We are pleased to annouce that the Central Penn Business Journal has nominated two of our clients, RBFCO and Lancaster GI as finalists for the second annual Internet Summit's Best of the Web Awards! The Internet Summit is a half-day networking and learning event, including expert presentations, exhibitors and an awards program.
Click here to view a full list of the categories and the finalists. The event is to be held July 26, 2010. Check back to see if they won!
We've put together another good collection of random resources from around the web.
Content Strategy is making sure all the stuff you put on your website has some actual thought behind it. Like who do you want using your site? What do you want them to understand? How can you help them?
If this sounds too daunting, here's a great article on how thinking of it like a mixed tape might help:
http://blog.braintraffic.com/2010/04/content-strategy-or-let%E2%80%99s-make-a-mixtape/
It's always interesting to view galleries of design focusing on unique methods and aesthetics. This helps open up your design sensibilities and consider multiple perspectives. Here are some of our recent favorites:
Single Page websites
Thinking about displaying a design and content on a single page adds a constraint that demands a lot of creativity:
http://www.noupe.com/design/single-page-websites-examples-and-good-practices.html
Vertical Navigation
We almost go with horizontal navigation for various usability reasons, but sometimes the right site map can really work great with a vertical navigation. Here are some great examples:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/19/showcase-of-beautiful-vertical-navigation-designs/
Clean and Light Designs:
With so many designs bogged down with gradient and effects overload, it's really refreshing to view a great collection of clean and subtle designs:
http://sixrevisions.com/design-showcase-inspiration/60-beautiful-clean-and-light-web-designs-for-inspiration/
Need to invigorate your workspace? Check out some of these creative office designs from around the world. Hopefully you're not viewing these from a drab cubicle farm:
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/creative-modern-office-designs/
We all get them and we're all annoyed as we sit there waiting for our email to un-clog as we wait for some 20 MB attachment to download.
So stop sending them! There are plenty of good free options for uploading your files to the web and emailing a link instead.
http://www.yousendit.com
This is a tool just for emailing large files. You simply upload to their server and they send the email with all the links ready to go. It's pretty simple.
http://www.dropbox.com
This is primarily a file backup system that works with your local hard-drive, but they also have great options for creating shared folders you can post files to for others to upload.
We're always noting links and resources across the interwebs that are loaded with web design goodies. We'll be posting randomly whenever we get a good collection. Here's our first:
Footers have become a major element of modern web design, with some becoming virtual mini-sites. This is a good article on tips, examples, and issues to keep note of when considering footer design.
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/03/how-to-build-a-footer-that-doesn%E2%80%99t-stink/
Call-to-action buttons are IMPORTANT. See how I used caps there to emphasize that? Your website has a goal, and it usually requires clicking on something to get there, so you better make sure that something is going to be effective. This is a good post on examples.
http://designshack.co.uk/articles/inspiration/25-examples-of-convincing-call-to-action-buttons
http://spyrestudios.com/freebie-detailed-3d-icon-set-from-medialoot/
http://designm.ag/resources/blogging-social-media-icons/
http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/20-fresh-sets-of-free-icons-for-web-designers
Typography is key to strong web design, so use some strong fonts.
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/resources/free-fonts-best-for-business-logos/
http://speckyboy.com/2010/02/24/top-20-free-fonts-for-distinctive-headlines/
After doing so many websites we're constantly on prowl for inspiration on what makes a website design stand out from the crowd. We'll be posting examples as we find them in the blog.
The image below represesents a great example from http://www.rednoseday.com/.
The first thing that strikes you is th playful, hand-drawn style they are using through out the design. It looks very personal and unique, especially compared with all the straight lines and slick graphics that dominate web design.
This is a great fit with Red Nose Day's incorporation of humor as their main theme. When you have a potential match like that then using this personal, hand-drawn style is a great way to stand out.
Hello and welcome to our brand new website!
Yes, we know you've heard that before. In fact, 5 times in the past 5 years. What can we say? We like updating our look and trying new things.
We had a lot of great feedback from our old site, and we've already heard some laments over the loss of our cutesy farm animals. But we wanted a site that was better at handling more information.
And, we wanted to do a "Lab".
We won't be doing much ground-breaking product development here, but we did want a place where we could experiment with different technologies, share the things that inspire us, and post articles on SEO, social media, and online marketing.
Our ultimate goal is to make this a resource. Not only for our clients, but for anyone looking to make their website better.
Of course, this will only be successful with YOUR involvement. Please let us know how we can make this a better resource. Is there a topic you'd like us to cover in our Learning section? Let us know. Comment on everything. Get involved.
So, yes, you'll probably hear another "welcome to our brand new website" in about a year. But whatever that site will look like, the Lab will still be a part of it. So let's start experimenting!
Open-source software is indeed a wonderful thing. We use it every day, and often recommend it.
But it's not always the best solution.
Here at SiteStrux, we program our own proprietary CMS solution. It works great for us- we know it inside and out, and can easily customize it to do whatever we want and offer the support our clients need.
There are many open-source CMS programs out there. Most of them are fine products, but they are simply not the best solution for every website scenario:
There won't be a magical plug-in available because it's so personalized that no general solution would work. So you need to provide a completely custom solution for the client's very specific needs.
For example, the Fulton Opera House (http://www.thefulton.org) wanted to add different sponsor logos at the bottom of every page. Ok, that's not so custom, right? But the trick was that different sponsors needed to appear on different pages using some complex rules.
Fortunately we were able to easily modify our CMS to handle this. We created a simple "map" to tie an image gallery of sponsors to the page being displayed that could be updated by Fulton staff.
Having that ability to easily implement micro-custom solutions is a big plus for proprietary solutions. Since we use our own CMS, we love micro-custom solutions (no suprise, huh?). It allows us to give our clients exactly what they need, and it helps differentiate us from other web agencies.
This simply wouldn't be nearly as possible with open-source software.
