Article 301 redirects, the Newfangled way. published on July 27, 2009 This blog post will explore what a 301 redirect is, why we use them, and how to set them up with Newfangled CMS. Newfangled generally advises clients to use 301 redirects when transitioning from an old website to a new website. What is a 301 redirect? A 301 redirect is when a URL : http://www.oldsite.com/old_post_about_product is redirected to http://www.oldsite.com/old_post_new_URL Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Guest Post by Eric Holter: A Critique of the Talstone Group Website by Christopher Butler on July 22, 2009 Now that Eric, our former CEO, is off to new heights in his career, I've invited him to contribute a few guest blog posts. This is the first of a series that will be published in the coming months... The Talstone Group is heading in the right direction with their website. They’ve already done the hard part, choosing a bold and narrow positioning statement (they specialize in healthcare marketing). They also have a site platform that includes a news section and blog so they have the means to employ a solid content strategy. But they seem to stumble in implementation of a content strategy that accords with their clear positioning. Read Now About
Article What I Read This Week by Christopher Butler on July 22, 2009 (Technically, this is what I read last week; it's just late going out. Just sayin') In preparation for Part 2 of this past month Read Now About
Article What Are You Listening To? by Christopher Butler on July 22, 2009 I've been enjoying many posts lately that fit into the "recommended reading" category- posts that list links to articles and/or books and explanations of why they're worth checking out (it's a content strategy). But I also listen to many audiocasts and would love to know what people in my network are listening to; I bet there's some great stuff out there that I don't know about. To break the ice, I thought I'd try putting out a list of audiocasts that I've been listening to lately and what I like about them... Read Now About
Article Building a WordPress Site published on July 20, 2009 We've been working on Newfangled's first WordPress site! Read Now About
Article How We Invest in Our People – Education! by Christopher Butler on July 16, 2009 I just saw this post from Matt at the 37 Signals blog about the benefit of "playtime" on innovation in the workplace. It's a brief thought but a very important one. Matt pulls a quote from Jim Coudal that is right on: Most of the smart, creative, successful people I know spend a good deal of time looking for inspiration, tracking down ideas and doing research. We do all those things too, we just don’t have a problem with calling it what it is, “goofing around.” Play is essential, it’s through play that you find connections between things that might not be at all obvious through logic or practicality. If you don’t have any accidents how are you ever going to have happy ones? He goes on to mention other examples of how companies invest in innovation by giving their employees some free time. How does Newfangled do this? Well, we do this in several different ways that I think accumulate to a holistic investment in our people and their minds... Read Now About
Article Email Marketing Planning for Ecommerce by Christopher Butler on July 15, 2009 "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system." - John Gall (http://www.daringfireball.net/2009/04/complex) This is an excellent quote that could probably be applied to many different points, but I'm including it here because I think it applies nicely to a trend I've observed with ecommerce development. For the most part, any project we do that involves ecommerce tends to fit into one of the following three categories... Read Now About
Article A Value-Based Content Strategy by Christopher Butler on July 14, 2009 Are you overwhelmed by the web? I am. You probably are, too, but are a little afraid to admit it. Perhaps the better question would be, "How overwhelmed are you by the web?" The rate at which the web grows in content is astounding, and for those who try to keep up with a lot of content whether personally or professionally, it can feel frustrating, exhausting, even futile. That's because it's all of those things. Really, something's got to give. So, I want to get real with our content: with the newsletters, the blog, my use of social media on behalf of Newfangled, all of it... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Mood Board Observations by Justin Kerr on July 10, 2009 Steve Grothmann, one of our project managers, recently wrote a good introduction to mood boards and explained how we have folded them into our design process. I'm going to expand a bit on Steve's post since I'm the one responsible for producing the mood boards and, now that I have a dozen or so of them under my belt, I can assess their impact on Newfangled's web development... Read Now About
Article CRM The Whitescreen QA Process published on July 10, 2009 As the newest member of the Newfangled team, I've been experiencing quite a few "firsts" over the past four months. Right now, the first website project that I will see through from conception to completion has reached the Whitescreen QA (Quality Assurance) phase. The programming is in place on the staging/development site, but the design hasn't been applied and the content hasn't been entered. Read Now About
