I recently came across an article that really made me think. We all know you can find just about anything on the Internet (whether it’s true or not, malicious or not, etc.). But have you ever stopped to wonder how many Web pages actually exist out there?

Well, as is the case with most curiosity-minded people, someone’s ponying up the capital to find out.  Apparently a group named the World Wide Web Foundation is getting a $1 million grant from Google to find out.  The article can be found here.

The results are supposed to come out early next year.  I’m very interested to see the final number.  Apparently the founder of Wired magazine estimated that there are approximately a trillion pages.  The problem as I see it is, the Internet is growing at an exponential rate, right?  Doesn’t that mean that the second that they finish counting, their data will be severely out-of-date?  It’s like buying a new smartphone, and the next day, they come out with a new version of it.  Blast!

Keep in mind that Google and other search engines are indexing most of these pages.  Given the sheer number of pages out there, it has to make you wonder, “Are my pages getting lost out there?”  This is another reason why web marketing grows in importance every single day.

Whatever the number may be, I’m proud to be part of a company that has contributed a large number of good-looking Web pages to the Internet mass.  Fortunately, content management tools like Cascade Server have allowed our clients to also easily contribute to that number.

Come to think of it, we have a tool here that will tell us how many pages exist on a particular Web site (also number of images, PDFs, etc.). Maybe I can start a scan of the Internet with it to count pages. It’ll probably finish scanning in 2016.

Beacon Technologies just completed a redesign of the Texas A&M Foundation Intranet. In addition to visual updates, the site received usability enhancements and organizational features.

Here are some project highlights:

• The site is secured using both .NET permissions and an authentication method (Central Authentication Service) used by the University and allows multiple levels of security—from “guests” to management level. GREAT JOB MIKE!
• Bulletin board system for FAQs and Q&As as well as “fun” applications like trading tickets and recipes
• Integration of Google calendar, including downloadable events and calendar filters (See below.)
• Internal blog to enhance internal communication
• Beautifully designed and informational employee profile pages (See below.)
• Bookmark utility that visitors can use to save pages
• A-Z index for alphabetical listing of site pages as well as traditional site map
• CMS form creator

The client is thrilled with the results and we’d like to give credit to everyone on the software development team that was involved in the project! This is the Foundation’s eighth project with Beacon.

BEFOREAFTER

I recently provided a client with a list of non-flash animation options (a.k.a. JavaScript plug-ins) for their new home page banner image area. My good friend Wendy Honeycutt came up with a great list that I thought I’d share:

• http://tympanus.net/codrops/category/tutorials/
• http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/HoverSlideEffect/
• http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/CompactNewsPreviewer/
• http://www.serie3.info/s3slider/demonstration.html
• http://galleria.aino.se/
• http://www.gcmingati.net/wordpress/wp-content/lab/jquery/svwt/index.html
• http://css-tricks.com/examples/StartStopSlider/
• http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/examples/image-rotator/
• http://jqueryglobe.com/labs/slide_thumbs/

*Note: most JavaScript plug-in apps are customizable. Thus, the speed of image rotation, background colors, font styles, and transparencies can be adjusted.  Some really cool stuff out here!!

What are your favorite sites for JavaScript plug-ins?

There are thousands of plugins available for WordPress, which is awesome for non-coders.  The issue with many of these plugins is the bulk code it produces is highly unnecessary when you consider most functionality is already available for use in a fresh installation of WordPress. Plug-ins also have to be reconfigured across sites–integrating these functions into your template eases the portability of your site’s theme while maintaining functionality. On a recent project, we discussed this integration as a standard for blog development, which is a significant advantage when you consider the process of pushing out releases.

Consider the following 3 plug-ins:

• Popular Posts
• Recent Posts
• Post-Plugin Library – Needed for other plug-ins to work. (See the bulk?)

These are pretty  commonly used methods of displaying blog posts and content.  Together, these 3 plug-ins only take up 500Kb of data–however, everything you need is already in WordPress if you know the lay of the land. The three functions below can do all the same things with just a copy+paste into your functions-file, usually located at:

/wp-content/themes/YOUR-THEME-NAME/functions.php

These are pretty simple to modify or tweak as needed, whether it be the code in PHP or the markup/styles. Oh, and these replacement functions only take up a tiny 1.64Kb!

Functions:

<?php
	function popularPosts($num) {
		global $wpdb;
		$posts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT comment_count, ID, post_title, post_date FROM $wpdb->posts ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0 , $num");
		foreach ($posts as $post) {
			$title = $post['post_title'];
			$count = $post['comment_count'];
			$date = $post['post_date'];
			if($count!=0) echo '<li><a href="' . get_permalink($id) . '" title="' . $title . '">' . $title . '</a><br /><div class="post-date">'.$date.'</div></li>';
		}
	}
	function recentPosts($num){
		$args = array('numberposts'=>$num);
		$recent_posts = wp_get_recent_posts($args);
		foreach($recent_posts as $post){
			$date = $post['post_date'];
			echo '<li><a href="' . get_permalink($post["ID"]) . '" title="Look '.$post["post_title"].'" >' .   $post["post_title"].'</a><div class="post-date">'.$date.'</div></li>';
		}
	}
	function recentComments($num){
		global $wpdb;
		$comments = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_title, post_password, comment_ID, comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_date_gmt, comment_approved, comment_type,comment_author_url, SUBSTRING(comment_content,1,30) AS com_excerpt FROM $wpdb->comments LEFT OUTER JOIN $wpdb->posts ON ($wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID = $wpdb->posts.ID) WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type = '' AND post_password = '' ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC LIMIT ".$num);
		foreach ($comments as $comment)	echo '<li><strong>'.ucwords(strip_tags($comment->comment_author)) ."</strong> commented on " . "<a href="" . get_permalink($comment->ID)."#comment-" . $comment->comment_ID . "" title="on ".$comment->post_title . "">" . $comment->post_title ."</a></li>";
	}
?>

Once you have these in functions.php, it is easy to call the functions from the sidebar or other locations of the template files.

Notes:

• The functions above would need to go inside of individual unordered list tags as they are currently marked up for the sidebar.
• The function require to pass a numeric parameter representing the number of posts/comments to return.

Example Usage:

This is an example of how to setup your ‘sidebar.php’ file to make use of these functions, Plugin-free.

<div id="sidebar">
	<div class="search" align="center">
		<?php get_search_form() ?>
	</div>
	<?php
		echo '<div class="tabs">';
		//Popular
		echo '<div id="popular-posts">';
		echo '<h2>Popular</h2><ul>';
		popularPosts(5);
		echo '</ul></div>';
		//Recent
		echo '<div id="recent-posts">';
		echo '<h2>Recent</h2><ul>';
		recentPosts(5);
		echo '</ul></div>';
		//Comments
		echo '<div id="recent-comments">';
		echo '<h2>Comments</h2><ul>';
		recentComments(5);
		echo '</ul></div>';
		//Get dynamic toolbar managed in WordPress Dashboard
		if(!function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('tabs')){echo '</div>';}
		if(function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('Sidebar Widgets')) : else : endif;
	?>
</div>

Texas A&M Foundation launched this month. Our objectives were to analyze, design, develop and host the Texas A&M Foundations public blog.  The blog design also needed to closely mimic the public site design. We have worked with TAMF on several other web site projects, including redesigning their public web site twice. The site received lots of comments and traffic on its very first day.

Features and Highlights:
• User manual
• RSS feed
• SEO friendly URLs
• Creation of categories
• Ability to add images and/or video to blog posts
• Contact information for each post author
• Comments allowed and moderated

Thomas Brinegar primarily handled the design and development with periodic assistance from Annette Fowler, Wendy Honeycutt, Justin Klingman and Tiffany May. William Nichols handled all of the administrative duties. Finally, big thanks to Heather Showstead for sound advice and suggestions.

Thanks to all!

The Cascade Server User Conference is something that Beacon has been attending since 2006.  (I personally have been to four of the 5, missing 2007′s conference to move into our new house…believe me, I would have rather been at the conference.)  It’s a great conference put on by Hannon Hill in Atlanta, where we get to mingle with Hannon Hill employees (and make absurd product development suggestions to them in-person), some of Beacon’s clients, and collaborate with other users.  And we get to see how others are using Cascade for their university or business, which is very interesting.

The conference began in 2006, and was small enough to fit in Hannon Hill’s very nice offices in Buckhead.  Given the ever-increasing popularity of Cascade, the conference has since moved to hotels, and this year will be at Georgia Tech’s Global Learning Center and Hotel & Conference Center.  Besides being a top-notch facility, they have a pool table, where I can demonstrate why I only play pool once a year.  Hannon Hill also hosts a reception on the first night, full of food, drinks, and mingling.  Overall, it’s a jam-packed, but awesome, two-day experience.

At the first conference in 2006, I was asked (10 minutes beforehand, I might add) to be a participant in a round table discussion, where Cascade users fired questions at my two fellow participants and me about how we use Cascade in our business.  (Little did I know that one of the participants would become a client of ours one day!)  I’ll never forget it because as part of the introductions, we had to say name our alma mater, and when I said “Virginia Tech”, I got booed by someone.  It turns out they were a bitter Clemson fan/employee, still upset about VT thumping them in the 2001 Gator Bowl.

Hannon Hill asked me to speak (by myself this time) at the 2007 conference, but I had to decline for reasons already mentioned.  However, I did speak in 2008 and 2009 on “Tips & Tricks for End Users”, where I gave some insider information on how we effectively use Cascade for a variety of clients.  For last year’s conference, I took the year off, and while I still attended the conference, I gladly let Brad Henry and Mark Dirks speak, titled “Web Marketing w/ Cascade Server CMS + Live SEO Reviews“.  This talk emphasized how Web Marketing is so vital to your business, and how Cascade aids in that effort.  It was a fantastic talk.

This year, I am speaking at the conference again, though the exact topic is TBD.  Why do I want to speak at these conferences?  Because I enjoy standing in front of a bunch of people at a lectern?  Hardly.  It’s a great way for me to share with others the innovative way we use Cascade to meet our clients’ content management needs.  Any CMS can let you edit your content.  But what else can it do for you?  That’s where we step in:  to push the envelope and make Cascade do what you need and want it to do.

If you’re a Cascade Server client of ours, come on down to Atlanta, September 19-20, 2011 for the 2011 Cascade Server User Conference.  We would love to see you there!

We launched a really cool new eCommerce site for BMI Surplus!  BMI Surplus is located in Hanover MA and is a supplier resource center of equipment for premier colleges and universities, research facilities, individuals and manufacturing businesses worldwide.  Their website uses the newest version of AspDotNetStorefront with several purchased add-ons and custom apps built by Beacon. The purpose of this project is to redesign the BMIus.com web site and replace the existing shopping cart with AspDotNetStorefront. The primary audience for the new website will be universities and other research centers, but also individuals looking for specific parts/equipment by searching via part number and/or SKU in search engines.

Here are the project highlights:
• Custom Logo Design
• Custom site design
• AspDotNetStorefront Version 9.1
• Rotating banner on home page pulling from Featured Products category
• Paginated, sortable and filterable category landing pages
• Custom fields pulled from backoffice system for product detail page (condition, tested, location, etc.)
• Share this button on product detail page
• Customized ‘Email a friend’ form that sends questions to customer service
• Customized shipping functionality (allow warehouse pickup, self-shipping)
• Wire transfer as a payment option
• Integration with back-office inventory system (Fishbowl)
• Web marketing analysis and recommendations
• eNewsletter signup integrated with Constant Contact
• Enhanced basic and advanced site search

HUGE thanks goes to John and Tiffany who really made it all work. There were lots of new and fun challenges with a new version of AspDotNetStorefront and the Beacon team met each challenge admirably.  Other big contributors: Wendy provided a lovely custom design, Thomas assisted with setting up the informational pages and Jeff provided essential WMS feedback and analysis.  Finally, BIG thanks to William and Wayne for their launch assistance.

Cookies have a range of uses across the web. Cookies are used to identify a visitors (authentication), remembering settings or configuration, or even maintaining a shopping cart or wishlist.  Cookies can store data locally on a visitor’s machine and can be called back as long as the cookie does not expire or get cleaned up by the browser’s Temporary File Cleanup.  On a recent project, we built a ‘Bookmark’ utility as extra functionality into a client’s site.  This functionality required the use of cookies, containing a URL as a reference to the bookmark locations.  jQuery has greatly simplified the scripting for cookies. However, after this previous project I decided to write some re-useable functions to handle common cookie routines.  Packaging multiple values into a cookie can be done through separating the values with a ‘separator’, usually a character the cookie values will not use.  Common separators are the  pipe (|) or tilde(~).  Back to the bookmark example, we can store the URLs in a single cookie with pipe separators as opposed to dropping a new cookie for every bookmark.

Library Resources:

You will need to include the following scripting libraries/resources for methods in the function list below.  You may include the libraries with three individual script tags or use the integrated one compiled below.

• jQuery – Contains the backbone behind the jQuery library
• jQuery Cookies – Additional jQuery library for cookies
• jQuery Functions – Simplified functions for easy cookie project coding

- Integrated JS Library -

Function List Overview

function cookieSet(name,value,exp){
	//set cookie with value
	$.cookie(name,value,{expires:exp});
	return;
}
function cookieGet(name){
	//get value of single value cookie
	return $.cookie(name);
}
function cookiePrint(name){
 //print value of a single cookie
	document.write($.cookie(name));
	return;
}
function cookieGlue(name,values,seperator){
 //construct cookie with array of values
	var str = '';
	for(var i=0;i < values.length;i++)
            if(i!=values.length-1) str = str+values[i]+seperator; else str = str+values[i];
	$.cookie(name,str);
	return;
}
function cookieSplit(name,seperator){
 //return array of values in cookie
	var vals = $.cookie(name);
	return vals.split(seperator);
}
function cookiePrintArray(name,seperator){
 //print cookie array values
	var str = $.cookie(name);
	str = str.split(seperator);
	for(var i=0;i < str.length;i++) document.write(str[i]+' ');
        return;
}
function cookieKill(name){
  //Delete cookie value/array
	$.cookie(name,null);
	return;
}

Cookie Scripting Examples

cookieSet('Name','Thomas Brinegar',7);		//set cookie with 7 day expiration
var cookie = cookieGet('Name');			//assign cookie val into variable
cookiePrint('Name');				//print cookie value

var name = new Array();				//create an array for cookie storage
name[0] = 'Thomas';
name[1] = 'David';
name[2] = 'Brinegar';	

cookieGlue('Name_Array',name,'~');		//glue array values together as cookie
var vals = cookieSplit('Name_Array','~');	//assign cookie values into array
cookiePrintArray('Name_Array','~');		//print array contents

cookieKill('Name');				//remove cookie value
cookieKill('Name_Array');			//remove cookie array

We recently picked up a fantastic piece of software for designing WordPress themes called Artisteer. While this software doesn’t give you complete control over the content, its great for throwing a general layout which can be finely tuned after it is exported. Artisteer features an easy to use
‘Microsoft Office’-styled interface that generates your layout and scheme via point and click.

When developing for WordPress sites in this way, I religiously abide by the following development process:

Start with the Design/Theme in Artisteer.

• Start a new project within Artisteer with the WordPress CMS.
• Work left to right with along the menu tabs on the ribbon across the top. Within each tab, work left to right with the avaible options and settings.
• On the far left tab, Ideas, click Suggest Design until a base design to work from is found or skip this and build the page using the Layour tab.
• Each tab focus has a ‘Suggest’ button for the helplessly creative.
• As you work to the last tabs, the design gets fine-tuned across page elements.
• Once a design is ready for site integration, click the arrow on Export button at the top of the menu bar. Select Export Options…
• On the properties option window, enter the author name, url, template version, template URL, any associated tags, and a brief description of the theme.
• Once this is entered, export your theme as a WordPress Theme. Exporting the theme as standard markup is available too, but is of no use inside WordPress.
  

Integrate into WordPress.

• Start up your FTP app of choice, FireFTP is convenient if your a FireFox user.
• Navigate and transfer a copy of your theme folder to: /public_html/wp-content/themes/
• Log into your WordPress Dashboard. http://YourSite.com/wp-admin
• Under the appearance drop-down on the sidebar, select Themes.
• Your theme once uploaded, should be listed among the themes avaialable to your site. Find yours and click ‘Activate’.

Add Non-Artisteer Elements and Styles to Template

• Artisteer isn’t going to always have every part of your site. You can make these from the ‘editor’ in the WordPress Dashboard listed under Appearance, or use a text editor and FTP.
• Making these modifications require knowing the WordPress Theme structure. Much of the code is in PHP, so background there also helps.
• Inside of every Artisteer generated WordPress theme, you will have the following in your Export folder:
  

• Open and add/change markup to THEME_NAME/header.php for changes to the header area, usually META, LINK, and SCRIPT tags and body elements that precede the menu bar.
• Open and add/change markup to THEME_NAME/templates/page.php for changes to the pages Menu, Sidebar, down until the main content area is loaded.
• Open and add/change markup to THEME_NAME/templates/post.php for changes to the content area of posts and pages across the site.
• Open and add/change markup to THEME_NAME/footer.php for changes to the footer area, this is any markup that follows the pages main content area
  (May be contained within outter-most DIV if designed so within the ‘Sheet’ in Artisteer).
• Open and add/change markup to THEME_NAME/404.php for changes to text and verbage on the 404 page.
• Open and add/change styles in THEME_NAME/style.css for changes to the stylesheet.

Site Structure and Content

• After the above is said and done, all thats left is organizing the structure of the site and loading it with content.
• Under 'Settings > General', change blog metadata and primary options.
• Under 'Settings > Writing', set defaults and settings for publishing blog content.
• Under 'Settings > Reading', set a static or blog listing homepage and set listing pages to show either summaries or full articles.
• Under 'Settings > Discussion', configure comment restrictions and requirements.
• Under 'Settings > Media', configure media (image and file) restrictions and requirements.
• Under 'Settings > Privacy', configure whether the site is to be visible or not to Search Engines.
• Under 'Settings > Permalinks', customize the URL structure. I generally stick to Month & Name or a Custom Structure using: /%category%/%postname%
• Determine sidebar widgets and make active under 'Appearance > Widgets'.
• Load posts and pages with content in their respective sections. Keep in mind to setup categories for posts if necessary.

Beacon is happy to announce that Greensboro Radiology has launched it’s new website!

Interesting items about the site:

· This is a medium-sized Cascade site with some customized transactional forms.

· The home page impact image is “split” and each image and link is replaceable via CMS

· News and Events are dynamically fed to the home page

· Featured Physician on home page is maintainable via CMS

· Internal banner images are maintainable at the page or section level via CMS

· Physician listing/detail pages allow the client to maintain, in an aesthetically pleasing way, extensive details about each physician—including education, interests and video.

So many different people have been tasked with helping on this site. Thank you to everyone on the Beacon Team who was involved!