Hair Fashion Magazine w/ Custom Gallery

[jimskillet]

Scope of Project: To develop a magazine for the hair fashion industry centered around an image gallery of hairstyles.

Website URL: http://www.thecuttingchair.com

Template: Custom

Additional Extensions: iJoomla Magazine (not used for the homepage layout but for author management, related articles, sidebars etc), iJoomla Search & Archive, iJoomla Ad Agency, Community Builder, Eventing, Fireboard, JomComment, MyBlog, Frontpage Slideshow, Simple Image Gallery Pro, Jumi, Article Thumbnails.

Custom Development: hairstyle gallery component & modules allowing users to browse, search, rate and comment on hairstyles. iJoomla Search & Archive was customized heavily. Auto thumbnail crop feature was incorporated so non-proportional thumbnails were not created. Custom search bar integration for articles. The Eventing component templates were customized, custom navigation bar for image based buttons instead of text, custom modules on the homepage integrated with iJoomla Magazine. Custom module on the homepage for "Featured Styles" to output custom selected styles to feature.

I would like feedback on my usability of the Style Gallery, website design and if you guys have any suggestions for any extensions that I could use to improve upon my site in any way. The hairstyle gallery in particular is a little buggy but the bugs aren't show stoppers. There are many improvements planned and kinks are being hammered out constantly. The site is at its infancy so I have a lot more useful features planned soon.

Thanks guys!

[ashliew]

This is great! I am suprised no one said anything. What was the original template?

[jimskillet]

Thank you! The template was completely custom, designed from a PSD file.

[chilejam]

WOW!

This is really good stuff. I'm a photographer, just getting started with Joomla, and I want to integrate Slideshow Pro into a Joomla site. I love what you've done and I'd like to bounce some ideas with you.

Great work! Keep it up.


Michael J
www.ChileJam.com

[tommychambers]

Very good job on this site! How has the site performed under load? Also, what type of traffic have you seen on a daily basis? I'm interested in seeing how well Joomla has performed for you.

Thanks
Tommy

[soccertipster]

Wow, thats a very very impressive website.

The best joomla website i've seen!

[jimskillet]

thank you! i'm glad you like it. there's a lot more to come including a social networking community and a potential upgrade to 1.5. the site is getting about 6k traffic a month right now and 45k pageviews. relatively low but we're working hard on SEO. the site has been holding up to the traffic just fine.

[SoulOnFya]

Very nice. I'm using Slideshow Pro also but can't get it to work. Mind sharing how you go yours to work. I tried embedding it, I've tried ALLVideo plugin and for some reason it's not coming up.

Your help is well appreciated.

[JenniSummers]

Hi Jim

That's a very good looking website you have there. It looks very magaziney which is what the fashion industry is used to, and is well laid out with each section easy to read. A nice website.

I also like the slide show. It has given me some inspiration for my own site. I have also been thinking about testing either Joomla, but I am not sure yet. Are your experiences with Joomla positive?

[jimskillet]

Hi Jenni,

Thanks for the compliments. The Hairstyle Gallery took forever to design and custom build. Here's the bottom line from my extensive research and experience with Joomla.

Joomla is great for content. It is just that; a content management system. If that's your objective, Joomla is very user-friendly and easy to set up in a short amount of time.

My difficulty with Joomla has been with building and scaling a community. If you are looking for more social networking / community based features, I would look elsewhere. There is however, a brand new social networking component developed by Azrul that I have had my eyes on for some time. You can find it at http://www.jomsocial.com.

I will announce that I will be switching to the Drupal CMS. Joomla just isn't the right platform for me to scale my business with. I have been frustrated with the bugs, the speed, the SEO friendliness, and the opportunities to build and scale a social networking community. Take a look at mtv.co.uk, and all the teamsugar.com websites. They were all developed with Drupal.

[buzzcms]

Superb website you got ! Once you move to drupal, please come here to drop a word to tell us your experience

[jimskillet]

Thanks BuzzCMS,

I will definitely share my experience with everyone.

[nyak]

Cool !!
Well presented content, Nice template

[Fire_Starter]

Two thumbs up !!!

[firstgrip]

The website is very well-designed. I can see different color hairstyles like the celebrities. Thanks for sharing.

[tinacruz88]

Absolutely gorgeous!!!

Any tips on how you worked on getting lots of inbound links? Im struggling on that part.

[Mod edit - manual signature removed]

[jimskillet]

Yep, genuinely befriend a lot of bloggers. The time and effort it takes to establish relationships with them is worth the reward. They will post about your site. Absolutely no spam emails. Spending 8 hours genuinely establishing a relationship with a blogger is worth more than spending 8 hours sending out spam link building emails.

[Kualaho]

Wow! This site looks great. Well done!

[lightload]

I think this site is amazing and would like to ask a couple of questions as i think we could learn alot from this site.

1. I would love to know how you have managed to have the background image on your site of the girl at the top, i used bulletin plaza template and i cannot manage to do this, and i have also been trying to add an image on each side of the site, outside of the template.

2. With your site map, are you finding it better with google to not include content in your site map and instead to just have the menu listed

it is a great site

[shibu]

Really very nice template

[joomfriend]

Your site looks attractive. Beautiful template.
Sad to read that you a leaving Joomla . Hope you will be back soon.