MoBass Fishin' is one of the exciting new projects in the works here at dotDigital Studios. This project came to us from our friend at LanArtist, Russ McBurney and his friend and fishing partner Greg. We were approached to create a site that was attractive and modern looking site that would appeal to a tournament and casual fisherman. The task also includes creating a powerful set of features both for the sites visitors and the sites administrator.

Task

This site will incorporate a sensitivity to design and aesthetic appeal to make the site visitor feel comfortable and at ease. Our client want the website visitor to not only enjoy the content and features, but the look as well.

dotDigital Studios is building a custom content management system (CMS), Bonfire™, to control all content, member administration, blogs, and classifieds. Bonfire™ will allow the client complete control over the site without having to be a "code-head" :). So this project covers lots of services that we offer here at dotDigital Studios; website design, web applications, marketing, logo, and print design.

Production

We can only share bits of information on this project while it's still in production, but what we can show will give you a bit of insight as to how dotDigital Studios approaches such projects.

In Figure 1 above you will see a wireframe to suggest the layout of the website. The wireframe is done first, before colors and other aesthetics are decided upon. That is done so that the client and and the Studio can focus on where "things" go without the distraction of design. It is easier in this stage to change where elements go as opposed to having designed numerous graphic assets and then having to recreate them to fit a different layout if the client were to change their mind.

Figures 2 through 4 below show a few of the progressions of the layout to concept. Once the layout has been decide upon we then start working out the design, art and graphics. Figure 4 is just one example of "Concept" art for the MoBass Fishin project. Figure 5 is what the design the client ultimately chose.

Features

Here are a few of the features we are developing for this project.

• A member portal
• Social site features
• Powerful lake information aggregate
• Advertising tool sets
• Site administration tools
• Classifieds system
• Articles system
• Video streaming system
• Blog system
• RSS feed system

Currently, we are in heavy feature code development and bug stomping - getting out those little critters that just want to be a pest. However, ALL part of the process of developing such a powerful site. This project soft launch will be within a few weeks. Stay tuned.