What they do ?
Since the inception of their company in early 2009, Renovating For Profit has quickly become a leading name in the property education arena. Renovating For Profit run courses on how to successfully renovate and develop for a profit.
What they wanted ?
Renovating For Profit approached Menkom to redesign their existing website which was not based on a CMS system and therefor very limited on being able to update and manage the website. The new website needed to be easy to use, easy to update and scaleable as the business grows. RFP had a lot of specific requirements such as including forum, blog, video, audio, press media, web presenter, ecommerce, graduate specific sections.
What we gave them ?
We chose Drupal as the CMS of choice to develop on as the framework. We felt that because of the specific requirements it would be much more flexible to handle the task. This was a relatively complex and extensive project with many features below are just some of them:
Custom Content Types:
We created various content types in Drupal that would allow RFP to easily add various types of content to the website. Things such as creating a new blog post or a new press media item is very easy to do via the Create Content menu. The admin menu has also been configured so that they only see what is important and what is not important was hidden.
Blog:
We build a blog from scratch that was easy to read and blog items could be categorised as well as previous items automatically archived.
Footer:
The footer contains social media icons for social marketing the footer also contains an auto generated menu system that was done so that once you reach the bottom of the page you could easily navigate to a page without having to scroll back to the top.
Office Auto Pilot Smart Forms:
We custom built some forms in Office Auto Pilot that would be used to capture leads from the website. One of the forms was for double opt in Newsletter signup. Once the leads were captured RFP could easily send newsletters from within Office Auto Pilot with extensive tracking and marketing purposes.
Forum:
One of the requirements also included a forum for graduates and public to participate in. This forum includes sections that are only available to graduates and are private sections which need a login to be able to participate in. Other parts are public that general users can participate in.
Various Private Sections:
Since the website is for public use but also graduates. There are various sections of the website that are only accessible to graduates. However one requirement was that they wanted the public to be able to see those sections instead of just blocking access to the pages. So we came up with a solution were there were 2 states of the same page one logged in as a graduate and one for the public when not logged in.
Custom Content Views:
Once a product, press media or one of the other various content types was filled in the front end would show the content. To keep it consistent we created the templates so that it did not matter what content you were viewing it would look uniform. Here you can see a press media article you can enlarge the pic or click more info and be able to download the pdf version of the article.
Graduate Login:
Graduates have a specific permissions that would allow them to see and interact with various parts of the website that would otherwise be blocked from the general public. This posed a good challenge for us as it involved working with role based permissioning, something drupal does very well. This is the graduate login box on the top of each page. Its also important to note that once the graduate is logged in they can also see their profile and upload an avatar that is used in the forum and other parts of the website.
Graduates Only Sections:
Everything in this section had to have permissions set so that only graduates can access them. Graduates had the ability to upload pictures of their renovation projects so that other graduates can see
Web Presenter:
The RFP website features 3 web presenters, the client Cherie had the choice to have a professional actor to script and talk or act themselves. Since Cherie is a public speaker she decided to do it herself. The presenters pop up in various parts of the website. This an interactive and effective marketing tool as you not only read but you can actual hear what the client wants to tell you.
Online Store:
The RFP website also includes a simple shopping cart. It is used to sell downloadable products such as Ebooks but also physical products like Training DVD’s.
Flash Animations:
The client requested as part of the requirments to not be so static and that she wanted some omph! to the website. Instead of using static images, some areas include flash buttons with bounce effects as you hover over them other parts are some simple effects just to give the site a little bit of an edge.