency, were looking for were:

1. The ability to create whatever fields and field types we wanted and as many as we wanted
2. The ability to create custom templates for each type of content so that we can completely customise how each content type looks
3. The ability to then make use of the custom fields which we created in the templates we created, wherever and however we wish.
4. The ability to create as many nested levels of sections/categories as we needed
5. Ease of use for the client to administer this new content

Other features which would be desirable:

1. The ability to make use of the core com_content database table (ie the ones which Joomla normally stores the content for pages in so that it would a) ensure ease of migration to future versions of Joomla and b) allow us to make use of the variety of existing extensions for Joomla which act upon this com_content table.  Put simply if the component uses the core tables for storing the bulk of its content then it means we’ll still be able to easily upgrade Joomla in the future and also use various modules etc to display that content.
2. The ability to extend the various field types which make up the system to add in additional custom types (ie MP3 players)

Each system, we found had its own plusses and minuses and it took us several weeks of installing, uninstalling, configuring and testing to settle on the best one.  So which one did we choose?

Check back soon for part two of this post and find out!

This site is a Joomla-based showcase for a select list of talented unsigned bands and not only gives out information on the band (including biographies, images and MP3s) but also lets users register with the site and have their say on who should go forward to take part in the ELFSound organised events!

The site makes use of several extensions to add to the core Joomla functionality and allow ELFsound to showcase each band on their own page.  We make use of JoomGallery and the Simple MP3 Player module to allow site administrators to maintain and embed images and MP3s into the site and also make use of the Blue Flames Forms component to not only create the voting form but also allow us to restrict each use to only one form submission per voting period, a vital aspect of how ELFsound will work.

This is a great example of how Joomla and its range of 5000 extensions can be used to create a functional, powerful site that is still easy for site owners to maintain.  So don’t be afraid if you are looking for a site that you think might be too complex or unique for Joomla to handle – get in touch with us now to find out what we can do for you!

The site is a new build but is still designed to fit in within the overall look and feel of A&A’s branding, both on their websites and in print.  It is essentially an online catalog of all the product that they offer, mostly from the Grimas range of make-up.

It was essential that the site was easy to navigate and for people looking for a certain product to be able to find it quickly, hence our implementation of a pop A-Z of products as well as a search function.  The site also lists stockists of the products from across the UK and Ireland to allow site visitors to find and order the products which they are interested in.

Check it out now at http://www.makeup-advice.co.uk!

1.6 is the first major release since Joomla 1.5 came out back in January 2008 and is more of an evolution of 1.5 rather than a revolution, with several important key features being added to the system in addition to a raft of functional and interface improvements.  The two main new features are :

1. Unlimited section/categories
Actually just unlimited categories, sections are gone altogether.  One of the limitations of Joomla 1.5 was that it only allowed for two levels of categorisation of content, Sections and Categories, and although you could have as many of those as you wished you couldn’t go any further than those two basic levels unless you installed one of several extensions which allowed for this. Now unlimited categories are part of the 1.6 core which allows for far greater flexibilty and organisation of content.

2. ACL (Access Control List)
This is another important addition in Joomla 1.6.  Again, although 1.5 allowed for restricting access to pages, modules and menu items we were restricted to a small set of core levels of access.  Althoguh we could set content to be only for registered users we couldn’t define different types of registered users – ie if you wanted Gold level access which let people view all articles and Silver level access which only allowed access to some of those articles.

As with the sections and categories, thanks to the wonderful Joomla community there were several extensions which could be added onto Joomla 1.5 which would allow for a greater level of control (such as the amazing OSE Access Control which we used on several sites), however ACL is now part of the core.

So what does this mean?  It means that you can set up an unlimited number of access groups for use on your site and define exactly what each of them can do on a per-item basis.  For example if you had a school website you could allow certain users to only update pages for their department and other users to update several department’s pages, or if you are a charity organisation you can allow project workers access to certain parts and site admins to all parts.  The potential is huge.

At this stage the release is still a BETA so is not quite ready for use on production/live sites, however it shouldn’t take too long for the first proper release to come out.  We will continue to investigate and test this new version in advance of its official release so that we can be sure to be amongst the first to be offering Joomla 1.6 websites to all of our clients!

We have just unleashed upon the world our latest site, http://www.ellerslypremierservices.co.uk, a Joomla-based site for a new service industry staff recruitment and supply agency.  The site includes a blog/news section (which will soon become active), contact form and a custom design.

The site will be expanded upon over the coming year, adding new pages, and features, however the client wanted to start off simply to begin with and Joomla allows for this.  So if you are wanting to create a website but start off small and then add features as time goes on without the need for a complete rebuild then we can definitely help you just as we helped Ellersly!

Contact us for more details …