Submissions are always open for future issues, so submit your work now. If you have always been interested in writing horror but don’t have anything right now, get writing! It’s the perfect incentive.

Poppy (Little, Brown and Company)

Our redesign of Poppy is vibrant, bold and feminine to appeal to a young, female audience. Using custom fields and templates, WordPress acts as an easy-to-use CMS for the client. We’ll have more on this project soon.

Brooke Parkhurst

Brooke, a writer and foodie, has a new book, Belle in the Big Apple, due to be released later this year. She needed a redesign and re-orgagnisation of her current WordPress blog and site to better promote her work (including videos for ABC) and reflect her new book cover.

America’s Hidden History (HarperCollins Publishers)

HarperCollins Publishers got in touch since they needed a new site to promote the book, American’s Hidden History.

Smithsonian Field Guide to Birds of North America (HarperCollins Publishers)

This site features images and audio from the book and DVD. The bird calls are played on the site to give readers a taste of what the accompanying DVD has to offer.

Now, when it comes to “traditional” blogging, we use WordPress for a number of projects. It’s an easy-to-use, flexible, and well supported system. It functions really well as not just a blog, but as a CMS for smaller websites which is ideal for authors. The diverse plugins makes development easier for us and therefore more affordable for our clients. A nice win-win. WordPress 2.5 has just been released in beta and the sneak peek looks great. The back-end has been redesigned and I love the look so far. I’m looking forward to seeing what features will come with this latest release and how we can use these developments to help our clients get the best out of their websites.

The beta is ready to download for testing. If you don’t backup regularly or aren’t that familair with development, perhaps hold off for just a bit for the formal release before trying it out.

In February we launched a few new sites including the redesign of author Janice Erlbaum’s site in time for the launch of her latest book, Have You Found Her Yet. I haven’t yet found the time to read this, but I did read Janice’s first book, Girlbomb, months ago and loved it. I’m looking forward to diving into her latest book.

We also launched a new website to promote Tom Breitling’s upcoming book (launching March 18), Double or Nothing. You may recognise Tom from the FOX reality show awhile back, The Casino. Considering he made his second $100 million before he turned 35, I’d say he’s got some interesting stories to tell. A tight schedule to get the site launched meant we needed an extra pair of hands on deck so we contracted Jen of Pop Stalin Design to work with us. We’ve contracted Jen before and she is always a pleasure to work with.

Last, but certainly not least, we created a simple web page for The Gorgeous Mosaic Foundation - a fantastic grassroots organisation that uses art to help families deal with the loss of loved ones through street violence and to bring the community closer together to try and prevent violence. GMF wanted a site to showcase what they do and also appeal to their youth audience. We’ll be working with the organisation to further develop the site in the coming months.

Whew! A lot more in the works this month so stay tuned!

This whole phone debacle did get me thinking about how easy it is to miscommunicate because you assume technologies are doing the work they are meant to do. Earlier this week I met a friend for coffee. We had planned a rough time to meet, but I was waiting on a confirmation SMS before heading out. It never came. I started to wonder if she had blown me off or just forgotten all together. I’ll admit, I got a little annoyed, or maybe a lot. About half an hour later she called wondering where I was - and sounding a little annoyed herself. It turned out, I just hadn’t received her SMS yet and she’d sent me three messages. Apparently, phones don’t seem to like me, but beyond that, I realised how easy it is for us to assume blame on people, rather than the technologies we use. Next time, I’ll give my friend the benefit of the doubt and wonder if I need to just forgo phones altogether.

As an author, it’s a good idea to provide your visitors with various options on where they can purchase your latest bestseller. Make it as easy for them as possible.  What we do for our author clients, and what I’d suggest to all authors, is create a page within the site which lists various outlets for purchasing the book. Be sure to include Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders, and Waterstones if you are in the UK. An extra call-out on your homepage to this section may be a good idea as well. It doesn’t have to be a loud or obnoxious, but a nicely designed, and well placed button will make it even easier for visitors to get straight to this section, purchase your book and indulge in some quality reading.

“Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.”

Our design, but not our site. A blatant copy, even down to our Google Analytics code.

Our website is our identity. We’ve been fortunate enough to have a steady stream of work through word of mouth and folks visiting this site, which we hope showcases our skills well and entices them to contact us. We are proud of the work we do for ourselves, and our clients, so it is annoying when someone who claims they are a web designer blatantly steals your work. It’s even more annoying when they blatantly steal copy from your site (word for word even) to promote themselves. We consider ourselves an honest bunch, so this really gets under our skin. We’d hate for someone to come across her site first and believe that we were the content thieves. Sadly, it does happen far too often which is why sites such as Pirated-Sites.com are quite popular.

As a photographer as well as a designer, I experience stealing far too often and I know many others who do as well. So, what do you do if it happens to you:

1. Email the offending party and politely request they remove your design/copy/images.
2. Do a WHOIS on the domain to locate the web host and contact that host to inform them of copyright infringement.
3. Blog about it. Often, the quickest way to getting someone to take action for a bad move is to publicly point it out. (It helps to have friends who blog about it as well.)

Update: The site has been removed, although some files remain.

Here’s to a great 2008 everyone! If one of your resolutions is to get that new site launched, or redesign your current site, and you are looking for a great team to help you - look no further and check that off your “to-do” list. Easy.

The end of this year has been so busy we didn’t have time to create a new holiday game (although we really wanted to) so instead, we invite you to take some time to enjoy Dashing Victor again.

Happy Holidays and all the best for the New Year. May 2008 be filled with much joy, success and most of all, peace. We will be taking a break until January 7th, so see you in 2008!

Hours of work went into the document, the emails and the phone calls, and although we couldn’t take on the project, I know it was well worth it. Why? What goes around, comes around. We have high standards for our client service and how we handle projects and word of mouth is an important, if not absolute vital, tool of the trade. If you don’t treat every potential client the best way you can - ensuring that their interests are at the forefront of your actions - you may soon realise your emails are drying up and the phone has stopped ringing.

Besides, it’s also a good idea to know when you have enough on your plate. If you take on everything, your work will suffer - not to mention your sleep - and no one will be happy. The client won’t get the full service they expect and you won’t get the results you want from yourself.