Last week we launched the Digital Archives website here at EBSCO Marketing. I had been working on this site for a while and am pretty excited about the result. This was my first site I built using the new HTML 5 mark up. HTML 5 is pretty amazing and while the browser support for all the functionality is not quite yet there, it makes sense to start to use the new tagging and java-script to get used to programming this way. The result for this site was awesome – the css was way simplier and I found that the cross browser coompatiablity was pretty high (a few IE 7 tweaks of course but whatcha going to do?).
The Archives site was also built entirely in Expression Engine. Some key features include the home page Carousel (which we should credit the Image Flow plug-in here), Contextual right side navigation (changes depending the page you are on), drop-down navigation, and Lightbox for the product samples. Using expression engine allows us to easily separate the content out from the design allowing our copywriters to tweak the copy on their own. The templating system in ee is great as you can code right within the CMS and have the template make decisions based on the content and what page you are on. Overall this site is a winner.
