Jon Lebensold » Bahá’í

Changing Times Bahá’í Conference Website Launched – Making Zend, WordPress and Flickr Friends

jon — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:56:24 +0000

I had the opportunity to work with a on a website for an international Bahá'í youth conference.

From a technical perspective, the website was pretty trivial, however I was able to experiment with the Zend Framework's Flickr web service implementation. Caching the images and resizing them was a must since Flickr doesn't offer great options with the image presets (unless you ask people to upload at a special resolution... which is no fun!)

Building an AJAX slideshow that's driven off of Flickr meant I didn't have to write any upload-image code for the client. Furthermore, they can use Flickr pools during the conference to create an ever-up-to date gallery.

I'll be releasing this as a WordPress plugin that's a little more user friendly, however if you're doing something similar and need a hand, leave a comment and I'll send you what I wrote.

Website for the Baha’i International Community updated

jon — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:03:39 +0000

A good friend of mine here was part of a team that just launched the new website for the Bahá'í International Community. I've had the opportunity to see the website designs progress over the last few months. What I find of particular interest is the use of breadcrumbs before any sort of title at the top and the right-hand navigation tool. I really like how the breadcrumbs are the first thing you see in the top left, this design is divergent from the notion of putting the banner at the top of a web page, and yet I find that it works well to guide the user's navigational experience. The menu works beautifully since it's adaptable to their other pages as well.

For example, the media page has a collapsable version of the same menu on the top right, while still maintaining consistency with the network of sites. I'd say this is one of the best used versions of the Accordian UI design pattern I've seen.

ISD Picnic

jon — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:38:44 +0000

The department that I work in at the Baha'i World Centre had a Baha'i new years, Naw-Ruz, picnic this past weekend. It was a beautiful Friday afternoon spent in Haifa forest. Between eating I still find it incredible how lush the Israeli countryside is. I've put up some photos of the day on my Flickr

Twin Bahá’í Holy Days

jon — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:18:59 +0000

Today and tomorrow are two Bahá'í holy days that fall under the lunar calendar. The commemoration for the birth of the Báb, forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh was today. It was celebrated with a selection of writings in Persian, English and Arabic. A choir performed a series of short prayers and then we circumambulated the resting place of the Báb. Holy days here are celebrated with such dignity, simplicity and beauty.