Cartoons by Marzio

Marzio needed a website to display his cartoons, without the clutter usually found on blogs (archive lists, tags and categories), and without the usual weblog format for displaying posts.  In this solution, I created some fun ways to navigate through the cartoon collection, while keeping the interface simple and uncluttered.

• a medium budget, custom solution
• font choice by Marzio
• custom administration console for managing content
• technologies used: PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, Ajax, XML
• http://www.cartoonsbymarzio.com

More Info

Four PHP classes were created: cartoon entry, cartoon list, cartoon category, category list.  These classes used DOM XML methods to access and save data in XML files.  It was useful to have separate data (and classes) for categories to reduce PHP processing time for simple requests such as RSS feed and category change.

Over half of the implementation time went into the creation of the content management system:  Add Entry, Delete Entry, Modify Entry, Modify Category.  These modules were kept simple in appearance, but their functionality is strict in keeping errors and discrepancies out of the XML data.  Modify Category was the most fun to implement, using JQuery movable thumbnails to represent cartoons in and not in a specific category.

Form pre-processing is done with Javascript/JQuery, then PHP also processes before finally implementing changes and announcing success.  A failure is not impossible, but would be a rare fault of the server's.  Ultimately, Marzio is informed of form discrepancies until all is validated, then he may confidently submit his changes/additions.