Klipp og Lim

After a long time of feeling we didn't manage to say all we wanted to say via our existing website, we finally managed to put our heads together and find the time to produce a website that would cover all our needs. This time around we didn't just settle for a site that would provide the bare necessities of information; we wanted something more interactive, rich, easy to publish, dynamic and simple yet elegant. In this case study we'd like to go over the process of how we came to the result you're using at this very moment and also look at some of the technical solutions we've utilized in order to make this site.

For an agency that deals with producing web content, there seems to always be a challenge to find the time and resources in order make your own website. We didn't really use much time planning in detail what we wanted this time, but we had a general idea and a list of wishes. We had a few meetings where we agreed on the general outline, and after a few rounds of initial sketches for the different sections we knew were on the right track.

When it comes to the actual programming and deploying of the site, there's no man better for the job than our own Eirik Backer. Once the sketches were agreed upon and it seemed our ideas were aligned, he started the work in building the framework for the site. There are several things to note when it comes to the backend: for one, we already had a Wordpress blog going and we didn't want to lose all the posts and stuff we had stored there. That lead us to the conclusion that we should continue using Wordpress as a tool to publish. For the weblog section this was fine — but for the rest of the site we had different needs. Lucky for us, Eirik has for quite some time been working on his very own CMS. This CMS, codenamed "Snop", is constantly under development and improvement but it's more than complete enough to serve as a CMS for a fully working site. Not only that, but we wanted to be able to adopt several other web services, like Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, YouTube and Bits on the Run and incorporate them into our website. As you can see from the result; we did. We've got Flickr serving photos which is automatically updated on the front page; we can 'tweet' on Twitter and it shows on our front page, Google Maps is usable directly from the info page, our Delicious links are available from our weblog and so on.

Some of the web services we utilize

Another important aspect of the site is that we wanted to ability to show content really BIG, both pictures and video. Bits on the Run is a fantastic way to upload, manage and embed videos in great quality; and  we see no reason why videos should be played back in the old fashioned youtube size with only 640 pixels. Our larges videos and pictures are now by default set to 920 pixels wide — which really makes a bigger impression when viewing work. For the ones with slower internet access there's still the option of disabling the HD button to stream the films in lower resolution, but the seeing as broadband speeds are getting faster and faster there's little doubt the default video size will continue to increase in the future. Another detail is that we've made the site quite iPhone-friendly too by automatically providing a mp4-download link if an iPhone tries to access a video.

So; we are now publishing posts in our weblog using Wordpress, updating the front page mostly through a selection of free web services and our portfolio and information-pages are kept updated using our own CMS: Snop. Keeping our website fresh has never been easier. Hopefully we'll be able to give a more in-depth presentation of Snop in a not so distant future. Meanwhile, hope you enjoy the site!

Type: Case study
Crew: Gustav Espenes, Eirik Backer
Date: March 2009