Transmission Films
Transmission Films is a leading independent film distributor who have been bringing the best local and international films to Australian and New Zealand audiences since 2008.
In 2012 I was contracted by The Solid State to develop and integrate a partial redesign and new features into the existing Transmission website. This included restructuring the information hierarchy to better promote and help users differentiate between the 'new releases', 'coming soon' and 'home entertainment' categories, developing a completely revamped catalogue system with a thumbnail/list view option and cross genre/category search filters to help users drill down content more efficiently, developing a new bespoke video player capable of playing self-hosted videos across all devices and, last but not least, develop a mobile specific version of the site.
The challenge from the outset was the approach to development. The existing site had to continue to run uninterrupted throughout, whilst the new features had to be available for client reviewing at different stages of production, no mean feat considering a brand new site was outside the scope of the project. Rather, the idea was to rework the existing Worpdress theme to accept the new features and design changes.
To handle this requirement I modified a plugin to allow for dual themes to run from the Wordpress framework simultaneously - the existing theme for public access and a cloned development theme that would be only accessible to users logged into site admin i.e. the client and myself. Once the new theme was ready to go live it was just a matter of switching the new theme over to public access.
I was then able to to recycle the dual theme plugin by modifying it further and dedicating it to the development of the mobile version. Once again, it was undesirable for the mobile version to be publicly accessible whilst it was under development however, it obviously did need to be accessible by the client for reviewing and approval.
Once the mobile site was ready for launch I modified the plugin yet again, permanently this time to detect if a user was viewing the site on a smartphone and if so, serve up the mobile version of the site accordingly.
In the end the client was over the moon with the manner in which production was handled and of course, the end result.
