Print Counsel Website
Posted June 25th, 2004 in Case Studies
Print Counsel is is an Auckland, New Zealand based print company. Their website is an information site advertising who they are and the services they offer. There is an online ordering section which allows customers to login and place orders.
Site Design
The design for the site was by Iley Hewlet of I-Design and was done in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop on a Mac. The Photoshop documents were then supplied to me and I created a site template which matched the document exactly. I used a combination of traditional table layout with CSS for some positioning and border elements. It was tested in a wide variety of browsers and platforms including: Internet Explorer 4.0, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 on Windows; Opera 5.0, 6.0, 7.0 on Windows; Internet Explorer 5.2 on Mac OS9 and OSX; Mozilla based browsers on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX; Konqueror 3.2 on Linux.
DHTML/Javascript Navigation
There is one DHTML/Javascript element in the site template in the
navigation. When mousing over the "Products &
Services" menu option an extra menu appears for that section.
This works in all browsers that support document.getElementById() (IE
5.0+, Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera 6.0+). After mousing out from the menu it
remains for a couple of seconds before disappearing. This allows the user
to easily return to it if they accidentally mouse off it.
Website Homepage
The Print Counsel website homepage.
The screenshot above shows the Print Counsel homepage. The top right area of the page features a login box for customers to log into the admin area and place orders. A temporary session cookie is stored so each time they return to the "Online Ordering" page while the session is still active they do not need to log in again.
Online Ordering
Screenshot of ordering system after
customer has logged in.
This screenshot shows the order form after an example user has logged into the site. The customer sees a list of items they can order; each customer has their own set of unique print items. If a PDF is present on the server they can click a "View" link to view this if they are not sure which letterhead is which, for example. After entering the quantities to order, they are presented with a confirmation page which shows all the items to be ordered and allows them to confirm the email address they would like a copy of the order to go to. After confirming the order details, an email is sent to their account manager with the order details, and a copy confirmation is sent to them.
Admin Area
The admin area allows Print Counsel to log in and add and edit customers. The customer edit page, shown below, allows them to both edit the customer details, as well as add, edit and delete the products that belong to the customer. PDF files can also be uploaded from this form, and a preview function lets the administrator view what is currently up online.
Screenshot of the admin interface editing a
customer.
PHP/MySQL and Tools Used
The online ordering and admin areas of the Print Counsel website are database driven using PHP and MySQL. The database stores the customers, account managers, products and sessions for customers who are currently logged in. All code was developed using the Zend Development Environment on Linux and the database was developed using both phpMyAdmin and the MySQL Control Center on Linux. The HTML templates and copy population was done with both Macromedia Dreamweaver on Windows and the Zend Development Environment on Linux.
Visit the Print Counsel website
Subscribe!
If you found this post interesting and would like to be notified the next time something is posted, please subscribe to my RSS Feed. Thanks for visiting!
RSS Feed