Original Showcase

The homepage of the original site, showing a gallery of images from various projects, as well as a gallery of videos. Both included, but were not limited to, various bits and pieces from projects that didn't have their own page for whatever reason.

The dropdown nav menus of the old site, showing the seamless connection between the main menu part of the menu and the drop-down, as well as the method of categorisationThe lightbox of the original site, showing a picture from the homepage with it's caption. The lightbox of the original site, showing the embedded YouTube functionality (with short descriptive caption) An entire project page on the original site, showing the way featured single images were handled and how the the page-specific content floated in it's own little box. The top section of one of the project pages on the original site, showing the way galleries were handled as well as embedded download links The code preview expansion toggling section of the original site, with the expansions toggled closed. Not the easiest way to read code, but helpful for side-by-side comparisons between the Player and Entity classes. The code preview expansion toggling section of the original site, with one of the expansions toggled open. Not the easiest way to read code, but helpful for side-by-side comparisons between the Player and Entity classes.

Live Demo at:
http://oldsite.sam-shannon.id.au/

This is my very first showcase website.

Built for a TAFE course (of course) in Web Development in 2013, the vast majority of the content on it was web development related.
I eventually added more diverse content (programming/networking related mostly) but switched to the WordPress version before adding much pure art (despite having done most of it before the showcase even existed).

As for the design itself… I am still partial to dark backgrounds with lighter text (I find it easier on the eyes), but the Oranges and Light Blues and Dark Greens I now find (despite being suitably contrasting) somewhat garish. The new WordPress site of course now uses much less Orange and I think it works a lot better (it also helped that I didn’t have to design it myself).

My shining pride and joy is the nav menu though. Entirely CSS driven, I was particularly proud of managing the seamless tabs (the bottom connects directly to the expanded menu without border clipping), show-hiding elements based on hover, and the way I handled subcategorisation.
The rest of the site is okay by comparison, though I am also rather fond of the gallery layout (which I have attempted to re-create in spirit on the WordPress site) and the toggling expandable code preview areas.

 

Updating it was a pain though, even with extensive modularisation through php include snippets. A bunch of copy pasting and editing template snippets for each update was something of a hindrance to my desire to keep it updated with my various projects, so I eventually bade it a fond farewell and moved on to a CMS-based site.

 

If you still want to potter around on it and see how it works and what it was like, you should be able to view a working version of it here.