Isolationism

I let this one slip through the cracks even though it happened a few weeks ago: The newly redesigned Critter Jungle website was quietly launched in November. Critter Jungle, if you don’t already know, is a lovely privately-owned pet shop in Hampton Park Plaza in Ottawa (near where Carling meets the Queensway); The proprietors are family friends, so this was a one-off project in my spare time.

The main goals of the redesign were to change the appearance of the site to bring it in line with more current design trends such as elastic page width and easy-to-read content, less garish choice of colour (now that web-safe colour is effective unnecessary since everyone out there is using true-colour display modes), and to emphasize a change in direction for site content. We also wanted to make the site easier for the customer to manage, and increase accessibility and usability.

My discussions with the customer led toward a recommendation of sharing articles and information instead of trying to keep a running product inventory on the site—we may eventually connect their legacy inventory system to the website, but that’s going to be a rather major investment for the software components, middleware development, e-commerce account and so on.

Their eventual goal is to have employees able to write submit their own articles to appear on the site during slower days at the store once the dust has settled and we’ve finished basic training.

Making the site easier to manage led to the obvious choice of moving from static HTML pages to a content management system; Joomla seemed like the best fit based on their needs and my prior experience with the product.

If you’re shopping for pet supplies in Ottawa or looking for pet advice, I strongly recommend taking your custom to the experts at Critter Jungle. Watch their web space, too, as new articles are being added with relative frequency.