Serafini Studios

The new website for Securanix Network Security Specialists is now live. It includes an updated look and feel, more accessible navigation and quicker loading times. In addition, links are now included on every page to translate into another language. The site validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

For this project we’re also using the PEAR XML_RSS module to display the CERT Incident Notes and Advisories on the homepage. This will automate the process of displaying security headlines on the site.

Part of the goal of the redesign was to improve the professional image of Securanix, and we feel that we succeeded in this area as well.

Just finished updating NaomiWrites.com with a new layout and the addition of a picture gallery. Using Open Source software called Gallery to handle image management. It is still pretty tricky to incorporate Gallery into a site without a lot of tweaking of header and footer files, but it is a nice and powerful system. You can view a slideshow, automatically order prints of your images and create as many albums as you want. Also it uses ImageMagick to resize images so you can upload a large image and it will create a thumbnail for you. Very nice…

We’re also using WordPress for the blogging software.

Visit the site at www.NaomiWrites.com.

Today we finished updating NoraLarimer.com with updated keywords to help improve search engine placement.

Nora is a longtime client, and when the site was originally built we placed an emphasis on clean design and letting her paintings stand on their own. Since then, we’ve added many paintings to the site, her recent work using watercolor tiles and implemented a Paypal shopping cart throughout the site.

Nora wanted to improve her search engine listings — a lot of the new content we’ve added to the site, like giclee prints weren’t part of her original content.

Nora’s current Google results include #1 for her name – Nora Larimer and #7 for watercolorist.

Our current efforts are focused on improving her results for terms including giclee, watercolor tile, watercolor originals and others. These are fairly competitive search terms, so we are not necessarily expecting #1 positions for each. But we should see improvements for each term now that we’ve added them to the site.

Do you come up where you want to in search engines like Google?
Post your site in the comments and we’ll take a look.

The new site for Blazing Products, Inc. is launched.

Formerly known as Tom King Harmony Products, Inc. (TKHP) we helped craft a new identity system for the company.

After extensive consultation, TKHP decided to change their company name, website, and packaging to reflect their core value – helping people in the irrigation and landscape lighting industries install faster. Thus was Blazing Products, Inc. born.

The new site is now live and includes their new logo, layout and content.

http://www.blazingproducts.com

We finished the artwork for the 2004 Principia College Reunion project the other day. The object was to go for a kind of retro celebration feel – a litttle circus, a little carnival, basically a fun party concept. The curve of the drapes is also meant to evoke the St. Louis Arch.

Oval version of the logo. Adds a starburst to the background.

This tent graphic is to be used as a fun part of the identity for the Reunion Weekend.

Blue and Gold penants (school colors)

All artwork was created in Illustrator. All images © 2003 Serafini Studios.

I’m happy to report that work on NoraLarimer.com is progressing rapidly. The biggest driving factor for the quick improvements is the addition of Hal Martin to my team of developers. He is a recent graduate of Principia College and is an excellent resource — skilled in computers, Macintosh as well as PC, has done programming in the past, and has picked up HTML very quickly. It’s not like HTML is that complicated, but attention to detail in a project is very important. Hal brings an excellent work ethic and great attitude to the team. He’s picked up grep really well (using BBEdit under Macintosh OS X) and has used the technique to make lots of the changes.

We’re adding ecommerce to the site using PayPal for both her originals and reproductions. We’re also taking the opportunity to make aesthetic improvements as well as we add the requested additional content. Once we’re finished with this current project her site will be in great shape for taking orders over the Internet and will be even more funtional.

We recently finished rebuilding Vibephone.com to not use iframes or the flash navigation. The old site loaded into a single page that had an iframe for the top navigation and an iframe for the individual page content. The navigation was Flash coded and used transparency to achieve an integrated look. The pages did not function correctly in browsers other than IE 5.5+ on Windows. We rebuilt the header graphics from scratch, creating a much cleaner, crisper look (although most people don’t see the difference at first). The rebuilt site loads better, is much more search engine friendly (actually the reason the site was redone was to improve search engine optimization (SEO)) and is now cross-browser cross-platform friendly. Also note the text on each tab is much easier to read now. Sometimes an overall design doesn’t need to be ditched, but the implementation needs improvement.

www.vibephone.com

Upgraded the Midwest Technology Journal website from php-nuke 6.0 to 6.8 to fix some security problems. Also installed NuCalendar module to allow scheduling of events.

www.mwtechjournal.com

A four color / black and white insert card was prepared for the Variety pack of CordKeep’rs in time for a guest appearance on TechTV.