We have made lots of new changes already in 2010 and have many more to come. The first thing you may have noticed, is that we have redesigned our website. But it’s more than simply cosmetic. Our goal was to create a guided user experience to help you make the best choice when selecting a web designer / developer for your next website. Here’s a brief summary of what’s new:

• You can easily walk your way through our site taking our guided Tour
• We now offer 3 ways for you to buy a website. With solutions for all budgets and time lines
• Compare all of our solutions using our online comparison chart
• Posted average pricing to help get a feel for the average costs of our solutions (prices are noted within the Comparison Chart)

We are very excited at the new solutions we are offering because our ultimate goal is to help you succeed.  If you are looking to work with a web design company with soul, and is focused on helping you succeed, we’d love to hear from you.

Live Site: StokesElectricLLC.com | La Crosse, WI – Electrical Contractor / La Crosse Electrician

Dave Stokes is a great guy and it was a pleasure to work with him.  Not only is Dave kind and friendly, but his staff is as well. The problem with the Stokes Electric website when we were contacted is that is was essentially outdated, and Dave wanted to create a website that reflected the quality and professionalism of his services.  Just the kind of job we love.

Dave hired Bernadot Studios to create a new online image for his business, while also tying into his existing marketing campaigns.  He wanted an animation on the home page of previous work, and the ability to receive email leads from interested visitors. Upon delivering the site to Dave, he mentioned that we had created exactly what he wanted.

Services We Provided:

• Custom website design
• SEO
• Web hosting
• Email
• WordPress integrated website solution
• Image gallery
• Contact form

Here is a cool WordPress website we designed for the great folks at Unique Edge Customizing. We added a sporty flash animation to the home page to help give a modern and progressive feel to the site.  There are some cool rollover effects too when you move the mouse over the car (engine revving) or the tire (spinout with smoke). This type of animated intro sets the site apart from the competition and also makes the site fun to use – which helps make it memorable.

Services We Provided:

• Custom website design
• SEO
• Web hosting
• Email
• WordPress integrated website solution – self managed content
• Image gallery
• Contact form

If you would like to start using an RSS reader you can sign-up for a free one at Google: http://www.google.com/reader

RSS feeds can also be used on your website to post headines and article from other websites. It is a great way to keep your site fresh and updated without having to write any content.

Almost all of the sites we build provide your users with RSS feeds to follow the changes on your site. We can even include services such as FeedBurner to keep people notified of changes to your site via email.

Benefits of providing visitors an RSS feed on your website:

• Allows other to monitor your site for changes (via a reader or email)
• Allows others to republish headlines or partial articles to help create more backlinks to your site (a form of free advertising)
• Uses ‘pinging’ technology which alerts various websites (Technorati, Webblogs, Bloglines, etc) when changes to your site have been made, and then in turn index the entry on their site thus creating a searchable article and backlink

There are so many great applications and tools out there today, and we are going to start writing about some of these to show you how you can benefit from them.

If you are using Gmail as your mail provider, you may not have been able to access your mail. Gmail services have been down for the better part of this afternoon.

However, it seems to be fixed now as I have just sent and received messages. If you’re a client and your services are still down, please let me know.

If you want to check the Gmail Service Status , follow this link:

http://www.google.com/appsstatus#rm=1&di=1&hl=en

Click here to view the live site.

We built this site for ourselves to join in the sale of premium WordPress themes. Offerings such as these help folks get a website up and running for peanuts. It is our pleasure to also release our themes as GPL, so that you can buy the theme once time and use it an unlimited number of times.

Do you need a website for:

• Marketing Real Estate
• Selling homes
• Blogging

We even offer installation and setup services, if you need assistance (paid services).

More themes areunder way, so make sure to grab our site’s RSS feed and follow along.

Hold on – one more thing. I am offering a Grand Opening Special. You can now purchase any theme at 50% off using this code at checkout:  ALOHA50 (this offer will end soon, so act now).

That’s all for now – Aloha!

I was founding partner with Carlos Aguaron (foreward thinking WP Developer and a great guy) in a little venture we called GorillaThemes.  We never met in person, but we worked together for about 9 months over IM and email. Things went well but we soon hit a stumbling block with time schedules and client work. Long story short, I recently sold my interest to Carlos, and he continues to do a wonderful job running the site.  You could say he is the Gorilla in charge.

I still have a soft spot for the big ape. Working on a project like that for many months – putting in a lot of late nights and drinking lots of caffeine – it begins to grow on you. I even taught my 1 year old to do the Gorilla (pounds her chest with her tiny fist and say ahhahhhahh – too cute).  That being said, I know GT will flourish under Carlos’ guidance and direction. He is customer focused and has a can-do attitude.

Being proud of GorillaThemes, I wanted to share with you some of the things I worked on while at GT.  I think this helps illustrate my love for WordPress and design, and I have asked Carlos’ permission to include the design in my portfolio).

So here are some of the things I worked on while at GT (granted many things we’re a joint effort):

• General design of the Gorila Themes  site (the image you see to the left)
• Bel Air Theme Design
• Smooth Theme Design (using 960 grid) // Carlos did a great job implementing Google Maps here
• Gorilla Themes logo
• Tribal theme design
• Vanity Theme design

What’s next?

Well, as part of the agreement, I am allowed to resell all of the themes Carlos and I built together. I have release the Smooth Theme under the http://wp-realty.com site. but I plan on launching a new site relatively soon called AlohaThemes.com. It will showcase these 5 themes:

• Tribal
• The Bel Air Single Agent
• The Bel Air Multi-Agent
• Vanity
• Smooth Real Estate Theme

I’ll keep you posted. Lots of new projects and client sites in the works too.

Heres a peek at our latest release:  WP-Popular.com – fun site for WordPress Geeks like me

Click here to view the live site.

My brother recently purchased Howie’s Bar / Howie’s Live in La Crosse, WI, and he needed a new website for his new venture.  Howie’s is a bar and live entertainment venue that serves people from 21 to 101.  It has been a fixture in La Crosse for many decades, and my brother’s goal is to modernize the facility to become a hub for live music and entertainment.

Here were his needs for his website:

• Be able to manage the site himself
• Event calendar / Upcoming shows
• Email address database
• Post daily specials
• Promote their banquet facility
• Get into the search engines
• Post photos of all the good times had at Howies

The solution:

• We implemented WordPress as a CMS to manage his website and help him rank well in the search engines
• We utilized Google Calendar and a WordPress plugin to make managing his events and specials a very simple process (including recurring events, like daily specials)
• We use FeedBurner to gather email addresses
• NextGen Gallery plugin to manage the image gallery

All in all the site turned out very well, and they get a lot of positive feedback from their patrons.  I would expect some updates to the site very soon as the needs of the business are growing to meet the demand of their customers.

Ok, let’s have some fun at our expense. Step into our time machine an let’s head back to 2003.

Here is a series of our home pages* from over the years (courtesy of archive.org).
*Please note that some of the images do not appear as the original, as archive.org is not always able to save all images and settings.

• Opening day December 2003
• February 2004
• March 2005
• December 2005 – 2007

I must admit, I did like that fish.

Other changes and future offerings include:

• My wife Meghan (defintely my better half) is now working with me, and our 6 month old daughter helps out when she can, too (one word – naps).
• We have created strong alliances with DigiSage, QTH, PlugandPress and MediaCore Studios and some other top secret people. These folks are among the best in the business in my eyes, and I am happy to work with each of them.
• WordPress is our clay. We like getting our hands dirty. Look to us for websites you can update yourself, post videos, images, polls, integrate a Gmail calendar, and more.
• Turn key website solutions (that look great) – monthly subscriptions
• We are going to launch an inspirational site for WordPress designers – cool sites to drool over
• Lots more good stuff too. Make sure to sign-up for our email alerts to stay in the loop.

So cheers to the first 5 years. The next 5 is going to be a great ride. We hope you join us.

Live Site: BathFixerInc.com | La Crosse, WI Bathroom Contractor

Terry Wagner, and her son Luke, contacted me a while back to build a website that would help promote their business online. We have done just that with the unveiling of the new BathFixerInc.com website. In fact, we received a quote estimate even before we “officially” launched the site. Just a glimpse at what is ahead for them.

Working with Luke and Terry has been a lot of fun, and I know there new website will assist them in promoting their business and gaining new customers.

Services We Provided:

• New website design
• SEO
• Web hosting
• Email
• WordPress integrated website solution – self managed content
• Image gallery
• Contact form
• Free estimate form