Parkway Utility District

We were asked to design the site of Parkway Utility District, a Houston area municipal utility district providing sewer, trash pickup and water services to residents in northeast Houston. They required ease of updating by district board members, document uploads and some SEO. We chose CMS Made Simple because it has an intuitive User Uploads module and an easy to use backend that allows meta data on a per-page basis. Plus, there was talk down the road of a members-only login capability and CMS-MS has its wonderful Front End Users (FEU) module that would take care of that nicely. A custom PHP script calculates the District’s monthly board meeting date and displays it on the front page.

Effective Monday, March 30, Pixelita Designs will be open for business as follows:

Monday-Friday

8AM-3:30PM 7AM-2:30PM

Saturday-Sunday

Available by prearrangement only; hourly rates (and in some cases, additional rush fees apply; check your specific contract) in effect for all telephone calls, chat sessions and work requests.

Stonefield Villas Homeowners Association

We were asked to redesign the web site of the Stonefield Villas Homeowners Association. It had been running on WordPress but WP’s document upload process was rather buggy and didn’t work on all browsers. And since they weren’t going to do any blogging, we suggested a “hard core” CMS, CMS Made Simple. It has an intuitive User Uploads module and an easy to use photo gallery module. They were sold. Other modules used include Calendar, Bookmarks, Events, and a relatively new module, TrueType, which allows renderable text to be displayed anywhere on the site. (We are using Edwardian ITC on the titles, to match the banner font.)

We’ve recently invested in a great project management system called ActiveCollab. One of its features, besides being an awesome project management system, is that it allows our clients to submit support tickets right from our web site. So if you need help with a project, want to check on the status of something we’re working on for you or need any other kind of support from us, feel free to send us a support ticket. You’ll find the link in the sidebar under Resources. Remember, you don’t need to be an existing Pixelita Designs client to ask for help; this is a quick way to get the ball rolling!

Submit a help desk ticket now.

We’ve been getting a lot of requests lately for help troubleshooting a WordPress issue or just fixing up someone’s existing site. While we enjoy creating web sites from scratch, we also love helping people with their existing web sites, even if we didn’t create them. So we are now offering a new feature called Service Credits. We’ve set up a page which explains the concept, how it works, whether it’s something you might be interested in and how to avail yourself of it.

In a nutshell, Service Credits are like cellphone minutes. You purchase blocks of our time which are good for one year from date of purchase. With those Service Credits, you can ask us to upgrade any scripts or programs your site is using, install and configure new plugins and modules, backup your site and/or databases, troubleshoot any problems you are having, and add and update your site’s content. Unlike cellphone minutes, you can roll the credits over from month to month, but bear in mind they do expire one year from date of purchase.

note: Graphic Art Services are specifically excluded from the list of items covered by Service Credits. Due to the nature of graphic art services, those will be contracted as our other services are, with a proposal and quote for specific design services.

It’s about time to bite the bullet and upgrade this site from WordPress 2.0.11 (latest stable legacy version) to 2.6.5 (latest stable version). We’d like to take advantage of some of the cool new plugins out there and … heh, it’s just TIME. So bear with us over the next 24-48 hours while we upgrade our database and fix any resulting nits.

Jacob Cass at JustCreativeDesign.com is holding a charity event celebrating his blog’s first birthday (Happy Birthday, Jacob!). And Pixelita Designs is sponsoring a couple of really cool prizes to help Jacob and his readers celebrate in style!

Of course we can’t top the $1200 Olympus digital camera, but we can come close! We’re donating one free blog makeover for your WordPress, TextPattern, Movable Type or Blogger blog. This is a $650 value. It includes one custom design by Pixelita’s graphic artist, Ivan Minic, coded to your blog platform of choice, retrofitting any plugins you currently have. We’re also donating one Flickr Pro account, a $20 value!

So how do you get your meathooks on these and the other 66 prizes? Jacob’s made it very easy. Just donate to Blog Action Day Poverty Fund or if you’re short on cash, write a blog post about design, design theory or something similar. So you really have no excuse, and you just might win something. (When people get together to give, EVERYONE is a WINNER; there are NO LOSERS.) So what are you waiting for? Head on over to Jacob’s place and make your contribution now!

Pixelita Designs is happy to report that we are back online and will be ready for business at 8 a.m. Central Daylight Time on Tuesday, September 16. We sustained no property damage to speak of and power was restored this afternoon. Again, we appreciate your patience during this difficult time.

BLUSD.org

We were asked to redesign the web site of a 501c non-profit, Blues Lovers United of San Diego (BLUSD). The site was running straight HTML/ASP pages on a IIS server. We converted the site to an Apache server environment and redesigned it to run with the latest and greatest WordPress. The main feature of the site is a comprehensive “gigs” calendar. We are still working on the perfect solution for that now, since it was formerly an Access database. Right now, the organization is taking advantage of the Event Calendar and GigPress plugins to manage various events. Custom code pulls in a featured event onto the front page and there are custom Links and Member Bands pages that pull in selected Link categories. We also designed a host of banners which change depending on which WP page you are on. This too is customized PHP coding. The organization is very pleased with the new design and the site is much easier to navigate.

Now through September 30 we are having a sale on web site redesigns and blog makeovers. If you have an existing blog or web site running on WordPress, CMS Made Simple, Movable Type, Expression Engine, PixelPost or TextPattern, take 30% off the price of a blog design (these run anywhere from $650 to over $1250, so the savings can be significant!). Just sign a contract before September 30, 2008. You must retain the same underlying CMS in order to take advantage of the sale.

What are you waiting for? Sign up now!