1955 Design http://www.1955design.com Accessible Website Design Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:36:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Why Your Business Needs a Blog my business. I can't over emphasis the impact a blog may have on your business, too.

Establishing Expertise

Consumers prefer to deal with a business that they have confidence in. Once your business has established a blog it becomes the ultimate online newsletter. It has world wide reach, but also touches your client base on the local level. Writing competent articles about your industry and aiming those articles at your target audience is a terrific way to demonstrate not only your knowledge, but your interest in passing this knowledge on to your customers. In the world of higher education and professional fields, those most respected in their individual fields of expertise always write about their knowledge. Why should your business or industry be any different? ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/06/13/why-your-business-needs-a-blog/ The Least Valid Website on the Internet As most of you know, I strive to develop websites that conform to currently accepted web design standards. I write my code to be valid both via the CSS file and the XHTML markup. Although it takes a bit more time to design a website to conform to these standards, it always seemed like the right way to design a website. It also feels good when your product is pronounced to be Valid by the various validation tools. I stumbled upon a website today that appears to me to be the least valid website I have ever seen. Bar none. As of today, there are 2017 validation errors when the XHTML is checked. Wow. That's a lot of errors. Can you find a website with more errors than this one has? That's the challenge for today! [eof] P.S. Just to balance things out, the University of California Spanish & Portugese Department is one of the most valid websites I have ever seen. The good folks over at Accessites.org highlighted the UC Spanish & Department website over a year ago. How's that for contrast? ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/06/09/the-least-valid-website/ Shepard Law Project Complete: I have just completed a new website for Matthew C. Shepard, PLC. Mr. Shepard is an attorney located in Keego Harbor, MI. In addition to a standard website, Mr. Shepard wanted the ability to write articles and news items for both his clients and website visitors.

WordPress as a CMS

With that in mind, I designed the site using WordPress as the CMS for this project. With only a modest amount of training, Mr. Shepard will be able to update his "Law Blog" on a regular basis. Not only will this be informative for his readers, but the blog articles will also make his website much more attractive to search engine indexing. Afterall, both Google and Yahoo love fresh content on websites and are likely to increase the page rankings for websites that regularly add new content.

Custom Blog Theme

This website was completed by customizing a blog theme that I have used for previous clients. By reusing an existing theme, and simply modifying the graphics and applying a few other tweaks, I was able to provide Mr. Shepard with a very cost effective solution for his webiste needs. I think the site portrays Mr. Shepard's law firm as both serious and professional, and that's just what he was looking for. I am happy with the site, but most importantly, so is the client! [eof] ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/05/31/shepard-law/ Finally - a Simple CMS One of the struggles I have had recently is determining the best way to allow my clients to update the content on their websites. Although there are a myriad of content managment systems to choose from, in my experience most of them are too complicated for the needs of the clients I normally work with. I have personally become a convert to using WordPress as the backend for most sites that I design. By doing so, I can update most client sites from anywhere in the world through the WordPress web based interface. This is a great advantage as I am no longer tied to the various desktop software applications in my office in order to accomplish most updates. With the exception of blog themes that I have done, none of the clients for whom I have setup WordPress as a CMS system have ever updated the content on their sites. Not a single one. This isn't a client failing, but rather I feel that WordPress is just a bit too complex for most clients. ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/05/15/finally-a-simple-cms/ WordPress 2.5 ID Numbers One of the deficiencies I noted in WordPress 2.5 was that the dashboard interface no longer showed the ID numbers for Posts, Pages or Categories. Although this might not be much of a problem for the casual user of WordPress, those of us who write custom WordPress applications have come to rely on these ID numbers to add custom features to our projects. In fact, WordPress itself instructs end users to utilize these ID numbers in a variety of the WordPress template tags, such as in_category(). I have come to rely on these ID numbers in many of my applications, having used them in various template tags and in creating category page templates. As a result, I was frustrated with the new interface and the lack of information regarding these ID numbers. I was discussing this issue with my friend Deborah over at Lireo Designs. Deborah is also developing sites using WordPress, and she is not one who lets a problem like this get in her way. After doing some research on this problem, Deborah discovered a neat little plugin that once again displays the ID numbers in the WordPress 2.5 dashboard. Thanks for the help, Deborah! It's a very useful plugin that makes my life a bit simpler. [eof] ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/04/30/wordpress-25-id-numbers/ From Lyon to Provence Two Red Pears - by Julian Merrow-SmithHaving only been in the south of France once, traveling from Lyon to Avignon via riverboat, I consider myself an expert regarding nothing in the region. I do consider myself an expert, however, in what I like. Make no mistake about it - I like the south of France. My wife and I were fortunate enough to visit in December of 2006, which is not precisely the time when the countryside is in full bloom. Nor is it the time of year that most people find southern France to be the most endearing. Nonetheless, the south of France invoked affection in me. The startling beauty of the countryside and landscape were in winter retreat, yet enough bursts of beauty remained for me to imagine what great sites the the onset of warm spring sunshine would bring to the region. Just yesterday I stumbled upon a website that belongs to a very fortunate man. Julian Merrow-Smith is a British painter who now lives in Provence in the South of France. In February 2005 Julian started Postcard from Provence. Julian now undertakes a painting a day, all inspired by the beautiful surroundings of southern France. His project has received international acclaim, and has been featured in The London Times, The New York Times, USA Today and The Sunday Telegraph. If you find the time, and think you would enjoy the beautiful work of a very talented painter, take a visit over to Julian's website and see for yourself that to which I refer. [eof] ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/04/15/from-lyon-to-provence/ Spam Sandwich Wow. I never knew I had so many cool visitors to this website. For every legitimate comment that my most popular post gets, there are hundreds of illegitimate comments left behind on other posts. Look at some of the neat comments these Spammer folks left for me. With visitors like this, how can I guy ever get discouraged about writing for the interweb?
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Let me know what classic spam comments have been left at your website. I would love to see what others have experienced! [eof] ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/03/22/spam-sandwich/ The West Coast Sets the Trend Again Only in California. Brought to my attention by TechEBlog. [eof] ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/02/29/west-coast-sets-the-trend-again/ Powered by Vista - Finally For the past year I had been in need of a new laptop computer. My old Dell machine had served me well, and allowed me to do everything I needed to do. It never balked, crashed, got tired, or gave up. But the time had finally come when it needed to be replaced with a newer machine. More memory, more hard drive space and a sharper HD monitor were needed.

My Fear of Vista Held Me Back

I was aware during this time period that Windows had released their new Vista operating system. Although I did not dilligently research Vista, I was aware that many people were reporting problems with the operating system. Many people. Too many people. Quite frankly, I was scared to make the switch to Vista. Since it has become virtually impossible to buy a new PC without Vista installed, I delayed the purchase for many months. ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/02/16/powered-by-vista-finally/ Southern Injustice justice.jpgProject Complete: Working with a familiar WordPress theme, I have just completed a new blog for Southern Injustice. This website will chronicle the upcoming appellate trial of death row inmate Richard Lambrix, who has been incarcerated and on death row in a Florida prison for the past twenty four years. Richard and his supporters intend to use this blog to document the evidence in his case and to attempt to demonstrate that he has been wrongly convicted of capital murder. As delivered, this theme is valid CSS and valid XHTML to the strict standard. The site is search engine friendly and uses WordPress as the content management system. [eof] ]]> http://www.1955design.com/2008/02/06/southern-injustice/