Michigan Web Design Blog

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.

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!

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

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

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...

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.

Welcome

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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...

“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 ... 

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

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

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