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Its been a great year! Thank you to all of our clients and friends.
Some highlights:
- We've produced over 230 online training videos for OSTraining.com
- We've been in the UK, Washington DC, Chicago, Austin, Indianapolis, Boston and more... teaching Joomla and Drupal to people from Pfizer to MIT
- We've launched a number of sites in 2011
- Rod is blogging again! (http://www.rodmartin.net)
May you have a blessed 2012!
We've Released Three New Joomla 1.6 Videos - Including ACL
It's January 10, 2011. Joomla 1.6 Stable should be released sometime before 11:59pm Hawaiian time today!
In preparation for that, we've put together 3 videos that will provide a great overview of what you'll need to know about administering a Joomla 1.6 site.
- Part 1 - The Site, Users and Menu Management Menus (9:52)
- Part 2 - The Articles, Components, Extensions and Help Menus (15:29)
- Joomla 1.6 Access Control Lists (26:31)
How the web is built - Static html vs the CMS
The folks over at W3Techs.com have released an interesting study on the distribution of web development styles.
A whopping 76% of websites are still not using a popular CMS. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are static sites... many could be dynamic - using PHP or another tool... but only 24% are using a recognizable content management system like Joomla or WordPress.
OSTraining Offers FREE Classes to Schools
This is a pretty cool!
Here's part of their announcement:
That landmark coincided with the holiday season so we celebrated by giving back: we held a free class for 16 non-profit organizations in Atlanta.
Fast forward almost a year and last week we hit another milestone: 200 live classes! Those Joomla and Drupal classes were held all across North America and England, from Los Angeles to London and from Vancouver to Miami.
This year's landmark also coincided with the holiday season and so we've decided to give back again, only bigger and better:
We're Featured!
One of the things we're passionate about is training. Yes, we're an internet marketing/web design company... but Rod loves to teach. He's just finished his 115th online training video for OSTraining.com. The topic of this video was JCalPro - a calendar component for Joomla (view the tutorials).
Our Contact Information
(if you use a QR Reader)
Usability Studies - The Why's and How's
"Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.
Usability is defined by five quality components:
- Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
- Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
- Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
- Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
- Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?" (Jakob Nielson - Usability 101)
Usability isn't just something web designers "do"... or talk about... its the life-blood of your site. Study after study has shown that you have very little time to capture a user's attention. If you do manage to do that... you must provide them with an experience that makes them want to stay... and come back. THAT'S USABILITY.
Rod Martin (2nd from left) receives the award for Answers in Genesis at the 2006 NRB Convention in Dallas, Tx.
In the past, usability studies have been daunting affairs. In 2005, Answers in Genesis did a major overhaul of their website. Towards the end of phase 1, we brought in ten people for a usability study. We used a conference room at a local hotel where we could set up multiple cameras to capture the user and the computer screen. Wires ran around the corner of the room to a viewing area where we had monitors set up to watch the test subject and take notes. Even though we tried to make it "comfortable", it clearly was not. Users walked by the equipment, and more than one of them grimmaced.
That said, the tests were hugely successful and we made some fairly important changes based on their input. In 2006, the site won the NRB Website of the Year for design and usability!
We've come a long way in 4 years! Today, we do usability studies with just a computer - its all built in! The user sits down with one person who leads them through a series of pre-determined tasks set by the client and everything is captured in real-time.
- Hardware: MacBook Pro with iSight camera built in.
- Software: Screenflow by Telestream (fantastic software...)
Take a look at the clip below.
If your site isn't doing everything you had hoped... perhaps it needs a tune-up! Do you know how your users find things on your site? Can you tell what's successful and what isn't? We can perform a usabilty study anywhere! Let us know how we can help you. Contact us for a free consult and discussion on usability!
