Grindstone Park | Custom WordPress Site

Client – GCOA
Company – GCOA
SiteGrindstonePark.ca

Tasks – The Grindstone Cottage Owners Association was looking for a new website to represent themselves and the Grindstone Park area. What they had up until recently, was a community forum through MSN forums, and a newsletter printed quarterly (The Grindstone Gazette). They had just started distributing the newsletter in PDF format via email.

There are a lot of big things happening in the Grindstone Park area, and it was time to take the old forum / newsletter and update them with a robust web site that provides information about the GCOA, the Grindstone area, the cottages, the lake, the businesses and everything involved in the park. Information for residents and prospective buyers for cottages in the area.

They were in need of a site that looks good, works good, and is easy to maintain. It needed to have a community forum, extensive photo galleries (amazing photography there, seriously, check out the wildlife!), rotating business card ads with plus a page listing all advertisers, a map with the park location, a complete archive of the Grindstone Gazette in PDF format (30 years of PDF files). It also needed the ability to take the Gazette to the next level by posting it to the site when published.

In addition to that, they needed to be able to monitor the traffic on the site, monitor the ad statistics, and be able to add/remove advertisers as needed plus a domain name and hosting.

Pretty intense and I love a challenge. I loved working on this site because it gave me the opportunity to merge multiple systems into one cohesive site. And it went very smoothly.

I chose to use WordPress for the CMS for it’s ease of use and short learning curve. Good for users of all levels to maintain their own sites with minimal learning. Though it is easy to use once set up properly, the set up is what takes the most time. The initial design I presented the association was a very unique design. It has a unique drop down menu, 4 different page templates, and 5 sidebars.Yes, I said 5 sidebars.

The design required compartmentalized content that can be easily updated. And I did not want to have to make then learn html/php just to update their site. So using 5 sidebars with different widgets in each was the best method for ease of use, and maximum flexibility.

To ensure cross browser support I made sure all PHP and CSS files passed W3C Validator tests before fleshing out the site with pages and content (before plugins).

Once the site was built and coded I installed the NextGen gallery pluggin to maintain the photo galleries, the Simple Press Forum for the forum (super easy to use and blends well), and Open-X for the ad server. I chose not to use the Open-X widget as I needed to do something out of the ordinary with the advertiser page, so I had to manually build it.

A lot of work, but well worth it. I think it is the best site I have done to date and certainly one for the portfolio. There are other projects for the GCOA I will post next week as well.

Grindstone Park is a great place to spend the weekends and any vacation time. If your looking for a cottage in Manitoba, THIS is the place you should be looking. Want proof? Check out the web site.

Grindstone Park

PS: This officially marks my 100th post. Cool! :mrgreen:

2 thoughts on “Grindstone Park | Custom WordPress Site

  1. Craig Goldstein says:

    I am on the board of the Grindstone Cottage Owners Asocition and was responsible for arranging the development of our website. I received multiple quotes and in the end chose Creative Compulsions because of price and product. Myles was very easy to work with, allowing us to change our ideas at any time. He took control of the process, offering his expertise in areas we were unsure while listening to our wants and needs for our members. The result is a fantastic looking website that is easy to use for all user levels. Thank you Myles for a giving us a great tool to share the excitement at Grindstone! I highly recommend Myles for your website/design needs. This is the third project that I have enllisted his services and I am more impressed each time!

    Craig Goldstein’s last blog post..Fresh Meat Manager

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