Evans Freimuth Architects Website

Client: Evans Freimuth Architects, Maplewood, MN

Link: www.efarch.com

Role: Interactive designer, developer, and teacher

Primary goal: Create a new website for the architectural firm with a simple look and site architecture

Tertiary goals: Use a back-end allowing for members of the firm to easily update content and each members of the firm a small amount of (X)HTML

Technology used: XHTML, CSS, MySQL, PHP, Wordpress, Adobe Flash, Actionscript 2.0, XML

The Process

Full disclosure: this is my dad’s architectural company website. He came to me wanting a very simple straight forward website to showcase project examples but push a phone call or meeting for more details. Since his business partner was creating pdf’s of projects and had a working knowledge of HTML, the site could be updated by staff members.

We began the process by developing a vision, basic site architecture, and gathered inspiration from other architectural firm websites (both good and bad). From there we refined the site architecture and I began multiple template mockups in Photoshop. After a template was approved, I installed Wordpress, began modifying a Wordpress theme to match the chosen mockup, and began populating the site from Microsoft Word documents written by EFA staff.

Other items developed include Google Analytics, initial search engine optimization, and a flash slideshow on the homepage which is a simple photo loop written in Actionscript 2.0 with an XML loader for easy content changes.

After setting up a new web host and configuring with the exiting domain name, we made the site live. Then, I taught the EFA staff how to update content within the Wordpress back-end. They have since been able to continue to update content.