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Basic Information:

• 7 Seas is located in Ferndale, WA
• Redesign Completed: 2010

Project Information:

• Content Management – Wordpress
• Pre-Fabricated Templated

Visit 7SeasUS.com

This site developed in partnership with AJ & Associates

Madison spoke to a Human Computer Interaction class from the School of Computer Science which was instructed by Margaret Burnett. Topics of the lecture included Madison’s work as a web designer, the principles of design and how they can be applied outside of HCI, and approaching the job search.

Stone Center inventories Indiana’s largest selection of natural and engineered stone, and we take great pride in keeping the most popular stone products and brand names in stock. You’ll find expert advice and the right stone for nearly every type of project imaginable. Doing business at Stone Center has never been easier. Our improved facility features a large showroom and salescenter, expanded product displays, a breathtaking two-story high by 100-yard long “great wall” of architectural stone samples, an added scale, easy access to product inventories, and separate contractor services for fast, efficient service.

Basic Information:

• Indiana Limestone Company is located in Indianapolis, IN
• Completed: 2010

Project Information:

• Graphics and Interface created by MyersCroxton Group
• Content Management – Wordpress
• Dynamic Flash Animation
• Dropdown Navigation
• JQuery / Gallerific
• Custom Category and JQuery gallery implementation to categorize, manage, and display over 500 individual stone products
• Custom Search Results Page

Visit StoneCenterOfIndiana.com

This site developed in partnership with 3WD: World Wide Web Designs

Basic Information:

• Salon Dazzle is located in Woodinville, WA
• Site Completed: 2009

Project Information:

• Flash Interface / Functionality
• Pre-Fabricated Template

Visit SalonDazzle.net

This site developed in partnership with AJ & Associates

But.

I’m very proud to say that I support two not-for profit agencies every year.

The Shalom Community Center, located in Bloomington, Indiana, is a day-time homeless shelter. I never really stopped to think before, “Where does a homeless person go during the day?” Shalom offers many resources to the homeless and low-income community that I never would have considered. Job coaching, internet, laundry, daycare, and more. I’ve served as their web master since January 2008 and I’m very proud that I do. We’ll be releasing a new version of their website sometime in 2010!

Return to the Wild is an organization based in Nashiville, Indiana that rehabilitates injured birds of prey. If an owl or a hawk gets shot or injured, Patti Reynolds and Laura Edmunds nurse it back to health. Some of their birds become permanent “residents,” if they are unable to fly or take care of themselves. The others are released back into the wild. Residents are used for educational demonstrations and fundraisers.

You might wonder why I’m telling you about these two groups and my involvement. I’m not patting myself on the back. There are countless ways that an individual can influence and aid a not-for profit, even if you don’t tangibly have the money in your pocket to make a donation.

I would urge you, as we come to the end of 2009, to budget some time in 2010 to find a charity or not-for profit in your community that needs something. Maybe its a one time thing, or maybe it becomes a new part of your life. For however long, in whatever way, HELP THAT GROUP! It will be rewarding; I can guarantee it.

No matter what your beliefs, I hope you have a very festive Holiday season, and a wonderful New Year. Enjoy time with family, eat good food, and enjoy life!

The CMS, by default, already has the ability to manage images, a blog, comments, users, text content, and all of those things that many people want on a website today (by the way, all of this with next to NO HTML CODE!!!!!) They also have a whole network of developers who have already created modules for things like image galleries, sitemap generation, e-commerce platforms, contact forms, and etc. In other words, there are all these cool little pre-built things out there that can be installed, instead of built, to extend your website. So, when you’re out there looking for “web design” services, keep in mind that someone who doesn’t use a content manager might very well be charging you for something that has already been developed!

“Out of the Box,” or once you get it setup, Wordpress is more or less setup to be a blogging engine. Many of the sites in my portfolio however, including this one, have been significantly modified to allow for content other than the simple blog or content page model. If you want a site that pretty much is a page by page (and maybe a blog, or testimonials section) website, Wordpress is absolutely still what I would recommend. In fact, if you look at my web design portfolio here on my site, you’ll see an awful lot of sites done in Wordpress.

However, if you’re wanting a site that is an e-commerce platform, and a blog, and a portfolio, and this, and that, and pages, and a strong user community, well, Wordpress might not be for you. Oh, don’t get me wrong I can still make it work. Wordpress just isn’t really equipped to handle more than a couple of different content types.

Drupal to the rescue. Drupal allows you to create not only content, but content types. So, if you want a portfolio, you can create a custom content type of that portfolio that has different requirements than the blog pages might. If you want to have guest bloggers who can blog, but not have access to the portfolio or pages of the site, you can do that (in Wordpress a user who can blog, can access page content). I would even argue that many of the modules for Drupal (specifically for e-commerce) are more feature inclusive than those you’d find for Wordpress. Not necessarily because they were better done, but because Drupal itself leaves more options open.

Drupal isn’t for everyone. The setup / installation process is just as quick as Wordpress. However, taking the time to setup all of the various permissions for users, content types for custom content, and the views to display this content can in fact take significantly longer than working with Wordpress. If you have a complicated project though, and you’ll have multiple people using the site and doing entry of multiple types of content, this really is the best option for you!

So, long story short:
Simple, easy to use, single (or limited number of users) website: WORDPRESS!
Heavily customized, multiple content type, multiple user, community website: DRUPAL!

So no, I haven’t abandoned Wordpress to fend for itself out in the cold. But! Don’t be surprised if you start seeing some Drupal projects creep into my portfolio. Its a web design service that I think will make a huge impact on my customers’ (and future customers’) ability to manage their own sites. Easily.

Happy blogging!

Basic Information:

• Story Insights LLC is located in Bloomington, IN
• Site Completed: 2009

Project Information:

• Graphics and Interface created by MyersCroxton Group
• Content Management – Wordpress
• Custom JQuery Slider
• Custom Filterable Portflio
• Multi-Tiered Content

Visit StoryInsights.com

This site developed in partnership with 3WD: World Wide Web Designs

• Safari
• Firefox 3.x
• Parallels running Windows (OR a second computer)

Windows

• Google Chrome
• Internet Explorer 8 (toggling on / off compatibility mode to see IE 7)
• Multiple IE to run Internet Explorer 6 on the same PC as IE 8
• Firefox 2.x for the PC (make sure to turn off updates so you don’t end up with version 3.x)

Once you get all of your development done, then you just need to start taking a look at the same site and the same areas in all of the browsers. You’ll almost certainly notice things in IE 6, if not others…

For example:

1. IE 6 / 7 both have a habbit of screwing up margins and any other “pixel” defined spaces. This might manifest itself in your design and will almost certainly show up around unordered lists (UL)
2. IE 6 doesn’t handle transparent PNGs so you’ll need to track down a “png fix” for the browser otherwise things look REALLY not great
3. Firefox 3 and IE 8 are much “truer” to CSS than any of the other browsers, so be prepared to see different buttons, slightly different alignments, and etc. throughout the entire site.

While there are many different methods of trying to fix and correct these problems, the easiest and most straightforward way of doing so is to run a browser detection script on the website. Once you’ve done this, you can then call various style sheets (.css) based on the browser and then you can tweak the custom settings for that specific site.

Most websites can have their cross browser tweaking done in under an hour, but I have certainly spent upwards of FOUR HOURS trying to fix and adjust minuscule things on larger websites before.

Moral of the story? Be aware… if you want to support every browser (ESPECIALLY IE 6) its going to take some time to make sure that even 100% valid CSS shows up properly.