Web design
I built this website partly as a testing ground for new design techniques. In the last year or so I've really got in to PHP, which allows very sophisticated dynamic websites to be created. As an example, the photos page searches a subdirectory of my server for photo albums, extracts a thumbnail from each, and displays the results tidily for you to enter each gallery. Neat, eh?If you've got a website already and would like it tidied up, or would like a website designed from scratch, I'm always interested in taking on new projects! The easiest way to get in touch is to email me: andymccafferty@gmail.com. In the meantime, take a look at the sites I've designed in the past.
International Café
www.internationalcafe.org.ukI'd been helping out at the International Café (a joint venture between local churches to reach out to internationals at the university and elsewhere) for a few years, and a website upgrade was needed. A new feature for me was that this website needed to be (at least partly) updateable by a non web designer. To this end, I designed some PHP code to allow the website owner to put dated events up (and more importantly to take them down when the event's happened!). Photos of Café events are also important, and again, a bit of PHP code sorts albums into date order, and displays slideshows.
Salamat
www.salamat.co.ukA friend of mine has a very nice holiday home in the Lake District, and she wanted an attractive website to go with it! At the time, I was just starting to use server-side includes (SSI), allowing the navigation code to be written in one central file.
Haffner Orchestra
http://www.haffnerorchestra.orgI play second violin in the orchestra, and somebody heard that I design websites! I tried to make the layout as stylish as possible, and used PHP for the first time on this site: the "printable version" feature uses various tricks to get rid of the image tags from the source code.
North Lancashire Counselling
www.northlancscounselling.org.ukOne of my earlier efforts. I used frames for this site, partly because I didn't yet know about PHP or SSI, but also because it can sometimes give a slightly more relaxed browsing experience: something is on the screen all the time.
Lancaster and District Birdwatching Society
www.lancasterbirdwatching.org.ukI was already running a local birdnews service (taken over from a another local birder called John Mason) when I was asked to revamp the LDBWS website, and get a domain name for it. Again I used SSI to manage the site navigation, which was a boon when it came to the forum section (which uses the PHP-based phorum). Using a central file for the navigation code means that important notices can be displayed on every single page of the website at the click of a mouse (to use a cliché!). An email straw poll led to the rather long but clear URI!
