moortor design - Quality design for the web and print

Announcing that the Beta of Climbhub is now live…

A screenshot of the Climbhub web application

Climbhub is an online climbing guidebook and social network. It’s a complex web application written in Ruby on Rails and was written from the ground up by myself. It’s very much an early stage beta, but is fully functional – go ahead and sign up if you’re a climber… it’s completely free to join and use and you never know, you just might find out about new first ascents in your area (although at the moment, it’s very much centred around the climbing in South East Cornwall).

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I’ve made two recent, weekend trips to North Wales. One at the beginning of December and one at the beginning of January. The reason for my keen motivation to undertake these exhausting weekends on such a regular basis, is the fantastic winter conditions the country is experiencing this winter! When opportunities like these come along, I find it hard to resist the urge to make the most of them.

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I have recently completed the development and design of an ecommerce site for Country Lane Hampers – an online hamper retail site.

Work on this site involved the complete development and design of an ecommerce application with back-end CMS, stock and order management, credit card processing and fulfillment. As a developer / designer working alone, such a large task can only be completed thanks to application frameworks. I used the Substruct engine on the Ruby on Rails web application platform. For more information on the open source Ruby on Rails framework and how it can help your business, see my previous post on the subject or get in contact with me.

Visit the Country Lane Hampers website →

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I’ve just arrived back from 2 1/2 weeks in the Alps. Myself and my youngest brother trekked the Chamonix to Zermatt Walkers Haute Route. A 13/14 day trek from the French town of Chamonix at the foot of Mont Blanc; to Zermatt, the Swiss town at the foot of the Matterhorn.

We had a fantastic trip and made good time, with no serious incidents. The weather was the typical Alpine mix – sunshine, rain, snow and thunder and lightning; but on the whole was fairly amenable by Alpine trekking standards. We made some great friends and took away a whole host of brilliant experiences.

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Just got back from another weekend away to Wales. We weren’t sure until the last minute that we were going to go because the weather was looking marginal to say the least! It did turn out to be a mostly grey, drizzly weekend, but we had a cracking time none-the-less – a perfect example of just getting off your backside and doing it and having a great experience as a result!

We had a great couple of days that included climbing Moel Hebog, climbing at Tremadog and meeting Eric Jones, and climbing the Idwal Slabs and continuation wall.

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My preferred framework for developing web applications is Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails is a framework built on a set of conventions for database-backed web application development that are implemented using the Ruby programming language. As open source software, it does have the benefit of being free (as is PHP), meaning savings that can be passed on to clients. However, unlike PHP, the framework has been designed from the ground up to assist in the rapid implementation of complex applications with the maximum of ease.

As a developer who generally works alone, this means I’m able to offer development of much more involved sites than I otherwise would be able to undertake on my own, whilst passing on the cost benefit of hiring a single designer/developer.

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I am currently working on a site for Gill Goddard Hair. A modern hair and beauty salon in Totnes. Pop on over to www.moortor-design.co.uk/sites/ggh to take a look at how the site is coming along.

The site has been primarily design-led, it is after all a very style conscious industry. However, I have taken the opportunity to play with some ideas I have been having about improving navigation for the end-user.

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I’ve begun working with a fantastic illustrator called Andy Hunt. Andy is one of the guys responsible for creating Gordon the Gopher. For a quick look at some of Andy’s illustrations, head over to www.andyhunt.com. At the moment this is a holding page in lieu of some much more interesting work to come…

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I got back late last night from a weekend away in North Wales. As a keen climber / mountaineer, myself and a few like-minded friends have taken to regular weekend jaunts to North Wales – leaving on a Friday night after work and getting back Sunday evening. Continue Reading »

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… and hello, to the new moortor design weblog. This is the first of (hopefully) many posts to keep you up to date with the latest news and goings on of myself and the design work that I get up to. I will also keep it updated with interesting tid-bits from the industry that I think might be of use to you or your business if you are thinking of comissioning some work on a website or graphics project.

From time to time, I may also drop in the odd post about other things I get up to that might be of interest to anybody thinking of working with me. It’s always a good idea to know a little bit about the character of a person you might be working closely with!

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