Big Orange Contest
University of Tennessee’s fans are dedicated to say the least. And the athletic department loves its fans. Originally the video contest idea was incorporated into UTSports TV site, however the success of the first contest warranted a brand new dedicated site. UT called on me to create a new site specific to the needs of running the various contests.
The site runs on a rails backend hosted on heroku, with some basic HTML5 and clever javascript on the front end. I was responsible for all development and design on the project.
- A flexible layout was used in order to fit future unknown content and fit different resolutions. Media queries are used to completely change the layout at smaller resolutions
- Flowplayer was the choice for the player as with UTSports.tv, voting is all handled via ajax and a few layers of protection to curb cheating.
- The submissions list is all directly tied to the player, playing pausing and switching videos is all handled without a single reload.
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Built On Rails
From what I learned in the first contest I knew the site needed a custom backend. Ruby on Rails was the easy choice for me for fast development and easy hosting/scaling through Heroku. Management is now made much easier with a custom tailored admin area, a huge improvement on the previous WordPress implementation.
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Being Flexible
With UT, the visitor base has a wide variety of technical specs. So right away I knew the site needed to be flexible. I also used media queries to create a low res version of the site enabling everyone to have a good experience on the site.