James Signs, built as a custom Ruby on Rails CMS site

Newly launched is the web site of Toronto based http://www.James-Signs.com, a designer and manufacturer of signs and graphics for a variety of applications for both standard stock-type signage and accessories but also catering to the individual needs of a diverse range of entrepreneurs, government, industrial, commercial, and institutional agencies.

The James Signs web site gives background on its long history, but where it really shines is in demonstrating the large sample of example products in it “What we do” section.

The business challenge is to describe the array of products that come under the heading of “Signs”. Outdoor that includes Store fronts and advertising the Business Name, address and services, to assist in parking, or to highlight a sale, in a variety of mediums and manners like banners, swinging signs, raised letter or applied onto the exterior window. Indoor uses include in reception areas, directional, safety and plaques. And signage is used on business and recreational vehicles. A series of galleries is used to give the customer the range of possibilities. (over 190 images at this time). To see further details, the image can be opened in a lightbox

All the content for the site is maintained by the staff of James Signs: navigation, text, and images etc.

The major navigation is defined by the pages, where the text and images (from media) for those pages is authored (with word processing support via TinyMCE):

and the heart of the system is the “product gallery” where “what we do” is defined using sections and sub sections, text and uploaded images (with auto-magical generated thumbnail images with PaperClip and Rmagick):

The technologies this site is based on is Ruby on Rails (plus TinyMCE, AuthLogic, paperclip and Rmagick) , jQuery (plus JQuery ui accordion sections, and the Slimbox Lightbox plugin), CSS3, and MySQL used to create a custom Content Management Sites (CMS) that address what James Signs needed.