I recently completed my latest web project for The Wright Venue. Following on form the brand, The website was the next installment of this project. The idea here was to try to encapsulate the essence of the night club. A purpose built 3 story multi-level ‘super club’ at Airside in Dublin.
There were basically 5 specific requirements for the site. Video, imagery, a functioning events system, a web store and a blog. As the site grows and we gather proper interior photographs I’ll be adding a flash based walk-though of the various areas and features. For now though, all I had to work with image-wise was the graphic elements I created for the interior and brand.
I initially built the site using straight html, css and php. As the site developed it became apparent to me that using wordpress as a back end was going to be more efficient and provide a more scalable delivery. I did consider the possibility of developing a completely flash based site but I kept coming up with reasons why it wasn’t going to be a good idea. There are, of course, several flash element in the site. I wanted to animate the logo and flourishes to give the site movement and I think these work well.
The menu system was probably the trickiest part. I initially developed a JavaScript based pop-out drawer type system. It worked fine in all platforms bar, of-course Internet Explorer. The problem there? Performance. IE seems to fall over at the thought of handling 2 flash animations and a relatively large JS file added to the several JS files WordPress initiates also. I tried several ways to alleviate the issue including different types of js based menus using jQuery along with streamlining and compressing all the javascript. It still had issues for some people so I reverted back to a straight CSS based solution and I’m happy with its performance.
Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll be adding the merchandise web store, an image and video gallery with footage from some of the nights so people can really get a feel for the size and scale of the club. A truly remarkable achievement!