Shire Enterprises, Inc., announces the redesigned PureAire Monitoring Systems Web site.

Featuring all products offered by the Lake Zurich, IL-based company, the quick-loading Web site offers a clear, clean presentation. The CSS layout includes valid HTML code and valid CSS, and is Section 508 compliant.  A crisp, CSS-based layout, the new site is the result of collaboration between Gary Kopycinski at Shire Enterprises and Marlene Frykman at Aardvard Web Works.

About PureAire Monitoring Systems

PureAire manufactures and provides life safety and environmental gas monitoring systems, protecting employees in the workplace. We incorporate proprietary gas-specific sensor technology for detecting low sub TLV levels of toxic, corrosive, pyrophoric, explosive and oxygen depleting gases.

PureAire specializes in providing reliable, proven monitoring solutions for many industries including semiconductor, chemical, petro-chemical, pharmaceutical, refining, refrigeration, waste treatment, and aerospace.

About Aardvark Web Works

Aardvark Web Works, LLC was founded in 2003.

After spending nearly twenty years as a creative in Advertising, Print and Marketing, with the next ten years being in Information Technology, it was about time to get out from under the preverbial thumbs of my ‘superiors’ and share my capabilities with the world.

I decided to focus strictly on the web as my next logical step. While researching for my new business, I found how inaccessible the web is to people who are less-abled, whether it be impairments such as visual, aural, cognitive, physical or they are technologically disabled by dial-up. Each and everyone of us has the right to access information on the web in the same manner for education, health care, government information, recreation and countless other things.

About Shire Enterprises

Shire Enterprises is located in Park Forest, IL, owned and operated by Gary Kopycinski. Gary is a proud member of the International Webmasters Association and the HTML Writers Guild. He uses a creative approach to web design, consulting with the client to elicit the main focus of the web page, developing a logo if necessary, and developing a color scheme that is both enticing and inviting.

I have had much experience with Joomla. Take a look at eNews Park Forest for a very complex, well-developed site created to provide news for residents of Park Forest, IL, and surrounding suburbs.

One of the best selling points of Joomla is that it is Open Source, free. You pay only for hosting and a domain name. If you ask a web designer to set up your site — and perhaps your should if you don’t know PHP and MySQL — you pay for time. This could run anywhere from three hours for a simple install to eight or ten hours for installations that are more complex and require more styling.

Joomla is very robust. You can do some incredible things with it, and you can do some incredibly boneheaded things with it.

Let me explain.

A base install of Joomla is very efficient, offering minimal drag on a MySQL server and code that is web compliant out of the box. So, you will start with a good PHP site and a solid MySQL database. If you go to Joomla.com, you will see there are many components and modules to add. Some of them are good, some of them are written using horrible code. These can break a site or cause many CPU-overloads which web hosts will complain about. There’s nothing worse than trying to open your site, only to see the words, “Account Suspended for CPU-Overload.”

Never, never, under any circumstances should you add a statistics counter to your Joomla installation, e.g. Joomlastats or BSQStats. They will horribly bloat your database and may cause CPU-overloads.

If you do add components that require you to change your template, e.g. add a CSS-include or some Javascript to your template, make sure you note this somewhere. If you remove the component, you’ll want to clean up your template so you don’t end up calling files that no longer exist.

That may sound like simple advice, but it’s easy to get lost with very large installations.

For more, I’d advise you to register at the Joomla Forum, start reading, asking questions, and experimenting.
One final piece of advice, I’d recommend setting up a backup site for every live site you install. It’s too easy to make a horrible mistake in Joomla (inserting a comma in the wrong place in your .htaccess or PHP.INI files, or in one of Joomla’s many PHP includes) and finding your site gone. This is even an uglier feeling than the Microsoft Windows infamous “Blue Screen of Death.” In these situations, you will see a blank white screen in your browser with a few lines offering minimal details about your PHP error. A good host can help you repair your mistakes, but it’s better to understand and learn what you did wrong.

All in all, however, Joomla is well worth the time investment.

Welcome aboard. Joomla’s a helluva ride.

One of my most important projects is eNews Park Forest, a news site for the Park Forest, IL, area.

I use PHPList to send announcements of new issues and breaking stories. Today I simply want to showcase the email sign-up page, located here, which is the newly styled sign-up page for the site.

One can either sign up for eNewsPF.com email announcements from inside eNewsPF.com (“Get eNews Alerts” on the main menu), or by going directly to the URL listed above. When one adds an email address from inside eNewsPF.com, one still ends up on this page for verification of the email address.

It’s nice to see the two applications play so nicely together.

Finally, I added the background gradient to the whole site today. I just like that look on my web pages.

Again, just happy with the new developments.

State Rep. Al Riley’s official campaign site, just launched this week, ready for the masses!  I’m very happy with the way this site has turned out.  It was a bit of a “rush” order, but it turned out very nice.

Good luck on the campaign trail, Al!

Park Forest, IL–(ENEWSPF)– Shire Enterprises web creations announced the release of its newest design this week, the official web site for Illinois State Rep. Al Riley, of the 38th Legislative District. The site was designed using Adobe Dreamweaver 8.2, and images prepared and edited for the web with Adobe Fireworks 8.0.

The site can be accessed from http://www.repalriley38.com.

The site is a solid, CSS-based design with valid XHTML according to the standards dictated by the World Wide Web Consortium, an international consortium where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Valid code helps ensure that web pages will be viewable from standard browsers

The site is also accessible to people with disabilities in accordance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. According to Section508.gov:

In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Inaccessible technology interferes with an individual’s ability to obtain and use information quickly and easily. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. The law applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology.

The site also features a menu extension for Dreamweaver from Project VII, “Pop Menu Magic.” The extension interfaces seamlessly with Dreamweaver, and allows great flexibility for the web designer. The extension produces fully compliant code and menus in compliance with Section 508 standards.

Additionally, there are two photo galleries employing SimpleViewer from Airtight Interactive. The galleries reveal a fluid presentation of the photographs resulting in a striking display.

Rep. Al Riley was appointed by Democratic Committeemen to fulfill the remainder of State Rep. Robin Kelly’s term for the 38th Legislative District.

Shire Enterprises, Inc. is owned and operated by Gary Kopycinski, and is based in Park Forest, IL. Kopycinski is publisher of eNews Park Forest , the only online news magazine exclusively serving the Park Forest area.

They’re a bit on the pricey side, but, you get what you pay for.  I did have to ask a few questions from support already, and received prompt answers from Al Sparber.  Very courteous, professional, to the point.

I’m using one menu for State Rep. Al Riley’s site, which I intend to formally announce this week sometime.  The web site is almost completed.  Stop back in a few days for the official release.

I always add my own code to the CSS of any theme, but this one already appears to be very well put together.

Did you know that some people devote their entire domain to a blog?  Yes, it’s true, you can get free blogs at Blogspot.com and event at WordPress.com, the truth is, you get what you pay for.  You don’t have access to your CSS at those sites.  You’re essentially stuck with what you get.

Start a blog at Shire Enterprises!  Fully installed blogs start at only $150 plus the cost of domain registration and hosting.

Enough with the commercial.  Enjoy the new look.

Tall Grass Arts Association, an art gallery in downtown Park Forest, IL, is a very busy place.

Now, Park Forest itself is an interesting town. By way of full disclosure, I do serve on the Park Forest Village Board, so I do have a bias in promoting my town. The village has struggled to bring businesses back to the town after its erstwhile “Center” suffered a devastating loss of businesses over a decade-and-a-half ago. But the Arts (capitalized, out of respect) never left. The downtown area is home to two art galleries, the Illinois Theater Company, a beautiful theater, and home office for the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Tall Grass gallery is thriving. Just came home from an opening of the new exhibit, Ink.

The wonderful collage at the top of this article is a collection of various pieces by current Tall Grass artists, something I threw together last night when doing the most recent update for the Tall Grass Arts Association web page. My most recent addition to the site is a collection of pages featuring various artists from the gallery. My favorite page is the face page with the artists’ names. The tiny “T” bullet next to the names is a nice touch, showing what CSS can do for us.

I maintain the site. The design, though table-based, is really very attractive. Put together by Sergio Gomez, it is very solid.
Thought you would appreciate the design, and the collage. We really have wonderful artists.