by workshedAdmin | Feb 29, 2012 | Workshed News
The time, it flies. Sometimes at light speed, it would seem. Our poor website has been neglected. So we wanted to give you a quick list of the projects we’ve recently completed—just for your enjoyment.
WE Plan It — http://weplanit.com
Workshed completed this project in partnership with Reed Creative. Lori Reed handled the logo design and branding, while Workshed handled the web consulting, information architecture, design, development, and some of the copywriting. WE Plan It is a online business that helps you plan your date, activity, or family outing. With amazing deals on local businesses, as well as personal recommendations for local businesses that they have tried and endorse, they allow you to search for and plan your date online. Or, if you are pressed for time, they will book anywhere from two-to-four dates per month for you (depending on your account level). Congrats to Wendy and Erin on their new business venture!
Central Station Steam — http://cadillacmeter.com
We recently launched is for the Central Station Steam company, which specializes in energy and flow measurement devices. They wanted to update and upgrade their previous site, while also revising their branding, adding in a full-scale content management system, and improving their search engine placement. Working with their SEO firm, we handled the information architecture, UI design, CMS implementation, and slicing/programming. The site is built on a heavily customized WordPress installation that supports their complex product hierarchy, yet still allows the product catalog to be easily managed and updated by their staff. Congrats to the folks at Central Station Steam and their new site!
Inger Klekacz Photography — http://inger.net
We also launched a new website for Inger Klekacz Photography, a Portland photographer focused on live music. Inger’s an old friend of ours, so when she asked us about doing a site for her, we jumped at the chance. Lucky for us, we didn’t have to do too much, as her photography speaks for itself. Built with WordPress, and using webfonts from the Helvetica family, the only graphical elements on the site besides her social media icons are her photographs, which are displayed in a large jQuery-based photo gallery. Check out her site and enjoy some fine art. And if you’re in a band, hire her to take your photos. You won’t regret it.
Nettleingham Audio — http://nettleinghamaudio.com
Nettleingham Audio is one of our oldest clients. We first designed their logo way back in about 1997. Their new site reflects the large amount of thought and time that was put into this project to really make it shine. Make sure to check out the photos of their new studio; and if you need to record your band, or even have your music replicated, check out Nettleingham Audio!
Downtown Camas — http://downtowncamas.com
We completely redesigned and redeveloped the new Downtown Camas Association website. The site includes a specialized WordPress CMS implementation with custom post types and a heavily customized MapPress Pro implementation for the business directory and the interactive walking map, which allows visitors to find and geolocate local businesses.
Portfolio Financial Servicing Company — http://pfsc.com
We performed a complete redesign and custom WordPress implementation for Portfolio Financial Servicing Company (PFSC), a Portland-based Portfolio Management company. Additionally, we perform an ongoing monthly SEO report to help analyze and improve their organic search engine rankings. PFSC has provided uninterrupted portfolio servicing, backup servicing and successor servicing to the markets they serve since 1992.
The Uncommon Gift — http://theuncommongift.com
We designed and built this site for our good friends at The Uncommon Gift. It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, sort of like the martinis they serve on First Fridays. Coincidence? We think not! The Uncommon Gift is a gift boutique in beautiful historic Downtown Camas specializing in unique gifts, home furnishings, and local art.
by workshedAdmin | Jul 19, 2011 | Workshed News
Workshed’s DNS provider is under a heavy DDOS attack as early a.m. on July 20th. We are keeping an eye on the situation and will provide updates as they arise. Currently, DNS for web sites and email on a portion of the web sites we host will be affected and may experience periodic downtime.
![Site Launch: Authentic Home]()
by workshedAdmin | Feb 19, 2010 | Project Reports, Workshed News
Workshed recently completed an ambitious project for Seattle-based interior designer, Kathy Banak, and her custom line of Paints and Fabrics, Authentic Home. Kathy approached Workshed wanting to unify her online brand, expand her offerings and move to a CMS-based platform to ensure scalability and ease of growth.
Workshed worked closely with Authentic Home over the course of four months to establish a strategy for linking a network of web sites together visually, strategically and technically. Today, we finally get to see the results of everyone’s hard work as she officially announces her new sites.
The Authentic Home Network of sites is comprised of a content-managed Interior Design-focused site that promotes the services Authentic Home has to offer, a blog site that allows Kathy to keep her clients informed and share her expertise on Interior Design and last, but not least, a fully-featured e-commerce site that allows her to sell her custom line of interior and exterior paints, as well as custom fabric selection. The key to Authentic Home’s store is the ability for customers to see and purchase paint and fabric in moods, which are pre-matched sets of colors and patterns that match certain moods.
Workshed leveraged open source technologies for the back ends of these sites, settling on the highly flexible and extensible Concrete5 CMS framework for the interior design site, the tried and true WordPress for the blog and Magento for the e-c0mmerce site. These technologies allow us to provide Authentic Home with a search engine friendly, easily manageable and extensible framework for the growth of not only Authentic Home’s Internet presence, but also for the growth of its business.
Workshed is proud to have been a part of this project and we look forward to seeing Authentic Home settle into its new home(s) on the Internet.
by workshedAdmin | Nov 24, 2009 | Workshed News
Our offices will be closed on Thanksgiving day and Friday. If you should need urgent assistance, please call 360-833-2901 x1 or email us at support (at) workshed dot com.
by workshedAdmin | Mar 13, 2009 | Technology, Workshed News
Oftentimes, when we’re building out web sites, factoring in time for IE6 amounts to a lot of extra time, blood, sweat and tears. Entire societies have crumbled as a result. Financial markets have been thrown into irreparable states of turmoil. Lives have been lost.
We’ve often stated that we’d drop support for IE6 when its browser share drops to 10%, a time for which we have waited with baited breath, anxiously watching Google Analytics reports as they inch ever closer. Alas, it’s been hovering around 20%, which is not yet there.
However, we recently read an article that put it all into perspective for us: IE6 is holding back the progression of the web. There. I said it. IE6 just isn’t a good match for your web site anymore. You see, in order to support IE6 so your web site doesn’t look like a discarded pile of yesterday’s images and text, we have to hack your web site’s code to do things it was never meant to do. Degrading things. Demeaning things. Things your web site will forever regret like the haze of a night on the town gone badly.
The biggest stumbling block is the dreaded Windows 2000, which will not run IE7 or greater. How do we support these users? How do we keep your web site intact when someone using IE6 wants to use it? It’s easy: Warn them that they will have a much better experience with another browser. After all, Firefox is free and it’s fantastic.
All hacks aside, the fact is, the big boys are starting to drop support for it, too. Google, Facebook and 37 Signals have all announced and/or provided lessened user experiences for IE6 users.
This is the beginning of the end for IE6 support, and at Workshed in particular, it is the end. As of April 1 (this is not a joke, either) we will no longer support IE6 for web sites we build without additional hours built into the project budget. There are far too many exciting things happening in the world of Web Development (embeddable fonts!) to have to dumb down the experience for a browser that’s 8 years old and counting.
It’s time to move on.
