F.A.Q.
SB3D provides custom software and one on one consulting to make your web site do things just the way you want. Creative problem solving using a variety of approaches. We offer hosting and backup services too. ···
Featured Software
Flexo
In the past our approach has been somewhere between using a framework and starting from scratch. Extensibility, efficient flow control and ability to adapt are key.
Our Flexo system is based on ProcessWire, a framework that's not an albatross.
QJAX employs an optimized loading strategy to accelerate both AJAX requests and traditional page loads. This makes it appropriate for applications ranging from simple forms to complex content management systems. QJAX applications can provide content to Drupal, often with performance advantages. The XF shopping cart can be used in QJAX. ···
The XF systemXF is an application framework for large and medium scale projects. A web application can be a complicated and dynamic thing but XF has the structure and tools to manage it. ···
Datarama Report GeneratorDatarama is a query-based report generator which can output HTML, PDF, RTF or XLS (spreadsheet file). It can also provide editing of specific data items. The user may supply parameters to guide the query. This is a really nice way to generate reports. ···
Automated Catalog Systems
If you sell things you probably have some kind of computerized system to keep track of inventory. We might be able to interface to that and automatically generate online catalog listings. We did this for a bookstore and eliminated hours of manual content creation. The online store is kept up to date automatically.
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A bookstore with 500 categories, a visual database of 5000 china patterns, thousands of antiques cataloged for an auction house. These applications built by SB3D take advantage of some common infrastructure but each implementation is unique, the result of close consultation with the client and incremental improvement.
- Multi-level category navigation system
- Search engine friendly URLs
- Images resized to suit your layout, upload in bulk or interactively.
- Search simply or with multiple parameter form
- Can be part of a complete e-commerce system
- Includes Smarty template system
- Selective caching for fast response
Calendar Driven Content
Pook and Pook is a busy auction house. We were already generating their auction listings but putting together the additional promotional pages and navigation for each new auction was a tedious task for their webmaster. Now they set them up in advance, with dates, and the site transforms automatically.
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"Thanks a million! ...much easier and less tedious overall at this point!"
Another client has a site with a repeating three year cycle of content which changes on the Sunday before the third Monday of each month at noon GMT.
For systems like these we collaborate with you to design an administrative interface where you can setup and manage these operations in a way that makes sense for your organization.
Controlling Access
Many sites have a need to restrict access to certain content. This could involve a login system, specially encoded links sent out by email, a portal only available to people on your intranet, etc. There are many different ways we can help you with this.
Shopping
Instead of a one size fits all approach our system is designed to be extended. Different kinds of products can have their own ways of being presented in the catalog and added to the shopping cart. They can have separate shipping, handling, discounts etc. There's a great deal of flexibility for handling items where choices are necessary (size, finish, options, etc.).
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One lesson we learned early on is that you can't anticipate everything a client could ever want. Our system is designed as a flexible framework providing the infrastructure to support things we haven't even thought of yet.
- Advanced catalog system works with your product data.
- Full featured Shopping Cart system.
- Interface to various payment processors.
- Custom order export for integration with your system.
- Lots of opportunities to make things work exactly they way you want!
Very Large Images
We can have your site automatically convert really big image files into small tiles for use with the Zoomify image viewer. Here's a 4000x2170 NASA image.
Interfaces to Web Services
One client uses the SurveyGizmo online survey tool. It's just right for them but they needed to generate summaries in a way that was beyond the range of options provided. We took care of it and now generate dozens of PDF reports for them each month. We love a good API.
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Conversions
Sometimes you have perfectly useful data in a file or database but it's not the right format for the task at hand. Maybe we can help.
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Translation service — Linguasoft needed to translate 223 Java properties files; simple text files with UNIX line endings. There were several directories of these files and they needed them as RTF files. I automated the task, including replicating the directory structure, and saved them a lot of mouse clicks!
Bookstore manager — The print catalog was being prepared and the person doing it wanted RTF files with categorized book descriptions. What to do?
I used Datarama to get the information from the database of the web site's catalog (another SB3D project). A custom query and template pull just the data they need, arrange it just the way they want it and Datarama outputs it as many pages of RTF data.
"Thank you, it's perfect. This is going to save us at least a week of work."
See:
Steve's column:
We offer some Rackspace Cloud hosting services. Get an affordable piece of the Cloud! ···
Offsite BackupsWe resell services from rsync.net and add some value. ···
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