Office closed for the Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

Our office is closed for the holidays (Dec 24 - Jan 1). 

If you are having a website emergency, please email jameyb@yourplanb.com or leave a message on our office voicemail and we will follow up with you as quickly as we can.  

We will be back at the office on Wednesday, January 2, 2013 and ready to discuss your web projects and plans for the new year :)

Happy New Year!
JameyB and DavidB

Why we love Google!

Why we LOVE Google!

From Chrome to Google Analytics - how can you not love how much easier surfing and following your surfers has become thanks to Google.

Not to mention Google Docs or Drive!  or Gmail!

So how does Google help you?  And why should you love it to?

1. Google Search has a better AI algorithm than Yahoo and MSN, which serves up better results for you while you are looking for something online.  If you want to quickly find something nearby, use the Local Search option.  And then there are the maps - so helpful and easy to use (and you can save them for use later!)

2. Google Chrome

• it is fast
• it does one thing (browse the web), and does it well
• it's updated regularly

PLUS: it uses the same browser technology as your iPhone or Android.

3. Google Docs (Drive) let's you easily share (and set permissions), work collaboratively and find work at home or at the office.  You can quickly save documents as pdfs!

4. Gmail
Not only let's you have space to send and receive large files.  It also has a great address book!  If you are an Android user you can share this address book which makes keeping things current so much more efficient at your desk and on your phone.  Gmail tends to receive less spam, has built in chat, is secure and FREE!

5. Google Analytics
Need to know who is visiting your site, which pages, when and if there are errors?  Use Google Analytics.  From it's easy to personalize dashboard, to quick reports (and the ability to email them as pdfs) to great resources on how to increase visitors, Google Analytics is a one stop shop for website analytics.

And what can be next?
Improved Android, tablets, laptops, Google TV, social game network?

Check out - Google Glass: Users are able to wear the glasses and see a computer interface near their eye as well as take photos with a nod – the final iteration of this device may well be released inside 2013; we’ll just have to wait and see!

More Google:
http://googlization.wordpress.com/
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/internet/web/101-google-tips-tricks-and-hacks-462143
http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/tips-tricks/25-awesome-google-search-tips-and-tricks/
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/06/expertise-in-google-search/
http://google.about.com/od/toolsfortheoffice/u/TipsAndTools.htm
http://lifehacker.com/339474/top-10-obscure-google-search-tricks

Motorbrains.com LAUNCH!

Working together with MotorBrains, we took an HTML/Flash combo site and designed a new responsive Word Press site! Images that pop, ideas that work and technology to keep the site on screens (no matter if it is a phone, tablet or desktop).


Visit motorbrains.com
Follow on Facebook and Twitter!

MotorBrains first came to us to work on their initial site back in 2004. Since then we have been working on their site, business cards and enewsletters. DavidB created the iconic robot who was the host on the old site and still can be found in the new version!

Give us a call if it is time to take the Flash off of your site and move to a Contact Management System like Word Press or Drupal. Call 773-665-2552

Kenilworth Press LAUNCH

 
KenilworthPress.com LAUNCH!

Full Color Off-Set and Digital Printing
Come visit us for all your printing needs.

From banners to business cards, stapled booklets to signs, calendars to Christmas invites, we can do it all! Just north of Evanston, a few miles from Chicago, Kenilworth Press has been supplying the North Shore of Chicago with custom printing solutions since 1973.

We have been working with Kenilworth Press for over 16 years! Many a print project for a client was handled by this capable crew in the near north suburbs.  And it was our pleasure to revamp their website into a content management system (Word Press) so Steve could keep the site current from the shop.

Working with GreensbyWhite.com

Respected in the interiorscape industry since 1973, Greens By White provides creative tropical plant rental, imaginative holiday and special events displays and floral designs to clients in the Metropolitan Chicago area. Known for our integrity and attention to detail, they are committed to listening to clients' needs, designing original installations of plants and flowers, creating a more healthy work environment and establishing a long-term relationship with their customers.

Please take a moment to visit their Photo Gallery of design projects. These photographs reflect their "passion" for their work, show green, healthy plants and flowers in beautiful settings and demonstrate why they have a reputation for outstanding interior landscape services. 

We have been lucky enough to collaborate together with the team at GreensbyWhite.com since 2007. Learning about plants as we go! Someday we will be able to brag about our green thumbs, but in the meantime, if you need office or building greenery give them a call!

If you need to spruce up your website, give us a call at 773-665-2552.
We look forward to working with you to grow your online presence.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We would like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!
And remind you our office will be closed for the holiday weekend.

We are so THANKFUL for your continued support and friendship.
Looking forward to working with you and making great things together.

Enjoy a short clip from Peanuts "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving". Watching this is a tradition in my house!

What Thanksgiving traditions do you have?

JoanTruckenbrod.com LAUNCH

NEW SITE LAUNCH!  JoanTruckenbrod.com

The web is a dynamic, ever-changing place. New technologies are created all the time and sometimes a refresh is needed. Joan asked Chicago web design company Your Plan B to help her refresh her site. Upcoming events, books for sale, and other major announcements are found on the home page, greeting the visitor the moment they visit the site. 

A website, like some works of art, are never complete, so be sure to check back often to see more exhibits, gallery installations, and fresh ideas from the creative world of Joan Truckenbrod. “A pioneer in Digital Art, Joan Truckenbrod’s artwork has been included in exhibits at the IBM Gallery in New York City, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, Musee d’Art Modern de la ville de Paris, Les Cite des Arts et des Nouvelles Technologies de Montreal, and the Villa Chianni in Lugano, Switzerland.” 

Learn more! We enjoyed working with Joan on her new Word Press website and look forward to seeing more great things from her and her work!

HVACsave.com LAUNCH!

HVACsave.com LAUNCH!

Your Plan B Company and the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (MEEA) is proud to announce their latest collaboration - HVACsave.com  

More about the program: The HVAC SAVE program is a regional HVAC contractor training and certification initiative based on National Comfort Institute (NCI) principles. This training teaches the skills necessary to determine actual effective efficiency of any functioning HVAC system and includes hands on demonstrations on how to perform critical HVAC diagnostics. Students who successfully pass the exam will receive the HVAC SAVE certification indicating their competency in HVAC performance and verification testing.  

More about the site: We decided to create this site using Drupal so that the team can easily log into the site from any location and make changes as they become needed. For example being able to keep the "Find a Contractor" current is key to the success of this site. HVACsave is a resource site for both Homeowners and Contractors, so we keep the design friendly and easy to use across the web.

We look forward to collaborating with the MEEA team in the future! Well done everyone!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Some Halloween tradition and history resources:


history.com/content/halloween
wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween
halloweenishere.com/history.html
halloweenmagazine.com/history.htm
halloweenhistory.org
jackolanterns.net/traditions.htm
halloween-website.com/customs.htm
everythinghalloween.com/traditions

And in case you need a Charlie Brown fix right this minute, try this from youtube!

Working with ChanceofDoom.com

Updated every Wednesday, artist Robert Tritthardt shares the adventures of unique characters living together in Seattle in Overcast with a Chance of Doom.  He also has republished his earlier online comic - Writhe and Shine.

We were Writhe and Shine fans and now we are working with Robert on his website!
If you like spooky, then you will like Overcast with a Chance of Doom :)

OPEN HOUSE FUN!

THANK YOU!

We had a spooky good time at our Halloween Open House!
Thank you to all the creative folks who stopped by - you guys ROCK!
Hope to make it an annual fete :)

Enjoy the photos!

YOU are invited! 4pm 10/04/12

Halloween Greetings from
Your Plan B Company!

Come enjoy a trick or treat with us at our Open House
at 4pm on Thursday, October 4th!

Our NEW address:

3759 N. Ravenswood Ave.

Suite 228a

Chicago, IL 60613

Tricks, treats, great new space and meet some new faces! 
Looking forward to seeing you there!


THANKS!
JameyB and DavidB
yourplanb.com

Countdown to Talk Like a Pirate Day - Sept 19th

Mark your calendars!
And it is the 10th ANNIVERSARY of this great day!

What will you do to celebrate?
Sing a song, wear an eye patch, sail the 7 seas?

We will be celebrating all day in our office - be warned arrr!

Join us and all other pirates at the TLAPD FB page: http://www.facebook.com/InternationalTalkLikeAPirateDay
 
To help get you in the mood here are some salty pirate sites:
TLAPD youtube
Cap’n is on Twitter
http://pirateaday.blogspot.com/
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/links.html#piratename
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/links.html#apps
http://www.blackbeard.co.uk/
http://www.dresslikeapirate.com/

Yo ho! Yo ho! A pirates life for me! ;)

Why we love Drupal!

Drupal is an open source Content Management System (CMS) that hit the scene in 2001 and really gained momentum in 2005.  It has a community of 630,000+ users and developers. Your Plan B Company is part of that number - we love going to DrupalCamp Chicago! Other groups using Drupal are: NATO, World Bank, Amnesty International, MTV UK, Sony's MusicBox, The Onion, Spread Firefox, and several political sites such as Vote Hillary and Draft Obama. IBM, NASA and Yahoo all use Drupal for their intranets (see " Why Yahoo! chose Drupal for an internal site"

Drupal is a great tool for complex and giant websites as well as smaller ones. Just one of the plusses for using Drupal is the easy to manage permissions and roles for the different types of admin and editor options. Drupal is also SEO friendly! Many of the SEO elements are installed by default.  Things like generating meaningful titles, meta data management overall and per page, specific modules just for managing SEO (like the SEO Checklist), and friendly URLs. Not to forget - the search tool! All you need to do is add your custom content and keep it fresh! Good SEO is more about content and less about trying to cheat the search engines IMHO.

So now you know a little more about Drupal, about why we love it and here are some current clients using it:
http://boccentral.org/
https://www.c4chicago.org/
http://www.caregivinghelp.org/
http://www.cje.net/
http://cvscaremarkspecialtyrx.com/
http://www.kruzinusa.com/
http://www.mwalliance.org/
and soon HVACsave.com!

If you are ready to convert your HTML, Flash or other CMS site into Drupal, give me a call to discuss your ideas and get things rolling for you 773-665-2552

And if you are ready to upgrade your 6.x Drupal site to the new Drupal 7.0 - give us a call to coordinate the upgrade planning. Read more about Drupal 7!

Learn More:
http://drupal.org/
http://drupal.org/features
http://www.searchreadyseo.com/blog/wordpress-vs-joomla-vs-drupal/

Personal note from JameyB: One fun sidenote is that I love the name Drupal because it is Dutch for "drop"! Having lived a year in Flemmish speaking Belgium, I think it is great that I can use a Dutch word everyday at work :)

Goodbye Flash

Flash was once one of our favorite ways to add movement and interaction to a website. But with technology always moving forward, now it is not the case! If you have flash on your site (like we do on our homepage - the awards that scroll) it is time to rethink and revamp. If your ENTIRE site is in Flash now is the time for a full remodel!

So, since we are changing out Flash on our own site, we thought this would be a good time to share with you all about options and why Flash is no longer a recommended solution. (Mind you there are always exceptions to the general rule, for example gaming sites...)

First, what is Flash?
“Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast. More recently, it has been positioned as a tool for "Rich Internet Applications" ("RIAs"). Flash manipulates vector raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Flash contains an object-oriented language called ActionScript and supports automation via the JavaScript Flash language (JSFL). Flash content may be displayed on various computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player, which is available free of charge for common web browsers, some mobile phones, and a few other electronic devices (using Flash Lite).”  (thank you wikipedia)

Second, why shouldn’t we use it anymore?
The big reason is that you cannot see it on Apple products.  More importantly on the 15M+ iPads out there! That is a HUGE bunch of potential customers that you are alienating with outdated information/animation/functionality. For reasoning why Apple won’t allow Flash, read Thoughts on Flash, by Steve Jobs.
Other reasons include:
- issues with Mac and crashing
- poor performance on mobile devices
- usability issues on touchscreen devices
- not effective at SEO (search engines have issues with Flash)
- costly to update or make changes

Third, what are the options now?
There are some options out there, not each one is perfect but it could work to meet your goals. Refreshing the information in HTML5, CSS, HTML, PHP5 and JavaScript is a start.  Check out WebKit’s CSS animation abilities too! What this tells us is that it is time to stop and review your website content, does it really need motion?  Is it time to focus on content vs. movement?  Content is and will always be king!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us to discuss. Call 773-665-2552

Read More:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/02/20/an-adobe-flash-developer-on-why-the-ipad-cant-use-flash/
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/adobe-flash-future/
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/
http://seb.ly/2011/01/html5-vs-flash-the-aftermath/

Be better and more efficient on Twitter (from Chicago Tribune Life Lessons)

You've mastered the art of telling a story in 140 characters or less. Now, take your tweeting to the next level

By Scott Kleinberg,
Tribune Newspapers July 19, 2012


http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/life/ct-tribu-social-media-advanced-twitter-20120719,0,6683521.story

Another awesome article we just had to share - this time about Twitter!
We tweet - do you?

Answers to Your Top 7 Questions About Mastering LinkedIn Marketing (from HubSpotBlog)

Posted by Brittany Leaning
Mon, Jul 23, 2012 @ 01:00 PM
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33411/Answers-to-Your-Top-7-Questions-About-Mastering-LinkedIn-Marketing.aspx#ixzz21l8e54wM

This is a great article about marketing with LinkedIn that we thought we should share.
I am on LinkedIn!
Are you?

Why we LOVE WordPress!

WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that hit the scene in 2003.  It has grown to be one of the largest self-hosted blogging tools in the world.  WordPress is an open source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working together on it.  Your Plan B Company is part of that group! 

You can use WordPress for just about any website topic from Fortune 500s to a page about my cat.  There are thousands of plugins, widgets and themes you can use or you can build your own.

WordPress is also SEO friendly! And many of the SEO elements are installed by default.  Things like clean permalinks, SEO friendly titles, website structuring, indexing and non-indexing features, categories, tags and its spider friendly.  All you need to do is add your custom content and keep it fresh!

So now you know a little more about WordPress, about why we love it and
here are some current clients using it:
chanceofdoom.com
cocktailcloister.com
georgia-hie.org
itssprout.com
jigsawchicago.com
kenilworthhistory.org
ridelawrence.com
spookyinc.com
thisishalloween.com
uptownproud.org

If you are ready to convert your HTML, Flash or other CMS site into WordPress, give me a call to discuss your ideas and get things rolling for you 773-665-2552

Learn More:
http://wordpress.org/about/
http://opensource.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress

Your Plan B Company has a NEW address!

After 15 years in Uptown (11 of those on Sheridan and Irving Park), it is time for change.
We are over in the Ravenswood Corridor at Ravenswood and Grace now!

Phone is the same: 773-665-2552
Fax: 773-665-2550

NEW address: 
3759 N. Ravenswood Ave.
Suite 228a
Chicago, IL 60613

Once we are all settled in, we will throw a twist of lime open house - you are all invited :)


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DavidB: reunion photographer

DavidB was one of the Beloit College Reunion 2012 photographers over a bright, sunny weekend in June.



Check out some of his photos here.

He had fun being the class photographer, once again, up on a ladder in Middle College getting classes together for their historic photos.  And later in the day the Class Parade, Alumni Assembly, All Class Dinner and all the activities in between.  GO BELOIT!

More about Beloit College Reunion 2012.