Seifert mtm Systems

[dragan]

 

A new PW site has just been launched: http://www.seifertsystems.com

A teamwork with Beat Beer (frontend development)

 

We had no influence on the visual design / layout. We had to maintain the visual look of the old site. But "under the hood", the markup changed a lot (for the better).

 

The main functions / tasks:

 

• Transfer from old CMS (MODX Evo) to ProcessWire.
  Not everything could be exported / imported via script, due to the old site using a very clunky multilingual system (YAMS).
   
• Dynamic product catalogue, with main categories, and product type groups. Automated product catalogue import for all four languages (from MS Excel, import to PW via CSV import modulue and various API scripts).
   
• Compact products overview and detail product infos. (accessible tabs)
   
• Fully responsive - compatible with laptop, smartphone and tablet displays.
   
• Dramatical markup clean-up (HTML, CSS): resulting in much faster loading, and overall smaller filesizes (less than 50% of the old code).
   
• Usability, accessibility and SEO improvements.
   
• Multilingual setup (german, english, US-english, french), partially custom content per region / language. PW 2.3.2 multilang setup, geoIP for certain geographical filters / redirects.
   
• Newsletter 3rd-party app integration.
  = Mailchimp. Frankly, while it's OK, the possibilities for other languages than english are quite limited. Same goes for styling the signup CSS. But hey, it's free for up to 2000 subscribers or so...
   
• Faster loading and much more user-friendly for both site-visitors and site-admins.
  Hint 1: When using CKEditor, there's a setting "render WYSIWYG only on focus".
  Hint 2: There a setting to keep empty fields collapsed, when the field is empty.
   
• Dynamic XML and HTML sitemaps.
  XML: For all visible and published pages, for all four languages.
  HTML: One for each language.
   
• Image galleries and slideshows. (Shadowbox + jQuery Cycle plugin)
   
• Search with coloured keyword highlighting on the result pages.
   
• News section with publishing scheduling.
  i.e. create pages (news-items) in advance, and set publish and unpublish dates - simply by adding two datetime fields and an appropriate selector in the templates, e.g.

  $t = time();
  $latestNews = $pages->find("parent=1108, limit=4, sort=sort, include=hidden, publish_start<'$t', publish_end>'$t'");
  

 

Main PW tools used:

• Batcher
• XML Sitemap from demo install (with a tweak, to collect all four languages, and sub-pages inside hidden folders too, all in one single XML)
• MarkupSimpleNavigation module
• Language Field Tabs
• FormBuilder
• Import Pages From CSV module
• Modules Manager
• Page Edit Fold Status module
• + various pieces from PW demo installs / profiles

 

 

But by far, the biggest godsends were the great API, the terrific multilang PW functions of v. 2.3.2+, the good documentation, and the great community help here.

 

The difficult parts were not really technical issues, but having to wait endlessly for content, getting new change requests almost daily, and putting up with several launch delays. We seriously didn't believe that we could launch it still in 2013.

 

What may lie ahead next year (or not), is Googlemaps integration and dynamic PDF generation for product sheets.

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings,

Nice work! The site works fast and is easy to navigate. You really packed a lot of information into the site, while keeping the navigation clear and logical!

One minor issue: on an iPad running Safari, some footer text colides (see attached screen shot).

Congratulations on the successful launch. Thanks for sharing!

Matthew

[Radek]

Hi, good work, i found few places where can be done some minor changes (tested on firefox).

Image and text is too much near. Some margin fixed it.

.plink img {
    float: left;
    margin-right: 10px;
}

Footer texts are too much on the top. Little fixes.

footer .links ul {
    margin: 30px 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    list-style: disc outside url("../graphics/small-plus-icon.gif");
}

footer .credits {
    background: url("../graphics/footer-divider.gif") no-repeat scroll 0 10px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);
    height: 160px;
    margin: 10px 0 0;
    padding: 16px 0 0 15px;
}

[DaveP]

Some of the text in the first sentence seems to be missing some spaces when viewing the English homepage on mobile (Chrome on Nexus 5).

Other than that slight oddity, works well on mobile and very quick.

[dragan]

Yeah well, to paraphrase an old adage... Give a man a fish, and he'll have food for a day. Give a marketing exec a CMS, and he'll ruin a site in no time.

We're really not responsible for a) the look and b) the actual content. 

(some translations are an atrocity... guess it's all done in-house or with housewives who do a bit of hobby translation on the side...)