TAI Extends Client Websites With Both Third-Party and Custom WordPress Plug-ins

Last week saw the launch of another Trinity Applied Internet custom WordPress website for northern Nevada short sale and foreclosure experts GreenStreet Realty. It features the new custom sidebars plug-in Patrick is getting ready to release to the WordPress open source code base, allowing for each section, or even each individual page, to carry a completely separate set of widgets in the sidebar. This allows the template to be infinitely more flexible and takes WordPress one step further towards being able to handle content like big brothers Joomla! and Drupal.

We also got the opportunity to play around with the IDX integration piece offered by GreenStreet’s MLS listings vendor, and are happy to report it was smooth sailing. The listings appear in various places throughout the site, and can be searched from the sidebar widget. Clicking a property listing brings the user to GreenStreet’s results page which is actually external to the website, an integration that looks seamless to the user.

Our content department (Erin, Nicole, and for layout, Rachel) contributed extensively to this project as well, with support including social media set-up, research and copywriting. And, there’s more to come! Stay posted for more exciting project updates…

What’s It Like Working With Trinity Applied Internet? Ready and Waiting for Your Call!

Part C: Ready and Waiting!

We feel that availability and efficient communication are central to web development and technical applications consulting. So we’re here. Pretty much always. From the real person who answers the phone every time it rings during business hours (thanks Nicole!) to a prompt email reply from Keith, to Patrick, who knows the minute there’s even a hiccup on your server even at 2 am on a Sunday, we are here. Just ask us.

Aside from being available, we go one step further and consider it our job, not yours, to do all the legwork. The nature of software and the web, and especially error-reporting, is that there are always a multitude of questions. It is written company policy here that it is not the client’s job to figure out all the finer points before they approach us with an issue. We’ll ask you which browser you are in. If it is a particularly tricky issue we may ask you for a screenshot. But like any good professional consulting and development firm, if you don’t have the answers we will leave it at that. We take your report, employ our robust issue tracking system and our cross-browser testing software, and come back to you with what the trouble is and what can be done to fix it.

Oh, and it is fitting to also tell you that as far as the details go, we will take care of them. Ever get caught in what seems like an endless loop of email back and forth? Communications are streamlined and efficiency is served when the responsibility for fact-checking, looking at the system one more time, logging in and checking the orders in your shopping cart for the tenth time, falls to one person. That “person” is us, whichever member of the team here you happen to be talking to.

We can’t claim perfection in these goals (who can?) but we do strive toward them each and every day and with every client interaction. When we are working on deadline and the impulse is to shortcut, we remind ourselves. We hope it leads to a smooth and engaging experience for our clients, and we take pride in hearing positive feedback in this regard from clients.

Earlier this month, we received a lovely letter in the mail from Beth Wells, Executive Director of the NV STEM Education Coalition. “Our website (ed. note: and its custom WordPress regional events calendar module) has garnered positive feedback and has contributed to the amazing growth in support for the Coalition this year. Erin’s training and Nicole’s patient support and training in keeping the website up to date have been outstanding. I am happy to recommend your services to prospective clients.”

Thanks, Beth! And a big thanks to all of our (more than 40) 2011 clients. Here’s to another year of doing our best work on your behalf!

Investing Time and Experience Before We’ve Even Started

Working with Trinity Applied Internet Part B: Investing Time and Experience Before We’ve Even Started

You know the staff. Now, what is the process? How do we approach your project?

The term “applied” in the name of the company is no accident. A cumulative thirty years experience in software and web development speaks volumes on behalf of the partners, and is directly applied to every project we produce, problem we approach, and product we deliver. The process behind your website or web application development is not piecemeal or made up as we go along.

Consult, research, facilitate, plan (and plan and plan some more), design, develop, test, adjust. Rinse and repeat. Every time, for every project. It doesn’t matter the size or the complexity of the project at hand, we spend the time at the beginning on analysis of your company, research, and planning. In fact, if you have already been through an estimating and proposal process with us, you know we spend a considerable amount of time getting to know you before we’ve ever even won you as a client.

Think every shop that advertises their easy and cheap WordPress package, or their hosted solution you dial right into, does that on your behalf? They don’t. Believe us, because we hear time and again from clients who tried out the competition first because of a really attractive price point, and since have realized they didn’t need a cookie-cutter approach. Or they went with a big media and advertising agency and were shoehorned into marketing decisions based on what the agency was “really good at,” and how it wanted to promote themselves as a full interactive shop.

Well, that strayed from the topic a bit, but the point is, at Trinity Applied Internet you get specialized, considerate, and tailored service that addresses your needs specifically. If you are a marketing department working with some IT constraints, we plan for that. If you are a small organization with one paid staff member and no time for teaching yourself website administration, we plan for that when we design your project, rather than discovering it at the end (or not at all.)

The adage about “prior planning prevents…” at best catastrophe and at worse any number of irritating little hassles. We take it to heart, to the extent that we are researching, discussing, and planning your project before you have even officially engaged us.

What Is It Like Working With Trinity Applied Internet?

Part A: Who is Trinity Applied Internet?

So, you have chosen TAI to build your application, redesign your WordPress website, or maintain your online presence. First, thank you! We love to meet new clients, learn about your business, your goals, previous successes and past challenges. (In fact, if you have come to the point of engaging us, you know we have already discussed most of that with you, even as we developed the proposal for your work.)

Next, you wonder what can you expect from working with us, the first thing being – who are we? In short, you will be working directly with a team of staff members and/or contracted designers and developers. When the project dictates, we also manage partnership resources for illustration and graphic design, hosting, analytics and SEO, or e-commerce, on your behalf. (All professionals based in the US – no offshore code factories need apply!)

Keith, Lead architect, user interface, and art director: Begins most projects in consultation and facilitation around goals and technical requirements, leads production of wireframes and comps.

Erin, Lead project manager, content director, operations: Tracks project progress, supervises content production, load and testing, manages accounts.

Patrick, Lead developer, database architect, and technical director: Designs the code behind all our work, as well as develops a good portion of it, maintains, monitors and upgrades existing sites and/or applications, and manages our development and production servers.

Nicole, Content management assistant: Serves as communication central around here, takes your requests and gets them where they need to go, as well as loads content, posts to your blog, administers your social media.

Rachel, Designer: Creates wireframes and comps, codes HTML/CSS templates, addresses maintenance and testing code issues.

Kym, Developer: Codes HTML/CSS templates, builds custom plug-ins, modules and apps, addresses maintenance and testing code issues.

Depending on the work, your project will also be supported by part-time freelance designers and developers who are directly supervised by Keith. They help keep us fresh, and insure that every problem we tackle is addressed by someone with a breadth of experience.

One last note: as the staff roster on the website indicates, four of us share the same last name. We are a family-owned and operated business, just another guarantee that we’ll go to great lengths to produce an outstanding project and experience for our clients – the family name depends on it!

Perpetual Apprenticeship

Does it seem like you are perpetually learning new things about how tools and strategies online can move your business forward? Over the years, I’ve met many people in many different situations who somehow expected to read up, get some advice, and then carry on with the knowledge of how the internet works and informs their business. Small business owners with marketing websites, IT professionals certified in a particular enterprise system, and plenty of folks somewhere in the middle who have been tasked to generate leads, sell things, or otherwise move business online.

Invariably, after working with us a while, these clients look at me (usually in their mind’s eye because we’re meeting online) and quip something like, “How can you manage this stuff when everything is constantly changing? Doesn’t this drive you insane?”

The answer to question number two is, yes…and no. Luckily, everyone we are fortunate enough to have on this team thrives on learning. Research. Applying lessons learned in one area to another. Patrick brings many years’ experience designing and developing software systems (with a bit of hardware experience, to boot.) Keith has spent an equal amount of time navigating the waters of “we-think-it-can-be-done-let’s-work-it-out” in teams both large and small. We are all perpetual students, continually following industry news and taking learning opportunities wherever we find them. We clock lots of overhead hours to R&D. Those interested in doing one thing over and over their whole day, week, career, need not apply here.

And then, just as we start to feel smart-ish, there’s a new version of IE, or Google releases some big hairy updates, or someone goes and invents something. (Twitter?) Every lesson we learn seems to point to more undiscovered territory, but also allows us to keep a solid footing when recommending solutions, troubleshooting issues, and making informed choices throughout the design and development process. We are keep at it on behalf of our clients, because we’re curious, fascinated, maybe even a little obsessed.

Excuse me, but I’ve got to go review my Google alerts on search marketing now.

2011, Wrapped Up at Trinity Applied Internet

As we return from our holiday break ready to conquer 2012, we feel it is only fair to offer a short wrap-up of 2011. In brief, it was a great year with some challenging and intriguing projects, and a ton of changes for Trinity Applied Internet.

One year ago, TAI consisted of Keith, Patrick, and Erin. We have grown by more than 60%, adding Nicole and Rachel full time, and Kym part-time. We have built a content marketing team, and now are able to offer clients services including copywriting, blog management, social media management, shopping cart administration, and other strategic marketing tasks in conjunction with our standard websites and application development. Many thanks go to our outstanding content clients, including Joelle K. Jay and The Inner Edge, TopLine Leadership, Our Broken Family Court System Conference, and NV Stem Education Coalition. We can’t wait to see what the next year brings!

Our ongoing maintenance, hosting and support business has been humming right along, as well. We continued providing service and support to Server Technology, PDUS Direct, KUNR, and a number of other companies, while adding the Nevada Immunization Coalitions and ITS Logistics to the mix. We provided project management and support to Vitamin Research Products and performed a Microsoft AX to Salesforce systems integration for Haws Corporation. As always, Trinity Applied Internet is proud to be invited to work for these industry-leading, globally or regionally respected companies.

And, as always, we’ve been launching a steady stream of custom content managed websites for companies big and small. This year’s site launches included the Nevada Small Business Development Center, The Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Foundation, Edible Pedal 100, Reno Sunrise Rotary, and Cart Barn, just to name a few!

We had some new opportunities this year including the chance to participate in Reno’s first ever Hack-a-Thon, Hack4Reno. We had a great time and even won Best Social App for our community-driven event application, EventSmash.  We also jumped into the conversation online, and created a goofy little app that helped anyone keeping track of the Old Spice Guy contest know who was ahead in “mentions” at any time during the contest – great fun!

There isn’t really any way to wrap everything up in one blog post – it has been such a busy year. But suffice to say there is a lot going on, with even more exciting developments on the horizon. The start of 2012 will see the reveal of some very exciting projects, as well as new developments in the office… (Namely, an office!)

We’ll keep you posted!

The Content Crunch: Getting Past the Blank Page

In years past (well, way past, but if you’re my age it really seems like yesterday) building a website was akin to creating a really nice print piece. You planned, you drafted, you paid attention to design and detail, you built it – and then you left it.  Your website gave users great information, such as what you offered, where to find you, how you differentiated your business from all those others. It will have allowed customers or clients to contact you, and might even have gone so far as to sell your product or capture sales leads for you. But, chances are you weren’t even thinking about rewriting it until you started to feel a little pain, or that it lacked something.

By 2011, with the adoption of content management systems, blogging for business, and social media, some websites are re-written almost daily.  A company may have a core group of followers that are listening in for wisdom, tips, and the next good deal, or they may constantly be testing and re-purposing content in order to continue attracting a stream of new customers — or both.  Now, especially in certain industries, if you are not continually adding new information you will be at a real disadvantage in both naturalized search and keeping your audience engaged.

Let’s say you have assigned your resources and planned accordingly. Your new website, with a couple solid pages, has launched to rave reviews. You have a blog ready to be filled up, and social media set up to push your blog content to. What now? How, exactly, do you come up with valuable content that will support all the work you have already invested in this marketing effort?

The Content Crunch Part B, Step 1:  Start Simple

First, just … start. My completely non-studied or academically supported opinion is that writing great content is about 60% getting past the point of procrastination. Take twenty minutes, write a few words down about what you know (your product is a great place to start.) Keep in mind that depending on your site design, three paragraphs and 400 words are usually more than enough for a page. Leave it for a day, then go back and edit it, and – do not be afraid to post it! Hit publish on that blog! Update that page!

You can (and will) always get better, later.

The flip side of this is, if you are a prolific and careful writer, you will need to pare down what you’ve got. Pretend you are summarizing your 15 page article into a three paragraph abstract. That’s all you need (for now, and possibly forever.)

The Content Crunch Part B, Step 2: Work Ahead

Web content management systems offer a really neat feature: the ability to use the system not only to put the content up on the site, but to draft and review it. You can create a page or a post with not so much as a whim of an idea, leave it in your queue until you are inspired to expand and finish it, send it out to your team for review, and edit it comprehensively before it ever gets published to your website or blog.  Take advantage of this to leave yourself starters for later, when you don’t feel so full of ideas. Start a page on a new product or service and keep adding to it as you get more information, so that by the time you know what you’ve got, you are mere moments away from publishing it.

This is especially essential when a team of people is responsible for updating your content. Case in point: here at TAI we have four blog contributors, who are all busy people. By working ahead and having a number of fully finished or even partially drafted posts in the system, when one writer is delayed, another post can pop in and take its spot. It took us a long time to figure this out, but it works pretty well.

Next time: Step 3 and Step 4, and more ideas as to how to generate valuable content for your readers.

The Content Crunch: Setting Your Project Up For Success

We focus on content management systems here at Trinity Applied Internet, but we are constantly reminded that for our clients, the system is not the difficult part when putting together a website redesign. (Probably, that’s because they are relying on us to work the magic.) The system, the code, custom plug-ins and even (to an extent) the design and user interface are usually relatively easy compared to… that’s right… generating the content itself.

In fact, we have worked with some outstanding organizations and businesses that, despite having an awesome story to tell, have no writers, no time, or no inspiration to get the story down on the page.  I understand their plight, having agonized for days over exactly what to write this blog post about, and how to write it.

The key to the success of your new website, depending on its goals and purposes, is probably writing some solid copy that will engage your audience and leave them wanting more. (More product. More information. More of your smiling face or your stellar services. ) This takes time, technique, and at best some experience. And while it is tempting to say it takes talent, the truth is it takes very little talent and can be learned over time.

The Content Crunch Part A, Step 1: Make the Time

So, you are designing a new website for your company. You have a list of features and functionality you need, you have completed your branding, you have plans for both online and offline campaigns to drive traffic and be supported by the website, synergistically. Now, you need to take some time out and plan for, collect and craft your content. We urge the companies we work with to do this during the few weeks or months when we are heads-down coding. We, or your developer of choice, will be busy working on things that won’t be ready for review for a while; you can be busy sharpening your pencil and crafting that content!

The Content Crunch Part A, Step 2: Assign The Right Resource(s)

Your company may have a marketing department, you might be lucky enough to have an agency, or it might all be up to you, as the owner, executive director, or team member who drew the short straw. We have a content team that can be contracted to write your copy, if that’s helpful. But in any case, someone is going to sit down and begin writing and it will be easier, faster and smoother for everyone (your audience included) if your staff or contract resource is the right resource. If you love to write, are excited about the prospect, and can spend a little time reading up on web copywriting –then go for it, you’ll do great! If (and we see this every few months or so) you break into a cold sweat at the prospect and suddenly it feels like you are back in the eighth grade with a big report due, then you are probably not the right resource for this task. Trust me. It will be agony for you, and probably not turn out very well.

Make sure you know who is going to write this (preferably before you start a single thing), and take care that that person or team is the best person or team available to you. Setting your project up for success by attending to these two (easy! simple!) tasks will jumpstart the process and have you just that much closer to some outstanding web content.

Thanks for reading. Next month…The Content Crunch Part B: Getting Past the Blank Page.

Trinity Applied Internet Launches Nevada Immunization Coalitions Website

Ta Da!  This past September, Trinity Applied Internet completed the redesign for the Nevada Immunization Coalitions website — www.immunizenevada.org.  The launch happened to coincide with a very busy time of year for NIC, the start of the traditional school term and beginning of flu shot season.

ImmunizeNevada.org features the new version of our Content Gadget content management system. (2.0), as well as a suite of custom tools that operate News, Events, Newsletters and Publications, among other items. The organization, which provides education, resources and advocacy about immunzations for patients and medical professionals, has been working with Trinity Applied Internet since 2005.

Extra kudos are due to NIC for establishing their own Facebook page and joining the social networking community. To join their Facebook group and help provide awareness and consistent immunizations for Nevada children and adults, visit the www.immunizenevada.org website and click through the Facebook link on the right hand side.