2012 Blog Articles

Happy #15 to Beacon + A Look Back at 2012

By Mark Dirks | December 31, 2012

On January 6th 2013, Beacon will celebrate its 15th birthday. It’s hard to fathom that fifteen years ago, today, “Beacon Technologies” didn’t exist yet.

Predicting the Future of Shopping

By Beacon News | December 27, 2012

Forty years ago, downtown department stores were in their twilight years. Suburban malls were sounding the bell tolls proclaiming the death of the downtown stores. Looming in the distance, strip malls and big box discount stores were getting ready to lay waste to the department store.

Vertically Aligning Inline Images Inside of a Paragraph

By Zedric Myers | December 14, 2012

By default any inline image will align with the baseline of the paragraph, unless a “margin-bottom” is applied to the paragraph’s baseline.

Newly Redesigned Site Launched for Tuggle Duggins Law Firm

By Beacon News | December 12, 2012

Yesterday, December 6th, we launched the redesigned Tuggle Duggins” website. This is a Cascade site that features the following:

jQuery Circular Image Gallery

By Zedric Myers | December 3, 2012

There are a lot of great jQuery galleries to choose from, but the “ROUNDRR” plugin stands out as a circular gallery. If you’re looking for great circular plugin, this one of the better ones. This particular plugin has several different customizations, as well. In the provided link below, it has examples of each customization and how it works.

GIF wins Oxford's 'Word of the Year'

By Beacon News | November 16, 2012

I really was looking for some nice serious techie news to blog about today, but this article was just too irresistible to ignore: GIF wins Oxford’s ‘Word of the Year’. Despite the hilarious sub-title “JPG and PNG decline to comment“, I really did learn a lot in the guts of the article.

The Responsive Universal Menu Icon

By Beacon News | November 1, 2012

Responsive website design will take over the internet, it’s inevitable. It’s a beautiful answer to the question of how to make content on the internet appropriate for a wide array of devices and screen sizes. With each new design and development approach comes a whole new set of standards.

Clearing cookies from just one site

By Beacon News | October 25, 2012

Recently, I needed to be able to clear a single site’s cookies on my computer in order to test an issue that a client was reporting. I certainly did NOT want to clear all cookies on my computer, which is the default and easiest method for most browsers (how would I remember those thousands of passwords that I have stored everywhere??), and it took a little searching on how to do this in each browser for just one site. Hopefully you’ll find this list useful as well!

How to Enable Wordpress to Define the Parent of a Custom Post Type

By Beacon News | October 12, 2012

Here is a script that will enable you to define a parent for a custom post type. You just need to include this in your functions.php file. In this code sample, "Product" is my custom post type but you will need to replace this with whatever you are wanting to define a parent for.

Increase Consumer Confidence on your E-Commerce Website

By Beacon News | July 17, 2012

I enjoyed the following article "Inside Forbes: 'Aha Moments' From Our New Home Page" this week and thought I'd share a few thoughts/observations:

Summer Internship Update

By Beacon News | July 16, 2012

I officially have 1 week left at Beacon Technologies. So far everything is going great! I am really excited about the Beacon NetCafe website. The website is coming along nicely. I am very impressed by the website and I would like to publicly thank Jennifer for her hard work on the website. I know everyone is busy right now and I appreciate her work on the website.

Forbes Home Page Redesign

By Beacon News | July 16, 2012

I enjoyed the following article "Inside Forbes: 'Aha Moments' From Our New Home Page" this week and thought I'd share a few thoughts/observations:

On Hover Alternatives for Touch Devices

By Beacon News | July 9, 2012

Even though touch screen devices make up only a small fraction of users that visit your site, the number of these devices hitting your site is only going to increase. This doesn't just include mobile devices, but also tablets that are being served a full site version. Your site should take this into account and any mouse hover effects need to be rethought and accommodated by some other means.

Beacon NetCafe Second Update

By Beacon News | July 9, 2012

My internship at Beacon Technologies is coming to a close but there are still many things to be done before I leave to go back to school. The previous week I completed the requirements and wireframe documents. I submitted the documents to the web designer of the Beacon NetCafe website. So far, the website is going along very well. The designer has setup a test website and it is taking shape.

Sitemaps and More!

By Beacon News | June 22, 2012

I only have 4 weeks left for my internship at Beacon Technologies. I am still learning a lot about the process of creating a website. We have decided on a template for the Beacon NetCafe. Richard and I are going to start pushing this website through and have the pilot run before the end of my internship. I look forward to completing this project in the near future.

9 Basic Google Analytic Terms You Should Know

By Beacon News | June 8, 2012

After a few client meetings, I realized that some of our clients don't know the basic "GA lingo" that we use in our reports. It seemed like I was having to explain certain terms over and over, which to me seemed odd but then again I do this for a living so I'm supposed to know them.

The iPad arrives

By Beacon News | May 16, 2012

Recently I won my very first iPad by providing the winning suggestion in a product detail page review for AspDotNetStorefront and it arrived today!

A jQuery Plugin to Validate Checkbox or Radio Button Sets

By Zedric Myers | May 16, 2012

There are many form validations available to use and each has their own unique features. If you have ever needed to validate checkbox or radio button sets this jQuery validation plugin can do just that. For instance, it can verify that at least two checkboxes must be checked.

Solving Problems -- Puzzle vs. Mystery

By Beacon News | May 2, 2012

Information workers are used to solving problems. Approaches can vary to determine a viable solution and can be bound by many constraints.

Social Media Best Practices

By Beacon News | May 2, 2012

Now that we have been practicing for some time, we are aware of good (and, bad) ways to employ social media. Opinions will vary about the "best of the best". That is the beauty of the web, it always changes.

Risks and Black Swans

By Beacon News | May 2, 2012

Whatever we do, we deal with risks. Despite our best laid plans and intentions, there are always those uncertain and unwanted events that happen which are beyond our control. In previous posts, I have talked about risks on projects

Word from the Sales Front

By Beacon News | May 1, 2012

April was a busy month here at Beacon. We came into the month off of a real strong first quarter with lots of exciting new projects kicking off with existing and new clients. The momentum continued into April with over a dozen project kickoffs and the addition of seven new clients, including:

DataTables with ListNav Integration

By Zedric Myers | May 1, 2012

DataTables is a great jQuery plug-in if your site needs table integration with options. Once you have your data ready for this functionality, you can setup the integration fairly quick. For more advanced options it just takes a little more time to get what you are looking to achieve. There are configurable options such as filtering, pagination, sorting, jQuery ThemeRoller support and many more.

Goodreads grid widget broken

By Beacon News | April 27, 2012

Have you been trying to use Goodreads Grid Widget and not able to get it to work? Are you copy/pasting the code and not getting anything but the no script version of the grid with a } at the end of it? If so I was having the same problem and I wasn’t able to find much information online to help me.

Clear(ly) it's time to say bye-bye to buttons

By Beacon News | April 27, 2012

With its new iOS app, Clear, Realmac Software has taken the “less is more” axiom to its ultimate conclusion. The Clear app puts a new spin on the common to-do list by enriching it with a playful perception of depth, dynamic transitions and crisp audio feedback, all wrapped under a minimalistic visual language and shallow navigation.

Best Practices for Companies New to the Wide World of Email Marketing

By Beacon News | April 24, 2012

Our Beacon Technology Web Marketing Consultants always recommend engaging in email marketing for both our online retailers and our online content providers because it works to generate higher relevant traffic, sales and or conversions on their websites. Email Marketing allows specific targeting, helps to push direct sales, builds relationships, supports sales through other channels, and it is data driven.

Want to Attend Internet Retailer?

By Beacon News | April 18, 2012

If you’ve looked at our events page then you know we’re attending the Internet Retailer Conference in June. Wahoo! This conference is HUGE and is jam packed with tons of great sessions and information. There will be 175 speakers, 570 exhibiting companies, 8,000 attendees, and multiple workshops! I’m excited, are you excited?

Some great Google Chrome Browser Extensions for Web Development

By Zedric Myers | April 18, 2012

The Google Chrome Web Store has a nice library of extensions to use for web designers and developers. Here’s a few that may interest you and are they are free to install.

How to add a Weather Channel widget or module to your website

By Zedric Myers | April 11, 2012

There are some great widgets and add-ons to get up-to-date information on your website. If you ever need a weather widget displayed on your site, www.weather.com offers a nice version.

Using the Free Social Media Vector Icon Set as a Source File for Other Icon Sets

By Beacon News | April 9, 2012

Here a few examples of what you can do with just the fireworks png (un-flattened) vector file from my blog Free Social Media Vector Icon Set. Please note these are mainly to showcase using the file as a source file for icon sets and the different levels of customization that could happen. Feel free to download them all and do what you'd like with them. Click here to download all social icon sets.

Not Your Average Breakfast Conversation

By Beacon News | April 9, 2012

Whether you’re a morning person or not, it’s safe to say you won’t find this kind of conversation around the kitchen table. Part of North Carolina’s Technology Association (NCTA) “Emerging Tech and Trends” breakfast series is focused on providing a forum where business professionals can engage in serious conversation and rhetoric around the ever morphing topic and trend of technology.

ASPDNSF's 2012 eCommerce Conference

By Beacon News | April 3, 2012

Beacon returned from ASPDotNetStorefront‘s user conference with a ton of great takeaways, new friendships, stregnthened partnerships and awesome experiences. Ashland, Oregon’s amazing scenery, great restaurants, friendly people and downtown park rival the eTail West conference in Palm Dessert for the best eCommerce conference destination.

University of Hartford jQuery Update

By Beacon News | March 30, 2012

Just a quick shout out about a cool new feature that Beacon recently implemented on the University of Hartford site at http://www.hartford.edu. Hartford has been a long time client and we do updates for them on a regular basis, but we wanted to spotlight this particular item.

Los Alamos National Labs’ Bradbury Science Museum Website Launch

By Beacon News | March 25, 2012

Just wanted to announce the successful completion of a new web site design for the Los Alamos National Labs’ Bradbury Science Museum… The client will be developing the site internally, but they are very pleased (see below) with the design that Wendy came up with! You can take a sneak peak here, if interested:

Top Mobile Browsers

By Keana Massey | March 22, 2012

Within the mobile phone landscape, there are at least ten operating systems (OSs) and fifteen browsers that require consideration when testing. Web developers should concentrate their testing efforts on smartphones.

Wordpress Lightbox Conflicts and Solutions

By Zedric Myers | March 20, 2012

Recently we developed a custom WordPress site for a client that has an integrated lightbox image gallery. It was an easy plugin installation and activation process. The next step was to add in the images to the media library and then call the shortcode inside the code dialog in the specified page.

Demographics for Social Media Sites like Facebook and Twitter

By Beacon News | March 16, 2012

Here"s an interesting Infograph I came across and wanted to share! What do you think of these stats? Is it what you thought or are they completely opposite of what you were thinking?

How to find Your Images on Pinterest

By Beacon News | March 9, 2012

Ever wonder how to find out what images have been “pinned” from your website onto Pinterest? Well I’ve got just what you need. I’m going to use a well known Furniture company called Bassett Furniture for my example.

DNS Explained

By Beacon News | March 7, 2012

Ever been mystified by the numerous acronyms involved in DNS and/or what the heck DNS is anyway? This fun six-minute video is well worth the time and does a really good job of explaining the mysterious world of the Domain Name System. Of course, our Web Hosting experts can also assist with any questions you have, so be sure to contact us!

Free Social Media Vector Icon Set (including pinterest and google plus!)

By Beacon News | March 6, 2012

First I would like to say I am a Web Developer here at Beacon so Design is not my specialty. However, I’ve gradually been getting annoyed by the round corners that are on most social icons.

Panda devalues anchor text

By Beacon News | March 6, 2012

A little over a year ago, Panda made its debut. The debut was not soon after it was revealed that AOL was prepping to add massive waves of content. A content farm to end all content farms. Panda put a stop to that.

eWBoard - The Electronic Whiteboard Site Launch

By Beacon News | February 15, 2012

We launched another great site last month for eWboard at http://www.ewboard.com! This site is a highly effective promotional site for IBS's newest patient tracking software, The Electronic Whiteboard.

Super quick Aspdotnetstorefront site setup

By Beacon News | February 13, 2012

There are literally thousands of settings that you can configure for a new AspDotNetStorefront site, but here is a set of instructions that we use to quickly set up a very basic non-eCommerce (catalog only) site in Version 8 of AspDotNetStorefront:

Heading South to IRWD!

By Mark Dirks | February 10, 2012

Hopefully it will be nice and sunny in Orlando for next week's Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference (Feb 13-15). I'm looking forward to meeting with our partners and clients that are attending. Let me know if you are going to be there - maybe we can grab some coffee and talk "Web"!

Design Freebie: Photoshop Tessellation Patterns

By Beacon News | February 7, 2012

While working on a site design recently I played with creating some tessellation patterns (I'm pretty sure I had been looking at M.C. Escher that morning). I never did use these graphics for the site design I was working on, but I thought I would colorize them and create some seamless Photoshop pattern files to provide as a download. Enjoy!

New Tool to Analyze PPC Data

By Beacon News | February 6, 2012

I recently came across an article talking about the new Wordstream PPC Grader. Of course my curious self had to go try it out and I'm happy to report this tool offers a lot of insight into your Adwords Campaigns.

What Web Metrics are Important to Track

By Beacon News | January 13, 2012

Clients often ask us what metrics they should be tracking. The answer to this question is simple. Review and track the metrics that are most important to your business. If you have an E commerce website, you should be measuring harder conversions such as sales, revenue, profit, etc.

Mobile Testing: "It has to work on HOW many devices?"

By Beacon News | January 6, 2012

One of the many competencies here at Beacon that we take pride in is cross-browser compliance: ensuring that a site looks the same in all of the mainstream browsers. This task is not for the faint of heart: there are nine browsers that we support across two operating systems.

Custom Fonts in Internet Explorer 9

By Beacon News | January 6, 2012

During recent projects, integrating fonts for the right look and feel has shown to be troublesome for Internet Explorer.

Google Correlate

By Beacon News | January 5, 2012

As a software development project manager at Beacon, I'm also proud to say that I'm both an NPR and data geek, so I was elated to hear a story this week that united all of my passions: Google Searches Are A Window Into Our Culture. The tool "Google Correlate" is actually a fascinating window into how people are searching for not only one specific term, but an entire web of other related (or maybe not-so-related) terms.

Beacon's Top 10 Blog Posts of 2011

By Beacon News | January 5, 2012

The Beacon Staff wrote nearly 200 blog posts in 2011! So we are highlighting our Top 10 and want your help to identify the "Beacon Blog Post of the Year". Please check them out and leave a comment telling us which one you enjoyed most and why. Some of these were actually written in 2010, but received enough views in 2011 to make the Top 10 List.

Flash is Officially Not Being Supported on Mobile Devices

By Zedric Myers | January 4, 2012

Flash is officially not being supported on mobile devices anymore. It's a good thing for performance and battery life. It also opens up the door for more interesting ways of introducing techniques and effects to your audience.

2012 Blog Articles - Beacon Blog

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