What's New

5/28/2008 - If you visit my client websites, you'll notice that my navigation systems are getting more sophisticated. This is possible because I am now using Dreamweaver CS3 on my newer websites, and I've been purchasing tools that integrate with Dreamweaver. I'm most interested in how to present content to best advantage. In rebuilding this website, I've made use of a widget from Project Seven called Glide Panel Magic. Although initially the page can take a little longer to load, once on your screen the delivery of related content is instantaneous.

3/7/2008 - I've been working on two new websites which should be complete in the next week or so.

1. The Edfund website is dear to my heart as their mission is to raise an endowment for our local school district.
2. The second website is for Legal Advocacy Workshops.  This site design is a template purchased from Project Seven.  Although I spent a lot of time customizing it, I still saved a lot of time and my client got a decent looking website for a reasonable sum of money. 

2/26/08 - In the last month or so I have added some unique  features to the SOS website, and altered the code to enhance presentation.  Although most are not worth mentioning, I am most pleased with the new calendar which is located at www.hwsos.org/calendar/.  This is an Easy PHP Calendar which I would highly recommend for anyone looking for a full featured calendar that is relatively easy to customize and maintain.

1/16/2008 - Completed the design and templates for the International Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor/Service User National Networks.  Although my instructions were to use the same template as the National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations, I felt that it needed to look different.  I took this opportunity to use my new Adobe Creative Suite software, specifically Dreamweaver.  I also invested in a Dreamweaver add-on called Pop Menu Magic which should make a huge difference with my future website commissions as it makes drop-down and fly-out menus that meet the Section 508 rules on accessibility, not to mention that they look great.  Since this is new software, if you see anything buggy looking, please let me know.

12/19/07 - When someone is pleased with something, they will share it with at least 3 others.  If you can make it easy to spread the word about a product or article at your website, you can increase traffic considerably for very little money compared to the cost of advertising.

With that in mind I recently added three new tools to the top of the page on all 90+ articles at the National Empowerment Center.  So now one can:

• Bookmark the page at their favorite social bookmarking website,
• Share the article by sending the page URL to a friend, or
• Easily print the page by clicking a button.

All these tools are made possible by a combination of JavaScript and HTML. 

The bookmarking tool is a new service from Add This (www.addthis.com) which allows one to select their favorite social bookmarking tool, and best of all, it's free.  You see many bookmarking tools out there, but they usually only offer 3 or 4 of the major bookmarking sites, whereas Add This offers about 30.  The email to a friend tool is a reasonably priced service I found at Send To Friends (www.sendtofriends.com). 

But after finding these tools and embedding the code into the article template, I had two different buttons and a text link.  It looked kind of hodgepodge, so I created three new buttons that look like this:

Tools like this are often built into content management systems like Joomla and WordPress.  But with a straight HTML based website you have to piece it together on your own.  You can find integrated tools that are quite nice that are used at major websites like the New York Times and Newsweek, but the companies that put it all together bundle it with sophisticated tracking tools and statistics.  These services can charge from $250 to over $10,000 a month.

Visit a recent article at the National Empowerment Center and check out the new tools.

10/12/07 - With my 35th high school reunion done, I've now added a flash based photo gallery which will be added to as more photos become available.  Many of the photos needed extensive touch up to remove glare, red eye, shiny faces, and in some cases signs of old age!  Meanwhile I continue work on our official reunion website at www.classreport.org by adding fun gizmos, slide shows, maps, etc. and look forward to our 40th reunion!

9/15/07 - I've been spending a lot of volunteer time working on the Support Our Schools website (www.hwsos.org).  The group has expanded its scope beyond fundraising, and has organized 8 new subcommittees.

8/15/07 - Created a section of my website to act as an auxiliary website for my 35th high school reunion.  This site is a bit jazzier than the sites I normally work on. 

6/23/07 - The  Support Our Schools campaign was a great success.  We raised about $265,000 for our schools.  The Blog (www.hwsos.org) worked great, I'd highly recommend it for anyone looking for a quick site with the ability to have comments from registered users.  Now I can get back to some billable work!

5/18/07 - Completed work (99%) on the Support Our Schools website (www.hwsos.org).  This is a good example of a WordPress Blog.  I've turned off the comment feature on all but one page.  My hope is that people that choose to donate money to support the Hamilton-Wenham Regional School system will contribute a few comments to the Why We Donated page which will be helpful for others who are considering a donation.

4/27/07 - Completed work on the Eastern Board of Approved Soccer Officials Association (www.ebasoa.org).  I included a  Flash Gallery on the home page showing the soccer officials in action.

3/27/07 - Completed rebuilding the National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations (www.ncmhcso.org) website including a drop down menu system.  You see drop down menus all over the place, but did you realize a huge majority of them don't work without Javascript.  I felt compelled to create a menu system that works for everyone.  That would include people with vision loss that use a screen reader, others that don't use a mouse, or simply don't have Javascript enabled.

Have an extra minute or two?  Disable Javascript on your browser and visit some major websites.  You won't believe how many will show up without any menu at all!

1/24/07 - I'm trying out CoffeeCup's Flash Gallery tool which I used to create a gallery of custom woodwork from my days in the woodworking business.  If you have any problems with it, please let me know.  I'll probably create an alternative version using a hoverbox gallery which requires no flash; see my note from 1/3/07 below.

1/17/07 - Pay it Forward!  Special thanks go out to Rita Lewis who generously offered to coach me in how best to set up the new Joomla based CSC website (temporarily) located at www.hwcsc.info/joomla. 

1/10/07 - I had a fun project for the National Empowerment Center.  They have a worldwide following and recently received Icelandic translations of six NEC articles which I posted to the site.  I've done Spanish and German translations before and the alphabet looks pretty much the same, but many of the Icelandic characters are completely different.  Take a look

1/5/2007 - Got started on a new website for the Eastern Board of Approved Soccer Officials Association.  I never appreciated what the referees do, they just show up at the game; but there is always more than meets the eye.  It will take a while to get it developed; they're not too active during the winter!

1/3/2007 - I've been playing around with various ways to display photos in a gallery.  I came across a cool new method that uses an unordered list and CSS (cascading style sheets).  Most of the galleries available make use of Javascript whereas this has none, so it can be seen by people that have disabled scripts, or who don't have it available.  Let me know what you think.  Hoverbox Gallery