An Adventure Into The New Year

I can't believe that 2009 is here! It came upon me so fast. And already, two new websites have launched in 2009.

First was 30 Day Marriage. It launched just days into the new year. It is a the start of a series of books being written by Susan Gentile-Hackett of Falmouth, Maine. The book is an interactive diary that helps couples explore their relationship. This site has a FABULOUS new feature ... an online marriage test that calculates your score online. Go ahead, take the test!

The second site of 2009 was a total redesign for Equine Veterinary Service. Dr. Tom Judd, Dr. Lila Solomon, and LVT Vicki Coffin now have a site that meets their goal of providing education to their clients on equine health as well as promoting their services.

There are many others coming up for 2009. It's the perfect time for small businesses to take hold of their business and find their home on the web.

Inviting You ...

Wow - I didn't realize how long it's been since I blogged. The Holidays and almost a full month of being ill put quite a bind on my time. But it didn't keep us from meeting our December 22, 2008 deadline for the launch of Katie McAuliffe's Joyful Invitations Website!


Katie and I worked through several ideas on this large site and decided on a method using inline frames so that visitors never leave the joyful invitation website, even though all orders are placed through the companies she represents. The results were GORGEOUS, functional, and catered toward SEO. After less than a week, Google has already indexed her pages.

Congratulations, Katie and Joyful Invitations on having the most beautiful invitation website on the world wide web.

A custom blog? Why not!

Over the last few weeks I have been working with Joyful Celebrations and Modeling Do It Yourself to create a blogspot that is as unique as their websites. If you know a little about html and how it works, or you are comfortable with having your website hosted on your local server instead of with Google and blogspot, this can be accomplished very easily.

NO MORE TEMPLATES!

Well, maybe not any ... I start with the template, and customize the style sheets and html off line and load the codes right back up.

Joyful Celebrations Blog: Katie loved the three column look, but blogger had none to offer in their templates. So our mission was to create a pleasing compliment to her two websites, but allow her to add the gadgets in a left and right side bar. See the results!

Modeling Do It Yourself has a club for young women who dream of being a model: Cashley's Club. They needed their blog nestled within their password-protected environment, so we set Cashley's Modeling Blog to host directly into a subdirectort of their website.

It's Party Time!

Today, at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, Joyful Party Favors - the online store for all your wedding, birthday, anniversary and party needs - had it's official launch! Watch as we track it's progress over the coming months.

Congratulations to Katie, owner of Joyful Celebrations, LLC! Our next project: Joyful Invitations.

Joyfully Creating

In following along with the progress on Joyful Celebrations, the website design process is well underway. The Joyful Party Favors website is nearing completion, with the final pages going in place as this is blog is being typed. Joyful Invitations has currently has a placeholder page and will the pages are scheduled to be constructed following the party favors website. Katie and her friend Jann (Modeling Do It Yourself), both from Florida, are keeping me busy this month. They are absolutely wonderful clients to do business with.

Getting Creative with Everyday Images

Part of being of website designer as opposed to a website developer is the "designer" part. In my opinion, to design means having the ability to be creative. It means being able to take everyday items and turn them into something custom and uniquely your own.

Let's take this image - taken quickly this morning when both my cat and Holly the Squatty Dog wanted to be on my lap. The initial image was this (yes, that's me peeking in).

As a website designer, in minutes, this cute (but nothing special) image could become the background or banner for a custom-designed website.







Whether it is given an "etched" effect ...

Made to resemble stained glass ...

A softened black and white ...

Given a color overtone ...

Or just all mixed up ...

Everyday images can become a graphic to make your website unique.

Are you ready to talk about your custom website design?

A Month for Giving

October seems to be the month of giving for Flying Change Webs & Graphics. For the second year, I have donated a website design to the Falmouth Education Foundation Fall Ball - their major fundraising event for the year. I donated the same size website to and the online auction by the Maine Cancer Society, promoting a cure for breast cancer in Maine.

Giving through organizations like this is a great way to promote your business and help your local organizations. And even more important, IT JUST FEELS GOOD TO GIVE TO OTHERS!