Joslex Studios | Maryland Website Design

The Sheriff of Queen Anne’s County is very proactive in using the world of social media to communicate to the public while using its networking power to generate leads for pending cases. With that effort having proven successful, it was time to make their website an additional tool in their arsenal.

The new website has a lot of features, many of which we custom built to work in our platform of choice, WordPress. I will highlight those features and show a few images but I encourage you to visit the site itself to see all it has to offer. Because of the names and information involved on their site, I’m hesitant to post too many images as these images won’t be updated in keeping with their website updates. You’ll note that I have blurred out names and photos of individuals in these screenshots, for that reason.

Home page:

Perhaps the most complex part of the website was building the database and infrastructure for the “Most Wanted” section. This section presents information on individuals who are wanted for a variety of reasons. We needed to create an interface for the staff at the sheriff’s office to keep that information up to date, as well as give the website visitor a way to view and sort through that information. We supplied a number of filters to allow users to sort or narrow down the database. I’m not going to show you a screen shot of that page as it contains photos and names of many individuals but you can visit that page on your own to see how it works.

The Sheriff’s Office also issues frequent press releases so we included a Press Release section so that those press releases could be posted directly on the website. They also have a list of email subscribers who wish to receive those press releases. To accommodate this, we built a custom subscription system to manage those email subscribers. There are two lists; Press Release Subscribers and Emergency Alert Subscribers. The Sheriff’s Office can filter both lists by zip code and by residential or business subscribers and then export those lists to be sure that their email is going to the appropriate audience.

We also created an Emergency Alert bar at the top of the page which appears whenever they issue an emergency alert (it is otherwise hidden):

There are several other ways that the Sheriff’s Office can communicate with the public through the website including:

• A Notices/Sheriff’s Sales page
• Photo Galleries
• Video
• Events Calendar

Here is an image of the Events Calendar:

This website is a perfect example of how one’s website can really become a tool. Leverage the power of WordPress and some custom code writing, we were able to create a site that will help keep the community safer and put criminals behind bars.

Visit queenannessheriff.org

If you’ve ever heard someone say, “I know a great little out of the way place”, they could very well have been speaking of Cantler’s. It’s off the beaten path, to be sure, but it remains an Annapolis icon where tourists and locals alike gather for an authentic crab house experience.

In redesigning their website, we wanted to capture the rustic and seafaring motif that one finds at Cantler’s:

Apart from re-designing the site from the ground up, we were tasked with adding some new features to the website. First, we built the site in WordPress which will allow the staff to keep it up to date on their own. They will now have a news feed using the blogging feature of WordPress to post news, press releases, photos, and event announcements.

Secondly, we were asked to incorporate the ability to sell gift cards and t-shirts on the website also.

Payments for both items are being handled by Paypal. Completed orders are stored in a database accessible from the WordPress admin as well as being emailed to the restaurant and the purchaser.

One of the challenges with the t-shirt order component is that Cantler’s does not have a regular set of t-shirt colors that they inventory. Their available shirt colors change all the time. So we had to create a way for the staff to easily manage the available shirt colors through the admin.

Creating a new color is easy:

In this past week that the site has been up and running, Cantler’s has sold gift cards to people all over the country. I’m not going to tell you how much they have sold, but I can tell you that in one week, their sales paid for 1/3 of their new website. Now, I can’t say whether these sales would have been made without the order form on the website, but I am certain that not all of them would have been. The addition of the simple, easy ordering process has certainly created a new revenue stream for the restaurant and certainly made the investment in a better web presence worthwhile.

Overview: Nautic Air™ manufacturer’s air purification systems for a wide variety of uses. Their product line is diverse and scalable which means that they have an air purification system for almost any situation or circumstance. With such a diverse product offering, the challenge immediately became how to effectively present the myriad of uses in a way that wouldn’t be chaotic or overwhelming.

Through our meetings with the client, it became evident that their products could be categorized to serve four markets: Residential, Commercial, Government, and Marine. Categorizing in this way gives the end user the opportunity to immediately find the information that is relative to their application.

Challenge number two was to take stacks of scientific data and present the efficacy of the products in a manner that was readable and user-friendly. We used a “layered” approach to allow the end user the ability to determine just how much technical information they want to encounter. The layers were organized like this: overview > technical specifications > scientific theory and data. Organizing the site in this manner means that users not interested in the science do not have to sort through it. But for you engineer types out there, the science is still available and right at your fingertips.

Home page:

Inside Page:

Visit the Nautic Air™ website

Recently, we had the opportunity to custom create a website for renowned photographer Bob Madden. Mr. Madden spent more than 30 years as a photographer for National Geographic and his photographic endeavors include excursions to all seven continents.

Mr. Madden is a skilled designer himself, so he had a lot of input on the design as we progressed. The website serves as both a gallery and as a medium for fans and friends to follow along with Mr. Madden’s busy schedule.

Home Page:

Gallery Page:

Each image in the gallery can be purchased using a custom e-commerce solution that we developed:

We also included a WordPress based blog so Mr. Madden could post of his travels, workshops, and assignments:

Link to site: bobmadden.com

Overview: All-Brite Services has been cleaning carpets for a long, long time. However, they had almost zero website presence previously so in creating their website we were pretty much starting from scratch. The only requirement they gave us was that they wanted to incorporate an image of a baby in the site as it appeals to their target market clientele.

Design: The goal of the design was to create a new website presence that would present their varied services, service areas, and specials and promotions. Secondarily, it would provide valuable information in the form of helpful articles.

Home Page:

We also created a simple content management system so the client could update their specials and promotions:

Visit allbritecarpetcleaningmd.com