NORTHWIND, makers of Maestro – a leading property management system for hotels, resorts, and multi-property groups – recently launched their new corporate website. With a variety of website users visiting the site, including clients requiring a login area for training and news, a robust, modern website was in order.

Deployed on Drupal, the website needed manage a significant archive of public data as well as large file downloads and resources in a restricted client-only section of the site. A forward-thinking company in terms of social network marketing, the design and implementation also had to embrace NORTHWIND’s Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles and advertise NORTHWIND’s webinar program.

The result is an easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain website that is in the capable hands of the NORTHWIND IT and Marketing teams.

And of course, the love I found in my inbox the other day made this website project that much sweeter: YOU SO ROCK! Thanks so much!. It was a pleasure, NORTHWIND!

The Brazeau Team is a top-performing group of realtors with a reputation for providing amazing customer service and using technology to assist the process of buying and selling real estate.

The website went through a few design cycles as the team reevaluated their needs and incorporates social media to help advertise their services and support clients in new ways. (No, really. They even use text messaging to get potential buyers instant information about a property!)

Powered by Wordpress, the website has extensive use of custom fields and plugins to power the listings. Roger Theriault’s Great Real Estate plugin was a great start and Hiroaki Miyashita’s Custom Field Template plugin saved the day.

Visit the site: www.brazeauteam.com

Perhaps I’m biased, but there’s really not much more fun that rolling out a website that you’d be visiting yourself. That’s certainly the case with Tune2Win, an independent tuning advice and performance part testing site for automotive enthusiasts.

A high-energy site filled with how-to articles and videos, it was Design & Develop’s job to fine-tune Tune2Win’s initial concepts and implement the site on ExpressionEngine. The results speak for themselves, and the feedback from the automotive community has been very positive so far.

Future developments will include extending the community aspects of the site.

Visit the site: www.tune2win

Mothercraft’s new website combined their multiple existing sites and services into a single resource, while expanding functionality and bringing a fresh look to their online home.

Design & Develop paid special attention to usability testing in the early phases of this project, testing the site design and organization with different levels of users in the Mothercraft organization to ensure that the site would work for a variety of site visitors.

Mothercraft had specific security and user management requirements that were fleshed out fully in mid-project, and fortunately open-source Etomite rose to the challenge.

Mothercraft gets special mention as client of the year, for their patience and humour during a difficult project. The technical difficulties, combined with a site that turned out to be far larger and more complex anyone expected, made for some serious timeline setbacks. As our first major project, Design & Develop learned some important lessons, and thanks Mothercraft for the chance to deliver. Though Mothercraft waited for their site, the results meet and exceed the functionality requested by the organization.

View the site: www.mothercraft.ca