The Last Outpost

The Last Outpost combines a bespoke Content Management System with a stylised layout and branding to bring readers an action-packed entertainment site.

The Concept

The Last Outpost originally started life as a small site dedicated to reviewing computer games. In 2005 we rebuilt the site from the ground up - developing a CMS to handle any number of writers, multiple categories and potentially unlimited articles with as few limitations as possible.

Our Ideas

For the main interactive element of the site - the forums - we chose the MyTopix message board since it is a good, free product which we have experience in setting up. We then coded the CMS to interact with the forums on various levels so that member's login details were the same across both systems, allowing site administrators to grant article-writing permissions to members that they trusted with this access.

The back-end of the site allows writers to create new articles, save drafts, upload images (which are automatically resized, and thumbnails created) and take full control of the layout of each article. A further requirement when an article is submitted was for a site administrator to be able to preview the article as it would appear before finally approving it and it becoming visible on the website.

The whole article-submission process is then tied into the site's homepage, with an animated slideshow scrolling through selected images of the latest articles in each category and rounding off an almost fully-automated process.

The Outcome

Combined with the CMS, we created a very unique design and a logo based around a planet and it's rings - a lone outpost in space which follows a gaming/sci-fi theme from the site's roots to give the site a strong identity.

You can see the site for yourself at www.thelastoutpost.co.uk. Please be aware that some of the articles and comments on this site contain strong language.

If you'd like to see samples of our printed work, please contact us and we'll be happy to come and show you our portfolio.