CentreSource Interactive Agency Blog » Chip Hayner http://blog.centresource.com Web Development | Nashville, TN Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:05:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 “I feel the need… the need for speed!” http://blog.centresource.com/2010/01/06/i-feel-the-need-the-need-for-speed/ http://blog.centresource.com/2010/01/06/i-feel-the-need-the-need-for-speed/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:30:58 +0000 Chip Hayner http://blog.centresource.com/?p=1346 For anyone (like myself) who has been religiously following Google and the amazing things that they have done to improve people’s experience on the web, you would have noticed a pattern in December 2009 of “speed.” The reasons for their speed obsession are clearly justified; a user’s experience on the web is made or broken by the speed at which they are able to browse, including the initial page load, the responsiveness of the interactive components, and the number of clicks to get to retrieve their desired information.

As such, Google has been busy releasing various tools to help with user’s experiences on the web:

Google Chrome

Ok, so this technically came out for Windows in 2008, but was released fully cross-platform in 2009. Chrome (and its subsequent big brother “Chrome OS”) is an open-source browser that borrows components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox (both open-source projects) and aims to “add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.” As of January 4, 2010, Chrome had officially passed Apple’s Safari browser to become the 3rd most popular browser behind Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Real-Time Search

As Twitter has grown in popularity, it has quickly become the first source for breaking news, mostly due to the ease and speed with which you can post information. In Q4 2009, Google signed a deal with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and FriendFeed (among others) to allow search results from each of their sites to be propagated into the Google search result page. The benefit of this is that one can get to-the-second results of what they’re looking for — all in one place.

Webmaster Tools

While improving the end-users’ tools can greatly improve usability and performance, Google acknowledged that individual site optimization is key to a successful user experience by releasing a variety of webmaster tools to help web developers identify slow parts of their site, and provide tips on how to improve those areas. One group of tools was added to Google Analytics under the new “Site Performance” section, that gives an analysis of your site’s performance relative to the rest of the web, as well as particular suggestions on improving page speed. This is particularly helpful in identifying over-arching tips and tricks that can improve the loading speed of your site as a whole.

The second tool is a Firefox extension called “Page Speed” that takes the analysis provided in the “Site Performance” section, and moves it to the browser, allowing you to view specific recommendations on a page-by-page basis. This is particularly helpful in identifying very specific ways to improve the speed of a particular page that might be loading slower than others on your site.

The third tool is a Chrome extension called “Speed Tracer.” This tool is more geared towards the performance of web applications, focusing less on the initial load time, and more on the strain that using the website itself puts on the user’s browser. Using Speed Tracer, you can pinpoint exactly what scripts, actions, or files are causing your website to appear to slow down.

Public DNS

The nerdiest most technical tool that Google announced was their hosting of a Public DNS server. DNS, or Domain Name System, is an essential part of the web that helps translate domain names (”blog.centresource.com”) into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers where the website files live. By providing a Public DNS, Google plans to not only optimize the hundreds of DNS requests that the average user makes every day, but also to gather data about user’s browsing patterns “to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally.”

]]> http://blog.centresource.com/2010/01/06/i-feel-the-need-the-need-for-speed/feed/ 0 Introducing the new CentreSource.com http://blog.centresource.com/2009/11/19/introducing-the-new-centresource-com/ http://blog.centresource.com/2009/11/19/introducing-the-new-centresource-com/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:52:47 +0000 Chip Hayner http://blog.centresource.com/?p=1173 The new CentreSource Web site.When your company has had so much success at planning and building world-class Web sites for companies and organizations of all sizes, it is easy to start to think “Hey, what about our site? When are we launching the new one? Can we put a treasure map on there? Can Chris take our pictures?” The answers to the last three are: “today,” “absolutely” and “if you ask him nicely.”

Capping off months of on-again, off-again work (Hey, we’ve been really busy!), we are proud to announce that the new CentreSource.com is finally available to the world. The new site invites you to meet our team, learn a bit about our process, see why our clients are the best and to chat with us about your undying love of cupcakes (or anything else you want to talk about).

Have a look!

]]> http://blog.centresource.com/2009/11/19/introducing-the-new-centresource-com/feed/ 0 Join us for BarCamp Nashville 2009 http://blog.centresource.com/2009/10/08/join-us-for-barcamp-nashville-2009/ http://blog.centresource.com/2009/10/08/join-us-for-barcamp-nashville-2009/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:02:04 +0000 Chip Hayner http://blog.centresource.com/?p=1122 Legendary Sponsor

It will be LEGENDARY!

CentreSource is once again sponsoring the midstate’s leading tech-driven “unconference,” BarCamp Nashville. This free event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday, October 17 at the Cadillac Ranch on Broadway in downtown Nashville (map). At last glance, there were more than 60 presenters that had created sessions on topics on everything from Web development to entrepreneurship. We are also very proud that several of our team members will be presenting at this year’s event:

Visit the BarCamp Nashville Web site to register today!

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In each of the mediums mentioned (and I’ll throw in SMS, blog comments, and forums), the person leaving the message is able to post directly to you — the biggest difference is that some of the messages are public and some are private.  Ironically, the items that are private (direct messages in Twitter / Facebook, SMS, email) seem to be the ones that I feel most obliged to respond to, whereas it feels “ok” to leave the public comments hanging without response.  I’m not sure if I think that “someone else can reply for me,” or if being public is less personal, and therefore less necessary to respond.

On the flip side, there is a particular expectation that we set whenever we send a message to someone.  I may not expect Sally to thank me personally for the birthday greeting I posted on her Facebook wall, but if I post a public message to @SouthwestAir or @ComcastCares, I have an expectation to get a response.

What do you think?

  • Which social obligations do you feel?
  • How do you feel when you post a public or private comment to someone and they don’t respond?
  • If your company or business is on Twitter, do you respond to every public or private message?
]]> http://blog.centresource.com/2009/08/19/social-obligations/feed/ 2 Choosing the Right Tool for the Job http://blog.centresource.com/2009/07/27/choosing-the-right-tool-for-the-job/ http://blog.centresource.com/2009/07/27/choosing-the-right-tool-for-the-job/#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:03:37 +0000 Chip Hayner http://blog.centresource.com/?p=1027 At CentreSource, we have a motto that “outcomes always outweigh the output.”  Through this, we try to focus on meeting the individual goals of our clients, versus focusing on the process of how they get done.  One goal we often hear is that our clients would like an easy way to update the website themselves.  By using a Content Management System (CMS), we enable our clients to accomplish this — without having to install anything on their computers, or know too much about how websites work.

Over the history of CentreSource, we’ve worked hard to choose the perfect CMS to be able to meet the individual needs of each client and project that comes our way.  There was always a balance that had to be struck — it couldn’t be too cookie-cutter, or else we wouldn’t be able to do everything that the client was asking.  Conversely, it wouldn’t be cost efficient if we had to custom build a CMS for our clients each time.  By focusing on the outcome  (the client’s goal of an easy-to-update website), we decided that the best single CMS option was not a single option at all, but instead a “toolbox” approach that would allow us to use the appropriate tool for each unique job.

WordPress

For basic blog / news sites with a few “static” pages, there is no better option out there than the open source platform, WordPress.  WordPress has a simple, intuitive administrative interface, and is designed and built around the concept of two types of content: posts and pages.  Thanks to their fairly extensive documentation and an incredible user community, there are thousands of WordPress tutorials, examples, and plugins available that can help you to maximize the capabilities of WordPress to it’s fullest.  Although there are some plugins out there (one in particular called Flutter) that allow you to expand WordPress into a more feature-rich CMS (with multiple content types, for example), we have found that doing so is like pushing a boulder uphill.  It can be done, but it’s more work than it’s worth — especially with other, more feature-rich CMSes out there (see below).  All in all, though, WordPress is an excellent basic tool for basic websites.

Sitemason

Next in our toolbox is a local company that CentreSource has used since we first open our doors, and has never let us down since.  Sitemason is a proprietary CMS that has expanded over the years to allow its users to edit pages, news, forms, polls, photos, and calendars.  Once you’re trained on their administrative interface, adding and editing content is a breeze, as heavy-hitter clients like Vanderbilt University, ABHOW (American Baptist Homes of the West),  Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, or TrustCore Financial can attest to.  Their team of developers are constantly refining and adding to their tools, taking guidance and recommendations from the users and developers that use their system.  As a result, Sitemason has proven to be an invaluable tool for our low- to mid-level sites.

Drupal

Over the past few years, Drupal has taken off as the de facto CMS for open source developers.  Advertising itself as not only a CMS platform, but also a CMS framework, Drupal has an extensively flexible core that can be used to build modules to do just about anything you might want.  Drupal’s bread and butter is its ability to create custom content types (a piece of content with defined custom fields), and then a system to view the content in many different ways (lists, grids, tables, blocks, etc).  Additionally, Drupal specializes in social-based tools, making it a perfect platform for bands, politicians, or churches.  For any high-level content-based site that is too demanding for WordPress or SiteMason, Drupal is the perfect tool for the job.

Symfony

While not really a CMS, the Symfony framework allows us to custom build anything that can’t be done with the tools above.  Symfony is a PHP framework that provides an architecture for developers to build complex web applications faster.  Using Symfony allows us to build the exact tool that our client is wanting — something that is necessary in circumstances where the workflow is just as important as the final outcome.  Using Symfony, we’ve been able to build complex order and shipment fulfillment systems and social-based file sharing and recommendation systems — sites that would not have been able to be found “out-of-the-box,” but that were needed based on our client’s goals.

The largest advantage of having a full toolbox at our disposal is that as we approach planning for each new project, we are able to choose a tool in response to the needs of the client, instead of trying to force the client’s needs into a preselected (and potentially limiting) option.  Each of the tools that we use help to cover the full gamut of price, time, and complexity, allowing us optimally serve the client with the best tool for the job.

]]> http://blog.centresource.com/2009/07/27/choosing-the-right-tool-for-the-job/feed/ 1 Dream Big, Take Action: Ellie’s Run for Africa http://blog.centresource.com/2009/06/08/ellies-run-for-africa-2/ http://blog.centresource.com/2009/06/08/ellies-run-for-africa-2/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:31:22 +0000 Chip Hayner http://blog.centresource.com/?p=899 ERFA2009 PosterThe summer is here, which means that once again it is time for us to join forces to help out Ellie’s Run for Africa (ERFA), a 5k run and family fun day that raises awareness of and funding for Africans who struggle to meet basic needs such as health care, food, water, shelter, clothing and education.  Since the first event in 2004, ERFA has raised over $155,000 and helped to put over 420 kids in school.

We have been a proud sponsor of ERFA for the past three years, specifically offering our web design and development services for their website, http://www.elliesrun.org.  This year, we were able to add a brand new system for accepting online registrations, donations, and volunteer sign-ups, including their “ERFA Heroes” system that allows people to sign-up to raise money, and then get people to donate in their name.

This year, ERFA has an ambitious goal of 1,000 event participants and raising $100,000.  It won’t be easy, but by teaming together, anything is possible.  As the ERFA slogan says: “DREAM BIG. TAKE ACTION.”

We’re asking that you Dream Big and Take Action with us.  Please consider donating to Ellie’s Run for Africa — only $25 helps put a child in school for a year!

http://www.elliesrun.org/teams/centre-source

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There is one question about “what’s with the funny symbols?” that I’ve gotten a few times from Twitter newbies, so I figured I’d write a quick post shedding a little light on the subject, and hopefully provide a little insight into how to quickly become a Twitter power user.

There are three primary symbols that are used through Twitter: “@”, “RT”, and “#”.

The “@” is used to signify when a particular post is addressed to or references someone. For example, if someone wanted to reply to something that I said, they would preface their post with “@chayner” (“chayner” is my Twitter username). The “@” symbol could also be used later in the post to reference someone (ie: “I am going to the movies with @chayner”).

The “RT” is short for “ReTweet”. You would use “RT” if you wanted to pass on what someone else has already said. The typical syntax is “RT @username: [original post]” where the @username is the username of the person who original made the statement.  An example of this would be: “RT @centresource: Congrats to our recently-launched client, the Two Futures Project, for being featured on the Huffington Post: http://www.urlzen.com/env“.

The “#” is used to tag an event, meme, or other keyword to group Twitter posts together. This is also known as a “hashtag”. This allows people to use http://search.twitter.com to search for posts on given topics, or even use sites like http://www.tweetchat.com to “chat” with others by all using the hashtag. For example, I’ve watched Red Sox games with other fans throughout the country, by following and responding to any post that includes #redsox.

Are there other symbols that you’re seeing that wou have no idea what they mean?  Leave us a comment, and we’ll update this post to include a description / example.

For a more detailed tutorial for Twitter beginners, check out this amazing post by Nashville’s own Michael Hyatt (@michaelhyatt), CEO at Thomas Nelson, and an avid Twitter’er.

]]> http://blog.centresource.com/2009/05/11/whats-with-the-funny-symbols-on-twitter/feed/ 2 centre{source}.com Announces Name Change http://blog.centresource.com/2008/04/01/centresourcecom-announces-name-change/ http://blog.centresource.com/2008/04/01/centresourcecom-announces-name-change/#comments Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:20:14 +0000 Chip Hayner http://blog2.centresource.com/2008/04/01/centresourcecom-announces-name-change/ NASHVILLE, TN, United States, 04/01/2008centre{source}.com is now ZENtre{source}.com. Nashville’s interactive strategies firm has renamed its company name to reflect its core competencies.

Since the beginning, ZENtre{source}.com, formerly centre{source}.com, has become a fountain of knowledge for progressive clients looking deep within their online persona for a user relationship that goes beyond casual clicking.

Read the full press release of centre{source}’s name change here

[ Update: For those that didn't already figure this out, April Fools! ]

]]> http://blog.centresource.com/2008/04/01/centresourcecom-announces-name-change/feed/ 0 Firefox 3 Beta 4 http://blog.centresource.com/2008/03/10/firefox-3-beta-4/ http://blog.centresource.com/2008/03/10/firefox-3-beta-4/#comments Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:29:48 +0000 Chip Hayner http://blog2.centresource.com/2008/03/10/firefox-3-beta-4/ Some of us at centre{source} have been running the latest version Firefox (version 3) which is currently in it’s beta stages. It’s VERY cool and VERY fast…Beta 3 Release 4 just came out today: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.0b4&os=osx

After installing, we were extremely happy to notice that Flash is once again working as expected, and it’s all running a lot faster and more stable. It definitely is a huge improvement over Firefox 3 Beta 3 (which itself was light-years of improvement over Firefox 2!)

Try it out, and let us know what you think!

]]> http://blog.centresource.com/2008/03/10/firefox-3-beta-4/feed/ 0 Live from Boston Drupalcon 2008! http://blog.centresource.com/2008/03/02/live-from-boston-drupalcon-2008/ http://blog.centresource.com/2008/03/02/live-from-boston-drupalcon-2008/#comments Mon, 03 Mar 2008 03:31:29 +0000 Chip Hayner http://blog2.centresource.com/2008/03/02/live-from-boston-drupalcon-2008/ Bob, Jared, and I just got to Boston for Drupalcon 2008! All week, we’ll be checking in and giving updates about what we’ve learned. If you’re in town for the convention, send me an email chayner {at} centresource.com and we’ll try to hook up for lunch!

For more information on the conference, check out http://boston2008.drupalcon.org

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