Interactive Work
Vintage Hill
Project Date 03.2006
Ingredients
CMS, CSS, PHP / MySQL, XHTMLDescription
Update: With the addition of the cute and furry Highland Cattle to the farm, Ann and Jeff needed some revisions to their website. The opportunity allowed me to make some subtle revisions to my original design and rebuild the home page in pure CSS. Look for a full update to the rest of the website soon!
Ann and Jeff Oberhaus were looking for a website to represent their two businesses: a seasonal greenhouse and the training of Holsteiner horses at their farm just outside of Columbia, Missouri. As my first freelance job I agreed to work for a small budget. a couple of chickens (no, not live ones) and eggs. They needed to be able to communicate to their two very different types of customers by keeping them informed of events and clinics as well as to hopefully generate interest in the horses that they have for sale.
The site purposely divides the customers at the home page and does not allow cross-browsing from within the site. This decision was made based on the fact that the desire for division takes place in reality on the farm.
The design takes direct inspiration from the farm itself and some of the decorative wall coverings within the house. To create a greater sense of division, separate colors and patterns were chosen for each area of the site.
To aid the clients as much as possible in maintaining their own site, an administration section was built to allow them to maintain events, horses, images and many areas of general content. To enhance their catalog mailing, I also built an email sign up so that they could collect email addresses from people wanting to receive notices from the farm. To keeps the groups separated, an address is stamped with either greenhouse or holsteiner depending on what area of the site the person signed up on. An email sender was built to allow the clients to sent emails to their lists directly from the site.
