The assignment was to create a design that could work with all of the areas of the Jewelry Making Professor website. This included an eCommerce section, a blog, and several call to action pages. Included within was the Video of the Week and a count down timer that display on the home page.

After refining the design, we settled no a basic layout. This design was then turned into a WordPress theme and an X-cart theme. Both needed to align perfectly and create the appearance of one continuous website. Take a look for yourself, check out the — X-cart portion and the Blog area here.

JMP uses X-cart for e-commerce. When we started the project, the X-cart version was 4.2.1. We needed to migrate all of the data and data structures into the newest version of X-cart, 4.4.3.

All of X-cart’s data also needed to be up to date at the time of the production move up, so we needed to document how to execute the conversion during the production move up. The results were pages upon pages of SQL queries and data structure manipulation.

After the X-cart 4.2.1 structure and data was formatted for 4.4.3, we made the connections to the application. Now it was time to add our database tables for our custom Video of the Week / Featured Product application. These tables were added and our custom PHP code deployed and we extended the functionality of X-cart to include management for the Video of the Week and the Featured Product.

Once we were ready for production deployment, the move took over 7 hours and resulted in about 15 hours of total bug fixes. However we regarded the production move as highly successful as we were able to launch JMP 2.0 on day 1 and not look back.

The main part of the JMP website is an e-commerce website powered by X-cart. Web Design was a combined effort between EJ Host and Geoff Matheson Design.

A custom admin area was built to control the inner workings of the site and to extend X-cart’s functionality. The Video of the Week system was developed and programmed by EJ Host. View the full website here

The first project was to design a weekly newsletter and a method of distributing it. Geoff Matheson Design did all of the newsletter design plus the basic HTML programming.

The next project was also a HTML email newsletter. We were used as subcontractors by Cause Design.

Read the full story here

The first project was to design a weekly newsletter and a method of distributing it. Geoff Matheson Design did all of the newsletter design plus the basic HTML programming.

The newsletter needed to be graphically appealing, so it therefore needed to be designed using HTML. Writing the HTML for a newsletter is very challenging because there are a lot of popular mail applications, each of which display the HTML differently. To limit our updating the HTML, we needed to test the design on all popular mail applications throughout the development process.

When creating a newsletter you must not only create a flexible design, you must also be able to code that design in a very basic type of HTML.

Once the design was coded in HTML, we needed to setup an area where the client could generate each week’s newsletter. Our client needed to type the name and the content for the newsletter and have all of the HTML generated. This was done by creating a simple custom admin area that will generate the newsletter’s HTML each week.

The last part was figuring out the best way to distribute the newsletter. After trying several methods, we ended up using Mail Chimp for newsletter mangement and distribution. Mail Chimp has a free plan: up to 2,000 subscribers; send up to 12,000 emails per month.

The next project was also a HTML email newsletter. We were used as subcontractors by Cause Design.

The problem was that the HTML would not display properly on all major email applications. We used email newsletter testing matrices to show us how the HTML would display on different mail applications.

After viewing the original matrix, we realized the HTML needed a complete rewrite. The reason is that certain mail applications do not recognize style driven design. After going through 11 revisions, we were able to create HTML that gave us a consistent look on all major email applications.

Gmail can be the perfect all in one solution for email. Currently, each user is given over 7 GB of space, with the ability to upgrade as necessary. Even a high traffic user can expect to store over 5 years of mail, which is search able and accessible at any time.

At the core of its functionality is its web based interface. By existing as a web based service, any web enabled device can connect and view the same inbox. Additionally, Gmail can be constantly upgraded by Google behind the scenes, with little or no downtime. Gmail’s search functionality is second to none, allowing the user to broaden or narrow their search as needed.

Our favorite feature of Gmail is its ability to receive and send mail through other mail servers. This means that Gmail can connect to your mail servers the same way as a traditional desktop application.

If you are using Gmail without sending would send your mail through the Gmail servers. By doing so the mail headers show that the sender’s domain and the mail server’s DNS records do not match. This typically sets off a red flag on spam filters nowadays and can cause deliverability issues.

Since we are setting up Gmail to send each mail account’s email through its domain mail server, all your email will be routed through the proper mail server. The ensures that there are no deliverability issues as outlined above.

One of the problems with a web based system is that you need to be online to view your email. This issue is avoided by using Gmail’s IMAP servers to sync your desktop or mobile mail application with Gmail. Additionally this allows the user to setup and deploy Gmail from traditional desktop mail applications such as Apple Mail, Outlook or Thunderbird.

Both incoming and sent mail can be setup so they are tagged by filters, which can place email into specific folders. These folders are available underneath the aggregate inbox and allow the user to check specific email accounts.

There are a few tricks to optimizing your Gmail and EJHost will be happy to assist you in getting setup. Please contact us today for more information or how you can be switched over to a Gmail platform.

What social media should your business target in 2011, check out the following article for some great ideas –>

This great article at SEO Moz give some tips for leveraging some of the best social media sites in June 2011.

There are millions of website online in 2011.

Nowadays, there is competition within every niche market. New websites pop up every day, making the internet a very crowded place.

How do you connect with your target market?

That is literally the million dollar question. How can you beat out your competitors & have your digital customers find you?

The short answer is it is possible, but it does require a large effort in time and unless you are willing to spend even more time manually doing certain SEO processes, money.

In this post, I’m just going to go over some very high level items that will help you get started.

In any case, a website owner MUST either learn SEO strategies OR hire a SEO professional. In the best of worlds, the website owner would perform certain SEO tasks them selves and contract out other tasks.

A good SEO professional is usually a web designer and has an understanding of programming. Legit SEO professionals will outline their strategies in how they will help your website gain online visibility. But SEO is only 1 part of the equation.

If your website is not a typical retail business, or offers specific services the best way to find new customers may be to leverage social media. Word of mouth sometimes is the best way to sell your services. Social Media Optimization or SMO as it is known is the term for properly configuring your social media.

Connecting with certain people on Twitter or Facebook is like hitting the Jackpot

Connecting with reputable people who have high status with online communities can make or break your business. Receiving a positive rate or testimonial from certain people can create a huge buzz. Finding and impressing these people is the hard part.

With the Internet changing so rapidly, new methods of finding your target market are just around the corner.

Keep your website’s visibility on the cutting edge by hiring the right SEO / SMO professional today!

Why are we bringing this up in a WordPress related post?
Simple. WordPress provides a superior way to itemize your collection of data.

Although there are several ways to do this within WordPress, we typically use the built in category classification. This allows us to assign our types of items to these different categories. We then display these items in specific places within the website. Just look how we’ve displayed the most recent blog posts on the home page.

The site owner can control list based content within WordPress by simply adding it to a specific category. We use the custom field area to provide variables where information related to the item is stored. We can give these items custom attributes such as images, links, names, dates, and other textual information.

All of this is transparent to the site owner (end user) and we’ll provide training and a manual if necessary. Our goal is to create an easy to use interface that requires no training.

ong>If you are unfamiliar with WordPress, here is a brief description:

WordPress is a flexible, intuitive website Content Management System. A Content Management System (CMS) allows the customer to control the website’s content without any programming knowledge. Typically this is done through a WYSIWYG interface. WordPress also provides the client intuitive control to add / remove pages and reorganize the menu. Clients also can also add images within the content. EJ Host also custom tailors WordPress’ content management on a per client basis. This gives the client the ability to update specific parts of the website.

Search for WordPress designers or developers and you will see thousands of results.

How does EJ Host stand out?

We stand out from our competition by developing our WordPress websites the same way we develop all websites, with XHTML and CSS . We start with analysis and research to formulate a design with you. We graduate these ideas and concepts to create a design. This design is then developed to a WordPress theme.

Our Competition

Most other “WordPress designers” have no idea how the inner workings of WordPress actually work, nor do they care. These designers either use WordPress theme templates or are using themes as a guideline to dictate their layout.

Our Competitive Edge

We only use WordPress as a Content Management System – all of our layouts are custom designed and then integrated into WordPress. We use CSS and XHTML to control the look of the site. The content is then filled in by WordPress. We have in depth WordPress knowledge which allows us to use WordPress functionality without having to settle on any out of the box design. So when we create your website, we can design it to any specification and then integrate it into WordPress.

Why do we use WordPress

There are many other pieces of software that perform many of the same functionality as WordPress such as Joomla, Sharepoint, Drupal, and PHP Nuke.

Why do we use WordPress?

• WordPress is very intuitive for the client to use with a short learning curve
• WordPress is an active and widely used product that is constantly updated, improved, and refined.
• WordPress offers your revision history which allows the author to recover a prior version of any page or post within the website
• WordPress has great Search Engine Optimization capabilities, including search friendly links and W3C compliant code
• Modular design allows developer to include or exclude as much code as necessary
• Ability to integrate other technologies such as AJAX, JQuery, Flash, Janrain and Ruby on Rails
• Unbelievable amount of plugins available to extend functionality

Read about advanced WordPress functionality here

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