We have finally completed the redesign of the Darley web site. We designed this site from the ground up using an open source CMS perfect for a company of this size. This site now encompasses all aspects of the web revolution. Video, community and user interaction. Most of this can be viewed on the first page. Darley is now focusing a large amount of time to video. They know to sell online video is more powerful that pictures.
I have focused a large amount of my time into 3D video using green screen technology. We want to give users a 1 on 1 product experience. Let them feel the product and control its movement. More on that in a few weeks. Getting back to Darley.com. You can quickly and easily navigate through this site with a redesigned navigation bar and follow up sub menus on the right.
We have also added many notable updates in our code using Moo Tools. One area is our specialty truck section. Here we can now quickly and easily add trucks via xml and have a nice gallery with specs. Another moo tool is our “Shared” button which you can find under any video that we offer. This gives the user the ability to post our video within MySpace, Facebook, and/or other third party cloud sites.
- Rescue Video with Shared button
- Moo Tool Interaction
One big problem that we tackled head on was catalog viewing. This company prints hundreds of thousands of catalog a year. We wanted to give the users who are use to the catalog a way to have that same feeling online but at the same time make it very easy to find what they are looking for.
I have a lot more to post in regards to this site I will save that for a later post.
I have just coded a new database that will handle all of the downloads that our pumps use. Darley has a huge database of curves/drawings/repair manuals and a whole slew of other downloads.
One problem is that they don’t have them organized very well so its not the easiest to find a download you need for a pump. So I took several weeks and came up with a PHP/SQL backend that will look at the pump files and add/compare them. It will then take the files or downloads and add them to corresponding pump.
The result is a very easy download system just by finding the pump that you have or would like to order. Below is an example of what the dynamic download section looks like.
I finally had the chance to get some time and update the Darley Pump module on the site. This project has been an on going update for a few months now. The pump module had not been updated for about 5 years. Yes I said 5 years. We still had black and white pump pictures on the site.
So finally after 3 months of sporadic updates I have completed the update. Our pump section now features almost every pump Darley offers. It has performance charts and plenty of info regarding each pump. There are still a few items lacking in regards to the pump pages.
Screenshot
Curve & Drawing Downloads – each pump will have its own performance curves and drawings links.
Spec Sheets – These are quote writer sheets that are currently being assembled by our pump sales division and once complete will be added under the pumps.
New Pumps – there are a few new pumps that need to be pictured and added to the site. Once I get the information I will place them on the site.
Once I have updated the above items I will place an update blog so that you can see what"s going on.
You can link directly to each embed script as needed. In the code you just need to change
file=http://www.darley.com/video/files/jim/bm/bm5.flv to flashvars=”file=http://www.darley.com/video/files/jim/bm/bm2.flv
The files are named
bm1.flv
bm2.flv
bm3.flv
bm4.flv
bm5.flv
bm6.flv
bm7.flv
About this truck:
The Tempest Mobile Ventilation Unit is a large-diameter positive pressure ventilation fan used for emergency ventilation of large structures such as box stores, high-rise buildings, tunnels and warehouses. The MVU gives fire fighters and emergency personnel greater control over the environment inside a structure by allowing them to control the movement of [...]
This was a very quick turn around. I filmed three places using green screens. Then had 12 hours to edit and get into DVD format for the company to hand out on the last day. Wish I had more time to make it better but time dictated results.
Working with a limited budget and time I was assigned the task of producing a new video of our Navy P-100 pump. They had a current video of this pump which was in VHS format. The VHS tapes were out of date. I had to go and dig out my old vhs player to view [...]
