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Content Management Face Off

CMS-Face-Off

What’s the best Content Management System for our website?

It’s a question we hear a lot these days.  Pretty much every web project that crosses our desks has one thing in common; a Content Management System (CMS).  The days of hard-coded websites are over.  As websites have grown more dynamic, interactive, and social, the requirement for their continual update has become a necessity. Content strategy is growing as a defined discipline and helping organizations to formalize an approach to publishing their content. As such, the number of CMS options has exploded. Read Full Post

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Designing for CMS: Crystal Ball Optional

Does this look like your CMS Design Approach?

Laying a design foundation for a Content Management System (CMS) framework presents a number of challenges, not the least of which is in engaging in a bit of educated guesswork about how the client will evolve the site in the future.

The creative merits of CMS-powered websites must often yield to an unpredictable content maintenance scenario. For example, while you might provide guidance for the type of imagery to be used, the only true control is in the dimensions you design. And while you may provide a structure approach to the style/class in which to publish copy, you have no control over the amount used in page titles, sidebars, etc. Read Full Post

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Why your CMS doesn’t care about you – and what to do about it

This is your CMS on drugs

I have some bad news for you. Your content management system (CMS) does not care about you.

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Hi…We’re Visceral.

Welcome

Welcome to the Visceral blog.

Over the course of the coming months we’ll be using this space to share our collective thoughts on Strategy, Design, Content and Development. We’ll talk about common problems we’ve found (and have hopefully overcome) in the web biz, as well as those looming challenges and opportunities on the horizon that deserve your attention. Read Full Post

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Quick Tip – Text Re-sizing in Visual Studio 2010

This is probably old news by now but I just happened to stumble onto one of the new features of Visual Studio 2010 by accident and thought I’d share. Read Full Post

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Beanstalk – Online Version Control

Version control is something that every developer is (or should be) concerned with since it offers many advantages for a development team. It allows multiple developers to work on a project simultaneously, it maintains an archive of previous versions, and it can act as an auxiliary backup system.

One of the challenges for a small shop however, can be setup, deployment, and maintenance of a server to house the version control system.  For my own small company, another challenge is that our developers reside in separate locations, thousands of miles away. Read Full Post

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Book Review: HTML5 for Web Designers

HTML5 Book Review

As developers we’re constantly tasked with keeping up with coding techniques, learning new technologies, and sorting out the “wow, that’s awesome” from the “not actually useful because of IE6, etc”. With HTML5 being the latest game-changing industry buzzword we’re once again forced to dig through all the clutter. Thankfully, Jeremy Keith has done the digging for us.

I blogged about Jeremy’s DOM Scripting book a couple of years ago and when I read that book I thought that he’d done the seemingly impossible. He took a convoluted and confusing subject and made it simple and accessible.  With this new book, Jeremy has done the same for HTML5. Read Full Post

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How Does SMS Marketing Compare?

SMS Marketing

I was asked recently by a client about why a mobile SMS campaign would be useful to them when they were already aggressively using e-mail as a promotional tool. “Isn’t e-mail better,” she asked. It’s a legitimate question, and one we, as consultants, should be prepared to answer. Why should clients add another cost to their already strained marketing budget when they’re using e-mail effectively? Read Full Post

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Content Strategy as Information Design

Content Strategy as Information Design

We were thrilled to see the outpouring of content strategy love from SXSW this week – and thanks to Twitter,  we do mean pouring.

During the annual digital love fest, it’s impossible to avoid the plethora of new ideas and concepts emanating from Austin.

But this year, we were super-extra thrilled. Why? Because of the renewed – some would even say altogether new – focus on the importance of content strategy.

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5 Steps to Tip-Toe into Social Networking

5 Steps to Tip-Toe into Social Networking

We are often told by clients that they simply don’t have time or the know-how to engage in social networking, even when an effective social network campaign might be just the ticket to achieving many of their business goals. Furthermore, as they don’t see the clear value in engaging a community via social media tools, they have little motivation to learn more about it.

While the issue of value is significant, it’s not for this article. In this piece, we’re going to dispel the myth that effective participation in social networking is a black hole of time and too complicated to engage in. It’s not. In fact, you can execute a successful social networking campaign in the same time that it takes to read the daily industry news or eat lunch.

So, without further ado, we have compiled a few simple tips to help you start building a valuable and effective social networking community.*

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