Columbine Pronaos — Broshure, Nonprofit Metaphysical Organization

www.boulderrosicrucians.org
October, 2004
Web Site Spec
Using Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, Paint Shop Pro, phpBB forum, SourceForge Gallery

The Columbine Pronaos is a local affilliated body of the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, a non-sectarian fraternal body of men and women devoted to the study of natural and metaphysical principles. The word Pronaos is Latin, referring to the vestibule or entrancyway to a temple, and is used by AMORC to designate an affilliated body of this size. I have been a member of AMORC since 1988, and of the Columbine Pronaos since 1989. In efforts to promote the local activities of the order, the Columbine Pronaos asked me to set up and maintain this web site.

The graphics were derived from an image scanned from a bulletin, where the same cover art has been in use for many years. The art consists of a Columbine (the Colorado state flower) over the Flatiron mountains, which overlook the city of Boulder, along with the Rose-Cross, a Rosicrucian symbol combining a rose at the center of a cross inside of a rectangle, combined with an Egyptian ankh. I colorized the art, resized and rearranged the wording to construct variations. For the web site template, I chose a color scheme to complement the color of the columbine. I used a color gradient in PaintShop Pro to create a graphic border representing a shaft of golden light. For extra components, I installed a forum, and a photo gallery.

At this time, the Grand Lodge (North American headquarters) of AMORC has indicated that affilliated bodies are not allowed to maintain their own web site, and has requested that the Columbine Pronaos shut down their web site. The officers of the Columbine Pronaos are in negotiation with the Grand Lodge, hoping to convince them of the benefits of an affilliated body web site, both to inform the membership, and to promote AMORC publicly.

Emporium Web Design — Brochure

www.emporium-sw.com/services
August, 2004
Using Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, PaintShop Pro
Web Site Spec

This web site was originally designed as a class project for the IWA-HWG Introduction To Web Design class. From the course description,

This web design course is a very comprehensive, detailed online course that teaches how to plan, organize, and create a web site from start to finish. The course places a heavy emphasis on individual page design and layout. Using some very powerful techniques taught in this course, you will learn how even the most simplest of pages can be arranged to look more appealing and professional!

The course placed less emphasis on technical skills, and more emphasis on how to produce a professional looking web site. At the end, there was an extensive checklist of items to incorporate into a professional looking web site.

BazaarMart.com — eCommerce

www.bazaarmart.com
March, 2004
Using X-Cart, PaintShop Pro, Dreamweaver MX, HTML, CSS, PHP.
Custom programming to enable integrated SEO automation.
Inventory Integration through Access with suppliers' product lists.

BazaarMart.com is an outgrowth of eBay sales as emporium-sales. After having used a PayPal shopping cart in conjunction with FrontPage, and after having worked with X-Cart on a client's web site, I decided to set up a separate X-Cart shopping cart online store on a separate web site. The original concept of BazaarMart.com was modeled after a brick-and-mortar flea market, where I worked as a clerk for. I created the buttons and logo in PaintShop Pro with a weathered and routered edge look, to simulate an old town, old west feel. After working with the X-Cart templates and skins, I discovered that the pages generated by the PHP scripts were already highly SEO optimized. . . to promote X-Cart! To correct this, I acquaired a fundamental working knowledge of PHP script programming, and altered the code so that the generated pages would have the properly optimized metatags suitable for promoting each individual product category. I also set up the shipping rates, and other shopping cart options.

For the entrance page, I recognized that visitors want to see products and categories right away, and not some introductory verbiage or flash presentation. I captured the HTML source code for the home page of the customer's area, and entered a brief introductory paragraph above the selection of featured products. I altered the links on the entrance page to point to the appropriate static HTML pages, so as to further enable spidering by the search engines.

I had already been using an Access database to track items and sales, and to schedule eBay listings. Using this same Access Database, I set up some tables and queries to import customer data, item data from QuickBooks, my suppliers' product lists, and from X-Cart. Using the imported product data, I set up more queries to export pricing, quantity, availability, and images into the X-Cart system.