Project Detail

Description

Brief- Small Wordpress-as-CMS theme customisation
N.B. I am offering a 20% BONUS if you can deliver this project ahead of the deadline.

Project Background
I run a small (one-person) design and communications business in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, a small developing island nation in the South Pacific. My client is a small, newly-formed regional intergovernmental agency that promotes political co-operation, trade and investment and security amongst Melanesian nations (Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia).
I am setting up a basic communications infrastructure for my client, including a website. They have a staff of four only, none of whom have much experience with the internet or with using a CMS. For this reason, I think creating a Wordpress-based CMS site is the best fit for their size and level of expertise. After some training that I will provide, my client's staff will be updating the content.
I am primarily a communications consultant, with a print design and editorial background. I have used Wordpress in the past, have a reasonable grasp of web technologies, and some web design experience. But for this project I would prefer to hire a Wordpress specialist who has done similar sites in the past and can develop them more quickly than I can.
The deadline is tight, due to the client's lack of experience with this type of project. In the interests of expediting site development, preference will be given to developers who can customise a pre-existing WP theme or template design to meet my brief. Theme frameworks such as Thematic or even premium themes will be considered (and paid for) if required. I have identified several premium themes which may be suitable within this document.
The content is still under development, so dummy text content only is required. Images will be supplied but the logo is also still being developed. Dummy content from WPCandy can be downloaded from http://wpcandy.com/articles/easier-theme-development-with-the-sample-post-collection.html to assist with this.
Text content will be developed first in English and later translated into French, so fr_FR language files will need to be installed. The admin page will be in English only at this time.

Draft deadline– September 29 2009
Final deadline– October 1 2009.

Skills required
Advanced Wordpress theming, advanced graphic design for web, Photoshop, PHP, LAMP admin

Payment terms
• Fixed fee released from escrow upon completion
• Additional 20% bonus if you beat deadline
• N.B. If premium theme is required, I will purchase this

Copyright
My client requires full copyright ownership.

Outline of work
1. Research/find suitable theme
2. Install WP & all requested plugins
3. Customise theme to meet the requirements of this brief
4. Make changes as requested
5. Test site in IE5/6/7/8 + Firefox 3.5 and tweak
6. Upload to production server

Page templates required
1. Homepage
2. Single Page
3. Single Post
4. Custom Page– member country data
5. File downloads list page
6. Contact form
7. Event calendar
8. Links page
9. photo gallery page (thickbox?)
Where possible, these can be based on existing templates from the site theme (if basing design on a pre-existing premium or free theme)

Required CSS text styles
• 4 levels of headings
• sans body text + italic
• serif body text + italic
• display heading (for front page)
• menu text
• submenu text
• image caption
• footer text
• pullquote
• breadcrumb text

Technical requirements
• Must work 100% in all browsers
• Must be 100% W3C standards compliant

Site Aesthetic
• Keywords: clean, modern, uncluttered, web 2.0.
• 2 column design but grid-based on 6-column grid—main content area over 4 columns, sidebar 2 columns.
• Centred, fixed-width—960px—not strict: should be flexible if content requires it.

Colour palette
Text must be black on light background. Subdued, earthy palette preferred with no more than 4 colours total. My client wants to see several options, and imagery to be used on site may be used as a guide for colour scheme.

Type preferences
I like wordpress.org's use of type.
• Mac: Lucida Sans
• PC: Trebuchet/Helvetica
• Georgia for pullquotes & headings on Mac & PC

Style references
http://www.populationmedia.org/
My client likes this site: I would like the MSG website to have less content areas; I think it is a little too busy.
http://wordpress.org
Overall, I like simplicity of this site. I especially like the placement of the navigation, the use of whitespace and the clean, well-spaced typography.
http://www.apple.com
I like this site primarily for the large amount of whitespace given to larger pieces of text and the attractive use of type in the content pages. I also like the user-friendly navigation system.

Sites with similar content & structural requirements
http://forumsec.org.fj
http://pacificpolicy.org/

Possible premium themes to consider
monograph http://www.wpzoom.com/monograph
arthemia http://colorlabsproject.com/themes/arthemia-premium/
yamidoo http://www.wpzoom.com/yamidoo/
wp-clear http://wp-clear.solostreamsites.com/
triumph http://www.wpnow.com/themes/triumph.html
the station http://www.woothemes.com/demo/?t=29
concept http://themeforest.net/item/concept-wordpress-a-premium-wp-theme/
thesis http://www.diythemes/thesis

Site Structure
Please refer to the attached sitemap diagram. The primary nav items are on the RHS, secondary on LHS of sitemap.

Primary navigation
There are 3 main primary sections to the site:
1. Content that can be either posts or pages– most frequent additions/modifications in this section will be 'News', 'Programs' and 'Documents'. This content to displayed as a horizontal menu at top of page, containing the following items:
• home
• about MSG
• news
• programs
• documents
• links
2. The second section consists of data about the member countries, linked to from flag images on the main page. Section 2 (country data) will only be updated every six months, so content should probably be pages. Main items are:
• Kanaky/New Caledonia
• Fiji
• Papua New Guinea
• Solomon Islands
• Vanuatu
Submenu for each country is:
• Geography
• People
• Government
• Economy
• Communications
• Transportation
• Photo gallery
• Country links
3. The third section is devoted to the MSG's program areas. This Section will be updated frequently, so should probably consist of posts. Itemes are:
• trade and investment
• economic and social development
• governance
• regional security

Secondary navigation
There is also a secondary content group which should appear as a footer text nav. Secondary nav items can be pages. Items are:
• employment opportunities
• feedback
• sitemap
• terms of use
• privacy policy
• site credits

Additional required elements
• Language switcher (language initials only, no flags) N.B. qTranslate theme comes with language switcher widget.
• RSS link
• Search field

Navigation structure
I want horizontal primary nav at top, with second- and third-level submenu items to appear as a dropdown, semi-transparent horizontal list. All menus should rollover on mouse hover state to indicate navigability.

WP plugins
Localisation
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/qtranslate/ (need fr_FR language file)

Events Calendar
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/events-calendar/

Maintenance
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup

Stats
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-meter/

Security
http://akismet.com/
http://www.bloggingexpertise.com/plugins/wp-contactform-akismet/
http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/login-lockdown.1.5.zip

SEO/usability
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/download/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/ OR
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress

RSS feed management
http://flagrantdisregard.com/feedburner/
http://www.silpstream.com/blog/feed-control/

Type
http://kingdesk.com/projects/wp-typography/

Breadcrumbs
http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/breadcrumb-nav-xt/

WP-as-CMS plugins
Static home page
http://www.semiologic.com/software/static-front/ OR
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/home-page-control/

Navigation control
(Fold page) list http://www.webspaceworks.com/resources/wordpress/30/

Site Search
http://dancameron.org/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/search-everything-wordpress-plugin/

Admin/user roles
http://redalt.com/Resources/Plugins/Role+Manager

SEO/tagging/URL management
http://fortes.com/projects/wordpress/top-level-cats/
http://robsnotebook.com/the-excerpt-reloaded/

Optional
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/date-exclusion-wordpress-plugin/

Misc. site requirements
• Header background image must be a single image. Logo will be transparent .png that sits on top.
• I have no preference for backgrounds etc. outside the DIV that holds all of the WP content– but I may need to modify this myself later.
• All content pages must have breadcrumbs.


Additional files submitted:
brief_docs.zip