A new MODx powered french website : soleil.info

Here is the new website I have been working on for the past year :



http://www.soleil.info

Which previously looked like this (if you see this one, it’s that DNS are not propagated for you yet) :



In english, "soleil" means "sun" and as you can guess from the domain, it’s a website dedicated to inform people about risks from sun exposure, educate children and teachers about protecting from the sun, provide UV index in the summer with data provided directly from Meteo France (French Weather Service) -> this feature is not yet there. We are looking for a modx developper to implement this, which should be ready for summer.

There is quite a bit of info on the website, 800+ documents, 150+ chunks and around 30 TVs (part of which had to be imported into the modx_site_content from a previous DB - learned quite a bit of MySQL along the way here) and the challenge was to make it as clear and simple to navigate as possible.

As you will see colors play a great role giving context to the content (each section of the website is a "universe"). We also designed it for 1024 screens, but 800 screens will see the main part (a not the right column which is secondary).

On this one, I didn’t do the graphic part I was consulted but it was Alexandre who did the photoshoping and Pierre and Rémi (aspeum on these forums) who authored it.

What I did :

• get the data from the old DB’s website into the MODx DB
• build the templates from the mockups
• set up the snippets calls
• install and setup the plugins

I have used a lot of PHx to reduce the number of template to a maximum, but also automate things as far as it can get (the frontpage is designed so that my client only needs to provide the ID of the document he wants on a given part of the homepage and everything is taken from there including setting the background, title and links color according to the UltimateParent of the document).

I have also used Ditto extensively of course, even for the randomized ads in the right column. MaxiGallery comes into play (not online yet) and I had to get some help from GaneshXL and Doze to add custom fields to the modx_maxigallery table (and then set placeholders for use in the template -> I’ll write a tutorial for the wiki soon) and automatically get the filesize.

Kudos to Doze and GaneshXL for their help !

I will soon document everything I did building this website, as I’d like to build case studies for modxcms.fr (and translate them for modxcms.com if it’s of interrest)

Another thing : Laurentc worked with me on this website to develop a custom eForm2db implementation for a few forms on this website. This is not yet published currently since we launched yesterday but it shoud be up by the end of the week. I’ll let Laurent explain what he did on this.

Last but not least, I still have to fix browser issues (guess which browser >:( )

But go ahead and report anything that should be fixed !

Nice. I see you also used a separate stylesheet for print (something I always forget about...).

What’s this Meteo France stuff you need help with? I remember having read something about it in the french forums, but I only understood half of it... some kind of info-subscription, based on a region?

Oh, and you should add Sun Ra in the musique section
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ra

Quote from: ganeshXL at Feb 19, 2008, 08:24 AM

Nice. I see you also used a separate stylesheet for print (something I always forget about...).

Thanks for the feedback.

Quote from: ganeshXL at Feb 19, 2008, 08:24 AM

What’s this Meteo France stuff you need help with? I remember having read something about it in the french forums, but I only understood half of it... some kind of info-subscription, based on a region?

Yes there is an commercial inquiry posted on the french board here (most of you won’t be able to read it since you probably ignore the french board with IgnoreBoards). One part of the module will handle subscription indeed, but another aspect is retrieve info from Meteo France’s server to have it automatically updated and published on the website.

I am not sure Rémi wants to work with someone abroad, but I can’t answer for him. I can’t really provide details since there are a lot of things to clarify such as how is the data provided by the meteo france server formatted (XML, something else ?). I’ll let him jump in and clarify that...

Tre magnifique!

Nice site, good job and a definite improvement and upgrade from the first version. I just skimmed it, but did not see any problems but it is all French to me

I also tend to forget about the print style, I really need to start paying attention to this as well.

I will soon document everything I did building this website, as I’d like to build case studies for modxcms.fr (and translate them for modxcms.com if it’s of interrest)

I am waiting for the write up. This promises to be some good reading

Great update David et al. Love seeing the consistency of immediate familiarity and similar feel of where it came from, but being MUCH cleaner in presentation and content. At least I think that’s what’s going on since I can’t understand a bit of the content! I give it a definite major thumbs up, both of ’em.

Thanks it means a lot coming from you guys

Hello everyone !

ganeshXL : The inquiry I posted is about a service we want to rebuild : send each day by email the UV Index (ultraviolet radiation intensity) for any french city. I can deal with talking english, I can deal with working with someone abroad, but both seems a bit too much for such a not-so-big project. MODx seems to be a grower in France, I received some interesting offers !

Oh, and yes, we intend to fill that music section !

dev_cw, rthrash : Thank you for your feedback. It is nice reward for both David and I.

rthrash

One should always trust copy/paste... Sorry

Don’t sweat it Rémi, I still do it sometimes