Durkan Group Blog

Using Magento for eCommerce

November 17th, 2009

An existing client with an ecommerce site that they have been successfully operating for over 3 years came to me with a list of new features they wanted to add to the site. They wanted to incorporate product ratings, product comparisons, video and more. They also wanted to introduce a new site and have the ability to manage products and content for both sites via a single interface. The existing site was on osCommerce, an open source ecommerce platform. While osCommerce was and continues to be a solid platform it did not meet the clients requirements. Enter Magento!

Magento is an incredibly robust open source ecommerce platform that is off the hook! It’s ecommerce done right, you can see its been developed by a team intricately familiar with the issues faced by ecommerce site owners, developers and administrators. Managing products across multiple sites is a breeze! Magento allows site owners to incorporate product ratings, promotions and videos effortlessly. URL rewrites promote a site that is SEO friendly, catalog management is robust and the dashboard and reporting is great. While the client was initially skeptical and hesitant to move to a different platform they are thrilled with the result. Check out the sites at wetsuitgear.com and kite-gear.com. Have an existing ecommerce site you are looking to take to the next level? Do you have an osCommerce site that just isn’t cutting it anymore? Contact us for expert advice on ecommerce platforms and possibilities. We are experts in ecommerce and converting osCommerce sites to Magento. We can also handle promoting and feeding your products to external sources such as Google Base.

Posted in Ecommerce | No Comments »

Custom Hosted Web App for Consultants to the Gaming/Casino Industry

September 21st, 2009

End of a long day, just put the kids down and writing my thoughts before turning in. Today was a good day, went to visit a client that provides consulting services to the casino/gaming industry to kick off a new project they are starting. This client came on board about 3 months ago. They have the need for a custom portal for time tracking/reporting and document management related to licensing investigations. They were very thorough in their selection process. DCG went up against some larger firms and we were chosen. The client and I both agree that they made a great choice. We implemented a custom web based portal featuring time tracking, document management and more all customized to meet their requirements. This was delivered in a mere 2 weeks.

The project that just kicked off today required further customization. The software works in the client’s context, meaning their terminology and processes. Software should never determine the process or business rules for a given business objective, rather it should adapt to the customer based on the synergy between the software provider and client. We have achieved that in this case and it will continue to grow as the custom web based portal is what the client is using to run the business in many aspects.

None of this comes without some challenges. The customer is high maintenance. The pace is somewhat kinetic and frenzied. When a project hits they need to be able to ramp up and respond quickly. There are many unknowns as they start any given project. They needed a partner that would provide the high level of service along with the flexibility required. This is where we have come through as a solid partner who delivers. Kinetic, frenzied, high energy, high pressure – it’s not for everyone but it is often the environment of small to medium sized businesses that accomplish great things. We can and do handle it.

Posted in Custom Web Applications, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Website Redesign, Content Management System and SEO for Crystal Signatures

September 18th, 2009

A few months ago I received a message on Facebook from a high school friend Tim, who had seen some of Durkan Consulting Group’s work and was interested in a website redesign for his company. We caught up over the phone and brainstormed and I setup a time to visit his company, Crystal Signatures, in Bethlehem, PA. I was looking forward to the visit. I already knew that Tim’s father Peter Yenawine, has long been recognized as one of the world’s best Crystal Sculptors. Yes, literally, the world. His work includes a number of Crystal Presidential Inauguration bowls, crystal art commissioned for the Pope, crystal awards received by all sorts of people for all sorts of achievements including Tiger Woods. It was easy to get to, here are their digs:

Tim took me on a tour. First we looked at the end product, tons of crystal ranging from flutes, crystal slippers, various awards for Fortune 500 Companies to large one of a kind crystal pieces that someone has had Crystal Signatures design to be in a certain area of their home. The craftsmanship is really impressive, consider the detail on the following piece. How does one even begin to do that with crystal? I found the level of detail on the pieces to be amazing.

We then toured the rest of the facility which is 22,000 square feet. Very interesting and cool, a huge machine shop that has been tweaked out to work with crystal and glass. Machines never intended for working with crystal have been modified to do so. I asked Rob who runs most of the equipment how they figured out all this. “We went through a lot of crystal!” was the reply. The effort and patience has been well worth it as Tim explained the production capabilities. Almost all supplies are purchased locally in the state of Pennsylvania. They leverage their investments in machinery and technology to work smart. When it came to the website redesign the same idea applied. Make the website an arm of Crystal Signatures sales force. With that in mind the following were the key objectives of the new website:

Create a website that really shows off the work and craftsmanship of Crystal Signatures. Plenty of galleries/pictures and the ability for site visitors to easily access and view this work as well as several online catalogs including a shopping cart for creating a “wishlist cart”. Site needs to be rich in content not only for search engine optimization but also to educate users.
Create a website that is optimized for search engines and will rank well in organic listings with Google, Yahoo and others.
Create a site that can be easily managed by Crystal Signatures internal staff including ability to easily add galleries, products to the catalog, general content pages, news and more.
Have solid statistics for the site so we know what traffic the site is getting and from where. If we are going to do all of this work we must be able to measure results.

The site just went live the other day so it will take a little time before we reap the rewards of the SEO work that was done but the 1st, 3rd and 4th objectives have been nailed. The site is CSS/XHTML (tableless design) running on an IBM Domino Server. The site itself is contained within a Domino/Notes database that has a robust web based content management system. Staff can easily manage all facets of the site including search engine optimization settings. CKEditor was used for the rich text editor in the content management system hence it is extremely easy for staff to maintain content. As you can see from the screen cap below adding and formatting content, adding pictures, links, etc. is very easy to do:

They now have complete control over their site and can add pages on the fly which will automatically be added to the site navigation. All Search Engine Optimization settings such as Window Titles, H1 Tags, Meta Description/Keywords, URL names and more are controlled via the Content Management System. Durkan Consulting Group is pleased to have Crystal Signatures on board as a client. This redesign is just the first step towards helping them leverage the web to increase sales and serve customers.

Posted in Domino Development, Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Development | 1 Comment »

Redesign for Ecommerce Website running Sports Camps, Travel Teams and Tournaments

September 17th, 2009

Check out the website redesign we recently did for BlackBear Lacrosse. BlackBear runs Lacrosse camps, tournaments and travel teams across a number of counties in the Greater Philadelphia Area. They wanted a site that would:

Allow customers to easily sign up for camps, travel teams and tournaments and pay online.
Have a custom registration process to include custom waivers/agreements and would generate team rosters, etc.
Have a robust content management system that would allow coaches/key contacts of the various travel teams to easily manage their own teams content including coach profiles, photos, rosters, etc.
Include the ability for site owners to easily email people based on the list of team to which they belong.

As is often the case BlackBear could not find an online solution that fullfilled all their needs. What they looked at often did about 60% of what they needed and could not be customized or the price was prohibitive. This is where Durkan Consulting Group comes in, we work with the client to understand their requirements, provide a high level of service and implement a custom website that does exactly what they need. Below is a screen cap of the new design, check it out. Props go to Clinton, DCG’s Design, CSS/XHTML, ECommerce and PHP guru.

Website for Sports Camps, Travel Teams and more

Posted in Ecommerce, Web Site Development | No Comments »

Custom Photography for Websites

September 16th, 2009

A lot of web sites out there don’t require custom photography. That is not to say you don’t incorporate photos into the design, its just that they aren’t custom, they are stock, images purchased from a source such as iStockphoto, or any of the other countless stock photo providers. In many cases it does make sense to have a photographer and setup a photoshoot specifically for a website redesign or web effort. When a project comes along that does require custom photography I get excited because I know the site will have great photos that will make it pop. I know the clients expectations will be exceeded. How do I know this? The answer is Adrian Gibbs.

Adrian is who DCG uses for all websites requiring custom photography. He rules, his work is reasonably priced and it is top notch. I used to think there wasn’t all that much to photography. Just grab a camera and start snapping pics right? That was until I saw Adrian’s work. I have used him on Duffers, Penns Table Restaurant and G & G Cigars sites. Check out Adrian’s site for more info. A few of his shots from the G&G shoot:

Posted in Web Site Development | No Comments »

The Pros & Cons of Giving Away Too Much Information in Your Proposals for Web Projects

March 27th, 2009

When a prospective client contacts me regarding a web site or web application they want developed I pride myself in educating them in the world of web design and development. Explaining the process and what makes a successful site or application in terms they can understand and listening to them to ensure I understand their business and objectives. Although I can sell I don’t consider myself a “sales guy” as I have a strong technical background. As a result my proposals tend to be more detailed, not to the point of overkill on tech terms but a solid definition of the client’s requirements and a blue print of the proposed solution.

Sometimes I feel as if I am giving away too much info. After all, you spend time understanding what it is the client is looking to accomplish and in many cases it is customized. Then you give them a spec and blueprint that they would have never been able to put together on their own and now they can shop it to any web development firm out there. I had a case where I put together a solid proposal for a custom secure web app. I followed up with the prospect who told me: “Your proposal was great, excellent detail, maybe to a fault. The president gave it to his cousin as a spec and now he is doing the project.” At least he was candid with me, others I am sure have not.

This brings me to another case. A prospect calls, an established firm that specializes in commercial real estate investments. Great, right up our alley, we have built some great web sites and apps for commercial real estate brokers, investment firms, etc. They wanted new logo/identity, website and more. “I hate to put you to such a tough timeline but you are the last firm I’m looking at. I need the proposal tomorrow.” So I have a good conversation with him, get a handle on everything they are after and then hustle and turn the spec/proposal around. I have a great rapport with the guy, this is in the bag I am thinking, it’s a great fit. He comes back and tells me that I am clearly superior to the others he has spoken too. He asks for samples of work, etc. To my surprise he comes back and says one of the principals has a friend who owns a firm and he has dealt with them in the past, that is who they are going with. What!?! And you were not aware of this?!?! BS I am thinking. I have been scammed. I put together great spec only to have it shopped and given to someone else.

2 months later I get a call from him. “Do you remember me?”. Oh yeah I remember you. Turns out the firm they went with wasn’t meeting their expectations. While I was wary I agreed to take on the project. They are ecstatic with what we have delivered thus far! Good karma I’m thinking, your good efforts come back to reward you.

When they went with another firm initially I was talking to my colleague Lisa who said “Do you sometimes think we are too detailed, that we give too much away for free?”. At the end of the conversation we both came to the same conclusion: Yes we do but we will not change it. It’s our style. To be thorough, to be a straight talker where so many are not. To take the time to understand and educate. Have a need for a web site, web marketing or secure web application? Contact us for advice and guidance. We give it away with the understanding that if you are serious, you will want it done right and will become a client. Good karma.

Posted in Web Project Proposals | No Comments »

Building Dynamic Tables on the Web that are sortable, resizeable and editable to backend data using Domino and Tablekit

February 27th, 2009

I have to give it to the folks at MillStream, who have developed TableKit. TableKit is a collection of HTML table enhancements using the Prototype framework. TableKit currently implements row striping, column sorting, column resizing and cell editing using Ajax. In less than an hour you can easily implement a table based on data in a Lotus Notes/Domino database. TableKit has a small footprint and gives the user freedom to easily update and sort data. Here are the steps to implement a TableKit for your Domino Database:

Step 1 – Downloading the Kit & Loading Files into your Domino Database – After downloading the kit you need to attach the files in the CSS and Javascript (JS) directory to your Domino database. There are a number of ways you can store these files in the database, I chose to store them as file resources and preserve the directory structure as shown below.

blog_dynamic-tables_1

Step 2 – Create Your Form Containing Necessary Elements -You can see the layout of this basic form below. Note that I store “xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en” lang=”en” in the $$HTMLTagAttributes field and I store the DocType settings in the $$HTMLFrontMatter field, using the same doctype obtained from the TableKit demo. I have a very simple table where I specify the classes/functionality that I want included in the table (sortable, resizable and editable) and the column headings that correspond to the data I will be presenting to the user. Note that your table head/th ID should be the EXACT NAME OF THE FIELD you plan on updating if you want to make the column editable.

blog_dynamic-tables_2-elements
The next screen cap shows the bottom of the form where we reference the JS files (computed text is to @webdbname) and the URL that should be called since we want this view to be editable. In this case we have it call an agent, which I will explain later. At this point we have everythingon the form that we need except the table data.

blog_dynamic-tables_3-elements

Step 3 – Adding the Table Data – Now we need to add the table data from the Domino Database. In this example, I chose to use a view although there are a number of ways this can be accomplished (e.g. QueryOpen agent). The view is set to be treated as pure HTML and the table is incredibly simple. You can set a class of “noedit” if you do not want a specific column to be updated by the user. If you want the table to be updated, you must assign a unique ID to the table row. Here is what I used for the first column of the view I embedded into the form:

blog_dynamic-tables_4-table-data

Step 4 – Create a LotusScript Agent to Receive the Post, Parse it and Update the Document – In step 2, we added a line specifying the agent to call when a user edits a cell. The user double clicks to edit a cell, makes the change, then clicks OK as shown below.

blog_dynamic-tables_5-script-agent
Upon clicking OK, a Post Request is made to the URL/agent that we specified. The code for the agent is below. When a post (vs. a get) is made to the agent, it creates a temporary document stored in memory that you can access via session.currentdocument. The document will automatically contain a field called Request_Content which contains, in valued pairs, the content posted. For example in the scenario in the above screen cap, if the user clicks OK the following is found in the session.documentcontext Request_Content field:

&row=3&cell=2&id=D17E1E80E02D9C4585257504006385D9&field=Subject&value=Platt%20Street%20Bridge%20

The agent below gets a handle on the document and Request_Content field and parses it to give us the document’s unique ID (IDstring) to be updated, the field that needs updating (fieldstring), and the value to place in that field (valstring). It also parses and replaces characters to handle spaces, forward slashes, and quotes. Then the agent gets a handle on the document to be updated, makes the change, and then prints the value back to the browser so the user is presented with the new value entered.

blog_dynamic-tables_6-postquoteview

And there you have it, a quick and easy way to implement sorting and inline editing for your web based Domino applications! Many thanks to MillStream for putting together such a robust, but easy to use, solution.

Posted in Domino Development, Tech Talk Simplified | No Comments »

Dynamic, Search Engine Optimization Friendly dropdown menus for the web

February 20th, 2009

The problem with many of the dropdown menus found today on websites is that they are typically heavy javascript which presents the following drawbacks:

Search Engine Bots indexing your site cannot follow the links and subsequently index those pages. Bots will only follow links that are presented as a “standard href”. The majority of menus found have all links in javascript and stop any chance of the bot going on to these pages and indexing them.
Javascript Menus have a Heavy Footprint, meaning that it’s a lot of code in the js files which increases the download time. This is especially true if you have a site or application that builds the menu on the fly.

DCG has implemented and evaluated a number of open source menu options before finding OpenCube. This tool has allowed us to build web applications and websites using a dropdown menu that is highly configurable and uses the standard “href” tag. This allows search engine bots to easily access and index those pages. This CSS based dropdown menu system has a much lighter footprint and as a result, it is much easier to code when making it dynamic.

DCG takes it a step further with web applications using CSS based dropdown menus that are dynamic. This mean the menu options a user sees are based on their access/user roles. More importantly, we give the capability to distribute access to content and menu items to our customers so they can be self-sufficient and internally manage access to their web application content. This type of control is inherent to DCG’s custom hosted applications. Contact us for more information.

Posted in Domino Development, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

White Paper: Web 2.0 Demystified, what it is in plain English

February 13th, 2009

Web 2.0 is the popular term for advanced internet technology and applications and means a lot of different things to different people. The expression Web 2.0 was originally coined in 2004, following a conference dealing with next-generation Web concepts and issues. One of the most significant differences between Web 2.0 and the traditional World Wide Web is greater collaboration among internet users, content providers, and enterprises. Web 2.0 is all about blogs, social networks, and user generated content. It’s also about technologies and frameworks such as Rich Internet Applications (RIA), XML, Web Services, and AJAX. A technocrat could easily write a thesis on any of these applications and services. That’s not our style. Not only because we have much more interesting work to do, but also because we choose to simplify. To us, Web 2.0 means Community & Collaboration, Rich Internet Applications, and Integration.

Community & Collaboration- I call it Community and Collaboration, although there are many other ways to descibed it such as social networking and user generated content/sites. The explosion of bandwidth and user demand has generated a number of sites where users can post content. Examples include Flickr, FaceBook, MySpace, and YouTube. Users have information they want to share, or they have opinions they would like to express on your content. The point here is to put less thought into these sites and more thought into your own network or niche. Does your company or network have a community? Our internal Durkan Consulting Group (DCG) Portal is a perfect example of a Community. It is our employee intranet where content can be added, deleted, and modified. It is where we store and share information on projects and progress. We create and maintain comprehensive databases loaded with always-changing content. Durkan Consulting Group has unsurpassed experience in creating customized Community environments for our clients. When it comes down to it, Web 2.0 is about the people. It has to be inclusive. At Durkan Consulting Group, we listen, we learn, and we create exactly what our customers can use to maximize their productivity. We provide hosted intranets where you establish your own community of employees, partners, and clients, in any combination.

Rich Internet Applications – Web 2.0 also means robust web sites and web applications that have capabilities previously only found on desktop applications. For example there is AJAX, it’s not just for cleaning toilets anymore! AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a method of building interactive applications for the web that process user requests immediately. AJAX combines several programming tools that allow content on web pages to update immediately when a user performs an action. (Unlike an HTTP request, during which users must wait for a whole new page to load.) For example, a weather forecasting site could display local conditions on one side of the page, without delay, after a user types in a zip code.

Durkan Consulting Group makes use of AJAX with the Google Map API. This interface allows the user to change views and manipulate maps in real-time. AJAX applications do not require installation of a plug-in, but work directly with a web browser. Functionally, there is a listener in the background on the web browser. That listener gets data passed to it and makes a call to a server. The server gets an answer and presents data to you.

Simply put, web applications now have a robustness that previously wasn’t common. Durkan Consulting Group builds and delivers powerful web applications using AJAX that allow our customers to do things such as; requesting a product list and having the list pop up to select an item, mapping, and walking down a decision tree choosing different options.

Our extensive AJAX knowledge allows us to deliver robust web applications for our clients that feature type-ahead, integration with web services, and customization retrieving data from a backend without ever refreshing the user’s browser page.

Rich Internet Applications are not only about AJAX, but are about other technologies as well. Durkan Consulting Group can also deliver internet applications based on Adobe Flex. Web 2.0 brings desktop capabilities to the web.

Integration- Finally, we have Integration, which means taking data that you have complete control over and mashing it up to an interface that hooks into a database. An example of this integration is the real estate map Durkan Consulting created for G. Anderson Agency, a realtor on Long Beach Island. We receive an XML feed of all rental data and programmatically retrieve the Google coordinates via a web service. Users are able to easily see where a specific rental property is located on the island. This integration is based on open standards such as XML. These open standards and Durkan Consulting Group’s technical expertise allows us to deliver advanced websites and web applications. We can easily handle XML feeds, integrate your data with your ERP system, and mash your data using the Google API or any other web service or external system .

At Durkan Consulting Group, we encourage our customers to be co-creators and contributors. We want our clients to feel a sense of ownership over their website or web application.

Posted in Tech Talk Simplified, Web 2.0 | No Comments »