I’ve enjoyed creating or working on a number of websites over the years, but I am more of a web developer than a designer, so I’ve been glad as websites have gradually moved from the Current section to the Archive over the last few years as they’ve been replaced.
My choice of CMS was often Joomla! and I wrote quite a few modules, components and plugins for use with Joomla. One day I might tidy these extensions up and put them here so they can be used more widely. I actually now would prefer a static site—one day I’ll write a blog post about how this site is now built.
Current
These websites still exist; most of them now have their content edited by their owners. Some of them are no longer in my control at all.
DHMidi-Organs
https://www.midi-organs.euThis site was created in 2012, and was my first online shop, and first multi-lingual website.
Hound of Heaven Hymns
https://www.houndofheaven.co.ukThis website, for the hymns of my former Precentor, Neil Thompson, was created by Neil in Google Pages. Unfortunately, Google didn’t give a very easy way of adding hymns and creating a hymn list or a search page. So I took the existing design and added this functionality to a new PHP website, which has a very simple backend admin section to allow Neil to add hymns to as many categories as he wants.
Rochester Choral Society
https://www.rochesterchoral.co.uk I was asked to take on the RCS website in 2009. I created three design options, we went for a fourth one, which was basically the shape of one of the designs and the colour of another. The website was built with Joomla! 1.5, which allowed the RCS committee to edit the content, and build up a very comprehensive website with lots of details in the members-only section. By 2010 I had created a simple Joomla component which sold tickets through PayPal. In 2012-13, this was rebuilt to work with the latest version of Joomla! and introduce an optional donation page. (more)
Wood Supplies
https://www.wood-supplies.comThis is an ultra-simple website with a very plain black and white design, which I created in January 2003. Wood Supplies is a small company in Croydon which specialises in small-scale wood fittings, ideal for dolls houses. Aside from minor changes, and the annual catalogue update, not much has been changed here for a while, and the site is without a CMS.
Daniel Soper
https://www.dansoper.co.ukApart from a little play with a Geocities page in 1999, my first website (initially only at djsoper.co.uk) was created in April 2000. This had a music background which I took from somewhere and contained some “clever” Javascript which said “Good Evening” if it was evening and “Good Morning”! There was also a page for my repertoire list. In 2002 I created a new, blue, website, which included an organ-stop image, from Chelmsford Cathedral. There was a guest book, but little else. By 2005 this had become tired so I stripped it of all content, but left it there. I began work on a bold orange and green design, which never went live. (more)In 2009 I decided enough was enough and took the blue website down, putting the yellow holding page up, promising a new website within the year. And 4 years later, in 2013, that new website went live! This was my first responsive design. Over the years since then, the site has been gradually fiddled with, e.g. moving from Joomla! to 11ty, adding a blog and improving accessibility.
Archive
Websites that no longer exist. I’ve detailed them here mainly for the sake of my memory.
CasualtyClinic
I did a bit of work for this website in 2002, mostly removing <font> tags and adding CSS.
Cathedral Scholars
Durham Cathedral’s Choral Scholars form the “Cathedral Scholars” to perform male-voice close-harmony music. I created this website in 2003-4.
Chelmsford Singers
I redesigned the Chelmsford Singers website in February 2003. Originally pink, I updated it to a blue arch in October 2004. The website was replaced in 2006. (more)
Corpus May Ball
I helped on the web team which created the May Ball 2005 website.
Croydon Parish Church and CPC Music
During my time at CPC (1999-2001), I made a small website for the music department, with details of the organ, staff and choirs, using the altar frontal as a background. At the same time I created a “choir site” for choir members only, which provided the latest choir diary and allowed people to let us know if they were absent. Although this wasn’t heavily used, it was clearly the start in my mind of the Choir Admin project (see here). The church itself had its own website, which I was asked to replace with a new site in August 2005. For this website I created a short panoramic tour, with three locations. Unfortunately I never managed to get all the pillars straight... When the church became Croydon Minster, they got a new snazzy site. (more)
Dartford Parish Church
DPC website had recently been redesigned when I got involved. The design was great, but the site was made up of static pages which nobody could edit. My task, in 2011, was to convert the newly-completed website from static html pages to a Joomla! site so that it was easier to update.
Martin How
I created a simple template for Martin’s website, which was a signpost webpage to the Semitone Publications shop. Martin’s music is now available from the RSCM shop. (more)
Medway Festival
I was on the committee for the Medway Festival of Music, Speech and Drama from March 2009 until I left Rochester in November 2011. The previous website was difficult to edit by the current committee so I was charged with the task of building a new site. Because of limitations with the hosting, it had to be without a database, so I built a website using CMSimple. The organisation renamed to Rochester and North Kent Music and Drama Festival in 2014/5 and has a new website (which has the sameish header as the one I designed). (more)
Rochester Cathedral
As part of the Cathedral’s HLF project which started in 2008, the Cathedral was given a new brand identity, with new logos and colours. Part of my job at the time was looking after the website, and I had long-term plans to change the website from a Macromedia Contribute setup, with Classic ASP pages, to a Joomla! setup. This was a massive task, which I initially did with the old design retained (pictured below); then I began working on the new design, which was launched in August 2011. There were many custom-built modules and components behind this website to allow as much automatic thinking as possible. The website had the Cathedral’s fonts embedded, and a lot of images (many of which were taken as part of the HLF project). The Virtual Tour on this website was also created by me as a Summer Project involving many many photographs, a tripod, and many hours with my old laptop. The site was replaced in 2018. (more)
Roger Sayer
Roger’s original website was created in 2007 and used a small home-made CMS, allowing Roger to edit most of the pages and all of his events. A special feature of the website was the header and footer graphics, which cycled randomly between 50 different pairs of music excerpts from Reger’s Fantasia and Fugue on B-A-C-H. The site was replaced in 2017. (more)
RSCM-EEL
The website for RSCM in Essex and East London launched in January 2003, as a way of replacing the mailings to the choirs of the diocese, which took up lots of time and money. The first website was monochrome, with Green text/images and a cream background. After a short while, I discovered a way of making the header logos smaller without making them more pixelated. By November 2003 I was already bored of the colour, so I introduced a few more. The design remained like that for the next 14 years. Developments over that time included a simple home-made CMS to allow much of the content of the website to be edited by others, and use of the R&OS PDF php library to automatically generate PDFs for the awards section and the events page. The site was replaced in 2017. (more)Interesting fact: the music excerpt hidden in the top banner of the current website is from my own Now the green blade riseth!
Save-en-ergy
I did a small amount of work tidying up a near-complete website for Energy & Environmental Systems Ltd.
Seahorse School of Swimming
I created Seahorse’s website in 2011. It included an under-water effect, with randomly-floating bubbles (created with Mootools, later updated to jQuery). The site was built with Joomla! and contained a custom-built module/component displaying a map for each of the lesson venues. The site was replaced in 2018. (more)
The Choristers
The Choristers was the touring name (in 2011 and 2012) of Dartford Parish Church Choir and Darford Boys’ Choir. This simple website was a single page, which was a web version of a poster (not designed by me). This was a simple exercise in responsive web design and embedded fonts which inspired my work on Rochester Cathedral’s site.
The Garland Singers
As a founder member and some-time organist and then director of this choir, I created a simple website in 2003. I allowed it to get out of date far too often, so eventually took it down completely. The choir has now renamed and is here. (more)
Wisdom For All / The Wisdom Trust
Between 2003 and 2006 I worked on this website with my uncle; there was quite a lot of PHP code to calculate complicated reports in the members’ section. The site has been redesigned since, and most (if not all) of the code has been replaced.
This site was created in 2012, and was my first online shop, and first multi-lingual website.
This website, for the hymns of my former Precentor, Neil Thompson, was created by Neil in Google Pages. Unfortunately, Google didn’t give a very easy way of adding hymns and creating a hymn list or a search page. So I took the existing design and added this functionality to a new PHP website, which has a very simple backend admin section to allow Neil to add hymns to as many categories as he wants.
I was asked to take on the RCS website in 2009. I created three design options, we went for a fourth one, which was basically the shape of one of the designs and the colour of another. The website was built with Joomla! 1.5, which allowed the RCS committee to edit the content, and build up a very comprehensive website with lots of details in the members-only section. By 2010 I had created a simple Joomla component which sold tickets through PayPal. In 2012-13, this was rebuilt to work with the latest version of Joomla! and introduce an optional donation page. (more)
This is an ultra-simple website with a very plain black and white design, which I created in January 2003. Wood Supplies is a small company in Croydon which specialises in small-scale wood fittings, ideal for dolls houses. Aside from minor changes, and the annual catalogue update, not much has been changed here for a while, and the site is without a CMS.
Apart from a little play with a Geocities page in 1999, my first website (initially only at djsoper.co.uk) was created in April 2000. This had a music background which I took from somewhere and contained some “clever” Javascript which said “Good Evening” if it was evening and “Good Morning”! There was also a page for my repertoire list. In 2002 I created a new, blue, website, which included an organ-stop image, from Chelmsford Cathedral. There was a guest book, but little else. By 2005 this had become tired so I stripped it of all content, but left it there. I began work on a bold orange and green design, which never went live. (more)
