Although quite busy with our client websites, we decided to take time to give some love to our own website.  If you have not noticed, we created a completely new look and feel.  We are not quite done yet; we are still tweaking the design elements and the code.  The new website design signals new trends that we are excited to share with you today.

1.  Web Design Elements

As we are getting better in designing and developing websites using the WordPress platform, there are a few things that we particularly appreciate about web design.  We have become very fond of (almost obsessed) with beautiful typography, white space, and textures.  These elements, while can be subtle, can make for a very clean and elegant website. We are now paying very special attention to these elements as we create websites for our clients.

2. Responsive Design

As more people rely on their smartphones and tablets to browse the web, it has become increasingly important to create responsive websites.  This means that the website automatically adjusts to the screen size on which it is rendered.  Our website is now responsive in a very neat way!  To see what I mean, view our website on your smartphone or tablet.  Then switch from landscape to portrait. Did you notice the website adjust different to the screen size? Pretty cool, right?  We are currently implementing responsive web design in all our new client projects.

3. Resources to Help You Grow

This year, we will focus on expanding our blog.  We plan to transform our blog into a very useful resource that provides links to great, helpful, educational, and inspiring resources. Our goal is to make our blog a wealth of information to help our clients grow.  In addition, we will start creating video tutorials to help our clients effectively manage their WordPress websites.

4. New Products and Services

Finally, the new look and feel for our website foreshadows exciting upcoming announcements.  These will include new services that we are currently developing, perfecting, and testing.  We are thrilled to launch these services soon to better serve our clients.  Please stay tuned.

In conclusion…

2011 was an excellent year for us, but we are determined to make 2012 an even more exciting, innovative, and productive year.  We invite you to join us in our journey through an amazing third year in business!

In your marketing messages, are you excited about the potential of your products? Are you customers excited about how your product may impact their lives?

Australian-based media mogul Initech is pleased to announce that it finalized acquisition of Tucson-based Connexins Web Development LLC.

“For the last year or so, we have been closely monitoring the three most exciting companies on the web today” said a very excited April Loofar, President and CEO of Initech. “Twitter, Facebook, and Connexins have revolutionized the way we use the internet” Ms. Loofar continued. Based on the reputation, potential for growth, and profitability, Initech opted to acquire Connexins instead of acquiring both Facebook and Twitter.

Dr. Morgan, the previous owner of Connexins Web Development LLC who started the company in 2010, was not available for comments. Eye witnesses at Tucson International Airport report that Dr. Morgan was last seen at luggage check-in. “He was very ecstatic” one traveler mentioned, who also told us that Dr. Morgan was traveling with his lovely girlfriend to Hawaii.

We are pleased to announce the search is over!

Naturally, we used ourselves as the guinea pigs, i.e. we have a mobile website! Check out the screenshot below (click on it to enlarge). To visit the live version, visit http://connexins.mobi with your mobile device.

While this platform integrates with WordPress, it will not automatically format the existing WordPress website into a mobile website. The mobile website pages are built from scratch.

We like this for at least 2 great reasons:

1. It’s completely flexible and allows custom cascading style sheet (CSS) code (which, of course, I love).

Why would you care? Because custom CSS allows for custom designs, so I will be able to code the exact look and feel you’re after.

2. Creating mobile pages from scratch challenges us to design a website tailored to the specific needs of a mobile user.

Most people use mobile browsers differently than their computers’. Personally, I am typically looking for different kind of information (and different packaging of the info) on my mobile browser than on my computer. As such, mobile website design and content should be different than desktop websites.

We now offer “mobile websites” as a service to our clients. To learn more, please visit our services page.

Questions or Comments? Or are you interested in building a mobile website? Let me know!

Behind the scenes, people who are successful work hard on getting better. They think, evaluate, and plan their business approaches. Over time, they think critically about their progress, reflect on their experiences, and re-evaluate their strategies.

In other words, they practice and improve to become the best. As a result, they make it look easy.

Have you ever heard of the 10,000 Hours Rule?

It has been described by Seth Godin and written about by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers (great book by the way), and others. In simple terms, most remarkable people spend about 10,000 hours doing something before they become the best at it.

I do not know who said the following quote, but it perfectly characterizes the essence of this blog post:

“Champions don’t become champions in the ring – they are merely recognized there.”

When you succeed in the “ring” of life or business consistently, generally, it is not because of chance or luck, but rather because you prepared well.

Many factors (including genetics) predispose individuals to certain qualities. However, people are not born awesome public speakers, skilled artists, landscapers, or website developers. They work at it when no one is watching, until they become the best.

Behind the scenes, when no one is watching, are you working hard to improve, become the best, and make it look easy?

• makes your blog page seem too long
• may not look too good to have so much text in one page
• makes it difficult for your readers to browse through your recent posts

Here, we will show you how to use the “Read More” tag to display the first few sentences of each post, followed by a “Read More” link pointing to the page that contains the entire post.

It’s actually really simple and you can do it right from your WordPress post editor. Here are the steps:

1. Click “Add New” under “Posts”
2. Enter your post title and write your content
3. Place the mouse/cursor wherever you want to truncate your content
4. Click the “Read More” button (shown in image below)
5. (or if you like shortcuts, click Alt+Shift+T)
6. Publish or Update your post
7. That’s it!

Here is a screen shot of the WordPress post editor to show you what the “read more” buttons look like boxed in orange in both Visual and in html modes:

click on image to enlarge

Questions? Please let me know

The most important reason we have been successful thus far, of course, is you… yes you, who is reading this blog post! We are truly grateful for the amazing experiences and conversations we have had these past few months with our clients, friends, and blog readers! We look forward to continuing to serve you in the months and years ahead.

We hope you have a wonderful and enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend.

Writing a website proposal is not particularly exciting for a web designer/developer, primarily because proposals are full of words about the design and the development, so it is often perceived as a tedious exercise.

Initially, I shared the perception about website proposals as most web designers/developers. Recently, however, writing proposals has been a lot of fun for me.

So what changed?

My change of heart toward writing proposals likely stemmed from my philosophy of my role as a web developer.

More like a partner

As a website designer/developer, I think of myself as a partner to my client in his/her business. I spend quite a bit of time researching the industry and the needs of the target audience, which subsequently guides the design and layout of the website.

In addition to being elegant and user-friendly, I strive to create designs that communicate the messages that need to reach the target audience of the website. In so doing, the website would complement and enhance my clients’ business efforts and help them achieve their business goals.

Putting all this together in proposal format is exciting, because the website proposal represents a realistic and solid plan to realize the vision of my clients and help them accomplish their business goals – and that would make me happy as their (temporary) business partner.

Now, it’s your turn

When you need a website for your business, are you looking for someone to design and develop your website or someone more like a business partner, whose goal is to help you accomplish your business goals?

We look forward to becoming your partner in your next website project. Contact us today for a free no-obligation website consultation!

Here are a few resources to help you remember, honor, and learn:

Locally in Tucson, Freedom Walk 2010 by Operation Homefront Arizona

The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. You can browse, research, and contribute!

National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum

Project 2,996 remembers the victims of September 11, 2001.

Let’s never forget!