2020 John Shearer Website
The home page slideshow features is built for ease of administration with admin previews, publish before/after dates and structured slide templates. The home page also pipes in content from a custom post type and the Shearer Facebook feed.
The mega menu makes it easy to quickly jump to any machine or component page.
The machines page makes a feature of the latest models while allowing for machines to shot from any angle.
A machine page showing a slideshow of contoured images, key features, embedded video and automatically linked documents.
For this new site I also switched to new store locator plugin that is cleaner, lighter and better complies with WordPress standards.
The manuals and brochures archive features search and filtering options. Documents also show up automatically on their relevant machine pages.
The contact page featuring the usual contact details and form.
The previous version of the John Shearer website was one of the first WordPress sites that I built. It was a great learning experience but always had limitations that I wished I could go back and tidy up. Not to mention, an ageing, 960px design.
This 2020 refresh brings it up to the modern standard while implementing a host of new front-end features. It is also now a snap for the client to maintain themselves, a key factor that was always a limitation of the old site.
The site puts key information about their product line up on the web in a format that is as easy for them to update as it is for users to find. A live Facebook feed pipes in their latest posts while a revised interactive dealer locator puts their stockists on the map. There is now also a central location for all of the their documents, brochures and manuals to live in addition to them being automatically displayed on relevant machine pages.
The design makes deliberate use of machine images contoured out of their original background as shots in the field are often not available.