LeBlog

Programming flexibility into a Yoga Studio Website

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:10:00 -0500

My latest ouvre. Yoga-Sanctuary.com was a website that had been stretched to its limits. It was a classic site, static HTML, frames, and outdated branding. There was third-party integration with MindBody, a business logic software system for scheduling, taking online payments and payroll for yoga studios, salons, gyms, and spas. My work was to install my ColdFusion CMS so that the studio manager could maintain the site, integrate a live feed from MindBody into the site for a nicer user experience, and to supply mechanisms for adding galleries, taking in and displaying testimonials, teacher bios, display a blog feed on the home page from Blogger, integrate Constant Contact newsletter sign up, and work with the owner and studio manager to design a site that was pleasing, dynamic, and not overly feminine. The result, is a wonderful example of the zen of website development. Here is the homepage as it was: Here is the homepage now: The building and customization of the CMS was a large task in itself, but it built up a codebase that I have been working on for almost 2 years now. This is the best example of what my gCMS can do. I learned several things about how to use CF and MySQL to do all the back-end stuff, and still publish static and dynamic pages on the front-end. I can see that I have to refine things a bit now too, like for example, I need to add a back-end function for publishing or regenerating all the pages in the site with one mouse click. The juiciest bit of programming was integrating the MindBody feed. That meant exploring the CFHTTP tag and after pulling in the XML feed, a lot of XPath data manipulations so the front-end display was what we wanted, with conditional logic, styling and fail-over code in the event of a communications time out with the third-party server. Take a look. Although it just looks like a simple page, there is a bunch of hard-won knowledge behind it.

Tasty Business

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:21:00 -0500

That's what a friend said of the platter of deviled eggs at the party last weekend. Little did he know that his comment was directed at my handiwork. So, what do you do when you are invited to a potluck and the invite says, "Bring a fork-free, nut-free appetizer to share." Well, if you are me, the first thing that pops into your mind is deviled eggs. Why? I don't know... perhaps because we have 6 hens in the yard, and 6 dozen eggs in the fridge. That thought was a stroke of genius! I immediately put 3 dozen eggs in cold water and put them on to boil. What's next is key: once the water boiled, I covered the pot, turned off the burner, and left them on the stove for a timed 18 minutes. The result: perfectly hard cooked eggs, with bright yellowy-orange yolks, and no green. From there it was easy to recruit my daughter for the peeling, and as she peeled, I halved the eggs and scooped out the yolks. Once all that was done, it was on to the fun! The yolk stuffing can go so many ways... and I was feeling like some curry or thai chili sauce would really make people's taste buds pop, but the family was more cautious. " Just do the traditional," they said, "Keep it simple." That is so hard for me. Well, I pulled out the mayo, some lemons, dried mustard, and I started mashing and mixing. Once again, no celery in the house, so I improvised with some romaine stalks... just the light colored middle vein of the leaf... something crunchy. I diced that up, and threw it in! Things really started getting interesting when I noticed my wife on the way out the door with some scissors in hand. I asked her to cut me some herbs from the plants in the yard. She came back with some great sprigs of oregano, thyme, chives, and chive blossoms. Awesome! I cleaned and chopped the thyme and in it went... same with the chives, but I save some of those for garnishing, which I decided would be the fate of the oregano too. As I put away the mustard, and was pulling out the paprika, something caught my eye... the very thing I needed... the zing! Next thing I know, I'm sprinkling wasabi powder all over the yolk mash. Not too much, but a dusting over the bowl. Things were coming together, and I knew I had reached the optimal point of ingredients. Time to stop. And... I decided not to tell the family about the secret zing I added... that always makes things fun. On to the filling of the egg halves with a heap of yellow goodness, and laying them out on the platter (no pun intended). The coup de grace for the deviled egg is the garnish and whatever you shake over them to give color and flavor. I gave a liberal scattering of fresh chopped oregano, fresh chopped chives, and a light dusting of paprika. The final touch was tucking the purple chive blossoms in and around the eggs... a nice counter point to the yellow and white of the eggs. Done! At the party, the platter was gone before I got around to the food table, but I overheard some comments about the eggs... "tasty business" was a great way to call it, and my friend admitted that he based his comment on several trials by mouth. It sure is nice to come home from a potluck with an empty server... and even better... a good story for the blog! Cheers!

Amazing Chicken and Pork with Potato Salad and Pickled Ginger

Wed, 26 May 2010 19:09:00 -0500

You know when your kid says, "someone should put this in a cookbook," that you need to start writing this stuff down. The game: dinner improv. The objective: make those leftovers in the fridge into something new. Now. Here's what I was working with: 3 grilled chicken breasts 1/2 lb of grilled pork loin 7-9 baked potatoes, partly peeled, somewhat dessicated from being in the fridge uncovered 1/4 bermuda union, peeled 3-4 8" long zucchini or green squash fresh cilantro 1 bottle The Ginger People Ginger Sesame Sauce Pickled ginger I knew I wanted potato salad from the git go, so I chopped up the onion and the potato into large chunks and threw them together in a bowl. From there I was a bit stuck, because we had no celery, so I set it aside. I julienned the chicken and pork into 1/3 inch cubed strips, and covered that with the Ginger sauce. Next up I peeled the zucchini and sqaured off the stem and bottom. I sliced the zukes lengthwise in half then sliced each half into 1/4 inch thick slabs. The slabs, I laid out on the cutting board and cut several long thin stips from each slab. The result were long light green noodles of squash. On with the burner medium high, and with 2 tsp of canola oil in a saute pan, I started the zucchini. That reduced over about 10 minutes, and then I moved it to the side of the pan, and in the space created I added the chicken and pork in a mound. This is when I went back at the salad, now armed with the classic mayo spread, and a handful of chopped cilantro. But that was not enough. I like a snap to my potato salad... and this is when the magic happens. The palette of flavors that is your fridge... ahhh... with a little sniffing and searching I spied the perfect x-factor. The Pickled Ginger! A healthy pinch of sliced, pickled ginger was diced coarsely and added to the potato mixture. The pink of the ginger and the green cilantro were perfect for the creamy potato salad. By then the zuke and the meat were all heated up, and ready to be out on the plates... I dished it up for each on our favorite wedding-gift crockery from my friend. What a nice surprise. A gourmet dinner... and I pulled it out of... um, let's not go there :-)

Old Dog, New Tricks

Wed, 26 May 2010 18:33:00 -0500

Here's one of the ways that Facebook has been a good thing for my business. Simply put it is the network part of "social networking" that pays off. The more contacts you make in your network, the more people know what you do, and that is a good thing. Basic marketing. Here's the story of one FB contact that thought of me for her Dog Training and Boarding business. Well, there's not much of a story really... her website needed to be updated... the design was, well, "vintage." It was fun connecting with an old friend from my life at UMass and learning about her business. The homepage states: At Northeast School For Dogs, we offer obedience training, boarding, and daycare. Here's the site before: Here's the site after:

Puffer's Website Gets the Esthetic Treatment

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:24:00 -0500

This Aveda Concept Spa and Salon in Westfield, MA, needed a website update. I have done several spas and salons in Western MA, and I enjoy working with people who are all about the esthetic. What they bring to their customers in the way of renewal and relaxation, their website needs to communicate too. [More]

Hyundai Dealer Design Relaunch

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:38:00 -0500

One of my favorite customers is Gary Rome. He is an innovative and original business owner who gives his personal flavor to the way he does things. I dare say he was the first car dealer to use his dog in his marketing, and he has kept that theme going for about 10 years now. "The best doggone place to by a car" [More]

Circumzenithal Arc - the smile in the sky

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:29:00 -0500

A Circumzenithal Arc over Northampton, MA November 9, 2009. Not in the picture are two sundogs to the left and right of the sun. This is looking west at the intersection of Rt. 9 and Rts. 5 & 10 (in front of the Florence Savings Bank). [More]

Buy Coffee and Tea Online

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:30:00 -0500

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new website for Esselon Coffee Roasting Co., Inc. We redesigned the site, and took their online coffee sales business to the next level. The new site is built on the Shopsite platform served at Lexiconn in CT. Shopsite gives the website owner the power to manage all parts of the site via a full-blown ecommerce shopping cart and content management system. The site manager can add, edit and update products, spotlight sales on the home page, and control the navigation of the site. Shopsite has a built-in rich text editor that allows non-coders to do the basic web page edits as well as upload photos (with mulitiple resizing) and manipulate page content as needed, then publish static Google-friendly pages to the site. This project was also exciting for me because it is the first collaboration with Jennifer Williams of Verilliance, who handled the SEO research and content consulting. With Jennifer's talent on tweeking the copy towards online sales and search engine marketing, the expanded offerings of product, and with the power of Shopsite to manage the site, I am certain this marks a new era in the business of Esselon. If you didn't know, Esselon is also an amazing cafe in Hadley, MA that offers breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner with beer and wine and a kicking menu of savory goods! Below is the before and after shot of the Esselon.com home page... but don't stop there... check out the full site and buy some coffee or tea!

Before

After

Recent Launch: NECCEE Cosmetology and Esthetics School

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:42:00 -0500

The tagline is "Redefine your life." We redfined their site. New England Center for Cosmetology and Esthetics Education website not only needed a make-over to update their look, but they needed a plan for how to really drive prospective students to make admissions appointments and to help them make a career choice. UPDATE - June 2010: NECCEE was sold to BrioAcademy, and their website was mothballed as part of the brand consolidation. I worked with the owners and the admissions staff to determine what people needed to know in order to make the leap. Questions like: Do I want to be a hair stylist or do I want to be a spa manager? How can I pay for this education? When can I get into a class? Will I get a job after I am done? We redesigned the home page to feature those four questions, to give entry points so that users could make those choices. Their old website was already rich with information and background on careers, course descriptions, and institutional information. We maintained all the old search-engine-indexed URLs, and re-packaged the info in the new wraper. We launched a blog on Blogger.com to enable staff to easily generate keyword rich content that links back to the main site. It was amazing to see that Google indexes those posts within minutes of them being published. I took an RSS feed from the blog and populate the home page with the latest blog headlines giving a nice sense of currency to the site. One of the features I am really proud of is a simple, non-scientific career/personality quiz. Based on a group of traits, the user must pick 10 that they identify with... then my programmatic magic rates their likelihood to fit one of three career paths. See it here. The whole site is ColdFusion driven, and the next project is a custom build out for the schools' alumni... with job matching features and job seeking tools to help graduates make the most of their certifications.

Zito, NYC Portrait Artist

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:26:00 -0500

I am thrilled to blog about one of my most recent projects for New York City portrait artist, Zito. Zito's portraits are amazing! He captures the feeling of the time, place, and the subject in his own colors and brush strokes. He's gotten a lot of great press recently, and I am certain that his efforts to be a biggie on the Manhattan (L.E.S.) art scene will be rewarded. He's got great paintings of regular people, but also of such stars as Jimi Hendrix, Abe Lincoln, David Bowie, Oscar Wilde, Sitting Bull, and Scarlett Johansson. Here's a sample for you: Someone named Marina Zelle. I am very happy about how this site is coming along, and I am sure Zito is going to be a marquee client for me. I customized my CMS for him, so he can admin the whole site by himself. I also integrated Ray Camden's BlogCFC, and I am in the process of integrating CafePress.com so that Zito can sell is images on various merchandise. Check him out... you'll enjoy the artwork!

Love, Aviary

Fri, 01 May 2009 14:04:00 -0500

That is how they signed the "welcome" message when I got the email confirmation for my account. What is Aviary you ask? It is a cool new suite of web enabled applications that provide graphics tools similar to Photoshop and Illustrator created by one of the founders of Worth 1000. These apps are totally cool. Phoenix, the image editor is like PS. Layers, Filters, History... all the goodies that you would need if you had to live without Photoshop. There is a vector tool, a colors tool, and what they call a visual laboratory. And they have more in store... There are online screencasts, and demos... they offer tutorials and wikis on how to use the apps. It is a really great idea because, though I have always used the Adobe tools, having them has been a bit of a stretch on the wallet. I really like the fact that this guy Avi, from Worth 1000 realized that his awesome site was a little exclusive... you had to have the pro apps to really get fun work done. So he leveled the field and in true Internet spirit has brought democratic access to creativity to the masses. See you in the Aviary!

Springtime Berkshire Photographer

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:37:00 -0500

Are you planning a wedding in the Berkshires this summer? Do you need a senior portrait for your graduation? Does your business need professional photography for collateral marketing materials? Charles Abel's experience and personal style of working will insure that you get professional quality at a reasonable price. See: http://www.charlesabelphotography.com. Charles, or "Chuck," as I came to know him, has been working as a photojournalist and newspaper editor in the Western Massachusetts area for more than 18 years. I used to work with him at the newspaper in Northampton. He managed a busy department of several staff photographers plus seasonal interns. There always seemed to be a steady stream of interns for the photo department... but I digress. My personal experience with Chuck also includes the pleasure of working with him professionally when my family had a formal portrait done. It was really casual. We went to Child's Park across from the high school and found a well lit spot. I am pretty sure it was springtime, and Winter had just had a haircut. The prints we got were a priceless moment of time. My wife and I, two young parents... full of energy but not sleep. The kids are still showing some baby-like qualities. If you are looking for a wedding photographer you can visit the website www.charlesabelphotography.com

Do you know That Artist?

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:03:00 -0500

I am proud to announce the launch of my latest site: ThatArtist.com, the website for a Brooklyn artist named Mark Parsons. Mark's work in sculpture, printmaking, and collaborative projections sets him apart from many of his peers. His innovation and vision have brought his work to a another dimension. Mark teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and we launched his site just in time for the Armory Show, a big expo of new and contemporary art taking place in NYC from March 5 to March 8th. I am very excited about the ThatArtist.com project, because it futhers my experience with building effective back-end systems for my clients. I used much of the ColdFusion/MySQL knowledge that I specialize in, but I also was thrilled to incorporate the FCKeditor into the admin tools for the first time. This gives Mark the opportunity to not only manage text and images, but to control styling, upload files, embed Flash and so many other great WYSIWYG stuff that requires him to know nothing except how to use a browser. The site includes a galleries management tool, the ability to add pages at will, and the ability to edit the main navigational pages as needed with total control over text and images all delivered through a variable template based on the YUI standards of fonts, grids, and reset. Instantly Mark took to the tools and began generating content and taking ownership of his site. It was amazing to see a friend light up when he realized that he was released from the prison of his old website that was managed by someone else and he was not empowered to interact with it at will. I have great confidence that this site will open doors for me as Mark is a networking kind of guy, and he'll tell people how happy he is. The design of the site is very minimalist... in fact I did not use ANY Photoshop in building this site. It gave me a nice feeling for what can be done with simple CSS and HTML layout that provided Mark with the simplicity that he required. I did not even size the images in PS... I was thrilled to start using ColdFusion 8's native CFIMAGE tag to upload, resize and create thumbnails all on the server... again giving my client the power to know nothing about what dpi his images were or if they were web safe. CF did it all for me! Coming up next, I have another NYC artist in the pipeline, and we'll build off of some of what I made for ThatArtist.com, but I think we'll do more design, and there are a lot more features to implement. I am truly excited!

Tell Me More this February

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:43:00 -0500

Black History Month. Something we don't hear enough about if you ask me. And if we do we tend to think about the obvious parts of "Black History." MLK, Fredrick Douglas, Jesse Jackson, Abe Lincoln, the Civil Rights movement. But there are so many stories of the real black history in this country that we never hear. This morning during my drive time, my usual listening to the NPR show Tell Me More, a fantastic talk show hosted by an incredible woman, Michel Martin, revealed the truth of what black history really is. Stories of slaves who were abused and tortured. Black soldiers in the Union Army who took up arms to defeat the southern culture that objectified them and stole their flesh and blood from their very arms. Writer Kai Wright read the narratives of two such histories this morning... and I was faced with the dirty truth that is covered by the fanfare of our "liberated" society. I came to understand how quickly the grand concepts of the Emancipation Proclamation swept the country at the time of the Civil War, and how those high-minded ideals were no match for the human condition of what what happening on the ground in Mississippi, Missouri, and other states in the deep south. We all need to hear the facts of life that even though freed, slaves lived in refugee camps, had very little than each other, and that what the system left them with was nothing short of hell. Families split apart. People so badly abused that they could never walk or talk or give birth again. The sadness of our history is that we ever let this happen in a country founded on the concept that "all men are created equal." I want to honor the strength of a people who, after being ripped from the breast of their Mother Africa, and being beaten into a state of near soul-obliteration, have persevered and have risen above the ignorance of their oppressors. As ashamed as I am about the ugliness of black history, I am hopeful for the black future.

Photographer in W Mass and Berkshires

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:55:00 -0500

I am happy to announce the launch of the website for Charles Abel Photography. Charles is an accomplished photographer who worked as the photo editor at the Gazette with me over the past 10 years. His site is charlesabelphotography.com. Please take a look and send him some feedback if you get the chance. I was excited to work with Charles on this project, and I took the opportunity to use some new tricks in my bag. I used the Suckerfish Lightbox Redux which was developed by Jonathan Christopher, a programmer in Albany. I liked the way that the galleries can pop-up from basic text links, and reduce the visual load on a page by hiding the thumbnails until the user mouses over the links. Of course we all love the Lightbox image display... so many sites use it now. I also have enjoyed building the back-end tools so that this professional photographer can add, edit and delete galleries at will through a CMS that I built in ColdFusion. This galleries tool is one that many of my clients will use in their sites, and the beauty for me is that I can customize the front-end look to anything I want... not everyone wants the SuckerFish treatment... I am looking forward to using a new image viewer called Pop-box, for example. So, if you are looking for a senior portrait, are planning a wedding in the berkshires, or just need a great editorial spread, please consider Charles Abel Photography.