October 20, 2005
Issue No.2
Neekdesign
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Welcome to Neekdesign News!
While working on individual client projects, we've incorporated some great web strategies that might benefit all of you. In this issue we've outlined three free software applications that can add greater interactivity to your sites.
Photo Galleries
Many of you have very visually-oriented websites and could benefit from an easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain photo gallery. We have implemented a free PHP-based software application called Gallery for a number of you that allows users to view thumbnails, larger photos and automated slideshows. Gallery is very robust and can be configured to display separate photo albums with nested albums.
The Coast Highway Photo galleries are setup with two main albums (weddings and portraits) and a number of nested albums within each of these. Nested wedding albums are by couple and nested portrait albums are organized by portraits, children and families. Kevin optimizes his photos to a standard height and width at 72dpi in Photoshop and then uploads them through the online Gallery administrative area. He can create as many albums and nested albums as he needs.
Another Kevin of First Step Dance is using Gallery in it's more raw form. In First Step's Gallery section, you see how Gallery organizes albums on the top level. This is also where you can login to add, edit and delete albums. Now that First Step has a large body of albums, Kevin can start to organize these by year, event and classes. Gallery allows you to set the size of your thumbnail and large images, limit or add controls for the user, name albums and images, add captions, show photo creation dates and even include the name of the photographer.
For those of you using Gallery, there is an updated version. Please let us know if you are interested in using Gallery on your site or having us upgrade your current 1.X version to 2.0. As you see in these two examples, Gallery can be customized to fit your look and feel and features can be turned off or left on depending on what is most appropriate for your site.
Web Calendars
Most of you have internal networks running Microsoft Outlook. Outlook allows you to track meetings and display your calendar to others on your internal network. We have found a couple of great open-source web-based calendar applications that can be used to help keep your website users up-to-date on company and industry-related events.
WebCalendar
This is a free PHP-based calendar that can be installed, configured and setup on your hosting server.
PHP iCalendar
This free application has similar functionality to WebCalendar with a different look and feature variations.
What we love about these PHP-based applications (aside from their unbeatable cost) is their code can be optimized for use with Cascading Stylesheets. We have coded all of your sites with the latest version of CSS. Your CSS can be extended to provide a seamless visual experience with these applications.
Please contact us if you're interested in learning more.
Weblogs
Many of you have asked about ways to build community among your users and provide a more interactive communication channel. Weblogs are a great way to do this. They provide a number of features including the ability for users to make comments to your entries.
Six Apart
Six Apart continues to grow their library of blogging products, providing a number of great options.
Their original Movable Type application is a robust software package offering a number of very affordable pricing structures depending on your needs and the type of your business. The beauty of Movable Type is that it is a full-featured application with a one-time purchase fee. Mentat , a weblog for Lori Bowen-Ayre of The Galecia Group, is driven solely by Movable Type. Lori can add, edit and delete entries, upload images and documents, create new user accounts and more through the Movable Type online administrative interface.
TypePad is Six Apart's hosted, subscription-based weblog application. You pay a montly fee to Six Apart to host your weblog (rather than installing and configuring the software on your web server).
There are a number of other Weblog software and subscription applications available. Please let us know if you have questions about how these work or ideas about how a Weblog can be worked into your marketing.
-- The Neekdesign Team