Capstone Project - Media and Design Track

This project was for a local Austin glass artist. The project requirements specified:

• An online store connected to a payment system
• A photo gallery
• A newsletter subscription and management capability
• A place to display information about classes the artist is teaching, glass art events and exhibitions
• An area for unique content that would bring visitors to the site to learn more about glass making

A primary technical goal was to create a dynamic data-driven web site, enabling the artist to maintain key content herself.

Features and technical highlights of the project:

• The main site is made up of 12 viewable pages and 4 hidden pages that query the database and dynamically construct XML data files passed to the Flash photo gallery.
• 6 pages were created for the database administration area. A PHP data grid control was implemented and the area protected with a login, cookie and session ID's.
• A Dreamweaver extension was used to create the Flash photo gallery used in 3 locations.
• A MySQL database was designed to hold information about products, product categories, classes, events and exhibitions.
• Photoshop was used to enhance, sharpen, and resize images and to create the custom newsletter design and site banner.
• An email subscription system required designing several html-based automated email responses.
• Mal's e-commerce shopping cart was integrated using a PHP program to form a transaction for the cart..
• A PayPal Standard Merchant Account was integrated with the cart.