Archive for January, 2010

CASA Network

Posted Tuesday, January 26th

CASA Network is a nation-wide organization serving those working with adult ministries through training, resourcing and networking.

Aside from their yearly conference, CASA Network has become known for their quality online resources for pastors and lay-leaders. The new gocasa.org reflects their modern approach to their work.

Some features:

Members-only content access with user profiles
Multi-media features
Advanced jquery category navigation (in the members-only resource center)
Integrated store/shopping cart for memberships and donations
Rotating image feature

Motivatehealthyliving.com is designed to be a resource for wellness program managers in businesses. They needed a website that conveyed that healthy, fresh feeling and was easy to maintain and interact with.

Features sIFR font replacement for image quality headings, fresh custom logo, easy content management, features blog content and comments in a stylish sidebar.

Social Media Integration – A Case Study

Posted Wednesday, January 20th

Social media is here to stay. Let’s just get that out of the way. Many organizations are now looking to integrate social media into their web communications strategy and I wanted to share how FourTen Creative is helping people do so.

The Case Study – SimplyMusic

SimplyMusic approached FourTen to integrate their current website with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, an eNewsletter and a blog. The only hitch was that they had invested heavily in their existing web content platform and were not able to move their whole operation over to a WordPress install at this time. We decided to come up with a way to complement the current website with a social-media-rich WordPress install with some key components.

Subdomain Installation: We started by creating a sub-domain of blog.simplymusic.com and setting up an account at Bluehost.com to host it because of a locked-down hosting environment on their existing servers. We proceeded to install WordPress (actually WPMU for posterity’s sake) and moved on to focus on the user interaction.

Integrated Site Theme: We then created a theme that mirrored the exact look and feel of the existing site including menu structure to provide a seamless navigation experience between main site and blog (and between servers on different continents…the internet is pretty cool sometimes).

WordPress Social Media Tools: We then set up our WordPress install with tools to display latest tweets and send latest blog entries to the Twitter account. (Facebook can receive those same Tweets through the Twitter application installed on your Facebook profile. See previous post.) WordPress also enables the displaying of YouTube videos in their pages and posts.

Custom Social Media Graphics: Aside from an investment in their CMS, Simply Music had invested in a fabulous set of artwork that tells the story of a musical journey. These source graphics were adapted to customize their Twitter and YouTube environments.

Newsletter: A powerful newsletter is in the works by utilizing a 3rd party distribution system (Mailchimp.com) and the blog to host full content. That means a digest email can be sent with custom a template and will link readers to media-rich content hosted on the blog.

Summary

Overall, this unified social media presence creates a multitude of new discovery points for new customers to find your content and stay connected to your business. FourTen Creative is proud to offer this full Social Media Integration for new & existing WordPress based sites as well as existing sites running on other systems. Contact us today to learn more.

Designing for Kids and Business Owners – A Kindermusik Case Study

Posted Friday, January 8th

(Updated 03/2011)

I have been fortunate to work with some of the nicest people in the world: Kindermusik educators. Kindermusik is a music and movement class offered for young children around the world. See Kindermusik.com for more info on them.

Over the past ~~two~~ three years FourTen Creative has provided custom designed sites for ~~four~~ seven different Kindermusik locations ~~on the West Coast~~ in North America. Some of the concerns central to Kindermusik educators may be relevant to your business as well. I am highlighting here some of the features and successes of these sites.

Interesting/Colorful Design: No stock templates here folks. Kindermusik educators are a colorful bunch as they appeal to infants, toddlers and young children. Each website project began with a custom graphic design process, integrating existing logos and color preferences to an appealing layout that conveyed fun, yet organized information logically according to what parent’s need.

Ease-of-Use: WordPress has always been my first choice because of how accessible it is for web design novices. Kindermusik educators, though intelligent and capable, often don’t have time to play with html code. With easy configuration and training from FourTen, educators are ready to edit their own schedules, add photos, and blog to their heart’s content.

Social Media Integration: You’ll hear me talk a lot about this, but I’ll keep it short here. These people are social by nature and their websites need to enable the relationships that are the foundation of their businesses. Sites from FourTen can be integrated (and automated!) to work with Facebook, Twitter, email marketing tools like Constant Contact & MailChimp, video providers like YouTube and Vimeo, and come stock with a blog.

Search Engine Playfulness: Ok, well… “Search Engine Optimization” didn’t sound as fun, but making it easy for people to find you on the internet is important. Sites from FourTen also enable seamless integration with Google AdWords campaigns (even custom landing pages) and drive people to get connected to a class near them.

Low Cost of Operation: Ok, let’s be honest, a small business these days can’t afford to keep a web nerd in their basement on retainer. With WordPress being an Open Source system, multitudes of free plugins, and the prevalence of low-cost wordpress hosting on the web, your overhead for a website could be as low as $85/yr. Seriously.

Registration Handling: Integrating registration forms into your site can be handled a number of different ways depending on how you process roster information and credit card payments. We have used methods such as Secure Forms, PayPal, Jackrabbit Class, Your Virtuoso and Kindermusik.com to meet the needs of these small businesses. WordPress websites are so flexible, that all of these methods work well.

Visit some of these sites to see Kindermusik websites in action or contact us for your own.