michaelbain has successfully developed and deployed a photo-blogging website for the freelance photographer, Jessie Slabbert.

Jessie needed a photo-blogging and journaling platform to use as a showcase for her freelance photography website, SnappedPhotos – and on a tight budget too!

She needed social media integration and reader interactivity as well as an easy way to manage and update her own content: WordPress theming and customisation to the rescue!

The design called for a smart, but not too busy approach so that the website itself does not detract from the real art – her photographs – but still provide a modern, relaxed, yet professional showcase for her work.

In Jessie’s words:

I am all about freelance photography.
SnappedPhotos is all about freelance photography.

Contact michaelbain so that we may discuss your particular needs and tailor-make a solution for you.

michaelbain has successfully delivered a complete website solution for Tartan Manor.

The website features the following functionality and components, all neatly tied together:

• The tried and tested WordPress CMS with which the administrator can manage their own content
• A custom design with an easily manageable image slider
• Featured content area on the homepage
• Social media integration
• News items and blogging
• Visitor commenting and interaction
• An events calender
• Image galleries

Tarton Manor is a fun and dynamic new stable yard, just 4km from Greenhills, Randfontein, a stone’s throw from Maple Ridge and 20mins away from Featherbrooke.

Visit the Tarton Manor site for more information and contact michaelbain to discuss your needs for your website project.

michaelbain has successfully completed a website project for www.hajime.co.za.

Hajime needed:

• The WordPress content management system installed
• A custom theme designed and developed
• Their content transferred
• Their photo and video galleries set up
• Their Facebook page integrated with the website

michaelbain obliged with all of the above within a very short time period and within an extremely affordable budget.

Contact michaelbain for your website, content management and web development needs.

michaelbain in conjunction with pixelmagic is proud to launch the DarkCarnival Online Store.

The store is part of phase 2 of the www.darkcarnival.co.za project.

We have provided DarkCarnival with a full-on interactive shopping experience for their customers and a acomplete self-managed store management system for the website administrators to manage the store with.

The project was developed by michaelbain using PHP, MySQL and the stable and secure WordPress platform with custom developed plug-ins, widgets and theme functions.

Theme design and implementation by pixelmagic.

Secure credit card transactions by Virtual Card Services.

The user shopping experience features include:

• Browse products, with different listing views
• Search product
• Browse products by categories
• Share to facebook and other social media
• Featured slider
• Shopping cart
• Checkout as guest
• Registation and checkout to remember details for future purchases
• Product detail pages
• Product detail image zoom
• Related product to the one being viewed
• Discount coupons
• 2 payment methods: Online by credit card or offline by EFT

The shop administration features include:

• Product management
• Order management
• Shipping cost management
• Payment method management
• VAT calculation and management: caters for VATable and non-VATable products
• Coupon management
• Multiple product image management
• Variation management (weight, colour, size etc. with different prices for each variation)
• Blogging management for writing articles about products

“Dark Carnival Retail CC is a South African company committed to providing its customers access to the latest Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Collectables and related merchandise from around the world.

We, at Dark Carnival, aim to provide our customers the most recent and up to date information and products relating to the Comic World through our easy to use website. We also offer various delivery options at very affordable rates to help you receive your products in the shortest space of time.”

For more on DarkCarnival, visit http://www.darkcarnival.co.za

For your website and online store requirements, contact michaelbain

michaelbain in conjunction with pixelmagic has successfully completed a website revamp and modernisation project for the two sister sites, Dunblane Lifestyle Estate and Dunblane Equestrian Centre.

The client had a web presence in the form of static websites that they could not update and maintain themselves. Useful functionality like update picture galleries, news items and articles was not possible. They needed  a content management system and a publishing platform with some added functionality and a revamped layout and design to fit their image and marketing strategy.

The following was delivered:

• A customised WordPress content management system with which the client can manage their own content, picture galleries, news items and articles
• An events calendar managed through the admin interface
• A newsletter subscription and publishing service to collect newsletter subscribers and send out newsletters, managed through the admin interface
• Consistent and related (in function and form) navigation, layout and widgets across both sites to tie them together (theme design by pixelmagic)

Visit the sites by clicking these:

Dunblane Lifestyle Estate
“Dunblane offers you the move back to an old-fashioned country existence, coupled with the best of modern living to create the extremely desirable lifestyle that you’ve always dreamed of. Dunblane is situated in the East Rand around a magnificent Equestrian Centre, made up of  133 prime, large stands, dams and breathtaking countryside.”

Dunblane Equestrian Centre
“What better way to spend your time with your horse than in an environment that offers everything you could ask for? From the smallest pony to the most competitive horse, Dunblane has something for you. If you live for horses, you should live at Dunblane Equestrian.”

michaelbain has successfully completed a WordPress project for www.inter-arise.com

The project involved a WordPress installation, configuration and code modification to meet Inter-Arise‘s functional needs.  The michaelbain-developed Get-Post-Image plugin was also used in the theme to get the look and feel needed.

Inter-Arise: “formerly The Process Practice, is dedicated to enhancing individual and organisational effectiveness through facilitating individual and group processes that cut through unproductive patterns, and that build collaboration, capability and effectiveness. We harness the power of individuals and teams to create solutions, accelerate delivery, develop collective capability and enrich individual and organisation meaning.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could make a physical object in the real world, like your car door, a street pole, your office front door, your product or your business card clickable so that it opens a link on the web when you click it?

Well – now you can – with mobile phone technology and these:

See below / full article for more.

What …
… you are looking at is a QR barcode … more on the technology here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

These barcodes can be printed, projected on screens and televisions or attached to anything in real life you would want to make clickable to a mobile phone. A mobile phone user needs simply to walk past, hover his phone camera over it and his phone browser will open the link contained in it. It’s true, I kid you not! No really! It will even make it clickable from a distance, if you print the barcode big enough

But why?
Why not just print a http://www.somesite.com link on your delivery truck? Well that one is easy – what if you want to link to a specific discussion or content on a website that has a long URL? Something like http://www.somesite.com/articles/may2010/qrcodes/? Who would remember that or want to type that into his cellphone?

Besides – you want to interact with your customer now – not when they get home and they are at a computer, if they then actually remember your link or remember to visit your site. People don’t want to type addresses in browsers. They want to click.

So how does sticking this barcode on your business card or product packaging make it clickable.
Enter the modern cellular phone. Modern cellular phones have cameras. Modern phones are now coming out with 2D barcode scanners as standard.  Here comes the magic: You hover the phone camera over the barcode, it scans the barcode and then opens the link in your phone’s browser. Fact. Done!

QR stands for “Quick Response” so it is almost effortless to “click” that lamppost

Including QR code scanner software in new phones by default (as is the case) is also going to quickly push the adoption of 2D barcodes becoming part of mainstream society. Should your existing phone not have a 2D scanner, no problem, many free 2D scanners, that integrate with your phone’s camera, are available for free. I personally like http://www.i-nigma.com‘s solution.  Simply point your mobile phone browser to http://www.i-nigma.mobi to detect your phone and install i-nigma. I like i-nigma because it scans all formats of 2D barcodes, not just QR codes, asks permission to connect, is easy to use and keeps a history of scanned items. Ask the great google if i-nigma doesn’t suit you. Come on, try it! Install that barcode scanner on your phone and scan the 2D barcode above (effectively clicking it with your phone) right of your screen now!

Creating QR must be a pain?
No!  Just ask google again for QR code generators Easy.

There’s more!
QR barcodes can also do more when scanned with a phone  than just open a website in the browser. Exchange of information is just not limited to text being displayed on the phone, but it could open a URL, download standard contact information to the phone and generate a pre-filled SMS message to you (the business / the owner of the QR code) on the user’s phone and they just have to hit send.

Can you see it?
2D barcodes have been all the rage for quite a while in Japan. With Western adoption taking place it is just a matter of time until they become as common as the barcode on the baked beans being scanned at the local supermarket.

QR barcode on a business entrance that can be scanned from the street. You are effectively clicking their building with your phone and then browsing their website.

Imagine scanning that loaf of bread to get to a product detail website with nutritional information. Imagine scanning a barcode at the entrance to a mall to get walking directions in text (so you won’t need an internet connection) to the store. Imagine scanning that code on the for sale sign on a house to get the text info onto your phone to peruse later … imagine!
Can you imagine?

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