GretFriendsGreetings.com offers visitors the opportunity to send someone a personalized greeting from a famous person. For example, kids can get birthday greetings from their favorite sports heroes, and many other imaginative and clever ideas.

The Problem

This operation requires a means to allow visitors to preview the greeting card in real time on the web as they design it, and after approval the web site needs to automatically transmit the required information directly to the printing company that will produce and ship the card. It must do this in the printer's required format, together with files for printing the mailing labels derived from the customer's data. Not only are the formats for controlling the printing process different from those for creating a web display, the type of image needed is different and the printer requires high-resolution images that would be costly of internet bandwidth if transmitted repeatedly. Additionally, the site administrator must be able to add new celebrities and celebrity categories at any time.

Features required:

• On-line presentation of customized cards for purchase
• Database of customization images and templates
• Database of email links
• Database of users and user tracking system
• Database of orders
• Administrative accounts with log-in protection
• Real-time e-commerce payment
• Automated management of card customization
• Creation of PDF files for printing
• Creation of mailing label files for printing.
• Automated interface to printer's computers.
• Administrative screens

The Solution

First, we created flash routines to allow the customer to interactively create, view and edit their customized card. These routines call upon databases of celebrity images and signatures stored on-site in the size and resolution required for web display.

Next, we worked with the printer to define his required input, and then created code that would produce an output file that, when run through the printer's processing machinery, would print a card reproducing what the customer saw on the web site. In order to avoid the bandwidth charges that would be incurred by repeatedly including high-resolution printer's images in these files we instead devised a means to encode these that would pull the required images from a database of high-resolution images maintained in the printer's computers and insert them into the card file.

We then implemented a procedure by which the web site would automatically produce these files, and then connect to the printer's computers and transmit them when a card was successfully purchased.

Finally, we created a content managment system that would allow the site owner to create new categories of celebrity, and to add new celebrities and images to the site. This system automatically creates the necessary code and procedures for producing cards emplying the new celebrity.