SteveMcKeogh.co.uk - Web Developer

Branston wanted to setup a competition to promote their range of Pickled Onions. The competition was in a similar format to 'Hot or Not', whereas a user would upload a picture of themselves and would get voted on by visitors. Where 'Hot or Not' gets you to vote on a person's appearance in general, The Branston Factor involved you uploading a photo of you pulling a face as if you where 'hit' by the 'tang' of eating one of their pickled onions. Visitors would vote on the best face that they felt possessed the Branston Factor.

The site was a relatively straight forward build in respects to XHTML/CSS and general layout. Apart from the usual pieces of functionality, the main focal point was on the uploading area of the site. This was a simple form where the user would enter their name, mobile number, email address and the image they want to upload. Upon uploading, Branston would be informed of the upload and would approve the image via the CMS. Upon approval the image would be live and ready to be voted on.

The site gave the user two options on how to upload their image, they could use the online form mentioned above, or alternatively they could use MMS on their mobile phone. They could take a picture using their mobile phone, and send the picture to a phone number supplied on the site. This would then get sent to the website, and the site would check every 5 minutes for new images, once it finds new image(s) it will do the same procedure of resizing, cropping etc for the site and upload. Once approved by Branston it would appear on the site.

Another area of the site was the webcam. Everyday for a few weeks, the Branston team would travel to numerous supermarkets over the UK and setup a webcam to catch people whilst they sample Branston Pickled Onions to see if they have the Branston Factor.

All webcams feeds where recorded and where made available on the website. Branston wanted all webcams feeds, when viewed, to appear as if they were being feed live at that time. How this worked was with the use of an .asx file that I created dynamically upon each view. How this would work is the asx file would start a feed that was recorded previously from any point I tell it to. So I set it up so that every hour beyond 10am would start 1 hour within the feed. So for example anyone viewing a feed at 11:34 am, the feed would start 1 hour 34 mins into the movie. So every time a user views the feed it would appear as if it was happening live.

Fortunately Branston had a tight schedule on this build, as the site had to be ready for the supermarket visits mentioned above. This meant that there was no room for changes, and everything that was decided in the initial specification happened and stayed that way. That's a developers dream :-)