The Vine

About the client

The Vine are a committee based charity offering support for people over 25 with housing and addiction issues. The centre provide a range of services including counselling, learning support with free access to the Internet. I worked alongside some amazing people including the charity’s founder, Bridget Crowther.

Job Description

Computer Setup

I was initially tasked with setting up and maintaining 3 computers that clients used to browse the Internet, type up office documents and play a limited selection of games. All the computers were donated by local companies, and each of them had different configurations. The computer’s needed to be setup so that client’s could not accidentally break the Operating System, but still allow staff to install software.

I decided to use a combination of Faronics Deep Freeze, and baseline windows XP configuration using Group Policies to restrict what clients were able change. The Vine had 3 more computers donated to them, and I was responsible for rolling out the same setup on these new computers. After I setup the computers, The Vine saw a vast reduction in computer downtime caused by the clients.

Website

I was asked by The Vine Center to design and build a website to help promote their organisation. They wanted a basic website with approximately 15 – 20 pages of content. Their main focus was providing resources and Information to the public in an attempt to bring more volunteers and donations from local organisations to the center.