Websites Under Your Control Blog

Congrats on the grand opening of BARK - The Boutique Hotel for Dogs! Bark Hotel for Dogs is conveniently located in Mckinney, TX near Hwy 121 and US 75.

Whether it be a private suite for an overnight stay or a romping day of play, their canine utopia offers all-inclusive luxury amenities with the sole mission of providing a safe, clean, and loving environment for your beloved pet . . . one wet nose at a time.

The owners of Bark Hotel for Dogs are not new to this business - they created and ran another upscale pet facility, before turning their attention to this new venture.

Congrats again, and thanks again  for asking us to do your website and design your printed marketing materials!

The Adobe corporation, the biggest powerhouse in the web software world, has just acquired the developer of the system we offer under the trade name Online Business Partner™.

This is outstanding news, for a number of reasons. First, since Adobe has a long history of finding and acquiring the "best of class" developers of web software, our selection of the system for Online Business Partner was clearly a good pick.

Second, we can expect that Adobe will continue to improve the system and its support, as they have done with other acquisitions in the past.

We have been assured that there will be no visible changes to the client interface, so if you are already using Online Business Partner as part of your website, you can continue to do so uninterrupted. But if you have any questions at all about the Adobe acquisition, and how it might affect you, please contact us.

The company has announced that they will continue its Partner Certification program, and will only be offering the system through their Partner network. (Frisco Websites is the only Certified Partner in the region.)

The unofficial results are in, with our client Patrick Fallon winning 57% of the vote for Frisco City Council.

As with most local elections, especially in "off years", the election depends on a very few voters, and yet the opportunity for a candidate to spread a message is limited, since broadcast and print media typically give little attention to elections outside the "big city".

So "getting the word out" was especially important, and a website, together with email marketing, supplemented Patrick's many other efforts to do so.

As with all the sites we set up for clients, this one allowed Patrick and his team to go in and make updates, add campaign news, and monitor effectiveness on a daily basis.

When HRchitect decided to sponsor a professional conference, they were already familiar with the features of our Online Business Partner™, used on their business website.

On their HR Show website, they also wanted to register event exhibitors, sponsors, and attendees, as well as have the ability to rapidly make changes to the site.

As with their corporate website, HRchitect asked us to build a website with a custom appearance, add blank pages and navigation, and let them provide the text and images.

We were honored to receive the following notice today, and thank our great clients who made us successful in 2008!

FRISCO CHAMBER RELEASES LISTS OF BUSINESS AWARDS FINALISTS Winners to be Announced at Annual Banquet January 31st FRISCO, TEXAS, Jan. 20, 2009 - Candidates vying to be named "Best of the Best" at the Frisco Chamber of Commerce Annual Celebration have been narrowed down to a select list of finalists.   The Frisco Chamber of Commerce has released the finalists for the Business Awards portion of the Annual Celebration to be held on Saturday, January 31st, at the Frisco Convention Center.   "Trying to narrow the nominations to five in each business category proved to be a daunting task," said Scott Sonju, with the Frisco RoughRiders and Chair of the Nominating Committee.  "In fact, we ended up with six or seven in several cases because the applications were too compelling.  The Awards Committee's task will be to narrow the list to just one.   Frankly, I'm not looking forward to that!   What a credit to the Frisco business community."   The Annual Celebration, with an anticipated attendance in excess of 600, has a "Top Gun" theme this year and will include numerous Business Awards, as well as several Citizen Awards.   Winners in each of the categories will be announced at the event which is being chaired by former Frisco mayor Mike Simpson.  Business Awards to be presented will include, among others, Small/Medium and Large Business of the Year, Developer/Development of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, and Community Partner.      For additional information on table reservations/sponsors for the Annual Celebration, individual tickets, or the opportunity to contribute to the Silent Auction, please call 972-335-9522 and speak with Jackie Hong and/or visit  www.friscochamber.com.  The full list of finalists in each category are as follows:

Developer/Development of the Year   *Frisco Square *Harty Land Company *The Shops at Starwood/Hermansen Land Company *Bill Darling - Darling Homes *Jim Newman/Newman Village   Small Business of the Year   *Frisco Automotive & Transmission *Eagle Gymnastics Academy *Frisco Websites *Voyager Insurance-John Harvey *It's a Grind *Farstar *eLink   Medium Business of the Year   *Sound Perfection Incorporated *Land Rover Frisco-Randy Brown *Acute Kids Urgent Care *JamesHardie Products *HRchitect *Lawton Commercial Services Large Business of the Year   *Centennial Medical Center *Embassy Suites *The Westin Stonebriar Resort *Mario Sinacola & Sons *Park Place Lexus - Plano *American Unit   Community Partner of the Year *Centennial Medical Center *Frisco Square *EDS Credit Union *Sweeney Media Group *Mario Sinacola & Sons *Bill Darling-Darling Homes   Entrepreneur of the Year *Tamme Harty- Sound Perfection Incorporated *Frisco Website-Bill Sholar & Kim Green *Jim Newman - Real Estate *Kevin Lofgren-Farstar *John Clements/Allstate

Sponsors for this year's event include AmerisourceBergen and Frisco Family Services Center, Centennial Medical Center, FC-Dallas/Pizza Hut Park, and Mario Sinacola & Sons.  The finalists were selected from companies that were nominated and submitted to the Frisco Chamber of Commerce.   Upon receipt, all entries were then reviewed by the Nominating Committee, chaired by last year's Event Chair, Scott Sonju with the Frisco RoughRiders.   This same Committee will meet between now and the 31st to finalize their choice and narrow the list of finalists down to one winning entry in each of the categories.    "The list of finalists is a very strong list and that is a reflection of all the entries submitted to the Chamber.   Regardless of whom the winner will be at the event, Frisco should be extremely proud to have such quality and involved companies as a part of our community," said Tony Felker, President of the Frisco Chamber of Commerce.

Snowball Express is dedicated to helping the children of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces since 9/11.

On December 16th through December 20th of this year, Snowball Express will host 2000 children and surviving spouses in Southern California, from all across America, for an all-expense paid holiday gathering none of them will ever forget.

The Snowball Express website not only needs to tell their story and communicate with those involved. It also provides the mechanism for families to register, for donors to donate, and for the non-profit organization to thank its sponsors. 

We were glad to donate our efforts for this project.

When the water department of a nearby town wanted to take online payments, they contacted several web companies, and found that the custom programming those firms said were needed would be cost-prohibitive.

When they contacted us, we described how our Online Business Partner™ technology would not only allow for secure online payments, but would also allow them to make easy site updates as needed, and post new jobs and other announcements (that would automatically drop off the site when they were no longer relevant).

In addition, because of the efficiencies provided by our technology, we could redesign their site with a new attractive look at the same time we redeveloped it using our Online Business Partner technology, all for about 10% of the costs the other firms had quoted.

The Frisco Chamber of Commerce decided to kick off the national Chamber of Commerce week with the unveiling of its new website, which uses our Online Business Partner™ technology.

Chamber President John Land had us develop a custom design for the new website and build the initial menus and pages. Then his staff took over, and added additional pages and created their own material right in the website, thus letting them manage their costs as well as their site content.

Some of the information displayed on the Chamber of Commerce website resides in a different system, and the Chamber did not want to convert all of that information at this time. To allow for a fast and smooth transition, the data in the other system is displayed on the Chamber's new site through "iframes" or windows within a web page that display the content of a different web page.

While this reduces the level of control available for managing the presentation of the data from the other system, it allowed the Chamber to launch their new website without any time or attention whatever paid at this time to the format and management of the date stored on the other system.

Even though the Chamber did not make any announcement to its members, several hundred people per day discovered it on their own, starting with the publication of the site late on October 20th.

(The graphs here are taken from the standard graphs provided to every owner of a site using our Online Business Partner™ technology.)

By the way... the visitors in the first week were not just from Frisco, not just from Texas, and not just from this side of the globe!

It looks like there were visitors from nearly every state in the US, from Mexico and Canada, and quite a few from all over Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia as well.

In fact, with this much global traffic in the first few days, we would not be surprised to see visits from pretty much the rest of the world when we look back after a month or two!

(We know Frisco is a great place. But how do all these other folks know it? And why haven't they already moved here, now that they do?)

Our brokerage client wanted to allow his customers to search online for the basics of the listings he had for sale, but his clients did not want their addresses or details made public.

We set up a site with a searchable directory so that site visitors could find listings that matched their interests. The site visitors then request access via an online registration form.

Our client's office staff receives such requests, and with about three mouse clicks, can enable that specific visitor to have access to a specific listing for a specified duration (or forever). In addition, if a request is not acted upon within a specified period of time, the office manager gets notified so the visitor's request never falls through the cracks.

Our client wants to be able to respond instantly to certain types of inquiries. Our Online Business Partner™ sends a text message to his cell phone immediately when those inquiries are sent, so he can have a deal already locked up before his competitors get around to reading their email.

The website for Strategic Glass describes the commercial glass contracting and consulting firm to their target market of contractors and property management companies, as well as local, state, and federal government facilities.

The company asked us to create a consistent and attractive header for all pages, and they would then develop and insert the text.

They also asked us to create a "slide show" to display automatically on the home page and on the projects page, to illustrate some of their recent projects.