F2 Joomla! Development

Created Wednesday, 06 January 2010 by Aaron Francis in F2 Joomla! Development

Our team is proud to announce the completion of another fantastic Joomla! project for a new client located in Melbourne, Australia, NewSat. In addition to the many unique design implementation requirements requiring custom template solutions, there was also a need to create a custom user authentication plug-in so that users could be authenticated against the billing system employed by the company, Smile from Inomial. Instead of registered users or customers being granted access to the NewSat site via Joomla's own user authentication system, customers are granted access via a remote look-up process that confirms that the person logging in is indeed an active customer of NewSat stored within the Smile billing system. This small project therefore provides an example of some of the interesting ways in which customers, having made their decision to use the Joomla! CMS as their website 'operating system', are seeking to integrate 3rd party and/or legacy systems.

For more information about this project, or how F2 can help you with your requirements, please contact us.

Created Tuesday, 05 January 2010 by Hayden Foote in F2 Joomla! Development

Work is progressing well on our F2 Mapper component for Joomla!, for which our developers recently implemented Google Maps integration via the Google Maps API.

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Created Wednesday, 10 December 2008 by Hayden Foote in F2 Joomla! Development

The bachkit™ (pronounced “batch-kit”) is an innovation in low impact premium modular living. Constructed in around 12 weeks, bachkit™ offers a diversity of home configurations giving you simple, low fuss and practical living without compromising on style. It’s unique design in glass and aluminium combines the freedom of indoor-outdoor living with the confidence of security when you lock up.

Another inspired design from Perth-based creative agency, BrainCELLS, and a similar joy for F2 staff to work on (as BrainCELLS' technology implementation partner) as the Intelligent Life design, another recent BrainCELLS-F2 collaboration.  You won't find those designs at Templatemonster.com!!

The bachkit™ website employs the standard set of 3rd party Joomla! CMS 'plug-ins' sourced from the Joomla! extensions directory, such as the advanced SWMenuPro menu management system, the XCloner automated Joomla! backup and restore component for peace of mind and data security, the powerful JCE or Joomla! Content Editor for content management simplicty and the SH404 component for search engine friendly URLs and security.

For more information regarding the design itself, please contact BrainCELLS on +61 8 9284 7010 of This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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Created Wednesday, 26 November 2008 by Hayden Foote in F2 Joomla! Development

The WA AIDS Council (WAAC), established in 1985, leads the Western Australian community in the provision of a wide range of services in the prevention of HIV, and the treatment and care of people living with HIV/AIDS. 2005 marks the 20th anniversary of the Western Australian AIDS Council and this year will see the continuing dedication to our vision and mission.

The F2 team were commissioned over 12 months ago to commence work on a range of WAAC websites, including the main WAAC website, Project X, Freedom Centre and Sex in Other Cities; all of which make use of a plethora or even 'veritable smorgasbord', if you will :-), of 3rd party Joomla! 'plug-ins' sourced from the Joomla! extensions directory. These include:

• The advanced SWMenuPro menu management system;
  
  
• The VirtueMart shopping cart system for online sale;
  
  
• YOOcarousel for homepage and internal content page headers, and for the randomisation of selected header images;
  
  
• DOCMan for document management, enabling documents to be loaded and presented in structured and defined ways;
  
  
• Fireboard for the provison of online discussion forums;
  
  
• JCal Pro for event listing and display;
  
  
• Mosets Tree Directory for directory listings;
  
  
• JCE for powerful content controls;

... and the list goes on.  We are also in the process of developing and implementing multi-site event management (Sellout) and survey management/data analysis (Shout Out) tools for the WAAC team, providing them with ongoing support and training services to better manage the delivery of their services across varying, target demographics. This multi-site approach is, we believe, unique to F2 and is evolving into what we have termed our 'Platfform' suite of business management and marketing applications.

It has been a real pleasure working with the WAAC team over the past year or so, and many of our staff have 'cut their teeth' so-to-speak working on WAAC-related projects and component implementations.  We therefore thank them for their belief, vision and committment; and we look forward to providing you with further case studies and reports on our activities with the WAAC team in the not-too-distant future.

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Created Wednesday, 26 November 2008 by Hayden Foote in F2 Joomla! Development

Intelligent Life was formed in 2008, by bringing together the resources of the developer and manufacturer of Gen III, the Advantage Air group, with the expertise of Rylex Australia, one of the foremost providers of larger ducted air-conditioning systems for WA homes.

The new Intelligent Life website was designed by leading Perth-based creative agency, BrainCELLS, who did a wonderful job of creating a presentation framework that is engaging to the eye and provides simple and quick access to information on the Intelligent Life range of air conditioning technologies via three decision points on the home page; i.e. 'Discover', 'Who We Are' and 'Contact Us', using CSS-based roll-overs.  The subtle and unobtrusive use of Flash animation within the menu items, as well as the overall colour scheme and layout, ensures that the site visitor's attention is immediately focused when the homepage loads. This project was a pleasure for our staff to work on and broke significantly from the stock-standard Joomla! templates that have become all too common-place now-a-days.

The F2 team was, of course, commissioned to implement the Intelligent Life website as BrainCELLS' technology partner, and the Joomla! content management system was of course our preferred CMS.  The Intelligent Life website website makes use of an array of 3rd party Joomla! 'plug-ins' sourced from the Joomla! extensions directory, including those that we have specialised in over the past 6 years or so (back to when Joomla! was called Mambo!), such as the advanced SWMenuPro menu management system, the XCloner automated Joomla! backup and restore component for peace of mind and data security, the powerful JCE or Joomla! Content Editor for content management simplicty and the SH404 component for search engine friendly URLs and security. We highly recommend these components.

For more information regarding the design itself, please contact BrainCELLS on +61 8 9284 7010 of This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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Created Wednesday, 26 November 2008 by Hayden Foote in F2 Joomla! Development

Founded in 1840 by Western Australia's first Surveyor General, John Septimus Roe, Sandalford Wines is one of Australia's oldest and largest, privately owned wineries. Located on the banks of the Swan River in the picturesque Swan Valley, a 25 minute drive from the Perth city centre, this custom-built facility offers a unique blend of tradition and innovation, showcasing a total wine experience to visitors and placing it at the forefront of wine tourism in Australia.

Having hosted some of the world's leading entertainers, and being in desperate need of a re-design for the old website that had served them faithfully over the last 4 or 5 years, Sandalford commissioned F2 to design a new website that more accurately portrayed Sandalford's unique array of wine tourism offerings and provided them with a web services framework that would scale-up to enable them to integrate advanced business management and marketing functionalities over time.  The brief from the Sandalford team was that the new website needed to be simple to understand, easy to navigate, should visually highlight the various aspects of Sandalford's tourism- and entertainment-related services, and enabled maximum, in-house content management over all aspects of their website's front-end presentation and functionality.

The Joomla! content management system was of course our natural choice, allowing an array of default content management functionalities as well as access to a growing wealth of 3rd party Joomla! extensions to manage additional online processes. Sandalford's new Joomla! website makes use of many of these excellent 3rd party 'plug-ins' sourced from the Joomla! extensions directory, including the advanced SWMenuPro menu management system, the VirtueMart shopping cart system for online sales and wine club specials management, and the YOOcarousel plug-in on the homepage and internal content page headers for the randomisation of selected images, enabling Sandalford to highlight events, promotions and new wine releases, as/when required. In addition, the Image Browser Component media gallery from the good folk at www.e-noise.com has been used to manage the display of images within the Photo Gallery section of the website, and this uses the 'lightbox' effect, enabling site visitors to flick through multiple images with ease within the same gallery without each image requiring a pop-up window.

Stage 1 of the Sandalford Wines website redevelopment is now complete and there are now many additional opportunities available to Sandalford staff for the in-house management of their entire website marketing effort.  Training and support from the F2 team is ongoing to Sandalford staff, as are additional Internet-marketing consultancy services that will enable Sandalford to realise and implement further marketing and promotional opportunities using a combination of proprietary F2 and open source Joomla!-based technologies.

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Created Tuesday, 11 November 2008 by Hayden Foote in F2 Joomla! Development

We're pleased to announce the release of our F2 Mapper component for the Joomla! content management system. F2 Mapper allows you to upload small marker images and associate them on a map or multiple maps (i.e. images) with a location and then select what to link through to. For example, you could link through to another website address (URL), another sub-map/image with greater detail, or a menu item; or no link at all. On the front-end your site visitors will see a tool tip pop-up over the marker on the map with information from the description field and then if they clicked on the marker they will be forwarded through to whatever has been selected as the destination. We will soon be modifying F2 Mapper to include a link through an individual Mosets Tree directory listings, in order to present the details of a particular Mosets Tree Directory entry/listing.

For more information and pricing, please contact us. (Please note that 10% of all F2 Mapper sales will be donated to the WA AIDS Council for whom the F2 Mapper component was developed).