Objective
Stand-alone Application
(Link: http://k9-olympics.police.uconn.edu/)
Technologies Used
- PHP (Server-side)
- JavaScript, HTML, and CSS (Client-side)
- 3rd Party Libraries
- jQuery v1.9.1
- jQuery UI v1.8.18 - Custom
- jQuery Fancybox v1.3.4
Aurora (WordPress) Site
(Pre-Go Live Link: http://draft.k9-olympics.police.uconn.edu/ Post-Go Live link: http://k9-olympics.police.uconn.edu/)
Technologies Used
- HTML, and (minimal) CSS
Design Decisions
Anniversary and Event Date Images
In order to keep the maintenance of the site as simple as possible, the following two images were removed:
Name | Image | Purpose | Reason for removal |
---|---|---|---|
Anniversary | Signify the (number of) year the K-9 Olympics has entered | Original image is in PSD format; therefore, updating it requires a software that can that format. There is another format the the image has been converted to, XCF (eXperimental Computing Facility) which is specific to the GIMP image editor. | |
Event Calendar Date | Show date of the K-9 Olympics | Same as the above |
However, editing such files is not a challenge, the two images are attached to this page.
As for placement, below is an example of adding them to the "Header Content" (WordPress Admin → Appearance → Widgets).
W/o Anniversary / Event Calendar | W/ Note: Adding *something* to the header will make the search bar disappear! |
---|---|
Anniversary: Image Class: alignright |
Replacing Bing Maps
Yet another decision was to use Google Maps instead of Bing Maps, simply because Aurora does not support iframe from Bing.com. Example page created on May 5th, 2021 shows the iframe not rendering the map:
Photos Page
Only years 2015 & 2013 are linked directly to Flickr; the rest of the years were non-existent even on the old stand-alone K-9 Olympics site, as shown below:
Future Improvements
- Currently, the application is a PDF form which a prospective participant must fill-out and email Ofc. Rhodes with the form attached. This should be improved by leveraging Aurora's Gravity Forms!
- The entire K-9 Olympics team (organizers) make heavy use of Facebook for marketing, communicating, posting event photos etc. Aurora has Facebook Embed plugin which can be used to embed posts and videos. Working with the customer would be recommended to see what further additions to the site can / need to be made.