Go-Live Date: May 26, 2009 (Approximate)
Project Overview
Funeralwise offers a funeral planning tool to allow anyone to fully plan their funeral by making selections, viewing costs, etc.
Front End Description
I had created a Drupal theme for this client previously and used that as a starting place for this project. The client needed several views (application, admin, reporting, data entry, print, etc) and we built a template system to make this as easy as possible. (This is quite a large and complicated application and ended up having well over 100 views). For the most part – since this application is geared more towards older viewers – we tried to keep everything as clean as possible.
Back End Description
After debating on what to use for this rather large application (hundreds of data entry fields) – we decided on using a custom PHP framework which allowed us to have a templating system, clean URLs, the ability to easily store and retrieve data without the hassle of managing hundreds of columns, as well as a lot of jQuery functionality to reduce page refreshes and to increase functionality. Our focus was on simplicity and reusability. There are four main components of this project: data collection form, user management, product inventory, and reporting. Each component by itself is fully functional and allows the users and administrators easy access and manipulate the data needed.
Lessons Learned/Random Thoughts
With hundreds of data entry fields and over one hundred views, this application had to be well thought out before the first line of code was ever written. Several phone calls, documentation from the client, test plans, and proposed solutions were discussed well before anything took shape. Great planning ahead of time made something this large possible.