Some of the highlights:

CMS+
- Create content with WSIWYG editor, easy enough to use for even standard non-technical business users
- Version content
- Staging + Approval of Content
- Ability to create menus + drop-downs

Magento Widgets:
- Configurable page blocks
- Dynamic or Static
- Control where widgets go
- Control promotional advertising with granular control

Targeted Marketing Capabilities:
- Customer segments
- Custom promotions for those segments

Bridge:
- Sync with over 30 ERP/CRM/Accounting Suites such as SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Quickbooks, and Peachtree
- Sync orders customers, shipping + tracking information, and more

Are you interested in developing or designing a Magento Enterprise Edition web site? Get in contact with us to get an estimate!

Job Responsibilities:
Design and develop professional ecommerce websites on the Magento ecommerce platform.
Design and develop professional websites on the WordPress platform.

Requirements:
Experience developing PHP websites
Strong object oriented design and development skills
Skilled with JavaScript, CSS, and HTML
Working knowledge of XML and Ajax
In-depth experience with MySQL, especially with performance tuning
Experience with web services (SOAP, JSON, or REST)
Knowledgeable using SQL and relational database design
Excellent understanding of design principles
Efficiently manage multiple concurrent assignments
Takes ownership of assignments and executes to completion
Ability to work and maintain a professional demeanor under a deadline
Excellent interpersonal, communication and organizational skills with the ability to interact effectively with other employees
Experience with the Magento, Zend Framework, and WordPress is a plus, Linux administration skills would also be helpful.

Benefits:
Work remotely
Be a W-2 Employee
Flexible work schedule
Pay calculated on an hourly basis
Direct Deposit, bi-weekly
Learn new skills and perfect old ones
Be a part of a growing company in a growing industry

Forward your resume and cover letter to: dan@gaugeinteractive.com.
Thanks for the interest!

Now fast forward to today. Most online viewers spend only a few minutes, sometimes only seconds perusing your web site before deciding whether they “trust” you and your business or not. From visitors looking for a lawyer, to customers looking to spend thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars on durable goods, projecting an image that’s trustworthy and reputable is the difference from closing a big sale to going hungry. The trouble with the Internet is that your viewers are passive, until they contact you, they won’t tell you what works and what doesn’t on your site.

So what do you do before you build/rebuild your site? What do you include to inspire trust in you and your company so you get the sales/sales leads you need in order to be successful?

Thanks to a fantastic study done by the Nielsen company, which you can view here, we have some extremely interesting data:

1. 90% of people trust recommendations from friends: No surprise here, as we all know, word of mouth is the best kind of advertising.

2. 70% of people trust consumer opinions posted online: This is an incredible number, 70% of people trust people they’ve never met, seen, or even know are real. This number is extremely important as most businesses websites have no section what-so-ever for client testimonials, customer reviews, white papers on projects they’ve done, or anything that could be considered opinions of other customers.

3. 70% of people trust “brand websites”: Translation, people trust your web site as the best source of information about what you and your company provide.

4. 69% of people trust editorial content (eg: newspaper editorial)

Those numbers are extremely impressive and useful information. What’s amazing to us is that people view online virtual strangers, who they’ve never heard of before, they trust their recommendations more than a newspaper editorial, or even TV. What does this mean for you? Your web site is more important than ever. Do you have customer testimonials, white papers, or reviews of your products on your site? Does you site look presentable and put your best foot forward?

If you answer “No” to either question, you will want to address both of those issues immediately. In today’s economic client, every sale is an important one, so don’t lose out through inaction!

Want to add testimonials, product reviews, white papers, and more to your site? Need to refresh your web site as a whole? Get in contact with us today!

The Problem:
When we began our early projects, design always came first.  I came from a print design background, so thats where my focus had always been. We quickly ran into problems. Things weren’t looking right and didn’t function well. The designs lacked something.  It turns out our designs were lacking well organized content. We were leaving the addition of content to our websites for the end of the process. We had to change that. We had to put content first.

Content Comes First!
Once we realized our error, we transformed our process. We put content first.  When we started organizing, generating, and collecting content before we produced any designs, we noticed a number of positive changes.  They all worked together to greatly increase the speed and quality of production. It even made our clients happier!  They got a more efficient, focused website, and enjoyed the process.

1. Fast Production.
When people are excited about something they work faster and more efficiently. We try to take advantage of this as much as possible. Usually we talk with people after they have a bad experience with another company. They want a fresh start.  They want to improve and they are excited about it.
Gathering content is the most difficult and time consuming part of the web site design process. There are a lot of meetings, writing, small details, analysis and planning. We try to help as much as we can, but the majority of the work is the clients responsibility (most choose to write content themselves rather than hiring a copy writer). By putting the most difficult task at the beginning of the process, we take advantage of client excitement to get them through the content stage much quicker.  That way later on in the process those small details and decisions don’t slow the process down.

2. A Strong Finish.
Finishing the process with Design and then Development is exciting and rewarding for us and our clients. For the client, this is the easy part. By the time we reach this phase, the major decisions have been addressed, and they can sit back and enjoy seeing the fruits of their labor.  We first create sample designs for the home page and one other integral page in the design.  Once those are approved, we design the other pages and begin development. This process can take anywhere from 1-3 weeks depending on the complexity of the site making it by far much quicker than content gathering. When we’re finished, they get to view and interact with their new site on our test servers to make sure everything looks good before launch. This is always a pretty cool moment, its when everything comes together and most people are very excited to see the finished product.

3. Better Quality.
Adapting our process in this way has produced better quality sites for a number of reasons.
Designs were more user friendly, information was better organized, users were able to navigate easier, layouts were more engaging and coherent throughout the body of the site.  All of these things benefit not only the user, but the search engines as well.  When you make it easy for a search engine to see your site you will rank higher on Google. This results in an increase in traffic and business happening on your site. All very good things.

The Solution to the Equation:
After reorganizing our process our sites are easier to use, rank better on major search engines, and meet our clients goals. We’re always looking for ways to streamline our process and make it even better, and this is just the first major lesson that we’ve successfully applied to our working process.

If you have any questions on how we can put our experience to use for you and your business, please don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. We’re always happy to answer any questions we can.

We recently finished development on a website for a local kiteboarding lessons and gear company, All Out Kiteboarding. They came to us with the need to grow their business online. We built a custom e-commerce website using the software platform “Magento”.

Over the past months, their site has grown and is doing very well!
When we finish a site, we like to go back and assess how things are going, how the site is ranking, how many people are visiting the site etc. We use tools like Goolge Analytics to view and quantify these results.

Below is the basic “dashboard” page showing statistics for the All Out Kiteboarding website as a whole.
This site is doing very well in a few areas. Specifically, pages per visit, bounce rate, and average time on site. Since we launched the site on March 10 they have had nearly 700 visits to the site, and nearly 7,000 pageviews. Great exposure for their young business!

This next graphic shows where people are coming from. Whether direct traffic (typing alloutkiteboarding.com into a browser) or search engine traffic (typing all out kiteboarding into google) or from other sites (like facebook).

In this graph you can see that they are getting 35.4% of traffic from people typing in the specific url into their browsers. You can see that www.ikitesurf.com is sending them a lot of referrals as well. These referrals are coming from a link. You can also see google organic results and some referrals from facebook.

In the next chart, you can see what people are searching for and successfully finding the AOK site for. We call these terms “keywords”.

A few things look very good here. Specifically you can see the terms “kiteboarding Savannah” and “Savannah, ga kiteboarding lessons”. These are specific phrases and terms that we targeted in the construction of this site.

Finally, we see a screenshot from the google search results themselves showing their stellar page rank.

This is the goal. They appear number 2 out of a results list of 30,500 pages for “savannah, ga kiteboarding lessons”.

This is the target of many of the things we do. Getting a page rank like this is outstanding, and it will really drive a lot of money making business to these guys.

For more information on how we can help you hit your target give us a call or send us an email.

*If you would like more basic information on what SEO is, click here.*

If you’re concerned at all with search engine optimization (SEO), and you probably should be, validating your source code can prove useful…but is it a necessity? The answer is two-fold. Well more like a piece of origami.

Your content and organization therein using good web practices is the main factor in SEO, plain and simple. However there is a lot of discussion surrounding the importance of validated code in SEO. Much of the argument lies between the valid code having either a direct or in-direct boost to the overall SEO. It seems there are many areas where it can have an in-direct relationship to the SEO. If there is less (erroneous) code it can be indexed easier and faster by Google. Removing that excess code increases the text to code ratio. So whatever the page is relevant to just becomes more relevant.  With valid code, just like a human, a web spider will have a better time crawling your information.  Code validation shows serious professional approach of the company and skills of the team in particular. The bottom line is that it can only help. But how much time should you spend on code validation? There is only so much that it can offer, as spiders’ web crawling abilities are constantly evolving, just as browsers are evolving. They are evolving to understand and disregard our small errors, and increasing their understanding on how we communicate as we give and receive information on this Internet.

It is safe to say validation doesn’t have a direct effect on relevance (SEO). Having your site validate shows that you’ve done the job to the best level that you can, and it’s usually those type of people that ‘tend’ to do better at what they’re trying do achieve including SEO.

Below is a sample from the code used to detect and display the icons and links. Enjoy!

<?php query_posts('p=1068');?> //Wordpress Query, just grabbing one post

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> //initialize Wordpress loop

<?php the_title();?>

<?php the_content();?>

<?php if ( $files = get_children(array(   //do only if there are attachments of these qualifications

 'post_parent' => get_the_ID(),

 'post_type' => 'attachment',

 'numberposts' => -1,

 'post_mime_type' => 'application/pdf',  //MIME Type condition

 ))) : ?> 

 <?php foreach( $files as $file ) :  ?>    //setup array for more than one file attachment

  <?php $file_link = wp_get_attachment_url($file->ID); ?>    //get the url for linkage

  <?php $file_name_array=explode("/",$file_link); ?> <?php $file_name=array_reverse($file_name_array); ?>  //creates an array out of the url and grabs the filename 

<div>

 <a href="<?php echo $file_link;?>"><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/mime/pdf.jpg" alt="PDF" /></a>

   <a href="<?php echo $file_link;?>"><?php echo $file_name[0];?></a>

</div>

 <?php endforeach; ?>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php if ( $files = get_children(array(

 'post_parent' => get_the_ID(),

 'post_type' => 'attachment',

 'numberposts' => -1,

 'post_mime_type' => 'application/msword',

 ))) : ?> 

 <?php foreach( $files as $file ) :  ?>

  <?php $file_link = wp_get_attachment_url($file->ID); ?>

  <?php $file_name_array=explode("/",$file_link); ?> <?php $file_name=array_reverse($file_name_array); ?>

<div>

 <a href="<?php echo $file_link;?>"><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/mime/doc.jpg" alt="Word Document" /></a>

   <a href="<?php echo $file_link;?>"><?php echo $file_name[0];?></a>

</div>

 <?php endforeach; ?>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php if ( $files = get_children(array(

 'post_parent' => get_the_ID(),

 'post_type' => 'attachment',

 'numberposts' => -1,

 'post_mime_type' => 'application/zip',

 ))) : ?> 

 <?php foreach( $files as $file ) :  ?>

  <?php $file_link = wp_get_attachment_url($file->ID); ?>

  <?php $file_name_array=explode("/",$file_link); ?> <?php $file_name=array_reverse($file_name_array); ?>

<div>

 <a href="<?php echo $file_link;?>"><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/mime/zip.jpg" alt="Zip File" /></a>

   <a href="<?php echo $file_link;?>"><?php echo $file_name[0];?></a>

</div>

 <?php endforeach; ?>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php if ( $files = get_children(array(

 'post_parent' => get_the_ID(),

 'post_type' => 'attachment',

 'numberposts' => -1,

 'post_mime_type' => 'audio/mpeg',

 ))) : ?> 

 <?php foreach( $files as $file ) :  ?>

  <?php $file_link = wp_get_attachment_url($file->ID); ?>

  <?php $file_name_array=explode("/",$file_link); ?> <?php $file_name=array_reverse($file_name_array); ?>

<div>

 <a href="<?php echo $file_link;?>"><img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/mime/mp3.jpg" alt="MP3 File" /></a>

   <a href="<?php echo $file_link;?>"><?php echo $file_name[0];?></a>

</div>

 <?php endforeach; ?>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php endwhile; endif;?>

Wordpress is great for organizing your websites content. The ‘Post’ is your basic data object which can be assigned to one or multiple categories. From there you can create custom ‘queries’ to ‘loop’ through, and display your content. The built in Wordpress functions are intuitive and easy to use for customizing your queries to the database. This exemplifies the power PHP and allows you to build dynamic, content driven websites. The software also uses ‘Pages’ for different sections in the website. Custom coded PHP template files can be attached to Pages to unleash customizability to the maximum. Wordpress also has a well thought out hierarchy for passing data into different layouts. There is so much thought put into the conventions of this software. After working with Wordpress its hard to turn back.

For increased SEO Wordpress offers convenient application of metadata. Tags are an important component to the basic SEO of your blog or site. Such data can be attached to each Post for use in meta data or page layout. Tags can help your SEO rating so long as they are not overdone. They should remain mostly unique to the Post and its content, yet with a few relevant to the rest of the site (like general tags). A combination of smart Tag usage and the All In One SEO Pack Plugin can greatly improve your SEO. The plugin includes features such as automatic meta data generation and title optimization.

The Media Library is more refined in Wordpress 2.7. You can now choose from more image sizes with Thumbnail, Medium and Large. These can be referenced anywhere in the site through the Post objects. This is convenient for displaying a gallery of images, or having accompanying images for your posts. Check out this post for a peak at how we implement it for our site.

One of the most useful plugins is the More Fields Plugin. It basically allows you to customize the administration panel for writing your content so that there are more text boxes (fields) for data entry. You can control how they look, placement, and who has access to them. It can be very useful for writing posts with specific pieces of information you want to be displayed differently on your page templates. You can also add checkboxes, radio buttons and select lists as your input fields. This plugin can greatly increase your efficiency in work production. It can also improve your layout aesthetic whereby you have items of data displayed differently rather than trying to just type it all in one content box.

One plugin that we haven’t yet explored is the Pods Plugin for Wordpress. “Pods lets you create, manage, and display custom content types using WordPress. Like Drupal CCK, these content types can relate to one another, allowing for sites packed with interconnectedness. Automatic pagination, filtering, public forms, access control, menu editing and more are possible with the Pods CMS plugin.” It looks to be promising and there is constant activity on its development.

Wordpress offers the ultimate in flexibility and extendibility. If your plan is to increase your website traffic and expand your site, this might be your solution.

If you would be interested in seeing what Gauge Interactive can offer you using this technology please call us now! (912) 228-3265

The project was managed by our good friends Scott, Ken, Chad and Matt at Blue Lime Studio here in Savannah, and the end result was a hit! The presentation showcases the future amenities of the Savannah River Landing development, and is published with their promotional materials. Click here for more information about this project. Want to see some of our other equally cool work? Click here!

View the gallery in action here on a project page or on any of our work pages.

Here is a sample of the code. Basically you can put this anywhere inside the Wordpress Loop, or a custom query. The first two parts will look for attachments, then setup the numbered buttons, then thumbnails, and attach a java script for rollover functions. There are two sets of controls to demonstrate flexibility. (Don’t miss the preload function there also!)
The last part sets up the first gallery image and preps it to receive the java rollover function to swap the source.

<?php if ( $images = get_children(array(

 'post_parent' => get_the_ID(),

 'post_type' => 'attachment',

 'numberposts' => -1,

 'post_mime_type' => 'image',

 ))) : ?>

 <?php foreach( $images as $image ) :   ?>  // setup array of images

<?php $attributes_image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $image->ID, "large"); ?> //get the source for the large image

  <?php $numero++;?>

 <div style="height:40px;float:left;display:inline;" ><div><img onmouseover="document.getElementById('rolloverimage').src='<?php echo $attributes_image[0];?>'" alt="Gallery Rollover" src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory');?>/images/<?php echo $numero;?>_button.png"  /><img src="<?php echo $attributes_image[0];?>" alt="Projects" class="preload"/></div></div>  //displays the numbered rollover graphic with java rollover attribute

 <?php endforeach; ?>

<?php endif; ?>

</div>

<div style="height:160px;width:100%;float:left;display:inline;">         

<?php if ( $images = get_children(array(

 'post_parent' => get_the_ID(),

 'post_type' => 'attachment',

 'numberposts' => -1,

 'post_mime_type' => 'image',

 ))) : ?>

 <?php foreach( $images as $image ) :  ?>

<?php $attributes_image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $image->ID, "large"); ?>

<?php $attributes_image1 = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $image->ID, "thumbnail"); ?>

  <?php $numero++;?>

 <div style="height:100px;float:left;display:inline;" ><div><img onmouseover="document.getElementById('rolloverimage').src='<?php echo $attributes_image[0];?>'" alt="Gallery Rollover" src="<?php echo $attributes_image1[0];?>"  /><img src="<?php echo $attributes_image[0];?>" alt="Projects" class="preload"/></div></div> //displays thumbnail rollover images, alternate method 

 <?php endforeach; ?>

<?php endif; ?>

</div>

<?php if ( $images = get_children(array(

 'post_parent' => get_the_ID(),

 'post_type' => 'attachment',

 'numberposts' => -1,

 'post_mime_type' => 'image',

 ))) : ?>

 <?php foreach( $images as $image ) :  ?>

<?php $attributes_image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $image->ID, "large"); $tester = $attributes_image[1];?>

<div style="float:left;display:inline;width:100%;height:500px;">

 <img src="<?php echo $attributes_image[0];?>"   id="rolloverimage" alt="image" /> //displays first image in set

</div>

 <?php break;   ?>

 <?php endforeach; ?>

<?php endif; ?>

I found a cleaner and more lightweight variation of this called jFlow. All the basic concepts are utilized and it performs in the same basic way. Upon looking through the code is seemed smarter and easier to modify. It initially lacked the functions we desired, and it seemed like there was a demand in the forum for certain auto-scroll, and pause-on-hover combinations. We wanted to do this, and add a manual advance for the slides.

So the gSlider was born.

Have Gauge professionally install this script on your site starting at $125
Get professional installation. We’d love to install this script on your site for you. First we need some info…

Sometimes you need a little more flexibility than most. On the HGBD website our goal was to display featured projects using a more advanced slider. Our gSlider auto scrolls on the homepage at a given interval. It can be manually advanced, plus it will pause on mouse over. All of these are the basic components of navigation, no need for a pause button, just let the user interact and not even have to think about the pause button. No need for a play button because the user will have the option to advance the slide when ready. And when they are not focusing on the slider with their cursor, it will resume intermittent advancement to advertise its existence. The reason they would have their cursor in the slide to begin with would be the fact that we have these nice elegant *transparent window slides pop out of the slider on top of the image. Each of the, popup windows houses a link and more text about these featured products, of which there are three per slide. Talk about getting the most out of your screen real estate. This kind of thinking is already being pushed to the maximum in our mobile devices like the Apple iPhone.

To finish things off, we publish the text and images of the slider through a content management system. We make all of our websites via Wordpress. So the slides are generated within the Wordpress Loop, cutting down on code and ramping up efficiency.

*All of our code is tested for browser compatibility, validation, we use a transparent PNG filter script for the IE6 transparency fix.

(function($) {

 $.fn.jFlow = function(options) {

 var opts = $.extend({}, $.fn.jFlow.defaults, options);

 var cur = 0;

 var timer;

 var selected_class = "jFlowSelected";

 var maxi = $(".jFlowControl").length;

 $(this).find(".jFlowControl").each(function(i){

 $(this).click(function(){

 dotimer();

 $(".jFlowControl").removeClass(selected_class);

 $(this).addClass(selected_class);

 //alert(cur);

 //alert(i);

 var dur = Math.abs(cur-i);

 $(opts.slides).animate({

 marginLeft: "-" + (i * $(opts.slides).find(":first-child").width() + "px")

 }, opts.duration*(dur));

 cur = i;

 });

 }); 

 $(opts.slides).before('<div id="jFlowSlide"></div>').appendTo("#jFlowSlide");

 $(opts.slides).find("div").each(function(){

 $(this).before('<div class="jFlowSlideContainer"></div>').appendTo($(this).prev());

 });

 //initialize the controller

 $(".jFlowControl").eq(cur).addClass(selected_class);

 var resize = function (x){

 $("#jFlowSlide").css({

 position: "relative",

 width: opts.width,

 height: opts.height,

 overflow: "hidden"

 });

 $(opts.slides).css({

 position:"relative",

 width: $("#jFlowSlide").width()*$(".jFlowControl").length+"px",

 height: $("#jFlowSlide").height()+"px",

 overflow: "hidden"

 });

 $(opts.slides).children().css({

 position: "relative",

 width: $("#jFlowSlide").width()+"px",

 height: $("#jFlowSlide").height()+"px",

 "float":"left"

 });

 $(opts.slides).css({

 marginLeft: "-" + (cur * $(opts.slides).find(":first-child").width() + "px")

 });

 }

 resize();

 $(window).resize(function(){

 resize();

 });

 $(".jFlowPrev").click(function(){

 dotimer();

 doprev();

 });

 var doprev = function (x){

 if (cur > 0)

 cur--;

 else

 cur = maxi -1;

 $(".jFlowControl").removeClass(selected_class);

 $(opts.slides).animate({

 marginLeft: "-" + (cur * $(opts.slides).find(":first-child").width() + "px")

 }, opts.duration);

 $(".jFlowControl").eq(cur).addClass(selected_class);

 }

 $(".jFlowNext").click(function(){

 donext();

 dotimer();

 });

$(".pause").click(function(){

 dopause();

 });

$(".resume").click(function(){

 doresume();

 });

 var donext = function (x){

 if (cur < maxi - 1)

 cur++;

 else

 cur = 0;

 $(".jFlowControl").removeClass(selected_class);

 $(opts.slides).animate({

 marginLeft: "-" + (cur * $(opts.slides).find(":first-child").width() + "px")

 }, opts.duration);

 $(".jFlowControl").eq(cur).addClass(selected_class);

 }

 var dotimer = function (x){

 if(timer != null)

  clearInterval(timer);

 timer = setInterval(function() {

   donext();

   }, 4000);

  }

 dotimer();

 var dopause = function (x){

 if(timer != null)

  clearInterval(timer);

 timer = setInterval(function() {

   donext();

   }, 500000);

  }

 dotimer();

 var doresume = function (x){

 if(timer != null)

  clearInterval(timer);

 timer = setInterval(function() {

   donext();

   }, 4000);

  }

 dotimer();

 $("div.jFlowSlideContainer").hover(function(){

 dopause();

 }, function(){

 doresume();

 });

 };

 $.fn.jFlow.defaults = {

 easing: "swing",

 duration: 400,

 width: "100%"

 };

})(jQuery);

$(function() {
			$("div.slide_project_holder").hover(function(){
				$(this).find("div.pop_box").animate({top:"-180px"},{queue:false,duration:500});
			}, function(){
				$("div.pop_box").animate({top:"-45"},{queue:false,duration:500});
			});
		});

Have Gauge professionally install this script on your site starting at $125
Get professional installation. We’d love to install this script on your site for you. First we need some info…

Magento Custom Theme Development and Store Customization.  Our first project using The Magento Open Source eCommerce software package has been a complete success.  Our clients, the guys at All Out Kiteboarding, wanted a sort of grungy feeling to their site with high contrasting colors.  We decided to go with a grayscale scheme, and a sort of wet paint and checker board style.  We implemented a Java Slider for the homepage to show off some of their equipment in action.  Since Magento eCommerce offers a complete CMS (Content Management System) along with store functionality they have the ability to go in and change up their photos and link to certain promotions or specials as they see fit.  The client also has access to their other “static” pages so they can make updates and change info with ease.  The beauty of this CMS feature allows us to provide the client with a solid long lasting product.

Magento uses simple yet powerful XML layout files that reference Content and Structure Blocks (PHP and HTML files) which, in turn, display the content of the store.   Once a store is up and running, things are highly customizable and extendible.  Growth is the whole idea.  The Gauge Interactive Development team is hard at work mastering this new software and we intend to employ it at maximum capacity for future projects.

We have integrated a community poll where they can track their viewers opinions and other types of information, whatever they want to harvest, the possibilities are limitless.  There is a newsletter feature which is highly advanced with great control over subscribers and queued newsletters.  Of course there is a built in contact form for any type of inquiry.  The latter two features have customizable email templates that are sent out to keep things professional.

They are selling Kiteboarding Gear: Kites, Bars, Harnesses, and Boards.  They even have virtual products up on their store, Lessons for individuals and Groups.  Magento eCommerce offers more than a wide variety of options for configuring products, grouped products, configurable options, promotional prices, etc., Check out Magento - Home - eCommerce Software for Growth.

View the Project Details in Our Work section http://www.gaugeinteractive.com/projects/all-out-kiteboarding/

This is a small snippet from our gallery, just for testing purposes. We are using a new Syntax Highlighter for the web so people can view our code and utilize easier. We want to include more samples from our work in our blog.

<?php if ( $imagesi = get_children(array(

'post_parent' => get_the_ID(),

'post_type' => 'attachment',

'numberposts' => -1,

'post_mime_type' => 'image',

))) : ?>

<?php $images = array_reverse($imagesi);?>

<?php foreach( $images as $image ) :  ?>

<?php $att_image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $image->ID, "full"); $tester = $att_image[1];?>

 <?php if ($tester > 300){?>

<?php $numero++;?>

<div class="control_img_box"><div class="control_img"><img onmouseover="document.getElementById('rolloverimage').src='<?php echo $att_image[0];?>'" alt="Gallery Rollover" src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory');?>/images/<?php echo $numero;?>_button.png"  /><img src="<?php echo $att_image[0];?>" alt="Projects" class="preload"/></div></div>

<?php } ?>

<?php endforeach; ?>

<?php endif; ?>

When I want to do some research, or general browsing I use Safari, I have to lend it to Apple for the great interface, navigational tricks and excellent bookmarks system.  One quick little function that I like using is the “Auto-Click” feature, located as a check box option in the bookmarks window.  If you are using a folder to access a group of links you might open all the time, you can open it in tabs in one click instead of the drop down menu.  Say I want to just want to pop on and update a post real quick.  With one click I can have the Gauge Site and My Admin pages ready for me in new Tabs.  Any number of links will open, however many you have in that folder.  Anything to save a click, or a second helps in efficiency.  Below is the drop down version of course.

Updated: Check out the Site Project Page at http://www.condosinsavannahga.com/

For those of you unfamiliar with the Google Mini Appliance, the solution is a self-contained server that is powered by the exact same algorithm that powers Google.com. It can search and index up 50,000 documents of your choosing, be it standard HTML pages, or 219 other different file formats. From PDF’s to Word Docs, HTML to CSV files, this can search, rank, and display them all. The real killer application for this solution is that you can apply your own custom look and feel to the system, so it can blend in seamlessly with your current site. The reason this is so important is that sadly search is usually the red headed step child of features with most content management systems on the market today. When the developers are faced with the choice between implementing exciting new features like AJAX menu drop-downs in their product, or work on something boring like improving the search results engine, they invariably choose to work on the sexy new AJAX menu drop-down feature. But, as the old saw goes, every cloud has a silver lining, and in this case, the lining is a deep shade of Google Blue. Being able to customize the interface allows you to quickly integrate it into your existing site infrastructure without having to rebuild your site from the ground up to take advantage of it.

We’re right now configuring it before we cart it over to our data center, take a look at the pictures below:

Interested in what the Google Mini Search Appliance can do you for your site and/or company? Give us a ring at 912-228-3265 and we’d be happy to answer any and all questions for you!

We’re excited to develop this custom web site and E-Commerce application, it will be totally unlike anything else that’s on the market. We’re incredibly proud to be selected as an integral partner as Old Savannah Tours continues to expand its products and services.

The Google Mini Appliance is a combination of hardware (a server) and software (the google algorithm that makes their searches work) all packaged into a box that you can purchase and install. Its just like buying a Dell with Windows installed on it, only this is much more powerful and much more specialized.

There are a few different ways the Google Mini can be used. For example, say you own a large law firm with hundreds of thousands of documents that you and your employees reference and research on a daily basis. We can install, setup, and program the Google Mini Appliance to search all of those documents (it can search over 200 different file formats) with the same accuracy, speed, and relevance that Google uses for its online search.

This has the potential to save you a lot of wasted time and effort constantly looking for something and not finding it. This same scenario can apply to many industries, whether your searching construction documents, case files, insurance records, patient files, or articles on a website, the Google Mini Appliance can search it all and return accurate results.

When used on a large website the Google Mini offers the flexibility of full customization. We can install, program AND customize how it looks so it fits in seamlessly with your colors, logo, layout, and branding. This gives you the power of google search under your name and reputation.

Stay tuned for more details about how we can make this a reality for your business. More details will be posted on our “Services” page within the coming weeks.

So whether using it online searching your website or on your internal office network, the Google Mini Appliance can be a powerful tool that’ll help you to save some time and cash.

1) Mobile browsing is huge on the iPhone, 90% of all owners of the iPhone browse the web with it. Within 3 months of it’s introduction, it blew everything else out of the water in terms of market share. Now with the new version, it’s even faster with access to the 3G network. This is like surfing everywhere on WiFi which is going to make this an even more attractive platform for viewing content. Speed is king, and when you got that 1-2 minutes in the line in the grocery store waiting for the person with 60 items in the 10-item-or-less line, you want to have the speed to pull up something a) worth reading and b) quickly enough for it to be useful. Nothing sucks more than watching a progress bar crawl across a screen while web browsing. We all remember web surfing with a 28.8 Modem and nobody likes the equivalent of going back to it (Surfing over the slow, old cellular EDGE network)

2) Buying stuff through your phone. Steve has shoehorned another lovely way to separate you from your hard earned greenbacks, this time through the “App Store”. Now you’re able to buy games, applications, and more right from your phone. In that doctors waiting room for 30 minutes? Download a new game to keep yourself occupied, or download a new application to balance your checkbook while you wait. The developers who make these applications get 70% of the gross sale price, so it’s gonna be a cash cow for everyone, and a very easy way to empty your wallet. Why will it be so effective? Because every single iPhone user will have the ability to buy it, and it will be on standardized hardware so compatibility won’t be an issue, and payment is handled by Apple, they just drop the money into the developers bank account.

3) GPS in your phone. This is HUGE! Someone, somewhere, really really soon is going to build a great app that will allow you to see where you are down to 10 feet via GPS, and then display all the events that are happening around you, any merchants that have coupons/specials for what’s going on, and where your friends are. In terms of mobile advertising, this function alone is going to set off the equivalent of an atomic bomb in this fields revenue growth. The benefit for merchants and early adopters is that has very low barriers to entry for both price + ROI. The application that seems most promising right now is Loopt, a social-networking location-based system. Really cool, it will allow you to see and do pretty much everything you could ever want in terms of figuring out where your friends are. View the Keynote address and go in 27 Minutes and 30 seconds to see what it looks like and how it works. Welcome to the world of mobile advertising business owners, hop on board early and reap the benefits!

4) Its gotten cheaper. A LOT cheaper. As they say in the keynote, 56% of people wanted to buy the iPhone, but thought it was too expensive. Not anymore, the new price for the 3G iPhone is only $199. This will open up the phone to a huge number of people it wasn’t available to before, and even better, it’s now going to be available in 70 countries, so the global reach of this device is going to go up an order of magnitude, if not more. More people = more applications = more potential benefit for business owners looking to cater to that rapidly growing slice of the population.

5) Application development is easy. Companies that used to require employees to drag around enormous laptops for data entry, email, and CRM can now have a device that does all that and more in the palm of their hand. I know many hardened road warriors will be screaming at the top of their lungs to have these and drop those back breaking bricks called laptops. What’s really amazing is the trend in miniaturization recently. With a iPhone 3G and a Macbook Air, you can pretty much do anything you want to and still be carrying around less than 3.5 pounds (4.7 ounces for the iPhone, and 3.0 pounds for the Macbook Air)…viva la revolution!

All in all, an impressive day for Apple and the global community at large. Finally a device that will be equally empowering for phone owners as well as business owners, all in a hand held package that is so affordable that you can buy 3 of them with your snazzy $600 rebate. So get out there, help stimulate the economy, buy an iPhone 3G and help usher in the new era of mobile business and communications!

The answer to that is in this great article by the New York Times. It breaks down the Google AdWords system and how it works. For those of you unfamiliar with it, when you do any search on Google you get a series of boxes on the right hand side of the page that are paid for by advertisers. What many people don’t know is how it works. It’s all based on a highly advanced auction system. Search keywords prices are determined purely through whatever your competitors want to pay for it. Brilliant system, and oh Lord do Google finances show it, in Fiscal 2007 Google raked in $16.5 Billion in revenues, 99% of it from those little ads on its site + its network of other sites who use its search results.

Sure, the amount of money Google is generating is interesting considering how simple its system is. What’s more interesting is how they are tracking what makes a “Good Ad” and all the factors that determine how Google places your ad, it’s not just based on how much you’re willing to pay. Here’s the meat of the article:

Traffic was growing rapidly, as was the average price that advertisers were paying for clicks. But Mr. Fox and others realized that measuring the average cost-per-click was not good enough. Users might be clicking on more high-priced ads and fewer lower-priced ads. That would cause the average cost-per-click to rise, but it would say little about the health of the overall system.

So Mr. Varian and Diane Tang, principal engineer in the ads quality group, helped devise what they call a basket of keywords. Much like the consumer price index, a basket of goods and services that economists use to track inflation, the measure is made up of a broad sample of keywords and is weighted to make it statistically accurate. This internal benchmark helps Google get a clearer picture of its performance.

As measurements improved, Mr. Fox’s team unleashed a stream of experiments meant to optimize the ad system. They evaluated changes to things like the clickable area and background color of ads, and the criteria for placing ads above search results rather than beside them.

Over time, the company also looked beyond click-through rates to rank ads. Google now takes into account the “landing page” that the ad links to, and, for example, gives low grades to pages whose sole purpose is to show more ads. Soon, the loading speed of a landing page will also be considered, Mr. Fox said.

These factors contribute to an ad’s “quality score.” The higher that score, the less the advertiser has to bid to secure top billing. For example, an advertiser who offers to pay $1 per click to attract those searching for “vacation rentals in Colorado” may receive more prominent placement than another who bids $1.50 for the same query but has a lower quality score. An advertiser with a very low quality score may have to bid so much for placement as to make it uneconomical.

Quality scores work as an incentive to advertisers to improve their ads, which benefits users and, in turn, benefits Google, Mr. Fox said.

Most interesting things are the amount of ads on the landing page being taken into consideration, and of extreme interest to us (since we started in the web hosting business) is the speed you web site loads being taken into consideration. We have been screaming from the rooftops for years that the speed + reliability of your web hosting is mission-critical to your site ranking well and, we’re sorry kids, $5 a month web hosting is not gonna cut it. That is why we spend so much money on top of the line servers, keep the server load as low as possible. We never put more than 400 customers on one machine, the industry average is 5000-10,000. Sure, it costs a lot more to do it this way, but the end result is sites up 100% of the time and load as fast as possible.

In conclusion, it’s extremely interesting to see that Google is taking the results of even paid advertisers landing pages so seriously. What does this mean to you? If your web site is chocked with ads, loads slowly/irregularly and is offline from time to time due to poor choice of hosting platform then you’re not only going to be ranking poorly on Google’s paid results and unpaid results engines, but you’ll also be losing money from potential customers. Update your pages design/hosting platform before its to late!

This is simply the beginning. The bright lads at Google have long known that while a lot of the information people are looking for online is text-heavy, the majority (in terms of file size) is in images, video, PDF’s, Flash, and downloadable files. Google and the other search engines are rapidly making progress in these areas. The one people are most familiar with is with PDF’s. If you do a search on Google for IRS Form 1099 the first result isn’t the proper IRS website, but the PDF form. As the years go on, we can expect more and more of the content that was previously available only by manually search on multiple sites. This will allow future websites to be increasingly content-rich and be rewarded appropriately with good rankings by Google.

The future is indeed bright for flashy, fun web sites.

“White space” is the space between broadcast channels on the television airwaves. The technology utilizes these super high speed television airwaves, now vacant due to increased broadband use, to broadcast online data like movies, music, web-pages etc. With this shift in technology, new devices will be produced which will be faster and easier to use than ever before, changing the way that we interact with the mobile internet.

Google is also working on open source mobile phone software pack which they are calling “Android”. It’s software which will allow anyone to create their own mobile phone applications, meaning you could theoretically program your phone however you want. Icons, fonts, text size, etc. are all customizable. Essentially it will make programming your phone as easy as making a web-page.

White space combined with Android will bring a big change to the landscape of the internet we now use on a daily basis. It will make it more customizable, more accessible, more powerful, and more portable.

With the internet being used more and more on a mobile level, its not unreasonable to expect people to be doing things that they do on their home computers now on their mobile devices in the future. Things like shopping, reading, listening to music, blogging, and watching online T.V. shows.

This shift in technology will bring more people to your website on a smaller screen. Imagine viewing your website on a 2-3 inch screen. What will that be like? Will people be able to buy your product, subscribe to your service, read your blog?

A lot of websites are now being optimized for use on the iPhone, but with these new developments, it is likely to become a requirement in order to stay competitive. Its important to stay up to date with new technology and emerging trends. Prepare yourself and your business by taking this into consideration for your future web needs.

New York Times: click here to read article
Washington Post: click here to read article

Some interesting stats from the article:

* 43% of retail sales are to either be influenced by or made on the Internet by 2012

* 83% of business use the Internet to research and find potential vendors

* 75% of users admit to making judgments about the a company’s credibility based on their website’s design

The 75% of users admitting to making judgments on a companies credibility based on the website design is an incredible number. Think about your own website: if you don’t like the design of it currently, chances are your customers don’t either and it’s costing you a significant amount of business.

Check out the article here

The concept of the press release may be decades old, and in it’s modern online version, it still is and should be a major component of any business!

The New York Times posted an article about how slowly, amazingly, it seems that the FCC is moving past its usual behavior of rubber stamping the wet dreams of the telecom industry and actually is threatening to lay down some ground rules so at least this extortion at gun point will be somewhat orderly.

We feel really strongly about this topic (as you might be able to tell) as Telecom companies charge hosting companies like us an arm and a leg already for bandwidth costs so that no matter what traffic we’re getting, you get your site in just a couple milliseconds. It’s pretty hard to choke down the idea that not only should we pay what we do already to them, but now we get the privilege of paying MORE for basically providing the same level of service we provide our customers already. And to make matters worse, they want those negotiations to happen on a “per company” basis, so we’d have to negotiate specific deals with each ISP like Comcast, AOL, BellSouth, Qwest, AT&T, etc. in order to continue to keep the level of service. As you can imagine, each company would have different pricing, different terms, different bandwidth minimums and maximums, and minor contract stipulations. Yeah, I think we’ll pass on all that garbage folks, thanks but no thanks.

Fortunately, fellow Internet content providers aren’t taking this sitting down, and have organized a broad and pretty effective movement called the Save The Internet Foundation. Check out their website for more specifics and see how you can help.

Click to view the site

The Idea is to pit two sites against each-other in an all out coded duel to see who reigns supreme over the fiber optic lines of the world. The sites are compared, judged on their code, then the public votes to choose the best of the two. Its an all out brawl ya’ll. I love the idea of having websites compete, the winner picked because of quality. Design AND code is taken into consideration. Its like going to buy a home and always taking a bunch of really good builders with you so you can see exactly how well the home was built. I think in today’s world anything which helps us to reward good, efficient and well thought work needs as much support as we can give. So check it out and maybe vote on a few sites you really like. Do your good deed for the day and reward someone’s hard work.

Here is an article posted by another company that does what we do. Its a great way to see if your website needs some attention. The focus of the article is on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) The goal of SEO, and subsequently our goal for your website, is to get your page to rank well on Google. This means that when someone types in “I drove my chevy to the levee and the levee was dry so I crashed, how do I fix my car?”, you show up offering automobile repair services. Provided that is actually what you do. There are many things which help your “page rank” and this article does a nice job of laying out some of them and some easy ways to get you out of the levee and into the limelight. Enjoy.

Thanks for visiting!
-Mark Lubbers
Creative Director, Gauge Interactive