National Food Hygiene Ratings website
Scores On The Doors is a national public information service where you can find the official local authority hygiene ratings for food businesses. It's provides a clear rating of a businesses rating. The application provides numerous behind the scenes reports and also a SOAP interface for other applications to link into the data.
We inherited the code base from the previous development company and provide telephone support, ongoing maintenance and implementation and suggestion of new functionality as required.
We have undertaken significant behind the scenes enhancements to the code base - not limited to: security improvements, search engine and performance optimisations, automated unit tests to stop future regressions in the code base and a rearchitecture of the code base to help make future development faster.
Current developments include addition of RSS feeds, Enhanced reporting facilities, Refactoring of the backend database and iPhone application development
Technologies used: PHP5, Zend Framework, Smarty, Propel, MySQL, SOAP, Google Maps, Iphone App development
Bespoke PHP Training
We were approached by prominent London training company and asked to develop and deliver training materials covering the Zend Framework (including customisations) specific to the customer in question (a leading broadcasting and internet facing corporation). We created three training courses (a three day PHP refresher for non-PHP programmers, a three day introduction into their technology stack and the Zend Framework and finally a two day advanced course covering issues such as scalability, debugging, profiling and monitoring). The courses are intended to be given to up to 300 developers within the UK.
Technologies covered: PHP5, Zend Framework, In-house extensions to the Zend Framework
Mobile E-commerce application
Working as an additional development team for a popular mobile content company, Pale Purple produced a mobile web site for the selection and downloading of mobile content such as ringtones, wallpapers and games.
Technologies used: PHP5, Zend Framework and MySQL.
Housing Association - Content Management System
Working for a leading national communications agency, we updated a proprietary CMS based website (PHP5, XML, XSL, MySQL, Javascript) to meet requirements (theming and functionality changes). We were provided with graphical designs for the individual pages. After successful completion of the first project, we worked on further enhancements to the site - involving reuse of the site's data for a different audience.
Technologies used: PHP5, XML, XSL, CSS, MySQL, Javascript
Mobile Ringtones application
Working as an outsourced development team, Pale Purple produced ringtones e-commerce mobile site (i.e. browsing, purchasing, downloading and associated administrative backend). This project made heavy use of the Zend Framework and technologies like memcached.
Technologies used: PHP5, Zend Framework, Memcached, MySQL
Web based chat application
Contact a Family is a charity providing information for families about rare syndromes and disorders. They produce a directory of conditions, as well as publishing a paper based reference. Pale Purple produced a web based chat application with appropriate moderation, logging and authorisation which was designed to be easy to use and integrate with their existing site and theme.
Technologies used: PHP5, Javascript, CSS, MySQL
CMS Integration
Another project for Contact a Family involved creation of a directory site to store details on conditions. This involved creation of custom CMS module to fit in with the existing web architecture. The solution allows Contact A Family to publish condition overviews to the public, and maintain an authoritative directory for subscribers where outside experts can be assigned to particular conditions and be responsible for content review. Each condition consists of multiple pages with integrated forums and feedback forms.
Technologies used: PHP5, ExponentCMS, Javascript, CSS
Event Management System
Glasgows is one of the UKs largest in-house suppliers of conference & event services. Based in Preston, they organise and run a number of high profile events.
In March 2006, Pale Purple were recommended, via an existing customer, to Glasgows.
Glasgows required the capability for delegates to register for events, securely, online. They also wished to replace their aging thick-client internal application which caused extensive management and maintenance issues.
Glasgows were able to provide some development capability in house, mainly limited to HTML, CSS but lacked experience at developing large PHP based applications. They had already worked on a requirements specification with appropriate mock screenshots, and had a first draft at a database structure which they felt would encapsulate the necessary data across all events.
Working in association with Glasgows, Pale Purple produced an initial prototype and then progressed into producing the actual application. Working on a flexible, hours-spent basis, combined with regular meetings and communication, the application went live in October 2007.
Glasgows decided on the flexible development approach as it allowed for them to change requirements as the project progressed, with minor overhead. To date it has handled approximately 35,000 delegates.
E-commerce
no added sugar design and sell baby and childrens clothing. Pale Purple provide ongoing development, support (systems administration) and maintenance for their website. Recent developments include creation of a wholesale site, search engine optimisation and significant performance enhancements to help the site cope with a deluge of customers in the periodic sales
Technologies used: Propel, PHP5, Zend Framework (specifically: Zend_Cache), PostgreSQL
Related articles: Blog post - application performance enhancement
Transport tracking application
The Lloyd Fraser group is a third party logistics provider, who deliver supply chain solutions that reduce costs, improve control, and speed the movement of products, providing information about distribution, logistics and warehousing.
Pale Purple were approached by Lloyd Fraser to produce a transport tracking application for use with returned goods - something that fell outside the capability of their existing application.
Working through a number of fixed price phases, Pale Purple produced and host a web application with granular access control, that maps onto their business.
The application went live in early 2007 and is currently still in regular use
Email marketing application
Ezemail provide email marketing solutions. Pale Purple provides support, ongoing maintenance and new feature additions (e.g. remote API - SOAP/XMLRPC and suppression support) to the systems. In 2008, we also deployed a new server cluster in the UK and migrated the application to PHP5 and to support unicode. Setup and deployment was undertaken on RedHat Enterprise Linux, along with deployment and support of PowerMTA.
Technologies used: RedHat Enterprise Linux, PHP4/5, MySQL, PowerMTA
Data Warehousing
Pale Purple worked with the PDSA to produce a data consolidation system allowing for easy interrogation of data from the various distributed siloed databases at each pet hospital. To date the system has currently been running for over three years.
Technologies used: Python, PHP, Smarty, MySQL
