Category Archives: work

all things work related.

ThinkAheadColorado.com CSS Theme Development

I’ve been working contractually for Public Strategies here in Austin since about February, usually helping with tweaks and back end stuff on several different sites by now, and this is the first site I was asked to build out all the CSS for the theme.

They have a full “digital” team over there, I was sent a .psd(seen above) from the designer and I cut it up and coded the rest, the joomla install was readied by the project manager and we very swiftly turned around the site.  I really enjoy working with the team at Public Strategies as opposed to only myself and being solely responsible for every single aspect of the design and implementation, being a useful cog in a well working machine is extremely gratifying in it’s own, and I’m happy to part of such a useful team of people from time to time.

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Chompers Update

Chompers is now available, and will be available in Wal-Mart’s nationwide starting this summer. I updated the products page to include 3 more products on the chompers line. I replaced the LivePipe rollover tabs with Spry tabs, and also used Spry to make the sliding panels, turns out Spry is quite handy.

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5 Essential WordPress Plug-Ins For Your Site

I use WordPress a lot, I usually recommend it to my clients for any site as it’s easy to use, easy to manage, and very easy to set up. Whenever I set up a new install of WordPress I also install a small collection of plug-ins that I’ve found to be essential in my work.

I use flickr for photo sharing just because of the sheer amount of people on flickr, and it easily syncs with most other services, and especially with this plug in. It allows you to set and organize all your photos on flickr, and then those changes can be seen on your blog.

I always use this plug in to create the titles and urls, and set site wide keywords and such. Pretty straight forward and easy to set up.

If you have a google account, then you should be using analytics on your site, with this plug in you can simply enter your anayltics tracking code and you’re done, everything else is taken care of.

If you twitter, and this really only applies if you do, you can tweet from your blog, or blog from your twitter, a lot of features makes this handy for tweetheads.

Backing up your WP database seems important, so I install this too.

Simplest way to set a site up for mobile browsers, it can detect and change the CSS depending on the user’s browser, and comes with a collection of mobile ready themes.

Let me know if there’s any plug-ins your WP blog can’t live without.

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HeadShot For All, well in 6-8 weeks…

We finally closed the deal on http:/ineed.headshotenergyshot.com, we’ve been liquidating our own product online at 80% off the retail price, and it almost worked, we had some good momentum, but then we failed to delivery…literally. Shipping problems on top of the inventory problem that put us in this mess in the first place made these last 6 months a very tiring liquidation campaign, and now we are finally done with that.

And I breathe a sigh of relief, but only for a moment, I’ll feel great when they’re all shipped and accounted for, and I won’t get another, “I ordered sometime in july, just wondering wtf?”  We’re still going through lost orders and backtracking all the shipments to make sure everyone gets their package, but we’re no longer taking any more orders, surprisingly enough we managed to get rid of them all(through several different efforts).

Free HeadShot @15Rose

We dropped off a few pallets here at the 15 Rose for awhile, and that turned into an interesting experiment.  Leaving them out, then encouraging people to take as much as they want, worked well for the first round of pallets.  Three pallets sat in our breezeway for one month before they were taken by the locals willing to grab a few, we ordered three more pallets and they lasted only 4 days, I don’t really know how that happened.

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Impulse One Blog Polishing

hsblogIOblog

Finally got around to fixing some of the graphical/style elements of the HeadShot Blog and our Impulse One Blog.  Both were in need of some tweaking, so check ‘em out and let me know what you think of the progress so far.

I’m now in the process of learning adsense, because we don’t actually have any money to pay for adwords, so let’s see if there’s anything to placing unobtrusive text ads on our blogs.  I’ve started by testing a few banners on iNeed while it’s still operating.  Next I’ll learn to start placing it unobtrusively on all of our blogs, and then to any other blog that I make in the future that may need it, seems to be the thing to do these days.

Currently testing out a few adsense plug-ins, but nothing’s really standing out as a useful solution yet, maybe I’ll find it out there, and then actually post that plug-in article I’ve been working on, but that’s all in the future, unless your reading this now, then it may be in the present or past, or may not have happened at all, the unknown has yet to decide, or has it already been done….ooooeeeeeooooeeeeeeeuuuuu…..

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My New Cards, And How You Can DO IT YOURSELF!

When I ordered my latest pair of Pirate Sandals, Kevin threw in a few CardHippie business cards as well, and I thought it was an awesome idea when I saw it, after a little more searching, I found this helpful DIY thanks to Eco Etsy.  So I went about the following steps sand now have a fresh new recycled card, I feel good about using my trash for something useful, I have a hard time throwing anything away, so it helps if I can make use of some of the things I keep around.

Step 1: Make Design

businesscard
Obviously you need to start with you design, you want to remember that you’re making a stamp, so you can focus on clearer letters, thicker lines, making sure it’s a very clean and legible, because the stamp can leave a thick blob of ink on too fine of a design, smudging your design and leaving you upset.

Step 2: Order Stamp

Stamp

You can do your own research if you want, I went with Ideal 300 from Rubber Stamp Champ because for some reason or another I thought I needed a self inking stamp, upon receiving my stamp and making my first round of cards, I can say that I will order a HandStamp once this one dries up on me, the self inking is nice for doing a lot of cards at once, but its hard to control the precision of the stamp and how much ink is being transfered, also you can’t change the color of the ink.  So I would recommend going with a traditional hand stamp for something that will last longer, then again, if you plan on changing you card design every so often then it doesn’t really matter either way, order what you think is easiest for what you have in mind.

Step 3:Draw, Stamp, Cut

stamp, cut, copy

Draw your outlines, stamp within those outlines, and cut according to those outlines.

finished

You’re done, in 3 steps you have a never ending supply of business cards(as long as you have some form of thin cardboard material lying around).

Let me know how it works for you, and if you know any place I should be ordering my stamps from.

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15RoseAve.com is feeling better now

15roseave.com

Some minor visual fixes and suddenly a site can turn feel so much better.  I finally got back to cleaning up the visual flaws that were bothering me on 15roseave.com, and added some new functionality as well.

Re-worked the header,

Picture 35

added a global translation plug-in,translated

polished the social sidebar and now it includes the recent tweets,
Picture 37

Made the reservation button a fixed tab, and easy to understand,
Picture 36

and did a complete overall to the Rooms & Rates page, as well as the room pages themselves.

suites

Picture 11

The wall is getting some action,

wall

and I was finally able to write a few posts for the experiences.

experiences

And using the wonderful Twitter Tools plugin I have a tweet digest reporting all the tweets of the day, which is actually quite useful as I’m using the 15 rose twitter to RT any and all awesome things happening in the Venice/Santa Monica Area, so follow us if that’s your thing.

Head over and check out 15roseave.com sometime, let me know what you think.  And if your looking for a place to stay in California, well, you know where you can go…

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Impulse One Deserves a Blog Too!

So, we made another product site for Chompers Pet Snacks.  The thing about our “sites”, is that they’re more of online brochures.  I’ve always felt we needed something a little more dynamic, and a little more up-to-datable, and something for all of our brands.  So I did what any other person of the internet would do, made a new sub-domain, installed a fresh copy wordpress, found an appropriate theme, & modified it.  Now we have blog.impulse-one.com as our repository of updates for Impulse One.  We’ve always needed a news section, or a place for press releases for all of our products, and this site should act as that.

Picture 41

Still plenty of work to do on it, but the framework is in place, and that’s what matters at the moment, the graphical fixes and extended features will come in time, but for now I’m focusing on the filling it with some content.

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ChompersPetSnacks.com, Now We’re Making Pet Snacks!…

Thought we were just a beverage company supplying you with ENERGY and health?  WRONG! We also love dogs, so much so that we’re making the best dog snacks available.  Chompers is our newest product line with a certain demographic in mind…dogs.  So are you a dog, then you just try Chompers, if you have a dog, then you should get it some Chompers.  We’re working to get the product into stores now, check the updates on Impulse One to find out the latest information on any and all of our products.

I wrote the html and css for the site, and used LivePipe, a handy little javascript/css solution for the rollover tabs on the “Products” page.

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HeadShot for all!

People are receiving their packages! YAY! :D

Want proof, oh well I got some proof. What’s fun about all this is seeing our product showing up in different places. It’s really cool to see something you helped make showing up in other people’s pictures.

this guy has it on his shelf

this guy has it on his shelf

this guy had a few leaks

this guy had a few leaks

And this guy put them in his fridge

And this guy put them in his fridge

totals

Totals Up to 03-31-2009

So up to March 31, 2009 we’ve managed to give away 2,659 cases of HeadShot. That means we only have 22,341 left!! We’re getting there…I guess. Still seems like a lot, but we’re getting a new order from iNeed everyday, so slowly but surely we’ll spread the wealth until we’re out of it.  Make sure to tell your friends, or anyone you know, we have plenty to go around.

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Giving Away HeadShot cont’d

So we’re still in the middle of the HeadShot Bailout Giveaway.  How many more cases you ask?  I have no idea, still more than 20,000 as most the people purchasing it are still weary on whether or not this is a scam.

Turns out most of our orders came on March 27th

Traffic on March 27th

Traffic on March 27th

Which was the same day that SlickDeals posted this little dity.  So our inbox backed up that entire weekend with orders, and then we came back on Monday, readied a new shipping system workflow so we could get everyone their tracking number, and started going down the list.

However it seems the internet has this instant gratification idea, where one week without contact and your customer is up in arms wondering where the hell their money went(can’t really blame them though, I know I would be the same way).  And now that we’re getting into the third week since posting and people are getting a little more than annoyed that they haven’t heard anything more than a paypal receipt, some even demanding refunds.  And there isn’t even a hold up, it’s just taking our fulfillment manager awhile, she’s the only going through and shipping these out, and with several hundred orders it’s taking her awhile.

It’s interesting though, being on the other side of something like this, and I’m starting to understand why it’s takes 4-6 weeks to get a free sample of something.

Although this is showing us that we need to take the helm here, and leave the Arkansas office to selling and “thinking”.  In the next few days I should be moving out to Venice, CA, setting up shop out there, and when that happens we’re hoping to take on the fulfillment role since we’ll be close enough to our LA warehouse, and we’ll have room for storage in the basement of the Rose for now.  Because I just can’t keep taking the rap for something I have no control over, I have to fix that.

So if you’re reading this and wondering where you HeadShot is, it’s on the way, just give it some more time and you’ll be happy you did. :)

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