The popularity of established social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn as well as the rapid growth of newer platforms such as Pinterest and Google+ makes it hard for businesses to find a reason not to get involved in the ever expanding social me...

The emotional impact that color can have is evident in everything from the clothes we wear to the cars we drive. A yellow room may cause you to feel anxious while a blue one might leave you feeling calm or relaxed. When it comes to the branding of y...

This Friday, March 30th, Facebook is making Timeline mandatory for all business pages. If you haven't updated your Timeline by now, you have probably at least seen a glimpse of how different it is from the old Facebook business pages. Although many o...

Search Engine Optimization can be pretty overwhelming if you don't have any SEO experience. Here are 5 ways that you can dig into your website's SEO if you don't know where to start. Update Your Page Titles The <title> tag of a website is wha...

A simple example of making a mobile friendly website with responsive web design.

By now it's pretty clear that Google has far surpassed the mere search engine that it once was. But with so many tools, it becomes hard to stay on top of everything Google offers. A few months ago, Google revamped its offerings for marketers and adve...

Introduced last summer, Pinterest is a budding social network and perhaps among the most memorable start-ups of the past year. If you have yet to check it out for yourself, it essentially lets you create categories or “boards” that you then fill with...

Earlier this month, Google made a pretty major update to its search engine results. You may have noticed something different when you were logged into Gmail, but what exactly has changed? It’s something that Google is calling Search plus Your World,...

Google Analytics has so much to offer that trying to get the most out of it can be pretty overwhelming. With so many options and so much data, it can be easy to overlook and miss out on some of its greatest resources. One tool that’s relatively new ...

Earlier this month, Twitter introduced Fly, its latest version. Fly includes a new web interface as well as updates to the Twitter mobile application and TweetDeck. So what’s changed? The Layout The new Twitter introduces a layout in which your Twe...

Obtaining high quality links to your website is vital to search engine optimization. Here are ten ideas for finding the links that will ensure your link building campaign is successful. Write guest blog posts – there are quality blogs that exi...

Earlier this month, Google introduced its addition of the long awaited Google+ Pages to its budding social network. By expanding the ability to connect strictly with other people to connecting directly with local and global businesses, Google+ is bui...

Google for Advertisers offers countless tools for every aspect of internet marketing. The Insights section of Google for Advertisers is the perfect place to explore your marketing options and develop the plan that is right for you. Below is an outlin...

 Web Ascender launches the iPad app for Meritor (NYSE: MTOR)!

Web Ascender is looking to expand our team of web experts. If you have some experience building amazing websites with Drupal or writing slick Ruby code, then check out our Jobs page.

We're also looking for an Office Manager to help with our day-to-day operations.

While the idea of having your personal life story on a single page for the whole world to see may seem a bit invasive, the ability to create such a story about your brand may mean a lot for your business. The new Facebook Timeline was created to prev...

What is LinkedIn? The great thing about LinkedIn is that it’s one of the easiest social networking sites for anyone to use. Because it requires very little knowledge of social media, it can be a great marketing tool with much less of a time commitme...

If you aren’t already using Google Analytics for your website, you’re missing out on a lot of potentially game changing information. By simply adding some code to your website, Google Analytics will track each visitor that comes to your site, where t...

As the business of social media is built upon the idea of instantaneous news and updates, it comes as little surprise that the news specific to social media itself never seems to stop. Unfortunately, this makes it impossible to keep up with the ne...

If you’re on top of your marketing efforts when it comes to the internet, you likely have active business pages on Facebook, Twitter, and perhaps a few other social networking sites, but with the buzz surrounding Google +1, you may find yourself wond...

The evolution of fonts in web design has been a slow and steady one. In the early days of the internet there was Courier, then Times New Roman, followed by Arial and Verdana. For years, the list of “safe” fonts available to web designers was less tha...

Before you even start thinking about writing content for the web, be sure you know what you are trying to get out of it. Do you want to persuade customers to buy your product? Would you like to convince visitors of why you are better than the competi...

Perhaps the biggest reason for Google’s overwhelming popularity relates to its accessibility. While the search engine that has come to dominate its market is both easy to find and easy to use, using Google well is something that can only be accomplis...

If you aren’t writing great headlines, why write? Perhaps the most important part of any blog post is the headline. Your headline should do more than reiterate word for word the mundane content of your post. If you want me to read your article, you ...

With the recent introduction of Facebook’s new and improved social plugin Comments Box, third party websites can not only add Facebook comments to their website, but they also have the option to sync comments directly to user Facebook pages...

Web Ascender was recently recognized by the Lansing Business Monthly at the 17th Annual Greater Lansing Entrepreneurial Awards (GLEAs). Web Ascender’s Ryan Doom and Kevin Southworth were announced as the winners of the Interactive Services Entre...

The Like button is one of the most popular ways to integrate Facebook into your site. It is thankfully one of the easiest as well. From personal blogs to corporate websites, the Like button can act as a personal gateway between your site an...

If you haven’t heard, there is a new marketing phenomenon and it looks something like this: Known as a QR code, short for Quick Response, the image seen above is a barcode that can be read by mobile devices. The codes can store a variety of inform...

The average life span of a website design is about 3 years. Does that mean you then have invest a bunch of money to build a new one? Not necessarily. If your website was built using a content management system (CMS), virtual includes, ...

3 Must have photo applications for your iPhone. TiltShiftGen $.99 allows you to apply some create retro features to your photos. Change the brightness, saturation, and contrast Add a radial or linear blur Add ...

A handful of tips to help you improve your Facebook use with friends, family and co-workers.

Ryan shows you how to use the vector pen tool in Adobe Fireworks

Fireworks is an Adobe product similar to Photoshop but tailored more towards web design.  Here are the basics to doing masking.

Ryan recorded a short 10 minute video on doing very basic web design layout. Future tutorials on the way.

One of the great benefits of DotNetNuke is the ability to run multiple websites using the same DotNetNuke installation and database.  Each website within your DotNetNuke installation is also referred to as a Portal.  DotNetNuke can easily r...

In this video Kyle shows you how to create a nice button using Adobe Photoshop.

Learn about the basic building blocks of DotNetNuke.

The Vendor module and the Banner module make it possible to serve advertisements on your website.

The Web Ascender team donated over 160 hours to the Lansing Give Camp this weekend.  Here is a video to summarize the events!

The Forms and Lists module is a very versatile module that allows you to collect, save, and display data as you see fit. For example, you can create a list of staff, employee contact information, documents, articles, and many other things. ...

MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, what's the next social media fad that is going to sweep the nation?

The HTML Module is the most used module within DotNetNuke. Once this module is added to a page through the top control panel it simply gives you a rich text editor to add images, links, and text to the page.   After the module is added to...

A 50 minute video gives you the overview of a content management system and how easy it is to update your own website.

Pages are the fundamental building block for the navigation and content on your website. DNN allows you to create as many Pages as you like, and Pages can be organized into Parent/Child relationship (sub-pages) to form the navigation structure o...

Modules are the true functional elements of DotNetNuke. The majority of the items that you and your users will be interacting with are modules. After you have added a page or are on an existing page you will have Pane elements. You can...

One of the many benefits of DotNetNuke is the ability to easily control which users of the website can see and interact with what content. You can control the security and settings at the Page and Module level. This is useful if you wanted ...

  The Reports module provides a way to display the results of a database (SQL) query inside a module on your page.  In order to make good use of this module, you’ll need to be familiar with writing SQL Queries against a SQL Server database...

The Rich Text Editor is used in many of the DotNetNuke Modules and gives you the ability The Rich Text Editor is used in many of the DotNetNuke Modules and gives you the ability to edit text and HTML in a very simple and straightforward manner.&...

This free application will allow you to see how to properly build a web application to run offline using HTML 5 built in local storage.  The blog post and project review everything from localstorage options to offline manifest files.

This free jQuery plugin allows you to format information or documents in a nested drill down format like OS X.  You’ll need to be familiar with jQuery to use it, you can also see the full DNN module at DNNspot.com

Web Ascender built a ASP .NET MVC 2 web site solution to save and bill credit cards using our PayPal library we created.  Download this to save client credit cards and charge them, or to see how our framework is used in a real example.

Web Ascender created this extremely simple way to interface with PayPal’s standard, pro and express checkout processes.  No need to read through their documentation, just use this .NET library to start charging credit cards now!

 Are you a programmer who needs an easy way to get the latitude and longitude of an address or zip code? Use this free .NET library to geocode locations with either Google or Yaho’s API directly from your .Net code

Web Ascender has been working with DotNetNuke CMS for a very long time. During this time we have created 100’s of custom module.  We decided to create Dnnspot to share module that would benefit other individuals and companies

Follow these steps to create the perfect website landing page.

Web Ascender finishes first place in our summer kickball league!

Want to join the WA internet marketing team? Apply now.

Facebook recently launched the concept of @mentions for status updates.

Watch Dr. Ryan Wohlfert from Total Health Chiropractic talk about his experience with the Web Ascender team.

Web Ascender recently moved to a new office location.

Late last month, the Web Ascender team volunteered over 400 hours throughout the Give Camp weekend.

The crew from Web Ascender recently finished playing in a soccer league.

Brand new web servers installed for Web Ascender clients!

Web Ascender has openings this summer for web designers, internet marketers and sales interns.  Check out the details...

Having trouble dealing with reading text in the FCK Editor or Link Gallery? Learn two simple tricks to solve the problem with CSS.

The new office toy is a mini HD flip camera. I used it today to get a testimonial during a client visit. Quality is great for the size, this is completely un-edited.

Web Ascender has worked very hard over the last 365 days to meet the requirements to

Photos can make or break a website, in more ways than one. Great photos can grab attention and improve the appeal of your site.

Web Ascender employees Jeff McWherter and Michael Pardo created an application for the new Google Phone.

The daily stand up is a meeting held each day to ensure each member of a team is on the “same page” of a project.

New browsers come out all the time. Is there any reason to download the latest version?  You may be comfortable with your old browser, but new versions will speed up your browsing capability.

The majority of websites you come across today feature layouts that have a fixed width for content that fits in two, three, or even four columns and

Next to your skill set, the most important thing about developing for the web is the tools...

DotNetNuke is a great platform for managing a website.  It’s easy to add new pages, add new modules of functionality...

Agile is individuals and interactions over process and tools, customer collaboration over...

Web Ascender becomes a Microsoft Certified Partner and achieves a Microsoft Competency in delivering custom development solutions.

It has taken awhile for me to ‘get’ Twitter.  I have had an account for almost a year now but I did not dive in until a couple months ago...

Majority of the websites Web Ascender puts together is based on the DotNetNuke platform and we are hitting a new milestone

Ryan Doom spoke on Social Media today at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce building.  The presentation is available for download.

Ryan talks with Walter Sorg of WILS1320 this morning about internet social media websites such as Facebook and YouTube.

DotNetNuke – Show the logged in users name

The DotNetNuke documentation does not always have everything you need to customize the system. Often times you need to open up DotNetNuke in Visual Studio to review some of the methods that are available to you in the skins / ascx controls.

Here is how to show the first name, last name or show the username of the logged in user in DotNetNuke / DNN.

<%If HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated=True Then%>

Welcome

<%=UserController.GetCurrentUserInfo().FirstName%>

,

<%End If%>

 

<% If HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated=False Then %>

 | Sign Up

<% End If %>

 

<% If HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated=True Then %>

 | 

<% End If %>

To show the username of the logged in user in DotNetNuke you can use UserController.GetCurrentUserInfo().UserName

Whether you realize it or not, a lot of your time at the computer is probably spent moving your hands from the keyboard to the mouse...

Web Ascender compiles a list of some of our most popular website usability tips and has released the first of the 2 part series.

As web developers, sometimes we use terms and lingo that is not familiar to our clients. Some common...

Web Ascender has had a great 2007, and we look forward to a great 2008.  We have included some Web Ascender factoids that may be of some interest to all of our favorite people.

Many entrepreneurs and salesmen know that networking with other people is an important factor ...

A recent study reveals what your visitors are really looking at on your web pages...

Success is measured the same regardless of whether you are measuring your website, your business, the success of an event...

“Web 2.0” refers to the Web as a platform for a new paradigm in software delivery and functionality....

Many small businesses start off with buying a couple of computers, connecting them to ... 

If you’re responsible for sending out important emails, writing online articles...

The Long Tail” as you hear it used today is a term coined by ...

Embraces the Internet as a sales and marketing tool in 2007

Every salesperson should develop a marketing strategy specific to ...

Don't have enough time in the day? Have the feeling of...

Web Ascender and their clients get a brand new web server...

Read about why we overhauled the Web Ascender website...

Century 21 Looking Glass leverages technology ...

Well we have been in IT long enough to know that technology will fail you ...

 

Web Ascender is doing its part in the Lansing area to help the IT industry ...

I received the most interesting lead on a website yesterday, it was due to a returned library book....

We get asked what is RSS all the time, Ryan tries to break it down for ya'll.

Learn about some of the new features in Microsoft Office 2007, and why you should upgrade...

I installed Microsoft Windows Vista on my Table PC Laptop this week, here are my thoughts thus far...

Kevin and Ryan have decided to start a monthly newsletter where we share some information that will be useful for all computer users...

Ever wish you could just right click on an image file and resize it? Well you can with the Microsoft Image Resizer PowerToy. Download and install this application to get a new feature when you right click on any image with your mouse. I use this a few times a week to resize JPG photos from my digital camera to a more appropriate size for emailing and uploading to friends.

Cropper is a free, easy to use Windows application that allows you to capture specific areas of your computer screen. It is an application that you can drag and resize to put over a section of your screen, then hit enter and it will automatically save a picture of what is under the Cropper application to your computer. It is great for taking screen shots of websites, areas of a PDF document, cropping an area of a photo or sending a picture of your screen in an email to an associate. It is far better than ‘print screen’ and you can download it for free. I used Cropper to make the screenshots in this newsletter.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely complex subject because Internet Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN do not openly publish all the factors involved with calculating how they rank a website for particular keywords. It is up to the SEO specialists of the world to try different techniques, see what works and publish their findings to others. Here are a few simple “on-page” factors we have identified that can help your website tremendously in Yahoo, MSN, and Google. There are also a significant number of “off-page” factors that have an additional impact on your ranking, but we will cover those at a later date.

 

Mixtopia Premier of the Metro Detroit area is experiencing excellent results with Web Ascender’s Internet Marketing.

Mixtopia spent only $25 in the month of January, but their Internet ad was viewed over 3,000 times, and produced more than 50 qualified leads to their website. This has resulted in a number of phone calls and inquiries via their online contact form which has ultimately led to booking new bartending appointments.

Here is a quote from the co-founder of Mixtopia Premiere, Steve Csaki, after we revamped their internet strategies.
“What did you guys do! Our traffic has at least tripled”
www.mixtopiapremier.com

Mixtopia Premier uses the Standard SiteCTO plan with 1 Google AdWords package that Web Ascender manages.

Here at Web Ascender we made all of our own online videos. We primarily have two types of videos we make:

• Computer screen capture with voice over
• Digital Video of a persor with voice over