oh my god

Chicago-based indie rock band Oh My God is no other, just like their website. The deliberately “lo-fi” design from Paul Friemel recalls the early days of the web.

But the site actually has lots of juice under the hood, including an integrated Twitter feed and Flickr photo-stream, music downloads (with count tracking), blog-style news page, social media links, mailing list sign-up and export, embedded videos, database-driven concerts list, and online merchandise sales (using PayPal), in addition to several standard content pages.

Content Management System

Each main area of the site is controlled by a module in an easy-to-use custom-built CMS (content management system). The site owner logs into a back-end Dashboard where he can easily access and edit the site’s content and settings, such as Band news, Videos, Merchandise, File uploads, Home banner, Photos, Contact, Mailing list sign-ups, Music, Band bio, Download tracking, Concerts, Press, Footer link, and Admin users.

Most sections use a standard List-Detail model, where a sortable and paginated list of entries allows drill-down to edit individual records. The editing forms have simple fields and allow rich-text formatting with a simple word-like toolbar, when appropriate.

Animations

My favorite part of the site is actually not even part of my contribution … it’s Paul’s series of awesome flipbook-style animations, displayed in the site’s upper sidebar. Here’s one of them. The display is randomized, so be sure to see them all.