Web Development Samples

Susquehanna Valley Mycological Society

This site was a complete rewrite of their previous site, which had been constructed using Frontpage. This caused all the navigation to be java applets which slowed the load time for every page. We reworked the site to reorganize the content and make use of a tool to create the photo galleries quickly. The custom graphics gave it a more exciting look. Since there was load time to spare, we provided an animated gif for the left side buttons (links) that sweeps a mushroom across the button when it is pressed.

The new site has a cleaner and less gimmicky look, which adds to the impression of SVMS being a capable organization. We also tuned up the keywords and text in order to increase the chances of being found on a search. The hope is the newer look and feel combined with the a better chance of the "mushroom interested" finding the page, will increase membership for the organization. The site also has a large photo gallery from the groups forays. In the future we hope to add a forum to the site, and a listserver to allow mushroom hunting alerts to be quickly sent to all the members. This site would cost $600-800.

HorseIceCream.com

This is a community site for horse lovers and business that serve them. This is a large site with most of the content being dynamically presented. All of the articles, club pages, shows, and the news are pulled from databases. The site uses phpBB forums, a web calendar, and ad serving software that is provided by third parties. These web applications are seamlessly tied into the clubs, shows, news applications that we designed and created.

We also integrated Google's Custom search product to provide search on the content available on the site. We also used Google's Map product to provide, dynamically, Google maps on the club pages, based on their meeting location. We use Google maps on the Horse For Sale ads to allow prospective buyers to see where the horse is located, and to get directions from their location to the horse or club meeting. The maps on the page are setup dynamically from the addressees located in the club or horse-for-sale databases.

As an example of the integration; when an article is added to the system, it's topic or subtopic is picked from a list, as is the author. The article text is added. When this is done the web application automatically creates an forum entry for article comments. When a user visits the page that corresponds to the topic, the newest article (the one just entered) is displayed, the authors bio is added, and so are links for visitors to comment or rate the article and author. They can also view the authors full profile. If a visitor rates an article the authors overall rating is adjusted. The visitor can see how many comments have been made about the article.

The applications we created all have online administration pages that allow the operator to examine, edit, delete and otherwise manipulate the records. The site uses PayPal to purchase ads or horse for sale listings. Because of all the web aplications we needed to create from scratch, this site would cost $10,000-$14,000.

Top Notch Equestrian Center (DaniPinto.com)

Dani Pinto has been completely immersed in the “horse culture” since she was 11 years old. Her Walton, NY equestrian center is simply gorgeous, but its remote location wasn’t getting her the business. Dani hired Martin Works to not only create a web site but to harness her passion about horses. Since Dani wanted to spend her time working with horses and riders, we interviewed her, took lots of photos and knuckled down to work.

Her web site features an equestrian quote at the top of each page. The quote is chosen randomly from a list of quotes that Dani selected. We worked with Dani to select the optimum display of her facility and conformation of her horses. Lori’s own experience with horses helped us highlight the information that horse lovers want to know about horses, facilities and trainers. With us creating most of the content, and all the pictures, this site would cost $900-1100.

Wicked Women Choppers Store

Wicked Women Choppers Store is the official online store for Wicked Women Choppers. The store sells apparel sporting the Wicked Women Choppers logo. Metro Racing, Inc. supplied graphics for the basic design. Martin Works implemented the design entirely in Miva Merchant 5 shopping cart software. Then Lori worked with Peg to teach her how to update the products and storefront, process orders, and take care of basic maintenance. Please note, Martin Works did not produce the product graphics, but did have to clean up and manipulate the supplied site graphics. This site would cost $2600-3000.

TREHAB

The TREHAB site showcases this community support organization's coverage area and programs. They saw the TSS example (see below) and wanted their site to have similar aspects. Since the TSS site never went live and TSS as an organization no longer exists, we agreed. Because this was a rewrite of their old site, almost all the content already existed in electronic form, this reduced the cost of the site. All the new content was provided by them, further reducing the cost of the site.

We created a small flash presentation for their home page (it is shown where you see the TREHAB logo on the thumbnail to the right) that shows some of their projects and people. If you visit the site and explore it in depth, you will see how we used technology to allow visitors to delve deeper into the information about programs and projects without leaving the page. We also provided Google maps for their county offices that allow visitors to get directions to the offices from their location. TREHAB has a maintenance contract with us to update and maintain their site. This site would cost $1600-2000.

Mountain Aire Cottage Care

Mountain Aire Cottage Care wanted to reach out to new and existing customers, and showcase some of the new services they offered. Their previous site lacked impact and offered very little information. In this case the customer was very specific about the wording of the text on the site and insisted that we use exactly what they provided us, without the normal clean up we do to customer provided content.

The previous web developer had registered their domain name in the developers name and then did not want to release the domain. We helped this customer pursue this though InterNic and regain control of their domain. When the ruckus started the previous web developer pulled the site. Luckly we had captured the content and then we helped this customer find a economical web hosting service. As the content and pictures were provided, this site would cost $300-400.

The Susquehanna School

We were very happy to create this very large site for an Independent Private School in New York. The site's purpose was two fold, to help with marketing the school, and to be a resource for teachers, parents and the children enrolled in the school.

It would have forums for each of the classes that would allow for student discussion, posting of assignments, teacher-parent communication, and weather/school closing information. Additional forums would allow teachers from TSS and other Independent Schools to discuss teaching phylosophys and methods. Also the site would have galleries that the students and teachers could post photos to. The schools calendar and each classes calendar would be online, and email list servers would simplify the sending out of the weekly newsletter. Older students would have FTP accounts so that they could upload assignments. The web server would also provide for the common storage of student files allowing access from home instead of only at the school (LAN). Automated scripts would bring new or updated files to their mirror locations on the school's LAN.

By placing lots of information about the school's methods, goals, curriculum and teachers on the website, with good SEO techniques we hoped to increase enrollment by insuring that searches done for schooling in their geographic area would find them both in open search and local search. The marketing side of the site was designed to quickly provide a picture of what the school was about, its facilities, and then walking visitors through the enrollment process. The information was organized to allow a prospective student's parent to immediately focus on the class that their child would be in, and then flow directly into any particular education topic (Art, Science, etc.).

We used FAQ boxes in each area of the site with questions relative to that area. The answers would show in a pop up when the question was moused over. We felt that visitors who did not wish to read through the longer narratives could quickly find the answers they needed to make a choice. The site also had a lot of in-depth content that delved deeply into the schools methods, describing how the schooling would happened and why that contributed to a better education.

Of course part of the contract was to provide instruction to the school staff and students on how to use the facilities of the site.

Unfortunately as the project was nearing completion, financial pressures and low enrollment caused the school to close. To see a variety of images of the pages in the site highlighting some of the technical features you can look at this page of examples. cost $7000-10000.

Borough of Susquehanna Depot

Martin Works created the Borough of Susquehanna Depot site as part of the Pennsylvania Main Street Program. The site has an online forum and a calendar, both driven by SQL databases. The HTML for the organization and business listings are generated by text based reports generated from a Excel spreadsheet. After the spreadsheet is updated, Martin Works executes custom code to generate html that is pasted into the appropriate pages. With the calendar, forum and directories, not to mention lots of content, this site would cost $3000-4000.

The Boro had us update the look of the site and remove the forums. They wanted a new organization of the navigation and to move to drop down menus. They also wanted some form of photo gallery that could be administered by a Boro office worker. We were able to set this up for them and provide training to the worker on how to create new collections, add photos to the gallery and upload the new galleries. The site image you see is of the new look, here you can see the original site's look.

EZRTools

This is the web site that we use to sell our EZRTools software product. It has been reworked recently for a more modern look. Because the audience is programmers a high-tech look was used. Other new additions include super fast loading animations that demonstrate how our product is used. The site also includes an automated system for the newsletter.

Because of our concern about spam, we created this PHP powered fully automated "double opt in" system for users to sign up for the newsletter. A secured listserve is used to distribute the newsletters. The site uses a cost effective merchant service to allow users to purchase the downloadable software product. Because of the large amount of content, search engine optimization, custom navigation and the animations, this site would cost $1000-2000.

RF Central

Although RFCentral's website is significantly the same as when we designed and maintained it, due to their growth they are now doing the website maintenance in-house.

RF Central went through two other web designs before coming to us. Their first was hard to navigate, cluttered and bright yellow. The second was minimialistic and all black, used graphics for text, and thus was not well received by the search engines. Neither was it very friendly or useable to the customer. In addition to the rebuild, they needed the new site up fast - in less than two weeks!

We have continued working with them since May of 2006 to add more content and refine their web site. This means that some things have been added and others removed, and a lot of content added. For example we added an application so they could enter news releases which are be sorted by date automatically. The news entry function is password protected to prevent unauthorized news from being entered. This also allows them to select a few of their news items and have links to them available on the home page, as a javascript roller, dynamically generated with PHP and a MySql database. There site also has a number of flash presentations. They also needed an internal calendar for their employees. This calendar web application satisfied a need for individual calendars for traveling employees. This way the entire company staff can coordinate schedules even when on the road. At any one point in time their site would cost $3000-$6000 to make from scratch.

Susquehanna Depot Area Historical Society

The Susquehanna Depot Area Historical Society needed a simple "about us" site. Since Clay is the vice president of this organization, we were proud to create a web site for them. Built as a brochure site, the only dynamic element is the sliding menu. The site contains lots of pictures of the museum that the society used to operate. The graphic on the opening page is a stylized version of the society's logo. The logo is intended to show the borough in the center while presenting the idea that all roads lead to Susquehanna Depot and that the Depot and towns around it are interconnected in commerce and culture. The organization supports history from all the areas depicted in the logo. The site design has not been updated in quite a few years. This site would cost $300-400.

Freedom's Heroes

Martin Works originally created this web site to garner support for an Army Officer, Lt Col. West, who was getting raw treatment for doing his job. After the situation was resolved, we converted the site into a general resource site for supporting our troops. It features many links to support organizations for deployed troops and veterans. We also added a forum to facilitate communication between people interested in supporting U.S. soldiers, and as a private discussion area for a specific "local" unit that we support. The forums look was heavily customized. And the links represent a lot of research. Of course we would not charge to help our troops, but a similar site would cost $500-700.

Green Meadows Farm

Green Meadows Farm Bed and Breakfast wanted to show off their beautiful country farm and horses. The Farm actually has several lines of business including the Bed and Breakfast, horseback riding/lessons, and animals for children's parties. The Farm also has a limited budget. Martin Works tied all of the businesses together in a single web site at an affordable price. The site is designed to allow for easy expansion when the budget allows. Because of our care in design of the site, this site now ranks highly in Google local search for the important keywords involving the B-n-B horses and pets. We took all the photos and created most of the content, so this site would cost $700-900.