A while back We lauched ChristmasinOrlando.com in collaboration with Gaylord Palms® Resort! It's a site to find out all the Christmas goodness that Orlando has to offer for people coming from out of town. If you know anyone coming into town around that time, point them towards this site so they know all that's happening in Orlando during the holidays!

When we design a site for a client, we tell them that if search engine rankings are important stay away from an all-Flash site. This isn't a big secret, but it really hit home when I saw the following:

This is a Google search for "2007 stumpjumper" which is one of the new bikes from Specialized. The first non-sponsored result is a post from one of my blogs. The specialized.com site is built with the content in Flash and PDFs. The microsite they used to promote the 2007 Stumpjumper and Roubaix bikes is all Flash.

Results from specialized.com don't show up until the third results page and that link is a PDF for their new suspension. Not only do HTML sites give search engines content to index but they allow you to use page titles that contain relevant keywords. As they say: the proof is in the rankings.

Red Rocket recently redesigned the web site for our blog hosting product, Blogzerk.com. Behind all the great design is some cool technology.

Templates
For the original site we used the PHP Smarty template system. This had served us well in the past to allow us to separate our code and content and make quick changes either to individual pages or to common elements like headers, footers, and navigation. This also made it easy to implement and test our site redesign before going live as well as flicking the virtual switch to go live with the new look.

Since we used separate template files for our header, navigation, and footer it was easy to make copies of these and test them on a few copies of our content pages. When we were satisfied we had everything in order, we only needed to back up the old template files and then replace those four files with the new ones. In case of emergency, we could revert back to the old files.

CSS
We used CSS on the original site which made updating our CSS for the new look easy. We changed a few styles, removed some we didn't need, added a few new ones for some added layout elements, and we were good to go.

Flash
We used Flash on the home page to rotate three (currently) different images. We used the JPG Rotator component from Jeroen Wijering. This was quick and easy to implement and has some nice transition effects and timing options.

JavaScript
While we usually stay away from client-side scripting, we had an opportunity here to use it to enhance the user experience and we could ensure that it would degrade gracefully for anyone not using JavaScript. In the header of the site, we used the script.aculo.us JavaScript library to make a hidden DIV with our control panel's login form appear with a nice fade in effect and fade out if the Cancel button is clicked. If the visitor isn't using JavaScript the link will take them directly to the control panel's login page.

If you are looking to have your web site redesigned (or a new site designed), please contact us for a quote or more information.

UPDATE: After watching a few of these, it just hit me that John Hodgman playing the PC is fitting since he looks a bit like Bill Gates.

Check them out at Apple's site. They feature author, comedian John Hodgman and Justin Long (Dodgeball) another actor that looks familiar but I can't place.

Blogs are the new [insert whatever used to be old]. Although there is plenty of hype about blogs, some of it is deserved. Not only are blogs a great way for your business to communicate with your customers, they are also a good source for what is being said about your company--and your competition.

Here's some of the tools we use to monitor blogs for our clients and our own company. This isn't intended to be an exhaustive list but to give you a start in monitoring blogs.

Blog Search Engines
These search engines search blogs and other RSS feeds. Not only can you get search results like you can from other search engines, but you can create an RSS subscription for a given search term. Add this subscription to your feed reader and you get updates whenever there are new results.

• PubSub
• Feedster
• Google Blog Search
• Technorati

Tagging Sites
These sites either track tagged content or let users submit links and tag them. Tags are user-created keywords that describe the content like a subject or category. These are useful for tracking broader terms.

• del.icio.us
• Technorati Tags

We all had a great time at the Corporate 5K yesterday evening! Thanks to all of our friends and guests who came by our BlogZerk tent and said hello! With special thanks to Sobik's Subs, for providing some awesome post race subs!

SEE PICS!!!
http://blog.blogzerk.com/blog/Photos/Corporate5K2006

Here's a peek at our new Blogzerk ad.
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Then Go Blogzerk!! and Sign up for a Free 30 Day Trial and see how much you or your organization can benefit from your very own Blog.
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