Websites are living things and are constantly changing as new technologies become available. If your website is the same as it was two years ago, or ten years ago, as I've seen some, you are missing out on opportunities. Why, because users expectations change. Ten years ago, not many people cared about mobile websites. Five years ago, they wanted a mobile website, but expected it to be different from the regular website. Today, your customers want your website to respond, regardless of if … [Read more...]
posted on November 19, 2013 by
Always ask your developer…
I don't know about you, but I hate to ask for help. Maybe it's a source of pride on my part. Yet, so often I see the benefit of getting help. I was recently talking to a long time client. They were talking about how long it was taking them to do this back office process. (They were getting all of the mailing addresses for their customers who purchased from this past year to send them a small thank you gift.) To do this they were opening every order made, copying the info, and then moving … [Read more...]
posted on August 13, 2013 by
access2learn.com
Access2Learn is a separate website I maintain for students that I teach. The website was originally intended to be just for my students, however, I noticed that more and more people were visiting to get access to the notes. So in January of 2013, I went through a major redesign, and built the site on top of WordPress. Now I have better organization, a built-in search feature, and downloads that I can track. The layout was based off of the Genesis Theme, however, a child theme was developed … [Read more...]
posted on August 3, 2013 by
Service Desk Website
This internal help desk web application was built to replace several off-the-shelf applications that were not meeting the needs of the organization, and were costing the organization too much money. The Service Desk web application is built on top of Microsoft's Dynamics CRM product. A .Net web application, built using C#, was used to provide a custom front end. jQuery and jQueryUI were used to enhance the user experience, and proper use of CSS was used to provide a fast and consistent … [Read more...]
posted on July 19, 2013 by
Opportunity Knocks
Opportunity Knocks is an internal training newsletter that provides information about training opportunities, tips, and information about community involvement. Originally this letter was designed in MS Publisher, and emailed to employees as a PDF. This, however, meant that it could not be easily searched and that people often did not read it. The newsletter would go out every two to three months and took nearly a week to assemble. In 2009, I reviewed some of the previous newsletters, and … [Read more...]
posted on July 3, 2013 by
Optimizing Your Internal Websites to Boost Productivity
A lot of people will talk about how important it is for your website to be fast, especially for websites that face your customers. But what about internal websites for your employees. Could a faster website boost productivity? Their productivity is a cost that you may want to optimize. Now several studies have shown that even a few tenths of a second affect the user's perspective on a website, and how likely they are to want to use it. But I've heard several owners say how they are not as … [Read more...]
posted on July 2, 2013 by
Customer Training @ SunGard Public Sector
I took over the Training & Development websites for SunGard Public Sector in 2007. I was tasked with redesigning the interface and managing the training system. This legacy application is written in ASP Classic and connects to a SQL Server 2008 database. The database was updated from SQL Server 2000 when I started on the project. I found several defects in the system that was purchased, and started redesigning core components over the next several years. This included redesigning the … [Read more...]
posted on June 23, 2013 by
South Florida Putting Greens
I took over this site several years ago. It was originally designed by another company, however, the site was taking a long time to load, and did not provide for an easy way for customers to contact the company. I initially redesigned the layout of the website, shaving off almost a megabyte of download per page by optimizing the navigation structure. This was done using CSS Sprites, and removing table based layouts. This produced a faster downloading site, that appeared quicker to the end … [Read more...]
posted on August 12, 2012 by
Olympic Mashups for Even Better Competitions
OK, this is just for fun, but I've been thinking about the Olymics, and not just normal games and ceremonies. Rather, I wondered how to mash up two sports into an even more awesome sport. So with that, I offer you my Olumpic Mashup ideas. So without further ado, I my proposal on some Olympic mashups. (Not that I think that the IOC will actually heed any of these awesome ideas.) Discus and Skeet Shooting So in skeet shooting, you shoot a small clay disc, that looks like a mini Frisbee. In … [Read more...]