The City Cook

Far from being just another cooking website, The City Cook.com is a resource designed to help urban cooks meet the unique challenges they face. Considering the myriad of food related websites and TV shows currently out there, the urban audience is too often forgotten. With a rich database of selected local merchants, versatile recipes, and encouragement on home cooking in really tight spaces, The City Cook endeavors to rectify that and become the online resource for urban cooks.

This project is just one example of how Animus Rex offers much more than back-end web development. We often establish collaborative relationships with our clients and Kate McDonough, Editor of The City Cook, is no exception. We've been able to guide Kate through the maze that is on-line marketing as well as provide high-level strategic business advice.

Design credit: Jacqueline Broner

A great idea without a clear plan for online execution.

We learned long ago that when someone asks us to build a new Web site, the first question we ask is 'WHY'. If we understand the why, we can offer guidance in solving the how, what, where and when. We helped The City Cook develop and refine the strategy, target, mission, purpose, attitude, editorial voice and goals into a tangible execution plan. Kate and her team have been able to develop what was originally conceived of as a 'blog' into a full-featured Web site and media property.

Starting with design.

Kate brought us a design she wanted built into a Web site. Once in a great while a design will be so well thought out that we can just execute it. But most of the time that's not the case. Web sites are really software programs that look nice. Starting with design and then shoe-horning functionality to suit is like building a house from the roof to the basement.

We 'took it back to basics'. After initial discovery, basic information architecture and a high-level functionality specification, we had enough information to determine if the original design was workable. There were some good aspects, but it was limiting and did not really speak to the target.

To solve this, we worked with Kate to select the appropriate designer. We then provided creative direction and managed the day-to-day aspects of the design production. With design concept in hand, we created templates and proceeded with development. The result was a beautiful, flexible and on-target design.

Empowering a small, non-technical editorial staff to maintain a content-rich Web site.

The City Cook wanted to be self-sufficient. We created simple tools to help with complex tasks, such as cross relating articles and merchants and creating elegantly styled pages. EsKort itself is capable of much of the heavy lifting, but in this case we needed to build a custom 'Merchant Manager' that allows for easy input of all key information. This along with a world-class built-in HTML editor and a logical organization of content has allowed Kate and her staff to effectively manage the site.

"I brought Animus Rex my idea for TheCityCook.com and they turned it into a stylish, effective and seamlessly functioning site. They accomplished this using much more than programming or computer code.

"First they were strategic and imaginative, seeing the potentials of my ideas and making them work.

"Second, they were smart and skilled, plus patient with me when everything we were doing together was, for me, either new or unfamiliar.

"Third, they provided an elegant platform in Eskort that lets me run and operate my site as an independent enterprise.

"And finally, they were both acutely professional and also lots of fun to work with. A real dream team."

Kate McDonough
Editor, TheCityCook.com