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Since moving to Canada, we have maintained our web design and development support for our US clients as well as expanding our Canadian client base. In addition, we have been called into a number of WordPress projects and in the process we have deepened our WordPress toolkit! If you are looking for help with your WordPress site, please contact us. We can help with mobile optimization, design updates/revisions, plugin management and custom plugin development.
If you are looking for a new website and are contemplating using WordPress, we recommend checking out our blog entry on the perennial "WordPress vs..." debate. WordPress may be a good choice, but until you have a strategic sense of how you want your website functions to grow over time, you may risk boxing your organization in.
Already more than a month into 2017 and there are lots of new and ongoing projects to share.
Ongoing projects include circadian.com and circadianlight.com (see galleries below), developed for Circadian Inc. based in the Boston, MA area. Circadian first contacted me with a serious security issue on their Joomla 2.5 site. After running a secuirty audit and restoring codebase integrity, I then upgraded their site to Joom;a 3.6 and developed a Bootstrap 3 template to replace their outdated commercial template that was not optimized for mobile. I also developed landing pages for a Google Ads campaign along with Marketo forms (integrated with Salesforce) and a custom Marketo form template.
The next project was a design/development of a brand new site, circadianlight.com. In collaboration with other designers and content strategists, I developed the home page as a 'web app' style layout with a single column and full width horizontal sections. I also implemented lightbox popups for video and various contact forms.
At the start of another busy year, I am finally taking a moment to look back and catch up on latest developments. Recent projects here include the design and launch of veterinaryha.org, a new Joomla 3.4.x web site for the Veterinary Hospitals Association, a non-profit organization based in St. Paul, MN. The original web site was built in WordPress, and the initial plan was to optimize the site for mobile with a responsive WordPress theme. After the first meeting, it became clear that the functionality requirements would be difficult to manage in WordPress, so I converted the site content to the Joomla platform, developed a new design, and implemented quite complex access levels for the many types of membership that the VHA offers. As a note of explanation, I actually appreciate and enjoy working with WordPress (I have several clients using the platform), but for more complex feature sets, I prefer to use Joomla or Drupal. The alternative would be to install a lot of plugins, which, as any experienced WordPress developer will tell you, can be quite problematic.
The launch of the new elmwoodproperties.com website design was followed by the development of a custom, multi-step lease renter application that integrates renter data directly into the company Access database. I had the very good fortune of working with Andy Oaks, at Oaks Consulting. Andy is knowledgeable about almost every aspect of Access, which is to say, a subject of which I am completely ignorant. My job was to transition a series of pdf forms with many fields into a streamlined web app. New renters can log into the site, edit their profile, choose their preferred apartments., and apply for a lease online. The new process saves a lot of time and money AND (like all my new projects), works perfectly on mobile devices.
In other news, I am in the middle of large Drupal project that involves upgrading a Drupal 6 site to Drupal 7 and then optimizing the site for mobile. Working with Drupal makes me appreciate how easy it is to run mundane and routine tasks in WordPress and Joomla. On the other hand, the ability to map csv values onto fields is very cool and is also the main feature of this new project. More news to follow on that!
Demand for our web design, Joomla development, and SEO services continues to grow in 2015. In the first quarter of 2015, we have designed, built and launched a number of projects for clients across, including:
Mobile App for Minnesota Bio-Fuels Association:
This app (Android and iOS) provides search windows for users to look for and navigate to gas stations across Minnesota that provide bio-fuels (E15, E30, E85 and blends). The app integrates with the native Google Maps and Apple Maps mobile functions so that users have turn-by-turn itineraries and voice dirextion options.
Web Design and Joomla 3.x development site for Elmwood Properties
This project includes design of a new rotating image slider with animated layers of indexable content, conversion of large, complex PDF forms to digital, integration of Google maps with property listings and SEO of the entire site in a very competitive niche.
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Demand for our web design, Joomla development, and SEO services continues to grow in 2011. In the first half of 2011, we have designed, built and launched a number of projects for clients around the globe, including:
Armanino McKenna LLP: original design and custom Joomla templates for the largest CPA firm in California (ranked #37 nationally). Site integrates K2, JCal Pro, Docman, and many other Joomla extensions. Most of the prior content (300+ pages) had to be entered manually (we imported some pages with the K2 import component). One major project goal was to implement a robust SEO campaign - this meant an initial intense phase of wire-framing as well as ongoing client education.
2011 has started with a number of exciting projects at Concerto Designs! We signed on new clients, began work on exciting web design and Joomla development projects, and laid the ground for a robust year.
Probably our biggest new is that we now have clients around the world, including South Africa and Canada.
We have been contracted to design and build a new Joomla web site for the Institute for the Healing of Memories, headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa. The Institute's Director, Fr. Michael Lapsley, travles around the world conducting workshops that bring reparation, reconciliation and healing to regions of conflict, persecution, and genocide around the world. This is a huge honor and responsibility for us, and we are grateful for the generous help of the Institute staff and especially their print designer, Joan Baker, who has provided real inspiration and a fantastic palette to work with.
The Upstate region of South Carolina (Greenville-Spartanburg) is a vibrant region with extraordinary natural resources, a rich history and a powerful economy. After the slower pace of development for the past 18 months, we have seen renewed growth this fall.
2010 has been a great year for reaching out and broadening our client base in the greater Minneapolis area. In between ongoing converations with current and prospoective clients, we also like to keep an eye on what's happening with other web design firms in town. Some of these firms produce really impressive work - others do not always live up to their own marketing rhetoric. You can find an ongoing exploration of sample web designs in our 'Design @ Minneapolis' blog.