Riveredge created a new site that puts the symphony in charge of its own communications efforts. Features include a detailed performance calendar tool that allows the instant addition of new shows and concerts, with all relevant details, and with content that removes itself from the web site once a concert has taken place.

Also included is a dynamic gallery, with rotating magazine-like feature content, including text and photos that are clickable, and allow the symphony to present information prioritized according to its marketing needs. The site dovetails with the symphony's social media presence, allows patrons to buy tickets using several methods, and includes the ability for the symphony to accept donations online.

As a result, the new Wheeling Symphony web site has given the organization control of its own web content and enhances its marketing efforts, for less money than the group had been spending on its static site.

The conception called for an attractive site with design elements that would give readers strong visual cues to determine which stories might be more important than others. Also, FortBendNow would be ad supported, and required a method for serving and rotating ads on the site.

The result was an unusual magazine-style site with off-set column sizes in the top content row, separated by a photo that could be substituted for advertising depending upon news and circumstance. The original FortBendNow.com included a "liquid" design that displayed the entire page width to each viewer without horizontal scrolling, regardless of computer screen resolution.

The heart of the site was an automated news deliver system that "served" articles to the appropriate web site section at the appropriate time and day. With a couple of key strokes, the look of the site changed to accommodate weekend content. FortBendNow also included an automated back-end ad-serving system that calculated page views, multiple ad rotation schedules and much more. FortBendNow included several inside sections in addition to local news. It made use of a customized version of the Textpattern content management system, fully automating content updates.

Known for timely political analysis, business reporting and a series of local scoops, FortBendNow's audience and advertising grew rapidly, helping transform the site into one of the area's top news sources by early 2008, when the web site was sold to a group of former newspaper executives.

But Bankston needed to find a way to make his reputation and his record more visible. After many years of relying solely on word of mouth to reach new clients, Don turned to us to develop a no-nonsense, bottom-line business web site that matched his style.

Built on a customized version of the popular WordPress content managment system,
Bankstonlaw.com helps Don maintain a professional online image, and includes a variety of tools to improve office communication and attract new clients.

The site includes automatically rotating client testimonials, and Don's complete case record, presented for easy viewing. Bankstonlaw.com also includes a standard feature of ours - a Contact Us-style form that not only notifies Don's office when someone fills it out, but also captures all information input into it, in a special database in the site's back end. This information can be exported to any spreadsheet program.

We created what has become the party's central communication system, starting with a tool that allows visitors to opt in to the party email newsletter. Online forms give the party the ability to collect donations online, simultaneously collecting and maintaining legally required information under election law. Another form has resulted in dozens of volunteers signing up online to assist in block-walking, sign installation and other pre-election activity. A sister site we also created served as online headquarters for those local candidates who otherwise had no web presence.

Posts to the site's blog engine - a customized version of the popular WordPress content management system - populate various portions of the party web site depending on their category label. At the top of the home page is a dynamic gallery that can be used as a call to action for party activists. Other tools include a campaign event calendar application, and the ability to allow readers to share content from the site with their friends on Facebook, Twitter or other social media.

Juanita Jean's - "The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon" - is armed with a comment system designed to automatically keep out persistent spammers and allow the author to manually moderate which comments are acceptable and which are not. At the same time, however, the site allows for the "white-listing" (automatic approval of) all comments made by visitors with whom Ms. Bankston is familiar.

The administrative back-end of this site also includes the ability to create user accounts with a huge variety of authority levels, customizable down to the most granular detail. This could, for instance, allow an acquaintance (or employee) to perform a relatively administrator-like activity such as exporting information gathered from online forms, while being prevented from accidentally changing content settings.

VoteBooster

VoteBooster showcases custom web site templates we created, which are designed to serve as online headquarters for political campaigns. Each template comes with a variety of customizable tools and features popular with online campaigns - such as the ability to accept political donations online, while gathering legally required information from the donors.

The VoteBooster site showcases each tool and political template, explains in detail how they operate together, and shows how various tools and features can be combined to create the most effective campaign or candidate web site.

VoteBooster's administrative "back end" dovetails with most social media sites and with many major hosting operations. It represents one of several stand-alone business sites Riveredge has created to meet the needs of specific professionals in specific business segments.

Still in process, we are creating a new site that puts the symphony in charge of its own communications efforts. Features include a detailed performance calendar tool that allows the instant addition of new shows and concerts, with all relevant details, and with content that removes itself from the web site once a concert has taken place.

Also included is a dynamic gallery, with rotating magazine-like feature content, including text and photos that are clickable, and allow the symphony to present information prioritized according to its marketing needs. The site dovetails with the symphony's social media presence, allows patrons to by tickets using several methods, and will include the ability to accept donations online.

As a result, the new Wheeling Symphony web site will give the organization control of its own web content and enhance its marketing efforts, for less money than the group had been spending on its static site.

With such diverse tools at your disposal, however, the challenge comes in keeping your message consistent.

The key to message consistency and coordination lies in using your web site as your message hub. But while it may be tempting to try to save time and trouble by reproducing your web content verbatim in your other channels (your email newsletter, Twitter and Facebook), we believe that's a mistake.

Each of your communication channels reaches at least a partially different audience, but for those who follow you in more than one medium, repeating the same verbatim message is like watching the same TV commercial two or three times in a row - the message loses its effectiveness and become tedius. And the way your message is received and displayed varies from channel to channel.

Thus, it behooves you to create a separate series of messages for each of your communications channels, each conveying the same idea, but in separate ways that allow you to take advantage of the "personality" of email and the social media.

Think of it as translating your message into other languages. It's preferable to find a good writer who is fluent in those other languages, rather than reproducing a stilted, verbatim version from English.

Bottom line, if your business benefits from reaching people via email, Facebook, Twitter and other communications channels, then it will benefit you or someone at your organization to learn to become fluent in the nuances of using those particular channels. Or, as an alternative, contract with a trusted third party to provide that service, or the appropriate training.

If the web site belongs to you, or if your client has hired you to manage their web message, then you shouldn't have to ask anybody else for their help or their time or their permission when you want to make changes to the content. It should be your call.

Unfortunately, this premise still is not universally accepted. Too many people, and too many clients, still are saddled with stilted, static, hard-coded web sites that require the assistance of an HTML coder or a tech support person at some web hosting facility in order to make even the slightest content change. At best, the result is slow, inefficient and expensive.

The Internet was built to speed up communication and cut out needless layers of bureaucracy. We keep that in mind when we build web sites for our clients. They're not only great looking and full of useful features, they also include tools that make changing the content as easy as writing an email.

You do it yourself. Whenever you feel like it. Without asking anyone else for permission.

Contact us and we'll show you how it works.

As paid newspaper circulation has continued its slide toward oblivion, some publishers have begun building paywalls designed to force readers to buy a subscription or pay a fee to read the brilliant prose hidden within.

Others have leveled Blame Fingers at the likes of Google, suggesting that if search engines point people toward newspaper web sites, the added notoriety is somehow a bad thing.

Publishers seem unable to make the connection between news staffs decimated by layoffs, less local coverage, stilted shovelware sites and a disenfranchised audience that could get what it was looking for more cheaply and easily almost anywhere else on the web.

But then, most newspaper publishers are not (Attleboro, Mass.) Sun Chronicle Publisher Oreste P. D'Arconte.

Eschewing the paywall concept, D'Arconte unveiled a different scheme last week for annoying any remaining loyal readers of the paper's web site: He now is charging readers for the privilege of posting comments at the end of stories.

As he told readers on July 4:

The opportunity to post comments on stories on Sun Chronicle websites will be restored this week, Publisher Oreste P. D'Arconte announced today, with posters required to use their real names.

To enforce this change, all posters will be required to register their name, address, phone number and a legitimate credit card number.

The credit card will be charged a one-time fee of 99 cents to activate the account.

The poster's name as it appears on the credit card will automatically be attached to the poster's comments, as will the name of the community in which they live. Registrants will also be required to acknowledge they understand that under existing state and federal laws they are legally responsible for any comments they post. Registration under the new policy will begin at noon Wednesday...

Some web site owners work very hard for months on end in an attempt to create a "buzz" around their site, in an attempt to lure visitors and, further, to induce those visitors to interact with each other, spending more time on the site, attracting their friends and in so doing give the site justification for charging more money for advertising.

D'Arconte, by contrast, has managed to kill the buzz on his web site with but a few keystrokes followed by an edict.

Please, kids, don't try this at home.

If you have a web site, you want an audience. You will find that your web visitors are used to, and really seem to enjoy, interacting with you, your staff, your site and each other. That's a good thing because it extends page views and the length of time they spend on your site. Do not, under any circumstances, enact measures to make visiting or interactivity difficult. Forcing prospective interactive visitors to pay you for the privilege of giving you their credit card number is not conducive to increasing interactivity or visitor good will. Please never do this.

Web site operators should cherish every single visitor they get, because those visitors serve as a really important guidepost to advertisers, signifying why their ad dollars should be placed on that particular web site. Treat your audience well, nourish and grow them. Then, adjust your ad rates up accordingly. And also dictate to your advertisers that they may not place ads on your site that have monkeys moving quickly back and forth, or ads that move around on the page, cover other content, make noise or do anything else to annoy the visitors.

Cherish and coddle your visitors, don’t try to charge them.

Charge and educate your advertisers, don’t try to coddle them.

Because left to their own devices, advertisers will put horrible content on your site that will at best cause your readers to activate something of which you need to be aware: Adblock. At worst, coddled advertisers will annoy your readers right onto someone else’s site.

If you are able to educate your web advertisers and help them build more effective, less annoying ads, your site will look better, your advertisers will get better results and they may even start looking to you to provide them with new ads - just like an analog ad agency. Why not? Take advantage of the new line of work. Become an expert digital ad shop in addition to a great web news publisher. Gain influence and revenue beyond your traditional circulation area.