Arthur McLean

Background

Symbol Technologies worked with the interactive agency FG Squared to handle their web site and marketing needs. FG Squared didn't have internal web development staff at the time and outsourced these functions to other companies as needed. Symbol had decided to completely revamp their web presence, and it's IT department had mandated XML as the data source in order to afford interoperability with other architectures. FG Squared turned to Tom Myer of Triple Dog Dare Media, an expert in XML and web development. Triple Dog Dare Media, in turn, hired me to be the lead developer on the project.

The project was long and arduous, but developed successfully based on the requirements given by Symbol's IT department.

Fast forward a year later, and Symbol was ready for a major face lift on the site.

Challenge

The XML solution required users to edit site content in structured XML files that was then translated to HTML on the fly (XSLT). Users hated editing XML, and therefore didn't. They sent all their content changes and additions to FG Squared to handle for them. Moreover, the interoperability the IT department had wanted the XML for had never come to pass, and this requirement was dropped. Part of the redesign effort was aimed at moving the content out of XML and into a typical CMS structure.

The site had hundreds of URL's that were in use all across the Internet (search engines, vendors, documentation, third party sites, etc...), and these had to all continue to work and get to the correct content.

Solution

Live Oak Interactive was hired by FG Squared to handle the redesign effort. Very shortly thereafter I applied to and was hired by Live Oak, not knowing that I would get to work on the Symbol Technologies site a second time.

Live Oak hired three new developers, and we set to work evaluating MVC Frameworks and developing a new database structure to house all the data. Given my past experience with the XML data structure of the Symbol web site I was given the responsibility to import all the old content into the new database structure.

We worked closely with FG Squared to ensure that what Symbol liked from the old site persisted to the new, and to implement the new features and functions that it wanted to achieve as part of the redesign.