Autologic

Autologic are one of the largest and most successful vehicle logistics companies that services the UK and European automotive industry.

Autologic's vehicle management services range from vehicle movement and car transportation to fleet management, port technical services, vehicle storage and handling, right through to used vehicle refurbishment and remarketing.

Getme were approached by Autologic in order to produce a website to represent Autologic in the most professional manner, presenting a full range of information about the company that could be updated as necessary via a Content Management System behind the scenes. Getme's tried and tested Air framework proved ideal for this purpose.

Bespoke design with flexibility

The design chosen by Autologic from a range of provided visuals was simple but effective, with a clean, clear layout ideal for presenting information about the company without distraction.

One element of the design which would need to be recreated on every page to ensure consistency was the curved corners on all images. You might imagine this to be a problem requiring the use of an image editing program whenever a new image would need adding in future, but the flexibility of the powerful CMS built into Air allowed Getme to provide a solution.

For any content-managed page within the website, should Autologic wish to update an image, all that is required is to click the Update icon next to the image in question, browse to select a new image from the computer of whoever is doing the updating, and then click Update. No prior image manipulation required.

The curved edges of the images are created dynamically by the system, provided that the Image advanced details option is kept at the Curved edge setting while the image is being updated. As all images were set to Curved edge by Getme when the site was initially built, this option does not require attention.

Of course if a certain image needed to be presented in a more standard format, this option could be set to Default, which would provide a normal square-cornered presentation of the image.

Any image can be switched back and forth between the available styles at any point; all images are stored in an unstyled format so that no information is lost by presenting them in a certain style for any length of time before changing again.

Although an image style with curved edges was arranged for Autologic, any image presentation style can be set up as an option within the Air CMS, so that if desired, any number of image style options could be made available for controlling the appearance of images on an Air-based website.

Location, Location, Location

Autologic have a considerable and growing number of locations around the UK and Europe. Keeping track of these locations and representing information about them consisely would be rather a laborious job via conventional content management, especially with regard to accurately demonstrating their whereabouts, and so Getme provided a bespoke facility called Locations.

This provides a specific section in the back end of the Autologic Air website where a 'location' can be added. A form is displayed where all relevant details about a certain location can be entered including Name, Description, Images, Address, Geographic Region (UK/Europe) and contact details.

The most important element of this process is that the address is used to automatically place a marker on a map (provided by Google), which is visible on the Locations page of the website, pinpointing every Autologic location in either the UK or Europe.

Below this map on the website is a full list of all locations that have been added, along with their details, and the ability to select a link to show that location highlighted on the map along with the relevant address and contact details (see example above).

It's also possible to pan and zoom the map in order to examine the whereabouts of any location in greater detail.

Conclusion

Getme's Air web framework is a perfect match for the online requirements of a company such as Autologic. With any page being content-editable in a visual environment, any text or image on the website can be changed in a moment, and bespoke facilities handle the company's individual needs exactly.

Although Air is a hugely flexible modular framework upon which practically any web-based facility can be built, for this website few extensions were required beyond the core features of the system.

The solid, consistent design and functionality of the finished site demonstrate the impressive qualities of even a minimally-extended version of Air.