Codeworks are an organisation based in the UK who work with technologists, venture capitalists, economic developers, visionaries and entrepreneurs in the development and creation of digital companies.

They approached us to transform their visually striking design for the upcoming digital DIBI conference into an XHTML/CSS compliant WordPress site. Apart from the typical integration tasks there were a handful of special features they wanted to try and push forward:

• Countdown to the Big Day: We were asked if we would be able to create a countdown timer showing the number of weeks, days, hours and minutes left to go before the DIBI conference begins on April 28th 2010. We came up with a solution using Javascript which updates on the page without the need to refresh.
• Smooth Animated Buttons: Another feature that was requested was to make a number of submit buttons and links animate. Simple jQuery was used to deliver a smooth transition on the buttons.
• Newsletter Signup and Mailing List Integration: We were asked to develop a newsletter signup form which upon successful submission would dissolve and show a “thank you” message to the user. We also integrated the signup form with the Codeworks mailing list software to automatically add names and email addresses.
• Sexy Web Fonts!: Codeworks didn’t want to settle for the typical standard web fonts. We used CSS font-face and drop-shadow to enhance fonts across the site and deliver more of an impact.
• Dynamic Twitter Feed: Codeworks wanted to be able to highlight the Twitter discussions regarding DIBI throughout the site. We integrated twitter.com’s own TWTR widget which elegantly displays and animates the feed live to the user.
• Back to the Top: Hidden away in the footer of the site is a nifty little “back-to-top” button for when you’ve read your way down to the bottom of the page. Clicking it will scroll you up gently rather than the jump action often seen on other sites.

At the request of the client, the site was turned around quickly and since its launch has been a huge success – featuring on many of the top website design review sites including http://hotcssdesign.com/, http://www.mostinspired.com/, http://cssmania.com/ and http://www.designfridge.co.uk/.