The first project I worked on at Madgex went live last week. It is a customisation on the Origin Job board, and is a series of 8 Dutch job sites working off one database, one Admin site and one Recruiter access site. New job seeker sites are due to be added early next year, so it has been designed to work with 20 - 30 different job sites.

I moved on to a new project before the sites went live so Mike picked up the project and saw it through to launch. Thanks Mike!

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The sites are:


As with all projects it had its challenges, but as this was my first localised project, it also had its learning opportunities. Despite the clients only wanting the sites to work in Dutch, I decided to strip all of the static text into resources files and allow the opportunity to display any of the 3 sites (job seeker, recruiter services or admin) in either English or Dutch. This was primarily to allow for easier development and support. There is an entry in the Web.config file to allow the culture to be defined. So far, it has worked pretty well, except that to update the resources file the web sites all need to be stopped to prevent them from locking the file. However, updates are rare so this isn't a big problem in the grand scheme of things.

One of the great delights about Madgex is the way that the design works. We have creative designers who do the pretty bits and we also have a team of HTML developers who do HTML and CSS (and some javascript) meaning that as a developer I integrate the HTML with the objects and get it all functioning. So, instead of spending hours doing cross browser checking or trying to work out how to get a certain effect to happen, I have a designated HTML developer who does this for me and tells me what I've done wrong, leaving me to get on with the functionality. Perfect!

All in all a succesful project which involved great team work, and great people. Looking forward to the next one.