SERVICE NOTES

The Law Offices of Donald Detisch needed reliable email service and a place to host their existing web site. A recommendation sent them to DTL.  Soon, the time came for simple web updates, which I agreed to do. That’s when I first saw red.

Literally, I saw tons of red, and bright yellow and white mixed in for that ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise look. (Put on your peril-sensitive sunglasses and check out the original site.) For a professional law firm, this wasn’t just cheesey. It was cheeseburger! 

Junk food ingredients, not the packaging, are what kill you, and the innards of this site were in bad shape. When I discovered that the original designer used Microsoft Word, a tool for cooking up indigestible, fat-ladden pages, I really began to see red. If you build sites by hand, like I do, simple changes to sites like this become a supersized job.

Clearly, this was a site that Ronald McDonald built.  But being the (Burger) King of Perfection, I needed to have it my way. So I made a decision to spend those same hours redoing the entire site. The original “condiment scheme” gave way to a richer-looking design.  Plus, it’s built on DTL’s standards-compliant PageWorx foundation.  So it’s accessible, efficient, and easy to extend and maintain.

The result: The client loves the new look, and I know it’s good for you.  Pretty tasty for short-order cooking, and proof that not all fast food is junk food, even on the web.

I was amazed to discover that people routinely buy and drive million-dollar recreational vehicles. Aside from the obvious sticker shock, I’d be a wreck if I had to drive one. Taking a million-dollar RV out into heavy traffic could be pretty stressful. But, if I did have one of these rolling palaces, and it got a scratch or dent, I would immediately take it to Mike Eidsmoe’s San Diego RV Center for care and repair. While building their new web site, I learned that these people really know their stuff.

Their improved, standards-compliant site leverages design elements produced by Ras Graphics, and was the final piece in the company’s total identity makeover. But what was most important for San Diego RV Center team was the ability to easily make simple changes to the site’s content. So DTL built a content management system. They also needed a way to list RVs on consignment, so we built a self-service tool for easily managing vehicles, descriptions, and photos using an ordinary web browser. The web site consistently presents the information as if a professional web designer built the pages. San Diego RV Center found that when you’re steering megabuck RVs onto the information superhighway, having a custom-tailored, “no stress” content management system is the only way to avoid design accidents.

Travel safely. Travel in style.

This month’s website showcase is for Allcare Design/Build – a remodeling contractor with a distinctive way of doing business. We created a great look on a small budget that captures the quality, craftsmanship, and service Allcare offers.

The site features a series of representative project photos on the home page using a non-Flash transition effect, photo galleries, custom contact forms for clients and general contractors, a mailing list form that rewards subscribers with a valuable downloadable booklet of tips, and more.

The entire site is, of course, fully web standards-compliant using valid XHTML 1.1, CSS, and is based on DTL’s PageWorx page-generation system that simplifies maintenance and updates.

This month’s website showcase is for National Police Supply, owned by Sean and Debra DePriest. With 15 years in local law enforcement, Sean recognized the need to bring modern police equipment to a worldwide market that, since 9/11, demands faster access to the latest security gear.

“We have a lot of hands-on knowledge and experience with our products, but we were out of our league in bringing it all to the web,” says DePriest. “We selected DTL and Ras Graphics to develop our corporate identity and design a site that was easy to use without all the typical noise you find on most shopping sites. These guys really came through.”

Although some products are restricted to police and military, most are available to the general public. The site had to present an engaging style, copy that expresses NPS’s unsurpassed customer service, and provide a broad selection at competitive prices.

NPS’s extensive ecommerce site is built using an integration of custom pages designed by DTL and an open source ecommerce engine. The entire site is fully web standards-compliant using valid XHTML 1.1, CSS, and is based on DTL’s PageWorx page-generation system that simplifies maintenance and updates.  DTL also created automated mechanisms for inserting, sizing and optimizing product images.

“We’re adding dozens of new products and variations every day,” says Debra DePriest, who does most of the online catalog management. “DTL’s tools give us a huge time and quality advantage over our competitors.”

Here’s proof that good design skills can span disparate mediums. This month’s website showcase is for Wurts Interiors, created by Wurts’s own interior designer, Debbie Cañedo. Wurts Interiors serves San Diego homes and offices with flooring, space planning, remodeling, and everything in between.

Their classy new site sports a light and easy to navigate style.  It wins a gold star for using standards-compliant XHTML (that improves its performance, accessibility, and search-engine friendliness).  And, unlike most “artsy” sites, it conservatively presents the Flash intro in a way that doesn’t make you wait before you can get to the main navigation links.  (I can’t fuss much about the non-optional Flash intro music.)

Easter Egg: If you have a 1600×1200 display, you might find a little something in the margin.

It’s rare to see a relatively small company launch an in-house designed website and hit all the right style and technical targets (because it’s really hard, I tell you!), so Wurts deserves accolades.

This month’s showcase is an original DTL production for Olga Gunn Photography. Olga’s camera magic brings out the best in her subjects and makes everyone look great. That kind of talent calls for a special web site that frames her work as brilliantly as her photos.

Olga’s work is awesome. Preparing her photos for the web was an absolute treat. I love working with people who are truly gifted in their profession, and Olga is just such a person.

The standards-compliant site takes you on a tour of 100 stunning photos scanned from original negatives and prints. Each is digitally optimized by DTL for the web. I also wrote the copy, recreated her logo, and hand-tinted the image on the About page, one of her signature shots.

Our next update to the site includes a complete photo proofing interface so clients can preview and order photos right from the web.