There was a unanimous choice for 3, with the small revision of adding an actual “lynx” to the image.  Which can be seen in the final version here :

I’ll be developing the site as well, and will post links to that as it get’s completed.

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.

• WordPress Flickr Manager

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.

• All In One SEO Pack

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.

• Google Analytics for WordPress

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.

• Twitter Tools

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.

• WP-DBManager

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

• WordPress Mobile Pack

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.

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…..

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,

added a global translation plug-in,

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

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

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

The wall is getting some action,

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

A small touch up, made the ’1′ more like a ’1′, fattened some of the limbs, and took away the “ave” in place of a rose.  The change came about when making Scotty’s business card, and he asked if I could change the logo and make the ’1′ look more like a ’1′…

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.

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.

So that was an awesome way to start the day, April was super impressed (I like to impress her with things like that), and scotty already posted it up to our 15 Rose Facebook page, which means he was somewhat impressed, even if he’ll never say it, so all in all it’s a good morning so far.

3 weeks went by rather quick for me, and I’ve made it through a few of those, and that isn’t my full list, just a good summary of what’s on the tip of my noggin lately.

So what’s everyone else been doing? Need a vacation?  Come out to 15RoseAve.com and check room availability online! I’m still working on the site, so expect plenty of improvements, we just needed to get all the information up, and we’ve already received 5 online reservations!  Let me know what you think I should do with it, and what could make it better.

So if you click through our reservation link you’ll see I went with InnCenter as our PMS(Property Management System) solution, they just had better customer service(Mahesh is the man, and was a great guy to work with), and it was a bit more intuitive than frontdeskanywhere.  He was able to get me working with the system in 2 weeks, and we were up and running all proper like…

“You mean like a real hotel?”
-Eric after seeing how the new system worked, in which he would enter guest information into a computer.

There’s still plenty to do for the hotel from the marketing stand point, brochures, business cards, blah blah blah and all that jazz.  But what do you think of the logo?

I really wanted to get the whole thing to be one smooth, organic piece, while joining the ’5′ and the ‘R’ together.  I feel like it all kind of moves in a wave, much of what we’re all about here at the 15 Rose, and was able to keep a vintage feel, without being too old fashioned.

Time to start adding that to all kind of print materials, and making some decent fliers to pass out to all the people who ask what the hell this place is, can’t keep handing out business cards and crossing out jim and charlotte’s name…