Archive for the ‘launch’ Category

Another custom cms website design launched earlier today with a custom cms attorney web design for Komara & Cranton, P.A.

Partners Kenneth Joseph Komara, Esq. and George D. Cranton, Jr., Esq., serve Osceola County and Orange County in Central Florida, and specialize in Family Law, Personal Injury, Criminal Law, Traffic Cases, Juvenile Cases, Forfeitures, or Record Sealing and Expungements.

Komara & Cranton, P.A. has an office in Kissimmee, Florida, one block south of the Osceola County Courthouse.

The initial custom cms web design includes pages for Home, Staff, Individual Profiles, Legal Services, Location, and Legal Links. For now the site navigation includes main horizontal tabs with dropdown menus under the Staff tab with links to individual profiles of each attorney.

This web design was an upgrade to an older site on a different domain with outdated information, and includes a bolder new look appropriate for an attorney or law firm website.

A key advantage of a custom cms web design is the ability to easily add new content for less than the cost of static pages. Advanced features to add easily include video, audio, or contact forms, and the cms website may be expanded in the future with a matching blog if needed.

Wondering if a custom cms, content management system, web design is right for you? Contact us today with any questions.

A new web design and matching blog launched earlier this month with a custom CMS for Lifeline Dog Rescue. A CMS or content management system style of web design allows the owner to take control and manage site content without advanced technical skills.

In addition to the main website and blog design, social site pages were created for the client and the site features links to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.

Lifeline Dog Rescue is a non-profit caring for Weimaraner and other breeds of dogs providing shelter, fostering, and adoption. They are a division of Central Florida Weimaranaer & Dog Rescue, Inc., a Florida non-profit corporation since 2011.

Headquarters are in Davenport, Florida, and the 3 acre rescue property with private lake and enclosed on all sides with fence, is in Okeechobee, Florida. Plans for the future as early as 2012 include doubling the size of the dog rescue property, and the number of at risk dogs being rescued and placed for adoption.

Visit the Lifeline Dog Rescue Florida non-profit website to learn more about their work and how you may help.

I finally got around to a makeover of the first blog template I ever designed which seems overdue after being in custom web design full time since 2004 and doing websites more as a hobby since the mid-1990′s.

The screenshot here (smaller than actual size) is from the newly designed Growin’ Up in Maine personal blog where I tell stories of “Childhood Memories of Small Town Maine Life During the 1950′s and 60′s”.

While at it, I moved the blog from free hosting on Google’s Blogspot.com to a custom domain. Buying the custom domain through Google for $10 includes free hosting, so the old blog has a new template and home on a TLD top level domain.

The future cost to keep it online is $10 a year.

Originally the plan was to use the blog as a test site for offering custom blog design services, and the intent was to learn template design from the experiment then trash the blog.

To my utter surprise people my age in the boomer generation just loved the stories that brought back memories of their childhood. Based on the popularity and positive feedback I decided to keep the blog going.

The top header in the Blogger template design uses original photographs I took this summer in Maine for a widescreen view of the place we referred to as Down Back for 3 generations in the 1900′s.

Additional photos and video footage were used to create a YouTube video that you may want to view showing that special place including the old swimming hole Down Back on the Sebec River in Derby, Maine.

At times I’ve gone months without writing new stories, but that’s about to change after this makeover of the first blog I ever designed. Watch the video. Check out the new look of the Growin’ Up in Maine template and blog.

Bookmark the site or subscribe to the rss feed to read future stories about what it was like living life in a small Maine town.

Take a moment to peek into the future with this Google+ social network video preview from the official Google YouTube account.

Google tried a social network type application called Wave that flopped to some extent and some think Google+ (pronounced as in Google-plus) will be a winner. From the video you’ll see that they overcome some of the pitfalls of the top social sites, Twitter and Facebook, by avoiding sharing too much information.

The idea of defining multiple circles of “friends” so that content you post may be selectively shared is excellent. I am personally amazed at the number of young people publicly trashing their boss, using profanity, or admitting facts that could come back to haunt them in a job interview later in life, or worse. Divorce attorneys already use social content to gain advantage for their clients.

I think the overall plan for Google+ is a winner and expect they will soon dominate online social interaction in ways we could only imagine a few short years ago.

The cropped graphic as shown below is from a memorabilia newsletter html design launched within the last week and shows the top portion of the March 2011 edition of the Memorabilia News Bulletin for web design client Mainstream Memorabilia.

Each edition consists of 3 sections including an intro plus opt out info, discount price specials info, and an insider’s view of the memorabilia industry. 3 celebrity photos of autographed memorabilia are used and cropped to fit the format to decorate each section.

Links are included to their website pages for home, specials, contact, and their blog. Additional links across the bottom allow for changing preferences or unsubscribing per CAN-SPAM Act requirements.

For those in web design who work to the latest code standards, learning newsletter design may be a shock because you cannot use all the latest techniques of xhtml and css for a wow first impression. Literally, you must use code and basic html tags from 15 years ago including tables for layout.

This I learned the hard way in the testing phase of the news bulletin design for Mainstream Memorabilia.

The layout for an email newsletter template design must be simple and rigid. The reason you almost have to unlearn how you code is tables for layout and basic html code from 15 years ago will display properly in the widest range of email programs.

A 600 pixel wide standard newsletter layout works best, plus it gives a full view in most preview panes of the majority of email software programs.

For me, and after hit and miss climbing the learning curve, the evidence was in actual results during testing. After a few disasters the final design has the wow factor we wanted despite any code limitations, and the client is very pleased with the look and technical functions.

Mainstream Memorabilia is owned by memorabilia industry insiders with years of past experience in film and television production. They have the contacts for providing quality, selection, and value in celebrity autographed items, so visit their custom online store website that I just happened to design.

While there, you may want to sign up and subscribe to the memorabilia news bulletins, too!

The latest custom cms web design project completed and placed online is the residential and commercial sprinkler and irrigation cms site launch for Hessenauer Sprinkler Repair & Irrigation who services the greater Orlando area and surrounding communities.

The project represents a redesign of their static do-it-yourself website.

In addition to the custom cms main website, the design includes a matching integrated WordPress blog to allow enhanced seo search engine optimization because the customer can add original quality content often without assistance.

A key aspect of this custom cms web design with matching WordPress blog is the files that automate much of the publishing are managed in a single database.

This cuts down on custom web development time, allows automated site backups, and includes advanced features that clients may use without professional web design skills.

Content publishes automatically from plain text to xhtml and meets W3C worldwide standards, plus represents a breakthrough in state-of-the-art evolution for custom cms web design.

Hessenauer Sprinkler Repair & Irrigation has been providing sprinkler and irrigation design, sales, installation, and service to customers in the greater Orlando area since 1979. Links in their home page sidebar take visitors to very favorable reports and customer feedback on Angies List and the BBB Better Business Bureau.

In anticipation of the production release of a stable version of WordPress v3.0 soon I registered a new domain and launched a WordPress live demo website earlier today. The initial design uses the pre-production WordPress v3.0 RC1 version (release candidate 1) introduced one week ago on May 28, 2010.

The following bonus extras included with a custom WordPress theme design from us in our standard package have been installed, tested, and passed functionality on the new demo website:

All in One SEO to optimize posts for search engines, Sociable to insert social site icons and links automatically on every post, WP dB Backup to automatically backup your WordPress installation plus email it to you, and finally SI CAPTCHA to place an anti-spam code and input box at the bottom of every post to help fight comment spam.

Follow this link to the new WordPress Road Test website that will eventually allow privileges for new customers to practice making WordPress posts and let them study advanced blog and cms tutorials. The site is not for v2.x or older WordPress installations. The May 2010 RC1 replaces the BETA version and is the next step towards release of a stable production version v3.0 of WordPress later in 2010.

Other than adding the plugins named above and a footer link to the WordPress design services on this site, the look and layout of the WordPress Road Test site use the default out of the box theme from WordPress v3.0 RC1. All that may change as the www.wpRoadTest.com site evolves.

The latest custom cms web design project just completed was a recruiting custom CMS and blog that went online earlier today for SynergyHire LLC of Atlanta, Georgia. The main site and matching blog allow the owner to add, edit, or delete content 24/7 without paying each time.

Here is a reduced size graphic screenshot of just one page:

Compare the main site to the matching Atlanta Recruiter custom WordPress theme used on their blog. As with all my designs, the custom integrated blog is a unique one-of-a-kind design for a consistent look moving between the main site and blog.

Other features to consider are the custom logo, clean layout, and special page with 12 audio players to demo their innovative automated candidate phone screen service. Upon review of the initial custom cms web design launch the owner commented “I give you two thumbs up… you did a GREAT job on this Jim!”.

A long overdue tribute blog in honor of my late grandmother, Beth Parkman (1893-1975), was created and launched in WordPress last weekend. The custom blog features original poems that Grandmother Parkman wrote that were discovered and compiled by her late daughter and my aunt, Eleanor Parkman Heath.

The topics include poems about God, nature, love, and family by Beth Parkman, and more. Her daughter, and my Mom, Blanche Parkman Degerstrom commented about the new blog stating “What a legacy for her children, grandchildren and all to follow. Thank you so much!”.

The WordPress blog features a custom black and white top header showing my Grandmother enjoying the woods of Maine plus a collage of bust portraits of her as young, middle aged, and then later in life. The blog sidebar lists each of her 37 original poems by title in alphabetical order.

A special thanks goes out to my brother, Eric Degerstrom, who took the mimeographed copies of the poems and scanned them using optical character recognition (OCR) to provide digitized plain text of each poem. A lengthy biography of Beth Parkman is included on the About page, also.

Several unique related sites for Commercial Door and Access have relaunched with custom matching graphics and a custom WordPress themed blog on their headquarters website. The corporate headquarters site is at www.cda-solutions.info with a matching blog at www.cda-solutions.info/blog.

All three sites are custom cms web designs that allow the owner to add, edit, or delete content using simple plain text without a high level of technical skills in advanced xhtml or css. Some of the work was in collaboration with my son, Roger Degerstrom, of www.CodeRepair.com for design and seo assistance, yet I will handle ongoing support for this family of sites.

CDA Solutions, Inc. is in the business of commercial construction, maintenance, and security products and services for the Treasure Coast of Florida including the counties of Brevard, Indian River, St Lucie, and Martin. CDA Alliance Inc. has advice for local or national service and maintenance companies and Commercial Door and Access Inc. provides door, lock, security, and related work including construction, so customers have a dependable source with the expertise and credentials to assure quality work.

The CDA family of sites with the matching WordPress blog launched with the new color scheme to provide a consistent look and familiar corporate brand across their range of service, product, and advice websites.