Kylea had to get the last say...

...she just couldn't resist!

We're FINISHED!!!

Website Woe's

Ok well where do I start. . . Coding the website was easy. XHTML is just so good to work in. That was about the end of my good luck. After a lengthly battle with the Museum's IT guy over organising the hosting for the website on Friday afternoon we finally managed to get that under control.

Then it came time to start working on the CMS. No doubt if you've been following our story you will know that we chose to use wordpress, which yes I am aware it is a blogging tool really, but we decided to go ahead with it anyway due to the small number of templates required.

After adding the templates which I will admit was not hard at all the problems began. My first "neat" encounter with wordpress was on Saturday night when trying to login to wordpress it started telling me there were errors within the files. So after reinstalling wordpress with it's famous 5 minute install I was ready to go again. Fortunately I was smart enough to save my config files and php files to my computer first. Anyway upon re-install I was away again. After creating all the landing pages, and having to make all sorts of changes to simplify things for wordpress I thought I was definitely on my way. Bearing in mind this was sunday morning at this stage.

The problems I encountered with wordpress were huge really. So because every section has a different colour associated with it there was a lot of work to get into. Also because of all the pods on the landing pages I had to create a lot of custom fields to hold all the information. The problem with this I felt was that this was far too hard for the client to alter.

The next problem I ran into was creating detail pages. Possibly there was a fault on my behalf with the HTML but I'm not 100% sure on that one. Anyway at 4am this morning (monday) Wordpress spit the dummy well and truly and it was decision time.

I was faced with two options. 1) I carry on with wordpress, possibly having to start again due to the issues I was facing with parent and child pages. Ending up with a site that I wasn't going to be overly happy with due to the rushed coding, and finding that it would be very difficult for the client to edit.

or

2) Code out the entire site in HTML and post it in that form. Creating a site that looked like the designs and then spend some time after the challenge on either perfecting wordpress or experimenting with another CMS such as concrete5 or silverstripe(Yeah right I said I wanted easy to edit).

I made the decision that I would code the entire site in HTML and provide my client with a deliverable that looked exactly like they wanted and I could be their CMS seeing as I am more than happy to carry on lending my services to the Museum. I am quite happy with the end result and can now spend the next 2 weeks integrating the site into a CMS that will work for the client and allow them to easily maintain the website.

So we now have a finished site. which can of course be found at www.papakuramuseum.org.nz
(Kay will be adding in the content at a later date).

Wow what a hectic few weeks. But definitely worth while.

- Cam

Image Re-Sizing Manual

Here's the Image Re-Sizing Manual we made for the Papakura Museum, so take a look:


http://www.scribd.com/doc/18356074/Re-Sizing-Images?secret_password=1imysb22sjxqt7pss4p5


We made the manual to ensure that Kay & the other staff at the museum, felt confident in all aspects of editing their website, like being able to re-size the images to go on it :-)

Sweet Signatures

We made some e-mail signatures for everyone out at the museum today. This is what Kay's one looks like.

Logo Specs

We complied two sets of Logo Specs - one for the Papakura Museum and one for the PDHS, to ensure that each logo is used in the correct context and nothing is altered from the original design we have completed.


The following below is a link to take a look at the documents;

Papakura Museum Logo Specs
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18355836/PapakuraMuseumLogoSepcs?secret_password=1l3ttwdf9tfw3pfzvsv9

PDHS Logo Specs
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18355848/LogoSpecificationsGuidePDHS?secret_password=27386h78btxpj32hqqpw

Were done?!!

We've finished! YAY! Everything is complete...or just about :-)

Twitter Manual

Here is a link to the Twitter Manual we made for the Museum to ensure they can successfully update their profile each and every time..

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18344943/Twitter-User-Manual?secret_password=pwz6w0a2cv5rttkqvbb

Final Letterhead word templates

We have finally finished the letterheads and made them into templates in word. This will be perfect for the museum as they didn't want to have their letterheads pre printed and now they can just type directly into the document. The images are locked into the background so they have no way of accidentally moving them.

The colours are made slightly transparent on the screen, but they will print in there normal colours

Papakura Museum

PDHS

Mailchimp Manual

Here is a link to the Mailchimp manual we made for the museum :) It is originally a SWF so they can easily get to the page they want

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18189545/Mailchimp-Manual?secret_password=1aiy56zopmllpo06kbbk

Blogging about Submitting

We are filling out our submission form tonight so that it is done before the girls go away for the weekend to morning.

Some might call this pointless. We call it fun. . .

Brief

Thought we should have our project brief on here,

Follow this link:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18189442/yMedia-Challenge-Team-Museum-Brief?secret_password=3txluwwks23zixbdb7r

Cam's amazing work on website

So we recieved an email today from Cam which he had sent us at 6.17am!(After being up all night) Of the completed website templates, all coded! Yay! And debugged! So now they need to be uploaded to the CMS and have all the content for the site added... so basically tonight will be another late one!

> Note the logo will be changed

> The purple box on the home-page is a placeholder for the image rotator

Stationery Success!

We are just rolling around in confirmation emails. YAY! At present we have the logo, business card and letterhead approved for the PDHS and (after making some small changes) are awaiting approval on the Museum's business card and letter head. We have however got confirmation for the colour of the logo, which means we can start applying the right colour into the website, etc. So that's wicked! Even after a very late night...were still pumping! (somehow! lots of caffeine maybe? or sugar? Ha.)

We've got a few more stationery items to work on now for both groups. For the Papakura Museum we have a donation sticker and voucher to design and for the PDHS we have a donation sticker too. Were hoping to get those shipped off to Kay sometime this afternoon/evening to have a look at and get her opinions :-)

Anywho...take a look at what we've been up to. and look how beautiful we look after little amount of sleep :-)






Papakura Museum: Business Card



:Letterhead







PDHS: Business Card




:Letterhead




Finger's x'd we get confirmation for the P/Museum's Stationery items by the end of the day :-)

Mailchimp success!

Along with finishing the mailchimp user manual for Kay we also discovered she has been trying it out herself, which we are very happy about!

Here is a nice message she left for us:

While creating the manual we also discovered that you can share your newsletter on twitter immediately after you have sent it (how to do this is now included in the manual) :

This will be fantastic for the museum's exposure!

Working Bee of the Century!

Check out all the work Kylea & I have got through tonight WOOP WOOP! We've just shipped off (emailed) lots of work to the Museum to get look over and approved (straight way we hope! Finger's crossed), including the Museum's BC & letterhead and the PDHS's Logo, BC & Letterhead. Were hoping to hear from them either today or tormorrow at the lastest!

Anywho...check out our vid. We look awesome for this time in the morning. And I'm not wearing fur...it's just my blanket. It's bloody cold in our house!





Here's all the work we've just sent to the Museum;


Papakura Museum: Business Card



Papakura Museum: Letterhead





PDHS: Logo




PDHS: Business Card




PDHS: Letterhead






And now all we have to do is wait for the reply email/phone call! Lets hope it's all good news! :-)

Gmail - Team Museum

Just thought we would show you how we have been predominantly communicating with Kay at the museum, Anthea, and each other of course!

We set up a team museum gmail account to keep all our communication together in a more professional manor.

As you can see Cam has been emailing Liz and I the developments of the website as he goes, keeping us in the loop! We have also gotten a lot of use out of the chat feature!

PDHS Development

After all the brilliant feedback the PDHS gave us today, we have developed the logo (they wanted the dots to be in a more oval shape), and also came up with 4 business card developments for them (they chose a layout they liked from the ones I showed them today)

And here is the results:

Kylea's Visit to the Museum

Today Kylea had to unfortunately venture out to the Museum by herself...so here's a little Vid Blog to update you on how the meeting went :-) (It went REALLY REALLY WELL!)

What's Left?

Hey there. We've just got home from having our team interview with Eddy - it went really well :-) and she's made us (even more) excited about finishing and the awards evening!! (So looking forward to popping open a nice bottle of bubbly!!!)


Made a wee vid...so listen up and learn.



Will let you know how everything goes and update you soon :-)

Getting the low down..

Kylea's off to the museum today...unfortunately by herself, (Cam & myself have to go to Uni). However we have prepared her with lots of work to take for show & tell! Kylea's not just meeting with Kay today, but some members of the PDHS (as explained in the last blog), so she'll have a good audience today!! (GO KYLEA!)

Here's just a wee low-down and what she'll be talking about today with them... :-)



...and hopefully they LOVE everything she shows them!!!

Logo Progress...

Kylea & I (Liz) have just been working on the logo for the PDHS - Papakura & Districts Historical Society. The Society is like the museums 'Big Brother' (as they were the founders of the museum).

We've stuck with type based logo designs as we feel this best suits the society better due to it's simplistic and professional style. We were drawn to using circles in the logo as minor graphics, as the society is very proud of their first acquisition, a mangle (which is an old fashion washing machine). Instead of using an image of this object in the logo, which may become out-dated easily, we choose to add a modern twist through representing the object with multiple circles.

Tomorrow we are heading out to Papakura to present some members of the society the concepts we have developed. We have choosen to present 3 ideas to them...finger's crossed they really like the path were heading down. :-)


Take a look...




These are where we picked the 3 logos (above) from, to show the society;








These were all of our beginning/concept ideas. :-)

Watch Us.

Hello to all. Just a mini update (via Vid - like always!) on how were going and what were all up too.

Kylea and I (Liz) are presently working on the PDHS Logo (Papakura & Districts Historical Society) and a Stationery Set for both the museum and society too (which were hoping to get most of done tonight!!!).

Cam is being a comp geek and working on his code and bringing the website together (making it look pretty!)

We'll update on how we all get on later into the night...or early morning. ARGH!!!


Watch me. And have a laugh...

Website Progress

Cam is here showing Liz and I (kylea) the progress on the website! Very Exciting,

Here is a screenshot from this morning of the home page (although it looks much different now):

Changes:

- The colours of the sections are different now,

- Cam has hopefully figured out the Mailing List form, so that it is nice and small and will fit into our design

- Also our real logo will be on there soon to!

Also we have discovered AddThis!

We will have the share button embedded into our website so that people can share it over social networking sites! Hopefully increasing the websites traffic!

Go Cam!

Todays Meeting

Today Liz and I(Kylea) met Kay at The Pizza Box in Papakura, and talked about all our progress over coffee!

We asked all the questions we needed to know and got all the right answers!

- She uses Microsoft Word a lot and was really happy to have a letterhead template set up. She preferred this over having them pre printed.

- We showed her the logos, and she really liked the layouts, we will be hearing from her tomorrow with which one she wants to go with.

- She liked the new website layouts a lot.

- We talked through the different hosting options for the Museum's website. Kay is going to chat to the IT guy, but is happy to go with a new host which we have suggested, as it will be more suitable for their website.

- We asked about printing options and she is going to look into finding a local printer she is happy with.

- Would a twitter be useful? Yes!

- We showed Kay the letter we drafted to gain sponsorship for the feature object, and we were super happy to know we already have a sponsor for the website launch!

- We discussed about getting Liz & I to design colour-in sheets for the website, for children to download and complete. Each colouring-in sheet would be based around an area or object from within the museum; like "Firefighters" or a Kiwi.

- We went over the Stationery items which we will be designing for the Museum. These include; Business Cards for Kay, Sandy & Shona. (We will also design a card for the general staff at the museum, like the volunteers (same design but without a specific name)) A letterhead, email signatures (for Kay, Sandy & Shona), Voucher (for special guests) and a Donation Sticker (eg: to be placed inside a book being donated from the Museum).

- We also went through Stationery items which we will be designing for the PDHS. These will include Business Cards, a letterhead, a Society Subs form and a Donation Sticker.

We will be going in to the Museum on Wednesay to meet up with everyone, take photographs of the staff (for the website) and meet up with the Papakura District Historical Society to show them our concepts for their seperate logo.

We also offered our services in the future to design posters for the upcoming exhibitions.

All in all everything seems really positive!

Look who's on Twitter...

During our meeting with Kay we told her about how we had started a Twitter account for our yMedia team and suggested it could be something that the Museum looks into joining. Straight away Kay was happy to get on board and give it a go. YAY! so follow us and them on Twitter :-)

The Museum: http://twitter.com/PapakuraMuseum

And us: http://twitter.com/TeamMuseum

We are also going to place their Twitter link on their website for visitors to the website to have a peek at their Tweeter.

Another Update.

Have managed to do a little more development on the logo - even though we haven't even been out to see Kay yet haha. We have narrowed down the logo's to just three to show Kay today! So take a look and watch our Vid :-)


Option1:

Option2:

Option3:


We choose to present both a full colour (CMYK) and Grayscale (Black & White) option in each logo to Kay. We included the Grayscale option, as it will be used for stationery items like Fax's and photocopies, which are copied in b/w. We think that each option incorporates the same presentation principals and would each work well with the museum, but it's what image/symbol Kay feels best represents the museum (as well as layout of the logo itself).

Just another lil thing...

Here's a letter we've drafted (all of us got our 2 cents in), in regards to obtaining sponsorship for the Museum for the "Feature Object" - a feature that is going to be on the Museum's website. We are intending on showing Kay the letter tomorrow to gain feedback a.s.a.p so we can start posting these babies out in the hope that someone will reply A.S.A.P and we can have a business set up for the launch of the website. (Wouldn't it be lovely if everything would just fall into place!)


LETTER DRAFT;


Dear (Insert Business Name),


Papakura Museum is now implementing a scheme where businesses help businesses. The way this scheme works is we provide you with the opportunity to advertise your business along side an exhibition at the museum. In return we ask that you advertise the exhibition within your place of business.

To insure that you get the most out of this, we intend to relate your business to the exhibition through specifically selecting an object, which is relevant to your business service/work. We are looking to start an exhibition on (Type of exhibition e.g optical equipment, date and running length). We feel this object will help to advertise and support your business and the work you do within the community. If you have anything you would like to contribute to the exhibition or museum that would be appreciated.

In appreciation of your support, we will display your logo and contact details, along side an image of your object on our website. The museum committee will pay for any advertisement conventions, like posters, that are made specifically in regards to the exhibition or museum.

Regards



The Papakura Museum


:-)

Mailchimp Manual + Letterhead Template

We have been creating this manual for mailchimp, so Kay and the rest of the museum staff will have no trouble with it. We have created it as an interactive file (so they can easily get to the section they want). They will have a copy saved on there computer and we will also get them a hardcopy printed.

This is as far as we have got with it, there are many more pages to be added (just still images taken from the file):

We have also figured out how to create a letterhead template in Word from our Indesign file....this will be used for letters they will send in emails, and so they can easily print letters out with the letterhead already on it, specifically if they have run out of professionally printed letterheads.

We like the idea of providing them with as many digital elements as possible.

The letter contained in this file is a draft of the letter that will be sent out to Papakura businesses in order to gain more community support for and knowledge about the museum.