Reserve your free tickets at: http://ignitedover.eventbrite.com

Learn more about the event at: http://www.ignitedover.com

The Google Maps module is now live for all Delaware.Net CMS/Ecommerce customers as a free, automatic upgrade.    These automatic feature upgrades come about once per month (or more frequently), and this is one of the major benefits of using our CMS over other open-source solutions.    Free upgrades, free support, free training, and better integration.

Training videos for the new Google Maps builder are being uploaded today, so you will be able to see training videos directly in our on-demand help system.

1. Open up the space – we knocked down three walls in the office, combining the tech and design areas.
2. Bring in more natural light – knocking down the walls allowed more light in from the perimeter offices.
3. Get rid of barriers between people – all office desk hutches were disassembled and removed.
4. Improve lighting – replace flourecent lights with halogen spotlights and track lighting.
5. Improve the colors of the walls – we had the office painted with a warmer color.
6. Add more markerboards – we use markerboards a lot, so we got industrial markerboards from www.uwco.net.
7. New flooring – I wanted to remove all carpet from the floors, but we settled for having the carpets professionally cleaned.
8. Hang examples of our work – we created a wall of work examples that you pass as you walk into our office now.

After accomplishing all of these goals, I stepped back to admire our office space, and to see what else it needed to turn it into a true design studio. The thing that really jumped out at me is that we have collected quite an array of different computer desks over the years.  Some were 6 feet wide, some were 5 feet wide, and two were 4 feet wide.  All were made of that particle board that I hate.  So the next goal became:

1. Get new desks.

I looked at desks at local furniture stores, online, at office supply stores, and at sites like Herman Miller. Even the very expensive desks that were out there looked cheap to me.  One desk that looked interesting was the Milk desk, but that desk is $5000-$8000 for each desk.  You can see their cool site here:  http://www.milk.dk.    That Milk desk gave me some ideas for what we wanted.

One of my friends is a welder, and I thought about making a desk from sustainable materials.   I didn’t want the office to have recycled garbage in it, but I didn’t want particle board any longer either.  There had to be something in between.    I settled on making a frame for each desk out of metal, and then getting a flat surface for the top of each desk.

In speaking with my welder friend, we talked about steel or aluminum.   Steel would be inexpensive, but it would be heavy.  And it would rust. We agreed that a thick-wall aluminum square tubing frame would look the best, and would give the best strength. after sketching up 5 different designs on paper, we made the first prototype at his shop.

Here is the first prototype:

It looks really good in person.  And it only weighs about 10 pounds.

Here is what is coming next to finish the first prototype:

• Now we have a company manufacturing the surface for the desk out of architectural Corian that is translucent.
• A special cable box will mount underneath with a power strip inside.
• Power cabling will run through the desk tubing itself.
• There is a special surprise in the design that I will reveal when the desk is complete.

The new interface for the website was designed within the first week of the contract signing, and will begin moving online very soon.

Cities interested in upgrading their websites and gaining better management tools are encouraged to contact Delaware.Net at 888-432-7965, or you can inquire for a quote on our website at http://www.delaware.net/free-web-design-quote/.   Examples of our applications for municipalities can be found online at http://www.civic-logic.com.

Here are some of the differences between us and our competitors;

MUNICIPAL WEB DESIGN PRICING
Some municipal website design companies package websites into flat fees based on the number of citizens that live in the city/town in question.   This flat-rate pricing doesn’t work because smaller cities end up overpaying for their website, and larger cities end up paying more for add-on website modules to get a complete solution.    Delaware.Net’s fees for municipal websites is usually less than these other companies, and our proposals are more accurate because they are customized for each site.  Our one-time development fees for municipalities have ranged typically from $8000 for a smaller municipality up to $30,000 for a very large site (included dedicated servers, backups, GIS integration, and much more than the average website), with the average Delaware.Net project being closer to $10,000.   You could always spend much, much more, as evidenced by this quote given by CivicPlus.

3-YEAR TERM CONTRACTS?!?!
Other firms bundle design pricing with hosting over multi-year terms, selling the website services as a lease.  This can trap the municipality with a vendor over a long period of time, limiting their options.     A small city website project that we just won was quoted at $27,000 for a 3-year project from CivicPlus.   Our contract was under $9,000 for custom design and development, training, an Intranet, a request tracking system, email newsletter system, consulting, and more. We bill for our projects in three or four payments, so this is much more affordable.  We saved that small city over $14,000, and their site will also be completed much faster on our more powerful CMS.

CITY WEBSITE DESIGN
One of the challenges of building a custom website on a CMS is how to make the site not appear to look like a template.   If you look at the city website for the City of Cheyenne, Wyoming, you can see how a city website can look like a very plain, template-based website.  Should every page of your city website have a kid on a skateboard at the top of the site?   This is the difference between our company and others.   Our designs are custom, and we are not cranking out cookie-cutter designs.   Many times we hire local photographers at each city to get the best possible result.

CIVIC LOGIC CMS
Marketing speak aside, you have to really demo a Content Management System (CMS) before you buy it.  Your CMS is where you will be spending a lot of your time managing your website.    When you try these systems, ask yourself – “how easy will this system be for my employees to use?”.   If a system requires 6-12 clicks to accomplish editing a page, and our system takes 2-3 clicks, ours will save your employees a LOT of time over the other system.  All CMSs are not created equally.   We spent quite a bit of time looking at competing CMS solutions before we built ours, and it took us two years to get it just right.   Some systems, like CivicPlus, are simply a page management system for your website.  Others, like our CivicLogic system, are designed to be a true Intranet (secure staff website) for your staff, as well as being a CMS.    With a true Intranet website, you can securely add personnel documents, resources, file, pages, calendars, news, messaging, and much more for your staff.   Each department in your city can have their own private calendar and portal to share information.   This will save your municipality time and money, and get better adoption of the whole system from your staff.

MONTHLY CITY WEBSITE HOSTING FEES
Hosting from CivicPlus last year was generally $600 per month before they went to their bundled pricing.  That is a steep fee that still didn’t include all of their available modules. For example, you would have to spend another $100 per month AND a $1500 setup fee if you wanted their request tracking system.  A request tracking system is a VERY desirable system because it can be used to track complaints from citizens.  Our system includes a better request tracking system at no additional cost, a mass email newsletter system, and a real Intranet system for $150 per month.  That is a savings of $6600 per year!  For a better system!   It obviously isn’t all about price, so you should test both systems to see what is better for your city.

MOVING AWAY FROM CIVICPLUS
If you paid for a CivicPlus website, and you are tired of overpaying for your monthly fees, we can help.   Generally speaking, we can move a CivicPlus website to our CMS, Intranet, Newsletter, Request Tracking, and even our Project Management Module in a matter of two weeks.   The cost to move your site would be very low, and you would recoup that fee in a matter of a couple of months because our hosting fees are so much less than CivicPlus.  Your design files would also remain intact, so you wouldn’t have to pay for a new design.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact Me at 888-432-7965 x100 if you have any questions.   If you are looking to have a new website for your municipality, or if you are interested in moving away from an expensive CivicPlus solution, you can get a quote from us online using our free online quote form.

This is why I am especially proud that we have been selected to build the new City of Rehoboth website. We were up against two other good firms for this project, and I am happy that we won. Our pitch for this project encompassed what we saw as the true needs for the city moving forward, including specialized hosting needs dynamic applications, and data security needs.

This is a special project for us, and it will use all of our latest web applications. The City of Rehoboth already uses our Team-Logic system for their Intranet, and the new website will allow us to integrate the two systems (website and Intranet) to provide a total end-to-end system for the city. One of the ideas that came out of our meetings with the city is very innovative, and we are underway now. Keep an eye out for this new site!

There ARE cheaper open source solutions out there, and on the low end you have systems like Drupal, PHPNuke, PostNuke, .netNuke, Joomla, and others. These can be made to work if you have the time and patience, but for the most part they are solutions for non-profits and companies that don’t want to spend a lot on their website design work. I would never recommend them for a growing business that really cares about their website. Especially if they don’t have an in-house IT team. These low-end systems are well suited for a website where it is OK to use design templates for someone that wants to get up and running quickly. But there WILL be problems when using these systems, and like everything else – there is a trade-off.

Quality, Speed, and Cost – Choose Two!

If you go with a low-end CMS system, it might be fast to setup, and the price might be right, but your website will be a low-quality website. And if you factor in the time to customize it, that could then get expensive in a hurry.

Care should be taken to avoid a web design firm that charges a premium price for custom website development, then they turn around and install Drupal or some other low-end open system for their CMS solution. This is a way that a web desing firm can cut corners, and it is lying. We would never do this.

Another problem with the low-end open solutions is that they are higher profile targets for hackers. There are many examples of this that you can search for that show Drupal getting hacked, and other systems getting hacked. This is usually quite preventable if the systems are updated in a very regular manner, but the fact of the matter is that web desing companies that outsource their IT and hosting needs are much more likely to NOT update these systems. They build websites using these systems so that they can get them live quickly and turn a profit, but then the site (and the customer) gets neglected. This problem extends beyond CMS systems – it is also true of forum software and blog software.

Am I against open-source software? Heck no. We have our share of open-source software that we use at Delaware.Net, but there IS a trend away from it almost across the board, from operating systems to web development software, to application server software. Open source software is great if it is patched regularly, and if it meets a particular need. But sadly, most companies don’t do a very good job of updating.

Some folks assume that open-source software is somehow better because it is free and open, but this is just not true. To me, it is irresponsible for a web development firm to perpetuate that myth. Open source solutions shouldn’t be viewed as a software religion, they have to make business sense too. And when you actually track the time that it takes to make some open software work correctly, you find that it doesn’t always save you money in the long run. You also might be missing out on integration with your other business systems. Customers looking for a “quick and dirty” way to deploy and manage their websites might do OK with some of these solutions, but “quick and dirty” isn’t what our company is about.

So, you can go cheap with your CMS solution, or you can get one that is more custom to your needs, integrates with a nice custom design, and that doesn’t force you to log into three different interfaces to get your work done. And best of all your site will work better, and it will come up high in search engines.

Another advantage of our systems over other CMS systems is that ours is updated every month, with updates being seamless and free. Try geting your open-source system updated for free indefinitely by your hosting company (it doesn’t happen).

Today I relaunched my real estate portal at Delaware.com. The portal now includes an expanded real estate search that includes all real estate listings in both the TrendMLS database, and the Offutt database that serves Sussex, County Delaware. The site is updated daily, and has over 60,000 homes. You can search by city, and also by neighborhood to view comparisons of listings that you are interested in. The site also includes virtual tours of properties, and you can search those as well. If you are a licensed Realtor, I can put this technology into a site for you. I will continually add new features to the site to make it the leading real estate site for the state of Delaware.

Free Delaware Business Directory Also Launched

I also launched a local web directory, where you can add your business for free. Simply go to the site and add your web site to the directory for free. If you opt to pay for a premier listing, we have included additional categories that you can be listed under, and there are additional search engine optimization fields that will help to direct traffic to your web site. Premier listings allow a logo, and they show at the top of each category.

I purchased the Delaware.Net and Delaware.com domains about 7 years ago, and I used the Delaware.Net domain for our web development company, and I’ve always had a plan to use the Delaware.com domain for a local portal. That plan is being put into motion as I write this post.

The real estate directory is but one of many features that are going to be launched in the site this spring. For example, this week we plan to launch a business directory CMS module that will contain thousands of Delaware area businesses when it launches. Our new Content Management System that just launched also feeds into the Delaware.com portal. This means that area businesses will be able to post jobs, syndicate their products, and market their businesses in new ways – AUTOMATICALLY.

Combined with our exceptional Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work that we perform for our clients, we can now provide our local clients a Delaware-Centric portal that will greatly enhance their local marketing efforts. With our best-possible local domain name (Delaware.com), our cutting-edge database applications, and our reasonable advertising pricing, we feel that we can offer a much better value than other Delaware-area portals.

If you are interested in marketing your company on Delaware.com, or if you have a question about the new portal, post a response below and I will answer your questions.

Looking back at 2007

After a relatively flat 2006, we approached 2007 with a refined game plan. Specifically, to get the best talent I could find for our four teams; creative, programming, sales, and engineering. Mission accomplished. We now have 15 professionals, all working to bring the latest web technology to our clients. We are also looking for more employees to join our technical on-site team.
Some of the smaller office upgrades for 2007 include painting our office, getting all new computers for our staff, upgrading most of our software, and getting large dual flat screen monitors for everyone. We upgraded our office kitchen with new appliances and food choices. In the data center, we purchased a bunch of new HP and Dell servers, Cisco switches, and additional storage devices and drives.

Looking ahead to 2008

For 2008, we have some exciting new services and technology for our customers. Some of it I can talk about here in my blog, and some of our plans are proprietary and I can’t give too much information (yet). Here are some of the highlights…

1. New corporate web site for Delaware.Net, Inc.
   We’ve built so many web sites, that unfortunately we have had very little time to keep our own web site up to date. Now that we have a larger staff, that is all about to change. The conceptual designs for our new site is already complete, so you will see the new site in early 2008. We’re using this opportunity in redesigning our site to show our commitment to web standards, our newest applications, and more (the secret sauce).
2. New micro sites for our applications
   In addition to our new company web site, we are also working on new, smaller versions of our site for our applications. These sites will launch after our main site, and will contain more resources for our clients.
3. Team-Logic 2.0 AJAX Beta
   We completed our new AJAX-powered Intranet system in the fall of 2007, and it’s fast becoming our new web application hosting platform. When compared to commercial Intranet and ecommerce systems from other providers, there simply is no comparison because we offer more features, a better application, and for less money. We are undergoing live data testing in-house, and also with select customers now. This is going very well. In early 2008 we will add more functionality to this system and officially launch it with it’s own new microsite.
4. NEW – Mail-Logic Newsletter Server
   Starting at just $12 per month, our new newsletter server sets the standard for sending value and performance when you need to send out email newsletters to your customers, and your staff. Unlimited groups and mailings, automated bounce processing, web site signup, and HTML generation makes sending newsletters easier than ever.
5. NEW – Updated Real Estate Applications
   After leaving our real estate applications alone for years, they are undergoing a complete transformation. It is no longer good enough to simply have IDX listing feeds in a real estate site and call it a day. Our new real estate suite combines rentals, MLS feeds, lead tracking, content management, and local portal advertising. The new applications will launch in February, in time for the spring real estate season. Existing Delaware.Net clients will get special upgrade packages.
6. NEW – Updated Vehicle Dealership Application
   We’ve been rebuilding our dealership applications to use our latest CRM, email marketing, and content management applications. These will also feed used vehicle inventories to Delaware.com.
7. New Delaware.com Marketing
   Can’t talk a whole lot about this yet, but suffice it to say that we are building a local portal that will compete with other popular area web portals. We won’t be satisfied unless we create the best marketing portal for local area businesses.
8. Lots More
   More detail on our latest applications will be released soon.
9. Dream Home
   On a personal level, My wife and I have begun building our dream home, which will be complete in 2008. It is an exciting time for us as we pick out all of the options for our new home. We have already purchased a one-acre lot in the most prestigious neighborhood in Kent County, and our architectural plans are complete as well.

• FrontPage was a beginner tool, that professional web designers shunned.
• Adobe Dreamweaver is the defacto tool for professionals.
• Company Intranets became more critical to businesses, and yet most businesspeople are not web designers. So it made sense to make FrontPage into something even easier to use for web design newbies.
• Due to the last point, FrontPage because the built-in authoring tool for Microsoft Sharepoint (Microsoft’s limited Intranet product).
• Professional web site design requires tools that generate standards-based code, which FrontPage could not do.

Microsoft replaces FrontPage with “Expression Web”
For users that wish to build a web site, and who don’t need a basic corporate file-sharing Intranet like Sharepoint, Microsoft created a replacement tool for FrontPage called “Expression Web”. So far, it appears that this new program has been a colossal failure. Why do I say that? Because no one (and I do mean no one) asks for it. Back in the day, folks would go to Staples or their local office store and purchase FrontPage so that they could put up a web page quickly. Those days are gone. Those that need nothing more than an extremely basic web presence today can use online page-building tools to generate simple template-based web pages quickly.

More about template sites
Template sites built through a web interface have widened the divide between building a basic web presence, and building a professional web site. This divide means that it is both easier than ever to build a web site, and it is also harder than ever to build a web site. It all depends on what you call a “web site”. Domain registrars make a killing selling those template sites, and yet they really are hideous to look at. Superpages web sites that you can buy from the local phone book are also just as bad, and they fall into the template category. I stopped trying to talk first-time web site owners out of those template sites a long time ago, because if a quick and dirty web presence is all they feel that they need, then it will take a year or two of enduring zero business from the web before those web site owners smarten up and purchase professional web services from a firm like mine (Delaware.net). In a strange way, those template sites actually gain us customers because they serve to educate future customers of the value of a custom web site. Features like search engine optimization (making your site come up in Google) are sorely missing from template sites, and more web savvy customers realize very quickly that their template site is under-performing and is actually costing them money.

Web Video Overtakes Microsoft – Microsoft Responds
With the wild popularity of video on the web, thanks to sites like YouTube, Microsoft has been left behind in this important era of the web. Since Microsoft’s arch-enemy is Google, and Google bought YouTube, the situation has looked even worse for Microsoft. This is another reason why FrontPage went away. For example, you can’t even VIEW the web site for Expression Web without installing a “Microsoft Silverlight” plugin into your browser. What the hell is Silverlight? It is Microsoft’s attempt to complete with Adobe Flash – the web’s standard video player. Once Adobe got Flash to play video, it put another nail into Microsoft’s Media player (my least favorite video player). For Microsoft to get adoption of SilverLight, they have tied it very closely with ExpressionWeb.

If you still use FrontPage, its decision time
Since FrontPage is going away, you are going to need to get a new tool for building web sites. If a low-tech tool for a simple web site is what you want, then I would use Adobe Contribute, which is an easy to use tool for Creating simple web pages and Intranet content. Several licenses of Contribute can allow a small team to create a static Intranet that is a good start for having a basic Intranet. If you want to build web pages for a living, or if you are learning web design in college, then you need to start using Dreamweaver, Adobe design products (Photoshop, Illustrator), and Microsoft Visual Studio. Those are the tools that the pros use.

Lastly, there are other alternatives and hyrbids to all of these choices. It is now possible to have a web site designed fairly inexpensively, which can also have robust applications to help your business run. At Delaware.Net, we have many of these applications ready to install in your web site – like calendars, e-commerce, signup forms, file management, and more. If you have a site built in FrontPage, we can help you to come up with a newer, better way to manage and improve your web site.

Do I hate Microsoft?
No. We have a lot of Microsoft servers in our data center, and we are adding more every month. Most of the workstations in our office also run Windows, with the exception of some graphic design workstations that are Macs. But when it comes to the web, web authoring, or Microsoft’s attempt to compete with Flash, they don’t have a chance. Even their Internet Exploder (Explorer) browser is a CONSTANT headache for web designers because it is not standards-compliant. So how are we supposed to believe that MS will make their developer tools compliant, when their web browser isn’t? The answer is that they won’t. You can see the frustration of web developers over Internet Explorer in an article that Computer World just released, and if you read the second part of it you can see how much hassle IE causes developers. Every chance I get, I try to encourage customers to use Firefox instead of IE.

Screenshot and link after the jump.

Here is the link to the screenshot. Link to the live site is below.

http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/

Pretty neat.