Ryan Coughlin | Web and Graphic Designer

Cranking out Commerce Generation Blogs

Ryan Coughlin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:50:27 +0000

The past week I have been on several blog layouts for the Commerce Generation. We are currently working on launching the new website (which is much needed). Along with the new website is a company blog, as well as two blogs for the founder and VP. I started to browse other blog layouts and got some ideas of to run with and they also loved a very clean, simple, and big typography. Below are the various layouts that I came up with, these are just Photoshop layouts.

They are currently up right now at their locations, but not 100% complete, they’re almost there! I am going to be using WordPress, makes this quite the easy task. I am going to have to say that I like the Commerce Generation blog layout the best (the last one of out of the three). That one was the first round and got it on the first try, but the others went through a couple of revisions.

Once their all up and live, I will post links to the new blogs as well as the new and improved Commerce Generation website. Take care until then next post!

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And another went live – PetFoodDirect.com

Ryan Coughlin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:13:44 +0000

Since I started working at Commerce Generation last fall, we have been working on a very large project for Pet Food Direct.We launched the site about a month ago and its looking pretty good so far. I was in charge of slicing a PSD and converting to XHTML. Another site that they own is NationalPetPharmacy.com which is similar to their other site, but sells pet medication.

Its great to see a project that you and many others put time in to and see actual customers utilizing the new site. It was probably the largest site I have completed before working with lots of Javascript and CSS files.

The sites backend that was built at Commerce Generation is running Commerce Server with ASP.NET. Some features include:

Warehouse integration
Auto-ship prorgrams
Account management and much more!

Lots and lots of hours, but worth it once you see your work up and running.

Lets get back at it! I have found some free time this weekend to sit...

Lets get back at it!

Ryan Coughlin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:34:49 +0000

I have found some free time this weekend to sit down and clean up the blog as well as write up some new posts to keep it going! I have been slacking the past couple of months and have been really busy working at Commerce Generation in Burlington, VT. We recently finished up a large project with the websites going live. Along with that news, there are other coding tips and much more. Expect lots coming up.

Ryan

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Internet Explorer 6 Still the Popular Browser?

Ryan Coughlin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:31:17 +0000

A friend who started Cat on The Couch Productions, tweeted me an article titled “Browser Version Market Share” and I found this extremely interesting, check out this clip that was taken from the website. Most of you are going to have the same feeling as me when you see what the first result is. This article was published along with the data presented in October, 2009. I am sure there might be other data that says otherwise, but I believe this is very creditable, this resource came originally from the CNET website.

Browser Version Market Share

Find Internet Explorer 6 at the top using 23% – was a huge shock to me. Waiting til it dies out and Firefox, Safari, Chrome and others start to take the market share for browsers. Slowly but surely, that number will dwindle as new computers are coming with Internet Explorer 8 preloaded. As for Web Developers, you all know this still means we will be using CSS fixes to fix double float margin and many other issues that we deal with when testing a website on IE6.

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Google Insights – An Aid to a Successful Blog Post

Ryan Coughlin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:37:41 +0000

Last spring I came across Google Insights while I was working at EpikOne as a Web/Graphic Designer for the Spring semester. I used this for one of their projects to research currents trends that were developing among coffee, this was what the company was based around. I was using Google Insights to then gather information on current trends that were developing during a certain period of time and a set geography base for the search. After analyzing the data presented by Google Insights I took notes on the data given then worked that in to a new newsletter that was going to be sent out to a list of subscribers.

Lets cut to the chase, Google Insights can help you create a successful blog post because if you have an idea for a post in mind, send some keywords/phrases to insight. The interface of Google Insights is very simple, the landing page looks as follows:

Here are some basics steps that I take when I want to use Google Insights to writing a successful blog post:

Think of a new blog post idea/thought to work with
Write down some keywords/phrases, that visitors might search for
Enter them in to Google Insights – If you need to add any filters (Area, Timeline, Country, etc)
The results for your keywords/phrases will be graphed out for you and also a map overlay showing popularity, also showing a graph of Interest over Time
See which keywords/phrases are doing the best, then work those around your up and coming blog post.

The simple tips above can help your blog post become more successful by analyzing what the current trends are relating to that one topic. Lets say I wanted to write an article about jQuery and AJAX, lets plug these in to Google Insights and see what it returns, below is an image that shows us Top Searches and Rising Searches.

Give this method a try out for yourself. Ponder up a new post idea, think of some keywords, plug them in to Google Insights, blow away, bring on the followers. This has become a common tool in my arsenal for blogging and designing. Great way to check if your blog post is running in to any current trends, that will lead in readers to your blog. Give this a try and see how it goes.

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Launched Cat On The Couch Productions Site

Ryan Coughlin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:02:48 +0000

Finally..after months and months and still work to do. I was able to launch the Cat on the Couch Productions website. Which has a much cleaner appearance with new branding, that was a must to have.

The old site was terrible and did nothing but turn potential clients away. I loaded up some jQuery on the new website but am removing alot of the components to increase performance.

If you are using qTip, don’t. It is 44KB packed, which is still incredibly large. They have a lighter weight SimpleTip, that I am switching too, that is less than 10KB.

You can check out the website, but there are still numerous changes to be done, but my thoughts were that it was acceptable and working to launch for now. Then go back and tweak performance, gzip, compress, and CSS sprites.

Work and school studies have been picking and I have been slacking on the blog posts and jquery goods, but there will be more.

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Reload CSS without a page refresh

Ryan Coughlin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:28:07 +0000

As I was working this afternoon, Rogie King posted a tweet about a Bookmarklet that allows you to reload your CSS on your page without reloading the page.

So far I have been loving this, it is the perfect tool for your workspace. I highly recommend this to others. Thanks to the creator of this, can grab this bookmarklet and start using it.

Drag it to your bookmark toolbar
Open a site your are designing
To view your new CSS changes, just click the bookmark in the toolbar, and wa la

Quick and really easy. Thought i’d share this tool with everyone. Give it a try.

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Minor changes – Syntax Plugin

Ryan Coughlin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:13:40 +0000

I am switching my syntax highlighting from WP-Syntax to Google Syntax Highlighter. It is installed and working, but for some reason it is parsing my PHP, which is not allowing me to post the code for readers can try out the articles.

I have been doing some searching on Google with little results, but hopefully something will come up.

I recently started working at Commerce Generation in Burlington, VT so pardon for the delay in articles. I have several quick posts with some tips to publish in the next couple of days.

In the mean time sorry for the error in the syntax highlighting.

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NextGEN Gallery not loading CSS/Javascript

Ryan Coughlin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:02:34 +0000

Is your NextGEN Gallery showing images? But not loading the CSS and Javascript? Find the solution below.

I have been working on this project where the client wanted to be able to upload and install image galleries, so I have worked with this one and I love it: mhttp://alexrabe.de/wordpress-plugins/nextgen-gallery/

All was smooth and working until, I removed this one line of code from my header.php in my WordPress theme directory.

Without this function in your header.php the gallery does not know where to insert the CSS/JavaScript files to create a fully functioned gallery. Be sure that it is placed before your closing tag.

To find out more information on the function check out this

All in all, be sure if you are running any type of plugin where they need to insert code upon plugin creation that you have that line within your head element of the page.

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TIP: Use trackpad to control Expose in Mac OS X

Ryan Coughlin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:31:24 +0000

Another Sunday night is here, which means 8AM classes to start the week. After Football all day, I started working on some design projects, and I stumbled upon this small feature on my Mac. If you activate your desktop Expose and use two fingers you can use as you would use the arrow keys to navigate Expose on Mac OS X.

Not too crazy of a tip, but one I found out, that is pretty neat.

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