Custom Form Elements

Using a combination of javascript and CSS, we created custom form element including checkboxes and radio buttons to give body&eden the ultimate custom look.

Custom Cart

The first item on the list was to get body&eden away from the Pay Pal checkout. We offered consulting to get them started with Authorize.NET, and created a custom cart for their website. Special features of this cart include quantity fields on the individual drink pages, custom AJAX updates on the cart page to check for minimum delivery amounts, a custom checkout page for different orders, custom receipt page, and multiple custom transaction emails to both customer and vendor.

Content to Data Base

All content was pushed to a MySQL database for the ability to manage content in the future. Our MySQL database schema also holds zip codes that are used to verify delivery radius, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) content that can be updated in the event body&eden chooses to run ad campaigns in the future, and all product information. Pushing content to a database is highly advised for companies showing such large growth as body&eden, as well as anyone who wants control over any content.

Wholesale Contact Form

We created a contact form that would supply body&eden with pertinent information in regards to wholesale and resale. This contact form is protected by a custom captcha to help prevent autobots and spam.

Quick Order Form

We created a quick order form for body&eden and their customers. With design from Jennifer Schwartz, we created custom scripts to add elements to the cart on a single page, giving repeat customers an easy option to order quickly.

Custom Drop Down Menu

Because body&eden is a rapidly growing startup, we gave them a place to put all of their content without heavily modifying their current design. This drop down menu uses custom CSS and javascript, allowing for 1, 2, 3, and 4 column block layouts.

Custom WordPress News & Events

Body & Eden wanted a very custom look for their news and events, that did not resemble a blog. We created a custom theme, and created several custom plugins for the WordPress framework to meet their specifications. This includes feature images for all news on the main news page and custom categories. Custom post types were created for direct web links, articles written by body&eden (with copy), and PDF’s related to body&eden.

Continuing Partnership

We are very excited to have body&eden as a client. They have developed a strategic business plan, and discovered enormous growth within their first year of operation. From their choice of location, branding, marketing, advertising, and partnerships body&eden is well on their way to becoming a major player in the superfood tonic and herbal elixir market. Startups, take note, this is how it is done!

Landing Page in Action

We created a custom javascript slider that would work on all devices, and kept the primary view-port to maintain visibility on iOS devices. Three custom slides were created to market the three primary services offered by Brett Fisher Group (management consulting, executive search, and new product development). We also provided extensive links to social media, and any contact info the client might need within the header and footer.

News & Tweets

Brett Fisher Group offers management consulting services to clients, which requires constant posts of the latest jobs available. We created a custom script to pull the latest news article for the Brett Fisher Group Blog, and trim it down to fit nicely on the home page.

We also created a custom script to tie into the Twitter API, and get the latest Tweet from the Brett Fisher Group Twitter page. As Twitter limits the number of requests to an App, this script also provides a caching feature, just in case traffic gets high.

Custom Right Sidebar

We created a custom right sidebar containing a vertical menu to select subcategories within pages. We choose a non-ajax solution to help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Blog & Testimonials

Both the Brett Fisher Blog and Testimonials are created around the WordPress platform allowing Brett Fisher Group to easily update their news and testimonials. A custom theme was created for the Blog and Testimonials, mimicking the rest of the site.

Final Thoughts

It was an absolute pleasure to work with a client with such passion and attention to detail. Brett lightened up the load by knowing exactly what he was after. His background in business, art, and law are a must have for any business. Thanks so much Brett Fisher Group, and we look forward to more partnerships in the future.

Working closely with MIT Consulting, we designed a logo that emphasized the services offered by MIT Consulting, Information Technology. This logo is very fluid between print and digital formats, and emphasizes the solid structure and stability of MIT Consulting IT services with a heavy block font.

Business Cards

Based upon the requests from MIT Consulting we developed business cards that will be shown throughout Apple Stores in LA, and bring better visibility to MIT Consulting. These cards mimic the color palette used on the MIT website, and emphasize the professional services offered by MIT Consulting. Special thanks to Sharpe Printing, of Wichita, KS, for their valuable consultation on pre-press.

Website

A complete website re-design was completed for MIT consulting. This design was created to emphasize the services, expertise, and difference from MIT and other IT companies. Using the new Google Font API we were able to directly embed fonts that would have required image replacement techniques only a few fears ago. The home page was designed around a primary viewport for iPad, and all secondary information below the primary viewport is available through vertical scrolling including specific service entities, and recent news. News is captured from the MIT news, which is a WordPress framework with custom theme. Additional goodies include an AJAX based vertical menu powered by jQuery on multiple pages, and extensive use of HTML5 and CSS3.

bMobile is our newest mobile development project designed to appear as a native application, but be accessible from any device over the web. Now you can have the best of both worlds, a mobile, cross device, application that is accessible over the web, and the ability to launch your application in device specific App Stores like iTunes. Naysayers will point out “But what if I want to use device hardware such as contact lists, the camera, or accelerometer?” Well, you can do that also from a mobile web application with a little extra code sugar. This is a revolutionary way to capture your customers and clients through mobile devices, anytime, anywhere. As an added bonus, iPhone users can “Add to Home Screen”, giving them a native application feel with no toolbars and a start-up screen, a dedicated icon on their home screen, and all without ever having to visit an App Store.

User Interface & Layout

We choose to run a small javascript slide show on our home screen, to mimic the design of our normal website. Our slide show presents a few of the many options we have available for our clients when developing mobile applications. The slide show also allows for native swipe gestures, just in case its not quick enough for you.

We ran a dedicated toolbar on the base of the bMobile application, with icons familiar to the user. As we are limited to 5 icons when most smart phones are in portrait view, we choose only the core components of our services. Each toolbar icon brings up a nested list to further drill down into services provided by Byron Baker Design, LLC.

Graphing Application Gallery

One of the primary things we wanted to showcase within our application was the ability to deliver rich touch activated graphs ready for mobile deployment. We choose to pull some live data about one of our favorite companies, Apple, and display this data for our users. Live market data is shown in our line graph, and the current weather conditions at Apple headquarters in Cupertino is shown in a gauge style environment. Additionally, we have provided an interactive pie chart, showing a variety of statistics on mobile device market share by manufacturer. Our pie chart allows the user to tap on a segment of the pie for a detailed description of that segment, rotate the pie with a slide gesture, and remove segments by tapping on the legend items.

Live Twitter Feed

Our favorite social platform gets a nice place with our live Twitter Feed bringing you the latest Tweets from us. The possibilities of coarse are endless, and we could have easily applied this technology to LinkedIn, Twitter, or Google+, but we love Twitter and their Application Programming Interface is a model that we wish everyone would follow!

iPhone & iPad Native App Interface

For iPhone and iPad users, you get a little sugar added to your experience. Tapping the bookmark icon in the toolbar allows you to add bMobile to your home screen. Now you have our application with an icon placed on your home screen. Not only does this give you easy access to our application, but you also get the feel of a native application without toolbars and searchbars. Now you can see the beauty of what a mobile web application can give you, the look and feel of a native application, without the App Store. Beautiful…

Enterprise and Large-Cap Business Deployment

So your company has just deployed several thousand iPad's to your sales team, and you have several thousand more Blackberry mobile phones deployed to your management staff. Normally if you wanted an application to deliver the latest data to your teams, you would have to develop applications for both devices, and install that application on all of your companies mobile devices. But there may be an easier method, deploying a mobile web application inside your companies intranet that will run on all devices via the web browser. This eliminates the headache of developing for multiple platforms, and installing the application on all of your devices. Simply upload the application to your companies secure server, and your teams can access your data and application from any device. I don’t think we have to say it…. major game changer.

View Parent Fitness Website

View Parent Fitness Design

Initial Client Analysis

Byron Baker Design began this project with the sole purpose of helping Dr. Brenner to help others, and present his services in the professional light that they deserve. Among our design considerations was to give the end user a feeling of who Dr. Brenner was with special emphasis on his credentials, national broadcast appearances, numerous books, lecture series, and his unique house calls. With all this to cover, our journey began…

Wireframe and Initial Layouts

We began with an analysis of Dr. Brenner's needs, and the needs of his user base. With more and more people accessing web based content by mobile devices, we choose a static landscape layout. This layout presents many advantages to developing for mobile devices such as iPhone and iPad, by allowing the user to maximize the devices screen real estate. Additionally, we chose to exclude Adobe Flash from this entire project in favor of Javascript and specifically jQuery. By making this decision early in the design, we set the coarse for all interaction and motion graphics in this project.

Our final layout used high contrast black and white for the primary color palette as a subtle and professional touch. We also chose to use jQuery to allow the user to advance through the pages with a sliding affect activated by touch numbered buttons, keeping the viewport fixed. This allows the user to easily navigate the site with touch events on a mobile device. Sliders were also employed for horizontal scrolling of content.

mmmmmmm….. Javacript

This website is our heaviest use of jQuery to date. All navigation menus employ custom jQuery scripting to create drop downs and sliding content. Dr. Brenner had requested that much of the content be accessible to the user throughout the site. By employing menus into the primary navigation, we provided the user with the option to access all major portions of the website.

All copy was presented in a custom jQuery slider that allows the content to be broken into small viewable segments, which are indexed by number. Our goal was to not overwhelm the reader with large amounts of text, and hold interest by allowing them to access the following page, or subsequent pages, through indexed numbers. We also used custom event handling to change the images shown next to the copy in many sections to enhance the users experience.

Contact & Information Done Right

For those of you who have a publicly accessible website containing your email, you know what happens….. SPAM. It is a inconvenient truth of the internet today, if you put your companies email out on the web, or if you employ contact or lead forms without certain precautions, you are going to get a visit from the SPAM demon. We want our clients to only receive information and requests when they are valid, so we employed a nice AJAX driven contact form with security precautions that allows visitors to Parent Fitness to easily contact Dr. Brenner, without Dr. Brenner having to worry about SPAM.

We also provided a convenient map to Dr. Brenner’s office in Sherman Oaks, California via the Google Maps API. This map goes one step further, by allowing the user to get driving directions to Dr. Brenner’s office via location information provided within the browser.

Twitter API Integration

We created a custom Twitter API class to pull all of the latest tweets from Dr. Brenner’s Twitter account. Because Twitter receives such an enormous amount of requests, we set up a local cron job on the server that pulls in the latest Tweets and caches them to a local file. This not only helps Twitter, but helps improve the load time of Dr. Brenner’s custom Twitter application.

Dr. Brenner’s Twitter app also uses the latest @anywhere technology from Twitter, allowing guest to hover over @mentions and other information contained in Tweets to see information about Dr. Brenner and his followers. Very custom, very nice, and a very effective way for visitors to view the latest from Dr. Brenner without leaving the website.

Custom Magento Shopping Cart

Magento is quickly becoming the most popular open source shopping cart on the web today. We prefer Magento for its model-view-controller (MVC) structure, and the ability to access the large amount of extensions available within the Magento community.

Dr. Mark L. Brenner – Store is a custom Magento shopping cart that was themed to match the Parent Fitness website. Dr. Brenner has the ability to sell all of his content from books, to DVD’s, to audio and video downloads all within the Magento cart. Another great advantage of the Magento platform is great SEO and custom reporting for monitoring sales.

Custom Video, No You Tube Here

Dr. Brenner has had many guest appearances on popular television shows such as “The Today Show” and “The View.” With the growing importance of delivery to mobile devices and many browsers, we developed a custom PHP class to detect the end users device platform and browser. With this information, we deliver the proper content to the user so that video plays seamlessly on any device. We also created custom interfaces for viewing video content, so that the user had the option of viewing the content on a simulated flat screen TV, or going full screen.

The Finally

It was an absolute pleasure working with Dr. Brenner, and helping him to showcase his many ventures through an interactive website. This website entices interaction from the user to learn more about the services that Dr. Brenner offers, and promotes the use of social networking and a contact form to reach Dr. Brenner. I would like to personally thank Dr. Mark L. Brenner for the opportunity to showcase such a rich collection of hard work and dedication.

View Duffer Snuffer Website

View Duffer Snuffer Project Details

Branding Analysis

Eddie and Troy had already dove into the exact demographic targeting of their product, and Byron Baker Design’s goal was to deliver to that demographic the Duffer Snuffer. As a new brand, we arrived at a clean slate. The Duffer Snuffer is targeted at men and women, aged 18 – 70, who are avid players of golf. Secondary targeting is to the actual golf courses, to clean up the mess of cigarettes left behind by golfers on the tee boxes, fairway, roughs, and greens. To deliver the Duffer Snuffer brand to our target, we wanted to develop a clean, easy to navigate site that emphasizes the importance of the Duffer Snuffer to the golfer and the coarse. Heavy consideration was also placed on SEO and easily modifiable meta, title, h1, and copy to optimize any digital marketing campaigns in the future. As we set out on our mission to establish the Duffer Snuffer brand, we also noted the importance of social media, email campaigns, online advertising, and the use of video.

Competitive Analysis

When asked “Who is your Competition”, Eddie and Troy replied “Nobody!”. This placed added importance on the branding of this product to the consumer, and developing a satisfying experience on the buyers first discovery. We took a quick look around at well established golf brands, their use (and over use) of green, and how they establish their conversion process for digital advertising, branding, and sales.

Intro to the Solution

We started with a lot of media material provided by Eddie and Troy of Fairway Innovations, LLC. Using this material, we began from the ground up on design with our wire frame. We chose a static, non-scrolling layout that would occupy the landscape of a minimum 1024×768 canvas. We chose a two row, offset column design for the index, a three column layout for the purchase page, two columns for the about section, and a three column weighted center for the news. This layout was chosen based on the content needed and some assumptions about how the end user would interact. The index page contained a large Flash movie with an introduction advertisement for the Duffer Snuffer, and an interactive description based on the product packaging.

The Framework

Byron Baker Design uses a custom PHP framework based on the Model-View-Controller pattern. This pattern is ideal for most websites and digital applications and has the huge advantage of separating the data layer from presentation. We created several custom PHP classes to handle bringing in RSS feeds from our WordPress news platform, adding image support to the RSS files, and displaying them on our home page. We also made heavy use of the jQuery javascript API, as well as a few selected methods from Scriptaculous.

A Lot of Flash

Using the Adobe Flash production environment, we created several custom AS3 classes to handle repetitive code, and keep the timeline clean. For any developers out there, if you have ever had to scrub a timeline looking for code, you know what we mean. Using object oriented AS3 makes your production file clean, and allows you to organize your code so that you can make easy modifications in the future. We also used the Grant Skinner package to provide easy effects and event handling between our tweens, and utilized the new TLF text within Flash CS5. We always provide alternative content for iPhone and iPad with the use of SWF object, and some neat tricks for delivering content to the search engines, as we know they don’t read Flash movies.

The Design

We created all of the graphics for this site from scratch, with the help of a few elements from Fairway Innovations. We choose a subtle gray theme for high contrast with the branded logo and the use of green in the headers and copy. We also created all of our buttons in a sprite file, for a more appealing user interface that was easy to use on touch devices such as iPad and iPhone.

WordPress News Platform

We stressed the importance of new content to Fairway Innovations in helping establish their brand, and to do this we used our favorite publishing platform WordPress. We took our HTML and graphics, and created a custom theme to mimic the other pages of the website. We integrated feeds from Twitter and Facebook, as well as social networking buttons for each. With the ability to auto post to both Facebook and Twitter, we helped Eddie and Troy reduce the time it takes them to post to both of these networks. Additionally, we have the ability to extend the News section to do anything required by Fairway Innovations LLC in their publishing needs and beyond. As an added feature, we used cron jobs to limit the pull from Facebook and Twitter to one per hour, and set up a specific cron job for database backup, which also emails the database to Fairway Innovations once per week.

Email Campaigns and Facebook Customized

We wanted to deliver the same experience for the Duffer Snuffers email campaigns as we did for their website. Using our favorite 3rd party software, we generated custom branded HTML email templates for use by Fairway Innovations in marketing their product. Additionally, we created custom Facebook tabs, to show much of the same content that was included on their website through their Facebook page, increasing their ability to obtain customers through social sharing networks.

Video

We emphasized the importance of using video as a channel to communicate the Duffer Snuffer product to Fairway Innovations customer base. By using YouTube, we created a branded channel where viewers can subscribe to the latest videos on the Duffer Snuffer. We also created a plug-in for WordPress that would deliver YouTube content through the Flash Player to users on PC and Mac, and as an MP4 file to users on iPad, iPhone, or mobile devices.

Fore!

“Fore!” is shouted as a warning during a golf game when it appears possible that a golf ball may hit other players or spectators. Our goal was to extend the Duffer Snuffer brand to the demographic brought to us by Fairway Innovations for their product, and we don’t mind hitting anyone when we launched the brand either. We accomplished this with our vast knowledge of the online marketplace, extensive background in developing digital applications, and latest design trends such as CSS3. Furthermore, we empowered Fairway Innovations with the ability to post the latest news on their product (even via mobile phone), use social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter to market their product, launch email campaigns targeted at specific audiences (think customers, golf courses, vendors), and do this in all in a very time efficient manner. It was a pleasure working with Eddie and Troy from Fairway Innovations, LLC. I once heard: “To be the best, you have to surround yourself with the best”, and in this is the perfect case in point to prove that.

Overview

Email is an absolute necessity in today’s business environment. Take the following data performed by an Osterman Research survey as an example:

• An Osterman Research survey conducted in September 2009 found that 81% of email users regularly check their work-related email from home on weekdays, 78% do on weekends and 60% do so on vacation. The survey also found that despite the growth of alternative communication tools, 45% report that over the past six to twelve months their use of email is increasing.
• A May 2009 Osterman Research survey found that 97% of email users consider it to be important or extremely important in doing their work. By contrast, only 86% of users felt this strongly about the telephone, while 45% felt this strongly about instant messaging capabilities.
• Osterman Research estimates that the worldwide installed base for Microsoft Exchange is 160 million users, making it the leading business-grade messaging system in use in terms of total number of seats.

Clearly, email is absolutely critical to users and the organizations that deploy it, and it is becoming more so over time. Byron Baker Design, LLC wants you to take full advantage of the cost savings provided by our hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010 lineup.

The Bottom Line

A growing number of organizations are finding that the way to accomplish this is through the use of Microsoft Exchange as a hosted service, a model in which a remote third party provider manages all backend services for a flat monthly per user fee. The advantages of this approach for organizations that want to realize the benefits of Exchange are that uptime of the Exchange infrastructure can be very high and the cost of managing Exchange can be reduced significantly – typically more than 50% compared to on-premises management, as shown in the following table. Further, the use of a hosted Exchange service allows an in-house IT staff to be deployed to other projects that will provide more value to the organization as a whole. Byron Baker Design, LLC offers hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010, and we want your organization to discover how hosted Exchange can save you serious money.

Microsoft Exchange Server is the leading business-grade messaging system employed in North America and is currently used by 160 million people worldwide and growing. Exchange offers a number of capabilities, including email, calendaring, task management, address lists, and access to shared document repositories, and other functions. Additionally, Exchange is fully compatible with iPhone, Android, and Blackberry mobile devices. While Exchange was originally introduced in June 1996, and has been upgraded several times since to include additional and enhanced features, the current version is Exchange 2010 which released in November 2009.

Enter Hosted Exchange

Hosted Exchange has been offered for several years by a large and growing number of providers around the world, and there are presently around 150 providers of hosted Exchange services worldwide. As of late 2009, there are roughly 10 million users of hosted Exchange worldwide, up from just 1.5 million seats in mid-2007.

Who Is The Ideal Candidate For Hosted Exchange?

There is a perception that hosted Exchange is intended only for small businesses, while on-premise Exchange is better suited to mid-sized and large organizations. While this has been the conventional wisdom for some time, and while smaller organizations can realize the most significant per-seat savings from the use of hosted Exchange, larger organizations are realizing the benefits of migrating to a hosted Exchange model. For example, GlaxoSmithKline migrated 100,000 users to hosted Exchange in March 2009, and many more are following in their footsteps.

Benefits for IT

What Benefits Can You Expect?

Why should your organization consider migrating to hosted Exchange? There are a number of important reasons to consider doing so that are focused on direct costs, opportunity costs, security, and other benefits as discussed in the following paragraphs.

Lower Costs

Many decision makers believe that an internally managed Exchange deployment is less expensive to deploy and operate than hosted Exchange. While in some cases that perception is accurate, very often it is not. Recent studies by Osterman Research have modeled that an on-premise, 100-seat Exchange deployment costs nearly $40 per seat per month over a three-year system lifetime, while a 1,000-seat deployment costs just over $24 per seat per month. Given that hosted Exchange offerings are priced substantially less than this, the direct cost savings from using hosted Exchange are substantial. It is also important to note that leading providers of hosted Exchange include the licensing costs as part of their service, further reducing the cost of hosted compared to on-premise Exchange.

More Predictable Costs

A hosted Exchange deployment provides more predictable costs than on-premise deployments, because the cost per seat is fixed over the lifetime of the contract with the hosting provider. This predictability of costs manifests itself in two important ways:

• Unforeseen problems can create additional costs for an on-premise deployment, including natural disasters, power outages, moves to new facilities and other events that can add to the cost of managing on-premise Exchange in a somewhat unpredictable manner.
• An organization that continually adds users will, at some point, reach the maximum number of users that its infrastructure will support and will then have to add servers and other infrastructure to support new users. This creates a step function in the total cost of ownership for an Exchange environment can drive up the cost of Exchange management dramatically.

Reduced Opportunity Costs

Among the more important issues that any organization should consider is that of the opportunity cost of IT staff members or, in smaller organizations, individuals who are charged with maintaining on-premise systems. Most decision makers understand that finding and retaining qualified IT staff is not particularly easy. As a result, in-house IT staff members should be used in a manner that allows them to provide maximum benefit to their employer, while also giving them a satisfying work experience that will motivate them not to go elsewhere. Using hosted Exchange frees IT staff members from the requirement to constantly monitor the servers to ensure continuous uptime, freeing them for work that is not only more interesting to them, but also more compelling for the business.

With hosted Exchange, IT staff can be deployed on projects that offer more competitive value to the organization and can also result in greater IT job satisfaction. For example, if an IT staff member can manage a messaging capability very well, he or she provides some level of value to the organization. However, if the same staff member spent the same amount of time implementing new CRM capabilities that could convert a higher proportion of prospects into customers, it is very likely that much greater value could be realized from the same level of effort. The solution is simple, hosted Exchange allows your IT staff more time to apply to services that provide a greater return, while reducing work related stress and possible overtime.

Access To Exchange Expertise

Although Exchange is an easy system for users to employ, it is not a simple system to manage internally. It requires expertise in a number of areas, particularly when deploying a new version of the system, it requires expertise in each of the several server roles that comprise the Exchange platform, and it requires expertise in various other technologies that are integral to the Exchange ecosystem. The cost to develop this expertise can be high and, for smaller organizations, often prohibitive. In contrast, the use of a hosted Exchange provider can offer access to well-trained technical support staff that are available on a 24×7 basis that can typically resolve problems quickly and with minimum expertise from their customers.

The service aspect of hosted Exchange should not be overlooked when considering a provider of the service. Because few companies operate on an 8-to-5, Monday through Friday schedule, it is just as critical to have access to Exchange expertise at 11:00pm on a Saturday night as it is during normal business hours. This allows users to have their issues resolved in a timely manner without the cost and burden of maintaining in-house staff to manage a help desk, etc. In short, a specialist will virtually always offer better service and support when resolving Exchange-related problems.

Robust Business Continuity And Data Backup

One of the more compelling benefits of hosted Exchange is the fact that a third party is managing the entire backend infrastructure, thereby minimizing the impact of major and minor services outages and the ensuing loss of email that can impact any business. For example, a hurricane or tornado can knock on-premise systems out for days or even weeks, while less serious problems like power outages or storms can bring down messaging capabilities for hours or even a few days. While these events can also impact providers of hosted Exchange services, leading providers will back up their customers’ email, allowing uninterrupted receipt of email for customers until they can come back online. This is something that a non-technical staff member or senior executive can do.

Further, in the event that a customer’s facilities are made unavailable for any length of time, employees can still access their hosted Exchange accounts from anywhere using a Web browser, a mobile device or a copy of Outlook or Entourage on their home computer.

Rapid Deployment And Scaling

One of the chief benefits of hosted Exchange is the speed with which email services can be deployed. For example, deploying hosted Exchange typically requires little more than the modification of an MX record and possibly a change in the configuration of locale mail clients. Adding new users to an existing hosted Exchange deployment normally requires just some simple modifications in a Web-based administration tool. This makes it easy to add or eliminate small numbers of users, or even entire business operations,which is particularly important when integrating merged or acquired companies into an Exchange infrastructure.

Deployment Flexibility

A hosted Exchange capability allows organizations to be more flexible in the way that they deploy email to their employees. For example, a company may opt to manage Exchange in-house for its corporate headquarters, but provide hosted Exchange to each of its field offices that do not have an in-house IT staff. This allows the organization to provide highly available messaging services that provide a consistent user experience across the entire organization, but at much lower cost than if the IT staff was used to manage the satellite offices.

Relatively Painless Migration To New Exchange Versions

Migrating from one version of Exchange to another is just that – a migration, not an upgrade. Because Exchange does not allow an in-place upgrade to a new version, the cost of migration can be very high and even prohibitive for smaller organizations. Using a hosted Exchange provider, on the other hand, minimizes or even eliminates the cost of migration, since some providers will migrate their customers to a new version at no charge. Not only does this minimize the IT pain and the time required to migrate, not to mention the potential for downtime in the system, but it also dramatically reduces the overall cost of Exchange management over the long term.

Minimizing The Impact On The Internal Network

Another important benefit of hosted Exchange is that much of the network traffic that would normally take place with an on-premise deployment of Exchange is transferred to the hosting provider. For example, a hosted Exchange provider that also offers antivirus and anti-spam filtering will eliminate 75% or more of the email that would normally come into the network as spam, only to be quarantined and eventually discarded by end users. This saves significantly on both bandwidth and storage, costs that are growing exponentially and unpredictably in smaller organizations.

Robust Physical Security

Virtually all leading hosted Exchange providers operate very secure physical facilities that include video surveillance capabilities, multiple employee access points using multi factor authentication, tracking and monitoring tools and other capabilities that protect their customers’ data from being compromised. In most cases, the security provided by hosted Exchange providers exceeds the security that their customers could afford to deploy.

Measures, such as SAS 70 audits or WebTrust certification, can provide an extra level of assurance for customers. SAS 70 Type II, for example, is a set of professional auditing standards that assesses the internal controls that a provider uses, as well as the auditor’s opinion on the effectiveness of these controls.

The Ability To Focus On Core Business Processes

The use of hosted Exchange allows an organization to focus more on its core business processes rather than devoting resources to managing its Exchange infrastructure. While many IT decision makers believe that managing messaging capabilities is part of their core competency, that is really not the case in most organizations. Letting a hosted Exchange provider manage key messaging capabilities is most often a better use of IT staff members’ time, as discussed above.

The Ability To Deploy A Hybrid Solution

Many organizations will want to maintain at least some part of their Exchange infrastructure in-house. The use of a hosted Exchange provider allows this sort of hybrid solution. For example a corporate headquarters with thousands of users could have Exchange deployed in-house, while remote offices that do not have dedicated IT staff or specialized Exchange expertise could use a hosted solution. This permits all users in the company to have the same experience with Outlook or Entourage and with their mobile devices, while at the same time driving down the cost and complexity of managing Exchange. Another variant of the hybrid approach can be to offer hosted Exchange for some users and a less feature-rich email offering for other users whose needs are not as sophisticated. For example, an organization could deploy hosted Exchange for office workers while deploying a mail-only, non-Exchange solution for workers behind retail counter or on a factory floor.

Benefits for End Users

While IT can benefit significantly from a hosted Exchange deployment, so can end users. Among the many user benefits associated with the use of hosted Exchange are those discussed below.

A Variety Of Access Options

A hosted Exchange account can be accessed via Microsoft Outlook on Windows, Microsoft Entourage on the Mac, and from any leading Web browser, including Apple Safari. This permits users to access their email, calendar, tasks, address lists, Exchange public folders and other content and data sources from virtually any desktop, laptop, netbook or other platform. In addition, an Exchange account can also be accessed from any POP or IMAP client, including Yahoo!’s Zimbra Desktop.

Further, Microsoft recently introduced Entourage Web Services Edition, allowing Entourage users to access all of the features available in Exchange. Previous versions of Entourage permitted access only to the email and calendar functions of Exchange.

Windows And Mac Support

While Apple Mail, the mail client that comes with Mac OS X, has allowed users to access Exchange for many years as a POP or IMAP client, the new version of OS X introduced in August 2009 – Snow Leopard –provides full support for Exchange. Exchange support is also built into iCal, the default Mac calendaring application; and Address Book, all of which come standard on a Mac. While lacking some of the features of Entourage, Mail, iCal and Address Book provide robust and native functionality for hosted Exchange users.

Mobile Access

In addition to a variety of desktop and browser-based platforms, a hosted Exchange account can also be accessed using Windows Mobile, which is currently supported by the majority of mid-sized and large organizations; as well as BlackBerry devices and iPhones, among other platforms. This is a critical issue, since a large and growing number of email users consider their mobile platform to be a critical component of their email access – for some users, it is their primary email platform after hours.

Also in the context of mobility, for organizations that employ BlackBerry devices a hosted solution can provide further cost savings, since it eliminates the need to manage a BlackBerry Enterprise Server infrastructure on-premise.

Synchronization Across All Platforms

One of the key benefits of hosted Exchange is that users who create content in Exchange will see it automatically synchronize across all of their access devices. For example:

• A user can create an appointment in Microsoft Outlook on their desktop and it will appear very shortly thereafter on their Windows Mobile device.
• An email can be created using Outlook Web Access on a laptop and then appear in the Sent Items folder in Outlook on their desktop at home.

Support For “Big M” Mobility

Mobility in the context of being able to access email, calendars, etc. on mobile devices is important. However, “Big M” mobility – the ability for individuals to work from any location on any device – is becoming more important as fewer workers have a permanent location assigned for their work. For example, a growing proportion of organizations allow employees to work from home and come into the office only when necessary, thus providing significant savings on facilities’ leasing costs, power, HVAC and taxes.

Hosted Exchange is a key enabler of this capability because it allows workers to have access to their email, calendars, address lists, task management tools, etc. regardless of where they might be working – be it from home, a hotel room or a client’s conference room. This can further add to the cost savings provided by a hosted Exchange deployment far beyond the IT-related savings that it provides.

Comparing the Cost of Hosted vs. On-Premise Exchange

As noted earlier, hosted Exchange can significantly reduce the per-seat cost of an Exchange environment. As shown in the following three tables for organizations of 10, 100, and 1,000 users, the cost of hosted Exchange is significantly lower than for an on premise deployment of Exchange.

Substantial Savings, Even For Large Organizations

An examination of the tables above reveals that a 100-seat deployment of Exchange will result in greater cost savings compared to its 1,000-seat counterpart. Specifically, hosted Exchange will result in a 64% cost savings compared to on-premises Exchange for 100 seats, and a 55% reduction in the cost of ownership for a 1,000-seat organization.

It is also important to note that much of the cost savings for hosted Exchange comes from the significant IT labor cost savings available when using a hosted model. For example, as shown in the tables above, the labor component for 100 seats represents 70% of the cost of ownership for an on-premises Exchange deployment; for 1,000 seats, labor represents 58% of the cost of ownership. Please feel free to contact Byron Baker Design about how we can help your business save substantial amounts in delivering a hosted Microsoft Exchange solution.

We are not here to throw a beat down on anyone's design methods, and that is definitely not what this article is about. We all learn from our mistakes, and a good old saying is “Nothing changes if nothing changes”. We started just like most, with a few HTML files containing links to each other, and BAM you have a website right? This may even be the ideal solution for some very small scale websites offering a few pages of information, but when your website starts to grow, and you or your client needs more, you may be saying something similar to the Apollo 13 crew on April 14th, 1970 with the infamous “Houston, we have a problem”.

Problems in Procedural Design

The problem with designing a website with a bunch of HTML pages thrown into a folder is that it doesn’t have any methodology behind it. There is no plan, no design for future expansion, and it can become a confusing mess after a while. One of the easiest ways to help organize your site is no different than organizing the files on your computer. Creating a well planned directory structure is definitely a step in the right direction. So we mentioned the word framework earlier. What the hell is a framework?

OOP Frameworks

A framework is a set of reusable libraries or classes for an application or system. There are frameworks for almost every developed computer language, and they allow us to spend more time producing results rather than writing thousands of lines of code. The best way to get out of the box here is to think of your website as a software application, instead of a book with pages. Engineers designing a software package do not through a bunch of files in a folder and expect it to run the micro-controller in your brand new Cadillac. They design, or use, an existing framework that is easily extended with new functionality, and highly readable by other engineers that may need to maintain the system.

When we talk about designing or implementing a framework to a system or application we need to talk about the difference between procedural programming and object oriented programming (OOP). We have discussed many of the disadvantages of procedural programming in the proceeding paragraphs, but to summarize – procedural programming groups tasks or procedures into interdependent code. Procedural programming has many problems including that if any part of code is changed it could spell disaster for the whole application because procedural programming has no concern for the larger application as a whole. Object-oriented programming is a different approach to programming, intended to solve some of the development and maintenance problems commonly associated with large procedural applications. OOP is designed to make complex applications more manageable by breaking them down into self-contained, interacting modules. True OOP design includes encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance, as well as the ability to create classes and objects. Big words may need definitions, so here they are:

Class

A self-contained description for a set of related services and data.

Object

An instance of a class.

Encapsulation

Hides the details of a function or class, making it easily usable in an application.

Polymorphism

Multiple objects exhibiting similar features in different ways.

Inheritance

Allow one class to adopt the method and property definitions of another.

Encapsulation

Hides the details of a function or class, making it easily usable in an application.

Polymorphism

Multiple objects exhibiting similar features in different ways.

Design Patterns

Takes an abstract description of a situation and organizes it into a way to handle it in OOP.

Design Patterns

The last definition, design patterns, deserves a little more discussion as it is where the thought process of how to build an effective framework is derived. When discussing design patterns, we should always mention the Gang of Four, comprised of Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and Jon Vlissides, who authored the reference book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object Oriented Software in 1995. Some of the common design patterns are the Observer, Singleton, Decorator, and Model-View-Controller. We will focus mostly on the Model-View-Controller pattern as it encompasses several design patterns, and is a very commonly used pattern for multiple reasons which are out of the scope of this article.

Our New Framework

So with a little background out of the way, lets get right to it. We have developed a brand new framework that all of our new websites will be built on. Our framework is written in PHP, based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, and allows easy extension and implementation into a variety of applications and websites. We believe highly in separating structure from presentation, and our framework is based on that. Other design considerations were the ability to encompass javascript based jQuery, AJAX, and JSON. We provided modularization of commonly requested tasks such as calendars, shopping carts, image manipulation, pagination, etc. All of our database interaction is provided by the model, presentation accomplished through the view, and binding of all services and applications through the controller. We included a large collection of security based operations to prevent XSS Cross Site Scripting Hacking and brute force attacks on log-in protected systems. Additionally, we added a compile time framework utilizing Ruby for dynamically creating all CSS files, allowing faster styling and easy design modifications.

Why Not Use PEAR or WordPress?

The PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) is a framework and distribution system for reusable PHP components. PEAR is a really great open source framework, providing a lot of functionality and ways to interact with different web based services and applications. There is one major hang up with PEAR, and that is if you do not have complete control over your server, you are left dealing with the host to install PEAR extensions so that you can use them. Another drawback of PEAR is that you do run into situations where you need added functionality within a module or PEAR extension, and you can spend countless hours modifying a module that you shouldn’t be modifying.

WordPress is a premium blogging and news framework commonly used as a Content Management System (CMS). We love WordPress for blogging and news. However, designing a custom template for a client can be a real pain in the ass. The biggest problem with the WordPress platform is the plugin architecture. Plugins are submitted by kind developers who are usually not paid for their efforts in developing the module or plugin. This is great for the client who does not have to pay for some really great functionality on their website, but it comes back to haunt you when the plugin is not maintained or updated. Additionally, when you get 20 different plugins working together, many times they don't work, or they override the behavior of another plugin. We still love WordPress, and it is our preferred application framework for blogging and news, but we use it with caution and generally run it as a separate application on a sub-domain of the clients site.

Conclusions & Results for the Client

So what does this mean for the client, it means you get a website designed to the highest standards, which is what Byron Baker Design, LLC delivers. Your website can be easily extended, and can take advantage of any service or application programming interface (API) with ease. Furthermore, you get the comfort of knowing that if you move to a different developer in the future for any reason, you won’t have to pay for a complete redesign of the websites architecture. Byron Baker Design, LLC delivers exceptional digital applications, and we are continually updating and educating ourselves on how to make your next project the best around. Feel free to contact us for a proposal on your next project, or inquire about our consultation services if you need a little advice.

Whether you have a website currently or are starting from scratch, Byron Baker Design, LLC offers cost effective solutions to help achieve your website goals. We also offer a dedicated lineup of hosting and server options for any size business. We can not stress enough the importance of choosing a quality server solution when deploying your website or application. Your site could be vulnerable to attacks from all over the world, and only the best server resources and security practices will help to prevent you from these attacks.

Many times our clients ask the questions, “So what would we not be able to accomplish with an online application?”. Our answer to that is that we have not found any process that can not be accomplished through a digital application. If you are serious about bringing added value to your clients or customers while increasing branding and market share, be sure to contact us on your next venture. We can discuss many options in delivering your content digitally to millions of users on different devices.

Additionally, with our analytics data you can monitor your Return On Investment with any of our website design or digital application services. Analytics means real time data about how users interact with your application, what geographic location they visit from, at what time and for how long did they interact, and more. We can set up test models to deliver different content over the course of a designated period of time, and deploy the best solution from a set based on the results of that test. Furthermore, we can integrate conversion tracking into your e-commerce website to track what items provide the highest Return On Investment (ROI).

If you are searching for website design in Wichita or beyond, look no further than Byron Baker Design, LLC. We are here to not meet your expectations, we are here to exceed them. Contact us today so that you don’t get left behind in a rapidly moving digital marketplace.

The first thing that should come to mind in regards to an online store is security. Recent studies have shown that the security and privacy is the single most important factor in purchasing decisions made online. Massive online retailers such as Amazon.com place security at the very top of there business and marketing decisions. The primary technology behind e-commerce security is cryptography, or encryption. In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information (referred to as plaintext) using an algorithm (cipher) to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information. In many contexts, the word encryption also implicitly refers to the reverse process, decryption makes the encrypted information readable again. A simpler way to look at it is that when you input your name, credit-card number, or other sensitive information on a website, the information is transformed with a unique key into an unreadable form. The only way to recover that information is with the same key that was used to transform the data.

The primary method for encryption used today for e-commerce is known as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL). SSL is a security protocol that prevents eavesdropping, tampering, or message forgery with HTTP transmissions based on server-side public/private key pairs. To access an e-commerce website securely, you would use https:// instead of http://, and behind the scenes the headers and information sent between the client (your browser) and the server treat all transmissions as secure, but only if your website has what is known as an SSL Certificate present. The SSL certificate posses all of the information needed to verify that the connection is indeed secure. Sites with a SSL certificate will show a lock, or other icon depending on the browser, in the address bar. When you see this lock icon you know that your connection is using SSL encryption. Furthermore, most browsers currently will allow you to view the information associated with that certificate like the company name, certificate issuer, and more by clicking on the lock icon. Only e-commerce sites that use SSL should be trusted, and only professionally trusted e-commerce gateway’s and credit card processors will approve sites possessing an SSL certificate. Byron Baker Design can not only help you get an SSL certificate and install it on your server, but we have flexible server options with our complete hosting lineup that allow you to obtain a dedicated IP address required for most SSL certificates. Once your site is secure, you are ready to get setup to start receiving online payments.

When a user submits information including a credit card number, personal address, and order information there are several processes involved before the bank can receive payment. These processes can be summarized as follows:

1. The customer submits credit card for payment.
2. The payment gateway manages the complex routing of the data on behalf of the merchant by passing the secure transaction information via a secure connection to the credit card processor.
3. The credit card processor submits the transaction to the credit card network (like Visa or MasterCard) and the credit card network routes the transaction to the bank that issued the credit card to the customer.
4. The issuing bank approves or declines the transaction based on the customer’s available funds and passes the transaction results back to the credit card network.
5. The credit card network relays the transaction results to the credit card processor. The credit card processor relays the transaction results to the payment gateway.
6. The payment gateway stores the transaction results and sends them to the website for the customer and merchant to see.
7. The merchant delivers goods or services to the buyer.
8. The issuing bank sends the appropriate funds for the transaction to the credit card network, which passes the funds to the merchant’s bank.
9. The bank then deposits the funds into the merchant’s bank account. This is called ‘settlement’, and typically the transaction funds are deposited into the merchant’s primary bank account within two to four business days.

For a detailed illustration of how the payment process works, please visit the Authorize.Net website.

This all sounds pretty complicated right? Although there are a lot of steps in this process, Byron Baker Design, LLC can make this process very simple. We can set you up with a credit card processor and gateway in very short order. We believe that to be the best, you have to align yourself with only the best partners, and our credit card processor Power Pay, and payment gateway Authorize.Net are the best in the business.

Our partner, PowerPay, currently serves over 40,000 merchants located across the United States and Canada. Based on the number of merchant accounts, PowerPay ranks within the top 35 largest credit card processors in the United States and processes an average of 140,000 transactions each day. Get started with Power Pay today.

Byron Baker Design, LLC is a certified Authorize.Net developer. Since 1996, Authorize.Net has been a leading provider of payment gateway services, managing the submission of billions of transactions to the processing networks on behalf of merchant customers. Authorize.Net enables merchants to authorize, settle and manage credit card and electronic check transactions via Web sites, retail stores, mail order/telephone order (MOTO) call centers and mobile devices.

So now that you are all set up to receive payments online, how do you present all of your products and services to your customers. This is where having a deep knowledge of technologies such as PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, pearl, and others is a must. For many larger retail applications, day to day tasks like inventory management and shipping can be greatly simplified by using a third party shopping cart. Byron Baker Design, LLC provides solutions and integrations with all of the leading shopping carts available today. Additionally, we our Accrisoft Business Productivity SaaS package, which provides a complete solution for all of your e-commerce needs.

The possibilities are endless with the presentation of your products and services online, but getting consultation from a company who knows the e-commerce business is heavily advised. Perhaps the most difficult part for the do-it-yourself person is integrating all of the components needed to run an e-commerce store. For small businesses and hobbyist, we also offer simple and affordable ways to sell a few items through PayPal or Google checkout. Whatever your next business venture may be, don’t get left out of the growing market in online sales. You will be amazed at how easy it is to automate many of the processes that may be currently taking away from your valuable daily schedule. Byron Baker Design, LLC is here to assist you, give us a call or fill out a request to learn more about how you can go e-commerce.