Early this year we built a blog for a rising political and social commentator, Thando Sangqu. Thando is a 15-year-old with a lot on his mind – and he needed a blog to express his unique perspective on South Africa’s political landscape and lifestyle scene.
One of his most popular entries is an interview with Basetsana Kumalo, who was crowned Miss South Africa in 1994 and is now is a prominent South African businesswoman and celebrity.
We built the site using ExpressionEngine – a web publishing system that we specialise in, and that has outgrown its beginnings as a blog engine into a fully-fledged content management framework.
So it was surprising to us to note that although we’ve built many blogs as part of other websites (see our Cape Town Blog as an example), we’ve never built a standalone blog using ExpressionEngine.
We’re especially proud of his photo gallery, which uses the Flickr API to pull photos directly from Flickr onto the site. Thando had already built up his Flickr profile, so it made sense to connect directly with the social photography site rather than creating a standalone gallery. The site also boasts Thando’s live Twitter feed.
We wish Thando, Flow’s youngest client so far, every success with his blog. And watch this space – this young man is going places!