When “No Surprises” – a company based in Nigeria – called us back in January, I was predictably suspicious – all I’d previously had in the way of email from Nigeria were countless offers of $19,000,000 for the use of my bank account…

But here we are, many months down the line, their new ‘G-RAFF built’ site is live; and I have to report that not only are there genuine businesses out there, brimming with creative and smart minds, but that working with them is fantastic, and your definition of “beautiful people” will be revisited on more than one occasion. We’ve had a great time doing the site, learned some new tricks, pushed our “Backstage” content management system to the next level, and yes – we got paid (though sadly not $19,000,000).

They wanted the site in Flash, so we gave them some smart stuff… highlights included:

• A striking homepage that has had a great effect on their user base
• a sharp Flash tag-based gallery that effortlessly takes the user on a journey through all of the company’s events
• A sexy sliding panels system to keep screen clutter down throughout
• a shorthand system for writing content (markdown) in the backend system that all gets converted in the Flash to be beautiful formatted text – for example:
  “NO SURPRISES”->link:http://www.nosurprisesevents.com/ would become No Surprises
• A very low-bandwidth overall engine – we pulled the entire thing into a 96k engine – we wrote some nice progress systems, as most of Nigeria is on 56k dial-up, so at least they are kept informed of everything as it happens.

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