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Launching Another WordPress Site: Talatek, LLC

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jul 27, 2010; Category: Communication, Content Management System, WordPress; Tags: Communication, Design/Development, WordPress as CMS; No Comments

Visit talatek.com»

Obviously, we’ve been busy: TalaTek’s website is the fourth we’ve launched in a month (the third in little more than a week), with more in the works. This pace would be impossible without WordPress. With it, however, it’s not much of a stretch (discounting some late hours here and there).

The more I work with WordPress, and the more I understand of it’s capabilities and how to take advantage of them, the more impressed I am with it. Not just because it allows me to do more as a designer and developer (does it ever!), but because it allows website owners to do more to manage their online presence. It enables business owners and organization managers to utilize their websites as active communications tools, making updates and changes on an as-needed basis with very little effort.

TalaTek is in line with a trend I’m seeing in which businesses are more willing to embrace blogging as a means of creating content of value to their market, establishing their expertise and enhancing their search engine rankings. TalaTek has elected to call their blog posts “articles,” but I don’t care what they call them as long as they keep posting and getting the benefits of posting them.

Leon Sterling of Compelling Concepts wrote the copy for the website and developed the messaging. It was good to have a partner in the creative process; design is much easier—and more effective—when a clear message exists.

Yet Another Website Launch: Desert Sports, Terlingua, Texas

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jul 26, 2010; Category: Content Management System, Design/Development, WordPress; Tags: CMS, Design/Development, WordPress; No Comments

Visit desertsportstx.com»

Moving right along, we just launched Desert Sports’ website this weekend. They have been long-time clients, actually pre-dating Evo by about 3 years (maybe 4), and I believe this the fourth version of their website we’ve done for them. Desert Sports is a multi-sport outfitter in the Big Bend area of Texas, offering rentals, shuttles, and guided trips in boating, mountain biking and hiking. I’ve been on several trips with them, and you cannot go on a wilderness trip with a better bunch of folks.

As you might have guessed if you’ve been paying attention to what we’re up to lately, this is a WordPress-based website. In addition to their blog (a new experience for them), they update a daily report on weekdays that shows current temperatures, river levels, and other information you might want to know about before you pull out of your driveway and head toward Terlingua. They also plan to keep current updates on partially filled trips that have room for additional happy campers, like you!

The site has a lot of useful information on floating the Rio Grande, hiking trails, and mountain biking trails, as well as information on local services. Go take a look at their website, and consider getting away for a week in Big Bend with Desert Sports as your guides. It’s a guaranteed change of pace.

National Assistance Dog Week Website Launched

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 29, 2010; Category: Content Management System, WordPress; Tags: Blogsites, CMS, Website Launch, WordPress; No Comments

Visit assistancedogweek.org»

We recently (earlier today) launched another site with a WordPress-based content management system, this one for National Assistance Dog Week. The annual event was created through the efforts of Marcie Davis (workinglikedogs.com) to recognize devoted, hardworking assistance dogs helping individuals mitigate their disability related limitations.

While the site was launched a bit late (the event takes place approximately 6 weeks from launch), the site was built in just 8 days, from design to launch. Of course, like all sites, it’s a work in progress, and content will continue to be added. With WordPress of course, that’s no problem.

Behind the scenes, we’re still working on creating and testing custom post types in anticipation of event listings that will take place nationally. No doubt we’ll learn some interesting things in the process; we’ll report on our experience with that as we complete the work.

Why I’m announcing a site redesign, even though I think redesign announcements are lame.

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 20, 2010; Category: Content Management System, Design/Development, WordPress; Tags: Design/Development, WordPress, WordPress Themes; 2 Comments

When I see announcements about website redesign, my reaction is either a yawn or, if I’m feeling more energetic, a quick mental note: “So what?” So it’s more than a little ironic that I’m announcing the redesign of my own website, evowebdev.com. But after all, what are blogs for, if not to tell your readers what’s going on with you, particularly if it may have value for them?

The value for my readers (I know you’re out there, I can hear you breathing) is perhaps the realization that WordPress, on which the site is based, is fundamentally a solid, reliable, flexible web design and development platform for business websites. While this is not the first version of this site on WordPress, the redesign was very different. In the past, redesign meant “rebuild” as much as redesign. This time, I was able to focus almost entirely on design and messaging: there was nothing to rebuild (although I did upgrade to WordPress 3.0).

In New Mexico, including Santa Fe and Albuquerque (generally regarded as reasonably sophisticated), developers and designers have been slow to catch on to WordPress as a web development platform. Lots of them have created a blog or two with it, but not many have embraced it as a content management system (CMS) for full-blown websites. I had a difficult time this spring finding other local WordPress developers interested in hosting a WordCamp, so I shelved my hope of having WordCamp Albuquerque as premature (maybe in 2011).

Meanwhile, nationally, WordPress is catching on like wildfire as a development platform. Even major companies use it. WordPress has emerged as a leading CMS; in terms of numbers of websites and developers supporting it, it has achieved critical mass that allows companies to have confidence that it’s a stable and solid platform.

And, of course, it’s famously easy for WordPress website owners to update their own sites.

If your website is still static, it’s time to think about moving to WordPress. But don’t think about it too long, or you’ll be behind the crowd.

WordPress Selected Best Overall Open Source Content Management System

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Nov 23, 2009; Category: Content Management System, WordPress; Tags: CMS, WordPress; 2 Comments

We’ve been on the WordPress-as-CMS bandwagon for several months. Recently, we heard WordPress was awarded the Best Overall Open Source Content Management System award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards, beating out Drupal, Joomla, and a bunch of other geek favorites. We didn’t even know there was such an award, but of course, we like that it confirms our point of view that WordPress is a great CMS.

Recently we posted that All Small Business Websites Should be on a Blog Platform, by which we really meant "on WordPress." We were trying to appear open-minded. But really, we’re biased: we love WordPress. There, we said it! And we don’t care if the whole world knows it! WordPress has earned our favor by being simple, flexible, and powerful. And the more we use it, the more we understand how simple, flexible, and powerful it truly is. Read the above article for the benefits of blog-based websites for small businesses.

Also, check out our recently released (September 2009) CMS theme: Evo4 CMS. It was designed specifically to be used by professional designers who need a CMS for websites that incorporate a blog. We suggest it for professional designers because it’s not pretty out of the box, and you’ll need an excellent understanding of Photoshop and CSS—along with some understanding of PHP—to use it as the basis for a great website. You can also download a companion Photoshop template to help in the skinning (we can almost guarantee you won’t want to use the theme as is: it’s gray on gray).