Site Description
Steep Rock Arts Association is a program designed to provide emerging visual artists and curators with time, space and professional guidance to explore their work in a supportive, thriving, artistic environment.
Residencies are awarded competitively, at no cost, to national and international emerging artists. Applicants are evaluated by a panel that includes a variety of professionals in the art field. Those selected will be awarded an eight week Residency. Each artist will receive a $10,000 stipend to cover the cost of materials and transportation.
Source: http://www.steeprockarts.org/about
Development Overview
Steep Rock Arts Association contacted me to help improve their website. Overall it had the look they wanted, but there were a few problems that needed to be addressed. The most severe of which was the fact it wasn't getting a lot of hits from search engines. After looking over the source code, it was apparent what a big part of the problem was: the pages were all just image files. There was no way for Google or any other search engine to crawl the data. Going on the site's current look and feel, I proceeded to do a complete redevelopment from scratch, being very mindful of how my approach would affect the site's SEO.
The steeprockarts.org website is now powered by the Zend Framework. This was done so as to future-proof it; making various improvements and updates, both big and small, easier to complete. Also greatly improved was the implementation of the photo tour gallery as well as the trustee biographies, giving the site a much cleaner look and feel. The artist application process prior to my involvement required applicants to download a PDF, fill it out by hand, and mail it in. I developed a web form and PHP script to completely automate that process. New applications are stored in a MySQL database. A PHP script then grabs this data, parses it, and creates a different PDF file for each application. The PDF files are then all zipped together in one ZIP file which, at that point, is ready to be sent to Steep Rock Arts for their review.
Lastly, I created a Google Apps account in order to improve their e-mail system. Utilizing the Google API, a signup form was created, whereby those interested can sign up for the Steep Rock Arts mailing list. A person enters their e-mail, clicks the "Sign Up" button, and they're instantly on the list.
More improvements are continually in the works.
