Pemaquid Communications

Two sites designed by Pemaquid have been named Best of the Web award winners for 2011 by the Technology Association of Maine (techmaine.com). Awards were presented at the TechMaine Gala Thursday, June 23. The winning sites are:

PortlandMusicFoundation.org – Best Non-Profit Site.

annie|catherine.com – Best e-commerce Site.

Another Pemaquid site, MaineLobsterFestival.com, was a finalist for Best Arts & Entertainment site.

Two out of three ain’t bad! All three sites use the Django open source framework for content management and e-commerce. More details about the sites were posted earlier this month.

Thanks to our Clients for giving us the opportunity to show what we can do!

Three sites designed and developed by Pemaquid Communications have been named finalist for the 2011 TechMaine.com Best of the Web awards. And the nominees are….

annie|catherine designer stationery – Best e-commerce Site. Launched on Valentine’s Day, the site run by Annie Darling and Catherine Breer features creative, colorful cards and calendars adorned with Catherine’s art work depicting Maine scenes. The site, powered by the Django Open Source content management framework and its Satchmo e-commerce package, allows them to more easily manage product listings, sale offerings, gift certificates and promotional codes.

Portland Music Foundation – Best Non-Profit Site. The Portland Music Foundation is dedicated to promoting the music scene in Portland and offers regular workshops to assist musicians with their marketing and professional development. To our knowledge it is nearly unique – it’s one of only two music foundations in the entire country, and their mission takes cues from its counterpart, the Austin Music Foundation (and we all know about the music scene in Austin, right?). One unique feature is a Venue Finder, a google map mashup that helps you find the clubs in Portland, Maine where various types of music can be found. The site runs a Django CMS customized by Pemaquid and includes the Satchmo e-commerce component.

Maine Lobster Festival – Best Arts & Entertainment Site. This site redesign was undertaken as part of a class project with students from Maine College of Art, partnered with mentors in a project called Extreme Makeover – Web Site Edition. The site exposed the students to the Web design process in real life situation, and the Client a great site for a fraction of the cost. The site runs on the Django open source framework and the site uses the Satchmo e-commerce package.

Winners will be announced June 23rd at the 2011 TechMaine Gala.

Well, Hello World! It’s good to see you again.

It’s been a heckuva long time since the last blog post. We’ve had plenty of work here at Pemaquid for the last several months and somehow blogging about it hasn’t ranked very high on the todo list.

I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on improving the financial efficiency of our operation, and that’s paid off so far. 2011 will be our best year ever. It’s a good time to be in Web.

We’ve launched sites for great Clients like annie|catherine designer stationery, MaineBiz Sunday, Portland Music Foundation and, launched just this week, the Maine Lobster Festival, and done work for dozens of others including Oakhurst Dairy. Social media is still all the rage and we’re helping Clients make sense of the cacophony of tweeting, facebooking and blogging.

I’m working with a great group of people now as well. Jordan Warren has left for bigger and better things in Beantown, but fortunately she’s been replaced by new Creative Services Coordinator Trish Altieri (who’s better, not bigger). Trish is just what the doctor ordered – she has experience running operations for an ad agency here in Maine, so she fit right in and is whipping things into shape. Kelsey Raymond, whom I met last fall while guest lecturing to her Web design class at the Maine College of Art, has gone from intern to humble apprentice and is developing into a fine interface producer. Walt Craven has pitched in to do the design work on several sites, including the aforementioned Portland Music Foundation and Maine Lobster Festival. Elliot Bradbury continues to work his Django wizardry and has been – thankfully! – very reliable. Suzy Massey has been displaying her black belt in CSS and HTML. And there are many more who have contributed (Bob, Rebecca, Doug – thumbs up!).

Coworking continues at Wycwah, where we’re currently sharing space with our friends from NewsSimply and Sarah Robbins of Yacht.com and of course, Alibi. It’s great to see other coworking facilities like Peloton Labs take up the idea and run (ride?) with it. We wish we had their square footage!

Lots of good things are happening in the design scene here in Portland that are encouraging. Abstract Conference, for one thing, is shaping up to be an amazing event.

So this spring has been full of win. Looking forward to a great summer!

Clients always hope that a site redesign project can be turned around overnight. We haven’t quite hit that target yet here at Pemaquid, but last month we did manage to redesign the Web site of the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra in only a fortnight.

A big reason was the new Content Manager we’ve recently built using the Django Open Source framework. In 2010, Pemaquid has built more than a dozen Django sites (including 3 e-commerce sites) and with each site the process becomes easier – and much faster – as we hone our standard CMS package. With Django, once a module – like News, Events, Resources, Jobs or a Directory – is developed, it’s a simple matter to plug in to the next site like so many lego blocks in very little time.

Another reason is our expertise in Content Strategy. A solid Content Strategy considers the content available for a particular Web site (not surprisingly) but also the manpower available to manage that content.

In the case of the MSO, we needed to keep things simple. They had very basic content management needs (news, events/concerts, testimonials/reviews, a simple contact form and a series of article-pages). With the Pemaquid Content Manager they can update every page on the site, except for a couple of Google Maps for their venues. These administrators don’t have a lot of time for updates, but fortunately their content doesn’t change much throughout the course of the season.

There were limited creative assets to work with (a logo and a few photographs taken by orchestra members) so “simple elegance” was our mantra in pulling together the look and feel. We did want to tie into what another graphic designer was doing in creating other collateral such as posters and a program in order to make sure the branding was as cohesive as possible.

Fortunately, we had all the content in hand at the get-go, which helped tremendously in turning the site around quickly.

We did want to take a state of the art approach to layout, and we considered how the new site would look on an iPad as well as on a desktop or laptop monitor. That’s why the home page has large, expansive photos and a feel similar to a magazine cover or a poster. A lot of the essential information is readily available on the home page and teases you further into the site.

We used rgba semi-transparency on the home page, one of the latest CSS3 techniques, to lay the logo masthead over the photography and, as always, we built the site with bulletproof, standards-compliant xHTML with accessibility in mind.

The Midcoast Symphony, a community orchestra led by conductor Rohan Smith, is a truly extraordinary ensemble of volunteer musicians who perform solely for the love of great classical music. If you live in Portland or Midcoast Maine, it’s well worth catching one of their performances at Topsham’s Orion Performing Arts Center or at the Franco-American Heritage Center in Lewiston. Yes, you can friend ‘em on Facebook, and if you ask nicely maybe I’ll slip you a few tickets from the batch we received as part of the Web site redesign project.

A few weeks ago Pemaquid launched a new Web site for the Maine Health Access Foundation (MeHAF). MeHAF advances its mission through three strategic priorities: advancing health care reform in Maine; promoting patient and family-centered care; and strengthening Maine’s health care safety net.

The goal of our redesign project was to help give MeHAF the online tools needed to share knowledge, publicize the work of its grant recipients and strengthen its position as a thought leader on health care issues in Maine.

When MeHAF approached Pemaquid in January of this year, their Web site was not helping them advance their strategy. For several years they had been using a rigid, hard-to-use content management system that had been built using proprietary programming on an ASP.net platform. The system was balky and hard to adjust to meet changing needs. MeHAF staff had a tough time understanding how to manage the CMS, let alone how to use it to communicate quickly and effectively online.

Pemaquid responded by developing a custom version of our Pemaquid Content Manager, built atop the Django framework. We were able to quickly architect a solution that allowed MeHAF to preserve and migrate all the data from their existing site. At the same time, we were able to dramatically improve their ability to self-publish content on the site. Their page templates are much more flexible and search-engine-friendly, so over time we hope to see their search positioning (already relatively good for relevant topics) improve.

With the new Content Manager in place, MeHAF can update every page on their site – and create new ones – in a way that is easy to manage and is search-engine friendly. They can even easily control naming conventions (i.e. “mysite.com/mysection/mypage”). They can update news and events, and can update the contents of a custom library of Resources.

With a little help from graphic artist Arielle Walrath we updated the look and feel of the site to match design elements from their most recent annual report, designed by Portland agency Pennisi & Lamare.

As with all Pemaquid sites, MeHAF.org is built with bulletproof, cross-browser compatible CSS and xHTML and is structured so it’s easily accessible to folks with visual and physical impediments and who use assistive devices to browse the Web.

The solid base we’ve established also puts MeHAF in position to incorporate linkages to their nascent social networking system, and Django’s Open Source framework will allow us to build an online community for sharing health information through an onsite social network/forum, should MeHAF decide to move in that direction.

Whatever they decide to do next and however they choose to approach it online, the Pemaquid Content Manager will give them a platform that allows their site to easily grow and change along with their online communications objectives.

CONTRACT WEB DEVELOPER

Pemaquid Communications seeks a Web developer to assist us with upcoming work on a project-by-project basis. Proficiency in Python and the Django framework is preferred, although expertise in Rails or PHP frameworks is also good. Experience architecting and building custom content management systems is desirable.

Please send a technical resume along with links to working Web sites we can review to:

work@pemaquid.com

Thanks for your help. Rock on….

Rob Landry
Founder/Principal/Chief Bottle Washer
Pemaquid Communications
W http://www.pemaquid.com
FB: http://www.facebook.com/pemaquid
T: http://twitter.com/pemaquid

On Tuesday our coworking gang at 28 Maple Street held our first-ever Jelly and it was a huge success! The place was abuzz with activity – and more importantly, creativity. At any given time, about a dozen coworkers were collaborating in the conference room or lounging on the sofas.

Below is a rundown on the people who made our Jelly “Jell”:

Nick Hall (@tripdragon) – showed how he creates custom brushes and textures in Photoshop.

Our new coworking partner, Sarah Robbins (@brightworkllc) showed us how she uses Protoshare to make quick mockups for her projects.

Big, big thank you to Casey Rosenthal (@caseyrosenthal), for getting a more powerful wifi broadcaster in place to handle all the traffic. Internet service was screaming and flawless throughout the day. Casey also arranged to make sure we had plenty of coffee from our friends at Bard Coffee (@bardcoffee, @bardtogo).

Dave Weinberg (@daveweinberg, @AIGAMaine) created one of his patented cellphoneSketchpads. Dave and I also compared notes on working with local ad agencies with Web designer Katie Benedict (nope, not on Twitter… yet).

Progmatica members Justin Henry (@jhenry) and Russ Jones (@codeofficer) swooped in. Among other things, we hacked around the inner workings of the Django framework SQL. You guys are super geeks! (and I say that with admiration).

Arielle Walrath (@ariellebw) and her husband came by and, I think, got a little Web design work in.

Jason Thaxter (@thaxter) was wrangling with Flash action scripting for some online videos he’s working on for WGBH.

Good news! It looks like Jason, Tiffany Rad (@tiffanyrad) and Keith Sirois (@sirois) will be joining us on a more regular basis, starting in August.

Suddenly realizing it’s strange that Casey, and not Pemaquid’s intern Jordan Warren (@jmwarren19) who fetched the coffee for our event. We kept Jordan out of trouble by having her browser-test two new site launches.

While we’re on the subject of coffee (it happens a lot), I want to thank: Bard Coffee for being a friend and cutting us a break on the java; our landlord Portland Pie (@portlandpie) for the wicked good pizza they provided for lunch (Dave Weinberg is right; you must try the Nor-easter); our neighbors at Blush (@blushimagery) who provided an extra table as more people started to arrive, and Steve Darnley (@stevedarnley) of Tugboat Creative (@tugboatcreative) for offering his conference room for overflow.

And finally, thanks to Pemaquid’s Creative Services Coordinator Sheila Reiser (nah, not Twittering) for organizing the recycling of trash and generally ensuring our carbon footprint is minimal.

We missed you: Jeff Norris (@thumbtech – hope you’re enjoying your vacation) Mikey Hougland (@lamikey), Alex Steed (@alexsteed), Fred Abaroa (@costavidafred), Sarah Wallace (@sarah_wallace – glad you’re feeling bettah!) and Frank McMahon (@franklinmcmahon).

Things went so extraodinarily well that we’ll probably do this on a monthly basis on the third Tuesday of each month. At last word, Space Gallery (@space538) is planning on continuing their Jelly every first Tuesday, so hopefully we’ll make Portland a two-Jelly town! Amazing for a city this size, which tells me there’s a lot going on here under the hood.

How was your Maple Jelly? Let us know in the comments.

A little while ago I said I’d start posting some reviews of good content management systems. Many of you are familiar w/t/Usual Suspects – WordPress, Drupal and Joomla – so I thought I’d start w/a review of something you may not have heard of: Django.

Django was developed by The World Company as a CMS for the Lawrence Journal-World, the newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas. It was developed for the fast-paced, high-traffic news environment and was designed to make it easy to set up and easy to plug/unplug various modules (“apps” or “models” as they are known in Django-lingo).

Incidentally, it was named after jazz guitarist Django Rheinhardt. As a musician myself, I appreciate that.

Django is Open Source. It has been released under a BSD license.

Nifty. But all of you who are looking for a 5-minute install FTW will be sadly disappointed. Django installs are not for the faint of heart. Unlike the Usual Suspects, which are written in PHP, Django was written in Python. It also requires some server administration skills to configure. Fortunately, there are some hosting providers who specialize in Django.

Though it can be a challenge to set up initially, once configured Django is designed so that you can very rapidly plug in different chunks of some pretty sophisticated interactive goodness depending on your needs.

The idea is that you don’t want to be reinventing the wheel for content management with every site. This is known as the DRY Principle.

With a basic, rock solid Django framework in place, Web designers and developers can focus on the fun stuff – a custom look and feel, CSS and extensions to Django’s core functionality.

Django’s great for big sites that need things like member management(w/varying access privileges), events calendars, e-commerce and job applications. In other words, for sites that need more than the simple blog-based content management WordPress provides.

Here’s the lowdown:

Pro

Solid modular code – you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or rewrite most of the bedrock code you’ll need for most sites. You can concentrate on customization. There are models for e-commerce, Google Calendar – you name it.

Speedy setup - no, it’s won’t be speedy the first time you do it. But once you’ve got the knack, it’ll be a breeze.

Plays nice w/Google – Python, Django’s bedrock language, is one of the three “official” languages supported by Google. You can run Django and Python on the Google App Engine – meaning apps you develop will scale easily while they hum along on Google AE’s servers.

Open Source – No licensing fees to obtain, and the codebase is supported by a large – and growing – developer community

Con

Python – Just when you thought you had learned all the code you needed to rule the Web (*sigh*). Once you learn it, however, Python is a “pro” and not a “con”.

Server Administration Skills required – Can you say “shell access”? There, I knew you could. Get ready to cuddle up w/your favorite Terminal app.

Maine Sites Running Django

Flyfi.com – Portland-based, a social-ly, musical-ly site. Formerly Goombah and run by Emergent Music.

Maine College of Art – an application for applying online.

Southern Maine Community College – a personalized information request form.

Django Links

Django Project – documentation, tutorials… and your gateway to the developer community.

Django for non-programmers – Jeff Croft has a great post on the benefits of Django for front-end designers.

Django – Google Code – If you need help, here’s one good place to look.

Django Facebook Group (requires FB Profile) – here’s another good place to look for help, if you’re on Facebook (and everyone’s on FB now, right?)

Django pluggables – apps you can plug into your Django project.

Have you tried the Django tango? What are your thoughts?