That is what we feel we’ve accomplished with the BC Library’s latest Kids educational project: Express Yourself: The BC Kids Writing Contest.

JenTekk was contacted June 1st with an opportunity to design a small site for the BC Library Association in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, providing Kids with an opportunity to showcase their writing skills. The only catch was, they needed it done yesterday!

Unable to resist a challenge, working with the BC Library Association again and finally for the love of our kids – I took it on! Fortunately all the preliminary work was ready: basic content, site objectives, and functionality requirements.

Here it is 2 weeks later and launched!

Thanks once again to BCLA et al for the opportunity! May the “Express Yourself” writing contest be a huge success for you, and for our kids!

~

Technorati Tags: bcla, bc library association, bc kids writing contest, jentekk

We have had the pleasure of creating the Kids SRC website for the past five years, with this year making it 6!

Thanks to BCLA and the great people who also contribute to the Kids SRC – as always, it was a blast working with you!

~

Technorati Tags: BCLA, Kids SRC 2011, Kids Summer Reading Club, jentekk

The Richmond Shares website promotes community giving & sharing above and beyond the peak seasons of giving to a year round practice by providing a place for the Richmond Community to post donated items, or receive needed items.

The previous site – while for the most part meeting Richmond Shares needs – required the commitment of a PHP programmer to volunteer site maintenance. With their generous PHP programmer volunteer unable to continue helping out, Richmond Shares found themselves in a difficult situation.

Old site below:

As a volunteer for the Richmond Women’s Resource Centre (who operate Richmond Shares) I recommended we convert the Richmond Shares website to a Joomla CMS site, giving the Richmond Shares independence & sustainability.

After much planning, a successful funding request and assistance from Coast Capital Savings we proceeded to develop the new site.

New site below:

With Joomla training and a sandbox site to play around with, Richmond Shares is now able to maintain and grow their website without being dependent on a Programmer. Mission accomplished!

The technologies we ended up using are:

• Joomla 1.5: open source content management system
• JReviews: Joomla extension for donation listings
• ChronoForms: Joomla extension for Volunteer and Host Agencies contact forms
• XMap: Joomla sitemap extension

I wish everyone at Richmond Shares all the best as you continue to serve the local Community with this innovative service!

~

We have had the pleasure of creating the Kids SRC website for the past four years, with this year making it 5!

Thanks to BCLA and the great people who also contribute to the Kids SRC – as always, it was a blast working with you!

~

Technorati Tags: BCLA, Kids SRC 2010, Kids Summer Reading Club, jentekk

Terri Howie’s services include Specialty Auto Sales and Auto Financing for credit challenged customers.

Terri came to me late last fall, knowing exactly what she wanted, expediting the process of getting her website up and running. Joomla CMS was a perfect match for her!

Terri shared with me in detail her website needs, its purpose, target market and functionality. JenTekk happily assisted her in securing the .com and .ca domain name, as well as a reputable hosting company.

To work within her budget, I recommended that Terri preview some Commercial Joomla Templates, which reflected the style, design and layout that she needed.

Terri chose Zeox a boldly colored, yet simply designed Joomla Template. As you can see, we were able to keep the majority of the original template design, which enabled Terri to place the majority of her resources into the content development.

In addition to Joomla CMS, we needed to add a customized application form. After researching a couple of extensions, I settled on ChronoForms – a simple yet powerful Joomla form extension – luv it!

The finishing touches were added to the website only hours ago – so this site is truly “hot-off-the-press”!

Congratulations Terri! It was a blast working with you on your site. I hope that your new venture will prosper as you help people “get on the road again”!

~

Technorati Tags: terri howie, auto sales, specialty auto, financing, loans, application, vancouver bc jentekk

I met Sarah, A smart, sweet and ambitious young lady, at Bikrams Hot Yoga.

Before and after classes we discussed her goals of one day starting up a company and selling her own line of 100% natural skin care products.

As a friend and business owner myself, I was excited to help Sarah make her dream a reality.

Side by side we took the journey together… discussing what it took to start-up a business, registering her business name, her .com and .ca domain names, securing a reputable host and finally strategizing the development of her website, including the use of Joomla CMS, her site’s look & feel, and possible eCommerce solutions.

Once all the preliminary discovery work was complete, I began designing an original Joomla 1.5 CMS template according the website design styles we had looked over together… simple and clean.

During this time, Sarah developed her brand, researched manufacturers, created her skin care line, hired a photographer for product photos, learned Joomla CMS, and moved to the East Coast! Now that is ambitious!

We discussed several eCommerce solutions. After much research and upon recommendation by a local business owner, Sarah identified VirtueMart coupled with PayPal as the eCommerce solution most suitable for her immediate website needs… we learned VirtueMart together!

So here we are today, not even a year later, LIDO Skin Care site launched and ready to do business.

You can already find LIDO Skin Care on Facebook!

Congratulations Sarah on your new Company LIDO Skin Care, on the creation of your fabulous products, and the launch of your Joomla CMS & VirtueMart eCommerce website!

It was an honor and a pleasure to work with you on this. I wish you the best with your product line and much success in the future!

~

Technorati Tags: virtuemart, eCommerce, website, joomla, website design, jentekk, skin care, canada

They were experiments in color and style, but mostly reflected the fact that I really was still trying to find my own identity and my own personal website design style.

I will post them from the earliest to the latest, its been quite the journey. Enjoy!

2001: JenTekk’s first website – static

Not bad for a first try, but after a while I felt it was too conservative, too blue.

2003: JenTekk second site – flash

My next design I wanted to implement more color, and a unique style. In addition I wanted to showcase my flash skills. This is what I turned out:

2005: JenTekk’s third site – static

Having wet my feet with brighter colors on the flash site, I decided to take it one step further. I opted for very vibrant colors (I think they actually scratched the retina’s of one’s eyes) and an unconventional site layout & design. This site design borders on being obnoxious!

Each page of this site was another abusive color. I’m not sure if you noticed, but I had changed my logo as well. This site and logo wasn’t going to last long. Most people either loved it or hated it… lol! Not a good thing.

2006: JenTekk’s fourth site – flash

This flash website was made strictly to showcase my flash skills. I also wanted it to be very creative, and was actually quite happy with the way this site turned out, but I still hadn’t secured my identity and brand with this project.

2007: JenTekk’s current website – dynamic

Fortunately, after years of designing websites for other people, I started to get a feel for who JenTekk was, and who my target market was.

My current site design showed my own personal style and philosophy on site design, which is what I wanted to reflect as a brand… it was simple, vibrant, and professional.

I’d finally came up with a logo, a color, a style, and a brand that I could be proud of and hang on to:

This site is clean, has a large band of vibrant color, with subtle hues of the same color (in the menu, footer and page titles) to add some life.

The different images in the header add some interest without being over-the-top, and used to enhance the message of that particular page.

When its time to update my website design (yes I like to keep up-to-date with the latest trends) I can guarantee it won’t be too different from this one.

We’ve come a long way baby! JenTekk is finally in da house!

~

Technorati Tags: website design, evolution of site design, jentekk