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.

The challenge is to combine all of these ideas into one Web site.  The desire is to take advantage of the Internet to increase sales of the promotional items, and increase regular clients for the consulting business.

I don’t know how all of this well gel into a single Web site yet, but the idea has a ton of potential.

More later.

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.

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.

a free enterprise-class solution, enables executives, marketers and website owners to understand how their users interact with their website and help increase online business. Google has completely redesigned the product and enhanced the feature set through new email reporting, customizable dashboards, improved map displays, and plain language descriptions to make important information more accessible.

I use Google Analytics on every site I maintain. It is handy, but I do find it misses hits. A much more reliable solution is Awstats. Some hosts charge extra to add and maintain Awstats on a domain, but it’s a much more reliable source, especially if one wants to justify advertising.

However, Google Analytics is free, and the graphics are very nice.

Read all about the new version here.

And it works well.

That’s part of the reason I resist moving to anything beyond DSL and Wi-Fi at this point in my life.  I don’t know how my world would change if I could suddenly set up shop anywhere.  Anywhere.  The town swimming pool could become yet another place for me to sit and design web pages, or work on eNews, or anything else.  I hardly remember the days of playing solitaire on Windows 3.1 any more.

Remember solitaire?

I remember setting up my first bulletin board on OS/2.  Yes, it was also called, “The Shire,” and I got to the point where I connected to FidoNet, and had a blast.  It was fun play, and I learned tons.  But, it also took time.

So, sometimes, it’s all about taking time off.  Working at home, the days can turn into evenings, weekends can disappear.  Sometimes we need to step back.

Webroot Cautions Users to Use Protection When Looking for Love Online

The story is from Webroot Software, Inc., providers of industry leading security software for consumers, enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses worldwide. The release comes on Valentine’s Day, and I have to hand it to them, this is very clever marketing.

To coincide with Valentine’s Day, Internet security developer Webroot Software today cautioned users to protect themselves and their families against dangerous Internet threats and identity thieves when looking for love online. Webroot warned users against inadvertently posting personal information that can in turn be used by spammers, spyware purveyors, online predators or identity thieves. There have also been reports of malware developers creating false profiles on various social networking sites to target and attract the large installed base of users.

The story goes on to give some very good advice on avoiding the pitfalls of spyware and other nasty things.

Read the full story here.

Full story and various links at Adobe here.

However, as eGovernment becomes more commonplace, the World Wide Web Consortium once again is at the forefront of ensuring that proper standards are in place.

Today, the W3C announced is holding a European Symposium on eGovernment on 1-2 February 2007 in Gijón, Asturias, Spain. Participants will discuss issues that governments and citizens currently face in their use of Web technology. The Symposium may lead to suggestions for improvements in W3C specifications or further W3C energies devoted to eGovernment initiatives.

eGovernment refers to the use of the Web or other information technologies by governing bodies to interact with their citizenry. Like any information provider, governments have found it useful and efficient to interact with customers — citizens — online, allowing them to file tax returns online, take drivers education classes, access forms, and vote. Access to information, and efficient and secure interactions, help ensure fair governance. Following interoperable, open Web standards helps ensure access to information to people with diverse capabilities, using various devices, and helps ensure that “the people’s data” will remain available long into the future.

See the full story here.