Content Management System (CMS) Integration
My front-end developer/designer experience includes integration of new designs to old or proprietary systems. During the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to work in-depth with many content management systems like CommonSpot, DotNetNuke, SharePoint, and Convio spanning multiple programming languages and environments.
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SharePoint Template for Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Keynote
SharePoint Theme Project: On the right is
the SharePoint Designer theme that I created for Jesus
Rodriguez the legendary Microsoft BizTalk MVP Oracle ACE.
The BizTalk Server Product Manager at Microsoft asked Jesus along
with other members of TwoConnect's BizTalk product team to create
a demo that demonstrated how SharePoint Business Data Catalog and
Windows Communication Foundation can be implemented in a real world
manufacturing process. My part on this project was to create a theme
in SharePoint Designer and a logo for "Contoso Manufacturing". Creating
a theme is hardly a big deal. The fact that I had to complete it in
less than eight hours was the big deal. This demo was used in several
Microsoft events but its first appearance was with Steve Guggenheimer's
keynote at the 2007 World Wide Partner conference. -
SharePoint Customization for DC's Biggest Think Tank
Custom SharePoint View: Windows SharePoint Services (WSS 3.0) is my interactive collaboration portal platform of choice. I have experience designing templates, workflows, and sites using SharePoint Designer2. One part of SharePoint is a tweaked version of Visual Studio aimed at assisting people who design in the proprietary SharePoint environment. The other part is the powerful workflow capability. You can do about 90 percent of all your workflows without the assistance of a hard-core developer.
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Adoption: One key issue I have seen with SharePoint adoption is how bad all the stock themes and views look. Management see the collaboration potential in SharePoint, but the employees just see more work. Giving people custom views that are actually useful to them can help with adoption and make their jobs easier. In the scenario below they wanted a hundred data points to fit on one sheet of paper that would have all the necessary data to meet with any congressman/woman.
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Compare: Default SharePoint View vs. my Custom View of the same info.
Proof that You're C# Developer is wrong.You can change almost anything you want with a SharePoint view because of the flexibility of SharePoint's xPath data.
He just needs a good CSS guy to help.
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This image on the far left is how you enter and display data in SharePoint by default. The image in the right shows a custom "View" I created from SharePoint Xpath data. I added a print stylesheet to this view which prints all of a congressman's congressional data on one page.
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CommonSpot Templates and Designing Renderhandlers for The Heritage Foundation
Background: The Heritage Foundation launched a new initiative called Leadership For America. They wanted it to have a slightly different look and feel to the rest of the site so that reqruired the creation of new CommonSpot templates. We integrated the redesign in conjunction with Figleaf's John Venable. I saw the value in CommonSpot and took the initiative to learn how to create templates, renderhandlers, and customCF modules. I'd like to call this my three month on the job training in Commonspot.
CSS & Render Handlers: Commonspot, like most CMS, allows you to move modules around the page. In the Leadership for America pages, I designed the CSS so that people could move any custom element anywhere they wanted. It would transform the font-sizes, wrapping, and width to fit perfectly in any part of the template.
One Stop Shopping: From the experience I got with the Leadership for America template I created the Heritage Foundation Rapid Response template. Everything on this page pulls data based on page keyword and page title. I refined and automated the process to the point that a content editor could create nearly the entire page by filling out the Page Properties dialog box. A page with all available information on a given topic can be put live in minutes, allowing Heritage to collect all past, present, and future research in an automated way. Visitors needing info on a topic needed only to go to the rapid response page to learn about new policy indicatives.
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DotNetNuke CMSfor Microsoft Gold Certified Partner
Background: The TwoConnect site was created using an open source .NET CMS called DotNetNuke. Over half a million webmasters choose this product due to its cost (free), support by all major hosting companies, and the innumerable number of open source modules to enhance its feature set. DotNetNuke also allows you to create "skins" to change the look and feel of your site without having to redo any of your content. The most loved feature of end-users is the ability of any user (with permissions) to edit and update the site for themselves using a rich text editor similar to Word. The downside of this feature is that it tends to write HTML 4.0 code instead of XHTML, basically mixing the two together. Like many legacy rich text editors DNN still uses the "<font>" tag. Although it has other weaknesses, it is an incredible tool, and you can't beat the open-source price.
DotNetNuke Tip:You can change almost anything you want about a template or container. Most of the time it is fastest to start a template from your own crib files or to start from another template with an IA close to your vision.
Its a blessing to have unfettered access to these files if you know what your doing. If you don't, you have plenty of rope to hang yourself with. The TwoConnect site is an example. I am no longer maintaining this site. If you visit the site you can see that it has developed problems.
Who is this MacGyver Character? MacGyver
ABC 1985-1992 - The story arc of MacGyver follows the laid-back, extremely
resourceful secret agent Angus MacGyver, played by Richard Dean Anderson.
He prefers non-violent conflict resolution wherever possible and refuses
to carry or use a gun. MacGyver works as a problem solver for the fictional
Phoenix Foundation in Los Angeles. Educated as a scientist with a background
as a Bomb Disposal Technician/EOD in Vietnam ("Countdown"), and from
a fictional United States government agency, the Department of External
Services (DXS), he is used as a resourceful agent able to solve a range
of problems along with his ever-present Swiss army knife. More
from Wikipedia...
To the right is the theme from the fabled show. I think it is the theme
song for happy, honest, and simple times.
The views expressed in featured websites are not necessarily that of my own. I can't say that MacGyver endorses my site either.