The plan was ambitious: create a site where content provides the basis for navigation, present that content in a way that highlights Ham’s style and capabilities, and do it without using Flash.

We chose to present our work without using Flash because we wanted to provide users an experience available on any device, in any standards-compliant browser. We also felt that our Flash work speaks for itself, and a standards-based site provided a prefect “canvas” for our Flash and non-Flash work alike.

We had originally intended to create a Content Management System from scratch, tightly linked to our specific needs. This proved challenging as the project was self-promotional and thus non-billable to a client. After realizing the futility of building a custom CMS the dev team began researching existing open-source CMS systems, finally deciding to use WordPress. The WordPress system allowed the greatest stability and flexibility with a massive community of developers and library of plugins.

The site’s navigation system is by no means revolutionary, but ingenieus in it’s simplicity. The underlying concept is to allow the user to determine their path, by providing them with content related to each choice they make. We accomplished this by treating each blog post, portfolio piece, image, video and client as a separate piece of content with an associated set of descriptive tags. While the user is viewing a single piece of content, the site creates a navigation system dynamically by displaying the pieces of content most relevant to what they are viewing.

As the development team created the structure and logic of the tag-based navigation system, the design team got to work on creating a theme using CSS and JavaScript magic. The end result was an experience that is fluid, functional and usable on any device. [View Online]