Josh and I were approached a few weeks ago about the possibility of creating a church Web site that could be easily updated by the pastor and staff members. Having no knowledge of HTML or Web coding whatsoever, it was important that the church’s Web site feature an easy-to-use content management system that could enable church members to edit text and post new photographs on the Web site. The church (Living Hope Grace Brethren Church in Saxton, Pennsylvania) had no budget for a Web site project, so we made the decision to do this project free-of-charge as a gesture of good will towards a non-profit organization.

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Once again this year, we will be participating in Blog Action Day on October 15, 2008. On this day, bloggers from all over the world write their thoughts, concerns and ideas regarding one universal issue. The issue that has been chosen this year is poverty. Read More

Many designers and developers may disagree that the Web 2.0 craze is over, but I think it is reasonable to say it is winding down. By “winding down” I do not mean that Facebook, Twitter and other massively popular sites are going to vanish, but I do not foresee a lot more revolutionary sites emerging that are not classified under the next step (Semantic Web or Web 3.0). As a developer I feel that there will always be a piece of 2.0 in all of our future sites for quite a while, but there are a few items that will have a major impact until newer technologies make these obsolete (after the jump). I would love to hear your opinions as well so please leave some comments.

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Yesterday Gmail was down for a short period of time though to some it was an eternity. We recommend Google Apps (with Gmail) to a lot of clients due to the incredible reliability, unbeatable price (free for most purposes) and normally near 100% up-time.  Due to the mayhem that ensued across the blogosphere we decided to run some internal backups so we have a fallback in case Gmail ever explodes or disappears suddenly, which would probably have more adverse affects on the economy than on our petty email threads.

If you use Gmail for your primary email provider I would suggest scheduling your own backup if you do not already do so. Lifehacker.com has a great tutorial to get you started on a Windows machine as well as a Linux-based machine (you can just follow the command line steps to configure and run fetchmail). Better safe than sorry.

As an aside - does anyone know of a PHP-based script that can accomplish this same task? Being a Web developer it would be great to run this from our Web server without installing Cygwin.

Planning on redesigning your site but have a tight budget? You may want to rethink how you are going to spend your funds. Sure you can look into outsourced companies, chop shops, pre-designed templates or student designers, but in most cases (not to be cliche) you are going to get what you pay for. As long as your site is not a usability nightmare and looks like it was designed in 1990, there are a lot of other ways to draw attention and traffic to your site that are more important than a few bells and whistles.  Here are a few things you may want to allocate more time/money towards that in a business sense will be more advantageous to your site. If you are interested in getting help with any of them, please let us know! Read More

Being both a graphic designer and business owner, I have a love hate relationship with Microsoft Excel. Having an uncontrollable need to make things look clean, organized and professional in my layouts often leads me to clash with Excel. Being a business owner as well, it is essential that I use Excel for a variety of reports and spreadsheets. Today however, I stumbled across a few tips that help Excel users customize their layouts (among other useful tips) that helped bridge that gap within me between design and business. Read More

Data Matrix Solutions, Inc. (DMS) is a professional services firm offering business, financial, scientific, and engineering solutions to a variety of governmental agencies. As part of a larger re-branding contract agreement with Riddle Brothers Web Design and Development, LLC, I was tasked with the redesign of their current logo. Read More

Owning and operating a business is the best way to fill up every hour of your free time. Even when you aren’t sitting at your desk your mind is still contemplating your next action, thinking about landing your next project or developing new marketing ideas. Sometimes it is hard to “turn it off” and today I still have that problem although I am able to recognize it and consciously distract myself from thinking about it. It is like running an engine for 24 hours a day until it eventually over heats or burns out. This applies to employers and employees alike (at least those employees that enjoy their jobs). Here are some tips on decreasing your working hours, both physically and mentally, and some other ways to start enjoying your personal life while maintaining a successful career. Read More

Over the past year, the online service known as Twitter has exploded onto the social networking scene. Twitter allows you to tell the online world what exactly it is that you are doing at that very second. While you may think “great…another social networking feature to further divulge my personal business to the entire world”, Twitter can be a practical tool to help convey short point of interest to your Web site’s visitors. Read More

Many of you are probably already aware of this, but Mozilla enlisted the help of the world to help set a new world record for most software downloaded in 24 hours. We were among the millions that download Firefox 3. However, the experience in playing a part in this record breaking event did not end with downloading the software.

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