Nikoport

Besides launching today a page for a friend of mine, who gives explications of geography, i am working on a big project, which will be hopefully launched in March. It is a quite a big site for environmental community, written completely in Drupal with a big number of modules.

At the moment we are close to start beta testing and there are just several functionalities that are not quite optimized, that i am refining. Besides normal modules, there are some areas where online payment is going to be used, so it will be probably one of the biggest project based on Drupal that i have done untill now, so i am very excited about finishing this one. =O)

I have designed a new version of a website for TARH lda, which was finally launched a couple days ago. The site at the moment is completely static xhtml (php version is already in plans for the end of the 2008). Besides reworking graphic concept the new version includes a home page with news and archive, and a special page for the firm CEO José Martins Carvalho, also the work is being finished to add Spanish and English versions for the international visitors.

TARH Lda is a portuguese geological company in the area of ground water development. They are one of the most respected portuguese specialists in the project and supervision of ground water research as well as working with mineral water for spa and bottling and geothermal purposes. They have a very vast curriculum of doing works on 3 different continents and with no doubt are one of the finest portuguese firms.

At the moment it contains only a portuguese version, while english and spanish are still under revision, but they should arrive in the next weeks (english is almost ready, just a couple of small things are being reviewed and refined). The PT letters which stand for portuguese bellow the main menu are basically the start of the international menu.

The site of TARH was created using XHTML 1.0 strict and CSS 2.1 with a fluid design which is viewed best with 800×600+ resolutions.

Some words of dis appreciation go to the infamous Arsys hosting: no .htaccess access - guys, in which century are you living ? Anyway - enjoy the rest of the prepaid year - because it is the last one when TARH is still hosted on your servers. 2GB of traffic per month seems to be like a bad joke to me, especially in the year 2008 when most providers offer you no limits on the web traffic.

A couple of days ago i have put online a new site for “Dino Consult“, that was developed on Drupal. The design is very simplistic, to accompany the visit card that the owner of Dino Consult has. It was also based on the schematic design that was created by the client. Dino Consult is by their description a “consultancy firm for the export of innovative technologies, process comparisons and project management”.

Besides creating a xhtml/css template I have used the following modules: Views, Google Sitemaps, Update Status, TinyMCE (i still argue that it or any other editor should make into the core of the Drupal), PathAuto, Meta Tags, i18n and IMCE.
Basically the Views were used to place together. I still cannot imagine more or less complicated site or even a normal one (like Dino Consult) without Views module, it simply can do so many things for you.

A new website for Goumi Lda went online a couple of minutes ago. Goumi Lda aka Kromos Urbanos is a firm, which creates completely customized furniture. Basically they will turn your inspiration into a piece of furniture that you wish - should it be a lamp or a bed or anything else. But its better to see (visit) one time then to read or hear ten thousand times.

Goumi is actually a rare tropical fruit, which can be found in places almost all around the world. Just by watching the results of Goumi’s work, you will understand that. I hope that they are really going to fill their portfolio with the images of their work, because i expect them to have a great future. No, it is not a promotion, but as for me - i know where i am going to get some furniture for my future house =O)

The site of Goumi was created using XHTML 1.0 strict and CSS 2.1. Also there is a “small” flash animation on the, which was quite easier to do in flash then in XHTML. I did my best to make this site working in 800×600 since viewing the statistics of this resolution usage in Portugal made me thing on this subject, but i am still considering that some of the things are not the way they should be, but when you have some big images, there are not many ways of making site 100% fluid while not breaking one thing or another in HTML.

There are two other projects, which are on their way to be published in the next weeks, i hope.

Today, I have finished implementing some updates and a new online shop for Chama Talento and it should go live on Monday afternoon GMT, if everything is alright and no serious bugs will be found during the weekend testing. =O)

There are a lot of changes introduction of the “running news” and the flash news on the main page, privacy policy area, and the most important one is at the shop: the product hierarchy - from having only categories and products, the shop is now having much more complicated one: categories -> subcategories -> products -> versions. Besides that, each product version will have a lot of different options to choose: color, width, size or material for example. Chama Talento is surely becoming one of the finest shoes shops in Lisbon(Portugal) area.

Some of the other introduced changes are: inclusion of 7 subcategories (Dance shoes, Flamenco, Dance-Hall shoes, etc) with a more detailed shop products description and a lot of images. This site is getting better with each update, but still i am thinking about a lot of usability and accessibility changes which should be done, if the client would agree. Maybe with the next update some of them will find a way into the Chama Talento site.

After 4 months of working and reworking and once again changing and altering, the Interconfor lda website is online. Interconfor is a private Portuguese firm, working in industry of furniture and construction components, which it provides for a very wide scope of different commercial firms. They help construction firms to develop custom furniture and equipment solutions for all types of apartments, and recently they have even started doing post-forming on the furniture components, which allow them to provide exclusive solutions in Portugal.

This Interconfor web site was created using XHTML 1.0 strict DTD and CSS 2.1 profile, the design has some nonlinear things, which i implemented, for example, while having a fixed width, it has a lot of things, which are “out of the box”, solved by the fluid design css properties. What it means, is that its not that square and fixed as a fixed design used to be.

The site while still unfinished was asked by the client to be put online today, so even though it has some glitches, and backoffice products are not really inserted by the client, and there are some XHTML validation errors, the site went online a couple of minutes ago. The compatibility and the rest of the standards are eventually going to catch up during the next 10 days, as it happens a lot of times with web sites, done for impatient clients.

I am quite busy working on a several projects, which should go online this march, if everything goes right. First of all, it is a new web site for Interconfor, on which i am working already since January, then the next 2 projects are web design for Web Caravela Design and Scatti Design, which are to go online due in March. Later this month, or may be even in April i expect 2 more websites to go online, which are at this moment do not have even domain yet, but are already in progress, one for the real estate company, and the other one for a small private furniture shop, which is located in the center of Lisbon.