|
|
|
|
...SO WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE. NOW WHAT?
Hi, everybody! Welcome, welcome. Welcome to my corner of the world-wide Web, welcome to ValErb.com - I'm your host, the Internet's Val Erb. Please, relax! Let go of your mouse... It is a great day for the 'net everybody and here's why:
11/03/2008 — I'm finally (and perhaps a bit frantically) catching up after more than six months of not updating this site. Looking back, it would appear this is always the case, but like mechanics who never work on their own vehicles, so are the personal sites of busy web developers. What's been keeping me so busy? Well, back on June 21st Becca and I got married at our home in Bennington, so that had me preoccupied for a bit. After returning from our honeymoon in Aruba, it was back to work.
Vermont Country Properties Sotheby's International Realty launched improvements to their satellite websites system, allowing them to also launch sites for seasonal rentals (OkemoRentals.com for instance), single properties or groups of select properties. Their system provides for the quick and easy deployment of websites dedicated to any given market segment or sub-segment and these updates complete that spec. There are dozens of sites now being powered by this software, including AddisonCountyVermontRealEstate.com, ChamplainValley-RealEstate.com, WilmingtonVermont-RealEstate.com, OkemoMountainCondominiums.com, BromleyVermontRealEstate.com, VermontBedAndBreakfastForSale.com, VermontGolfProperties.com and VermontRealEstate-ForSale.com. They also started pushing data from their property listings to GoogleBase via XML and publishing a new, customized WordPress-powered blog.
We at W. Hardy Interactive, Inc. also launched a new WP Mu-powered platform for our company weblogs with a nifty Javascript roll-out blog navigation. As opposed to what you see here, I'm writing full-length articles, including one on search engine optimization and another on why I love web development. We also completed the move to our new server co-location facility, the Plug & Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, CA.
U.S.V.I. eco-resort Maho Bay Camps added Lightbox functionality to their site and also re-implemented their videos in Flash format.
It's now been about eighteen months since we started working with Kelliher Samets Volk, providing ColdFusion, Javascript, PHP, HTML and CSS programming, as well as database administration, Flash animation, graphic design and hosting consultation. We have been involved with projects for several of their clients, including Schlesinger Associates, VELCO.com, OVX.org, the Stowe mountain resort, EnjoyBurlington.com, EfficiencyVermont.com, VEIC.org and StartWhereYouAreVT.org.
San Francisco Bay area women writers' group the Wild Writing Women launched an AuthorFriendly-powered edition of their site in conjuntion with the release of their new magazine Ireland: The Sacred and the Profane, which is being distributed exclusively in electronic format through their AuthorFriendly store, at WildWritingWomen.com.
As always, there's much more that I'd like to tell you, but it will just have to wait until next time - I've really got to get back to work.
4/24/2008 — Yesterday we launched a revised edition of our company website at WHardy.com. We've added tab views to our portfolio and a new screen captures feature that you can see in the entry for Vermont Country Properties Sotheby's International Realty. Please check it out.
4/18/2008 — Last night an all-new edition of our Vermont vacation travel planning website at GoVermont.com was launched. Our travel planner was the very first thing I worked on when I came to work with W. Hardy Interactive - it's since gone through some ups and downs, but is in this new release a very useful site for visitors to the state. It's full of all sorts of great features including AJAX-ified search results, clipboard and keyword criteria auto-completion, plus an Yahoo!-powered accordion navigation and tab views. It will still work with Javascript turned off, which is also great for search engine optimization. Speaking of SEO, this is the first site we've developed to work with a really nifty URL rewriter that allows for virtual directories representing variables and their values - for example, instead of the web address GoVermont.com?Towns=Manchester, GoVermont.com/Towns/Manchester. Lodging data is supplied by the Travelocity partner network and events are provided by the State of Vermont, plus we'll soon be integrating content from our local database of attractions and golf courses.
04/14/2008 — It's tax-day eve and since I'm done with my taxes I'm taking this time to give a quick update to the 'ol dot-com. We've been right busy at W. Hardy Interactive. Here are some recent highlights.
Leading Vermont real estate brokerage Vermont Country Properties launched a new software system that allows for new websites with custom contents to be published quickly and easily - they simply select search criteria from their website (major regions, resorts, towns, offices, property type, price range, amenities, etc.), populate their introduction content and make a simple edit to the domain's DNS records; pretty soon they've got a new website catering to a specific Vermont real estate market, BurlingtonVermont-RealEstate.com being among the first. VCP Sotheby's also recently upgraded their new site at VermontCountryProperties.com to include maps for geographical search and additional upgrades for their eListings newsletter system that include integration of the additional search criteria from their new site - users can now at any point opt to automatically receive new property listings matching their search on the site as often as daily.
David J. Wallin, Phd. became the latest AuthorFriendly author when he launched a site for his newest work, Attachment in Psychotherapy.
Ultimate fly fishing destination the Rio Manso Lodge and Manchester area rental property brokerage Maple Leaf Rentals are both beginning to receive the benefits of recent basic search engine optimization.
Brunswick Harley Davidson / Buell of Troy (for whom I designed my very first website in 2000, long since retired) released an upgraded version of their site at BrunswickHarley.com, the enhancements for which include (in addition to dynamic SEO) a content management system, allowing them to edit any of their site's 119+ pages.
Also, acclaimed North Carolina blues musician Dmitri Resnik launched an all-new fully content-managed website at DmitriResnik.com.
As always, there's a lot more I should be telling you about, but it will just have to wait until the next post - I've got to get back to work.
11/22/2007 — Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! This past Friday evening we launched an all-new edition of VermontCountryProperties.com for Vermont Country Properties Sotheby's International Realty, who from regional offices in Stowe, Sugarbush, Stratton, Okemo, Manchester and Shelburne, VT offers residential homes, condo/townhouse properties, land parcels and commercial real estate. Under intense development for the last several months, this new site has some really cool features including AJAX-ified clipboard and search functionality, GoogleMaps integration, multiple search criteria selections, Flash integrated with CSS/JavaScript, printable HTML & PDF versions of listings and much more, but I won't bore you with the geeky stuff. It draws properties from their local database of enhanced property listings, as well as MLS data from the Vermont Real Estate Information Network (VREIN) and Northern New England Real Estate Network (NNEREN). From core architecture to minute details, this site is completely search engine optimized, with a focus on geographical location. It is without question one of the grandest and most impressive websites I've had the pleasure of working on. Special thanks go out to John Peloquin, who's in his first year as Associate Programmer with us at W. Hardy Interactive, for some really excellent work on the technical fronts and to Dick and Peg Montague of VCP Sotheby's for giving us the opportunity to produce it.
In other work-related news, Swedish artist Helena Borenius launched a new website at NordicInspiration.net that's fully content managed, thanks to custom CMS software from us at W. Hardy Interactive.
10/31/2007 — It's Halloween! It's also been almost six months since my last post. Why? Busy does not even begin to describe it. What have I been up to? Well, here's some of what's been going on with me... We bought a house! It's right on the South Stream in Bennington - in fact, it's so close, I spotted a big brown trout from inside the other day.
On the work front, there's exciting stuff I can't tell you about just yet because it's not done and a bunch of great work we've been doing with a big Northeast ad agency that for various reasons I won't be telling you about, but there are a few things I can and should mention. Tracey Wirth of Marin County, California launched an all new website for her fashion accessories company at GoshGollyGoods.com, powered by custom content management software from us at W. Hardy Interactive. Award-winning travel and food writer Jacqueline Harmon Butler's new AuthorFriendly-powered website at JacquelineHarmonButler.com got launched. Also, I finally got around to fixing the Safari browser compatibility issues with the Sons of Suckerfish navigation on this site and on ShoppingShepherd.com, my other pet website project. I know, “how exciting”, right? Well, however useful it's a cranky bit of code depending on how you use it, so I'm content to have fixed it. At the same time I revised database queries to make the sites faster.
05/03/2007 — We at W. Hardy Interactive are pleased to announce the launch of an all-new WHardy.com - check it out; we hope you like it.
03/28/2007 — I am finally getting around to updating this website after having completely snoozed through the first few months of 2007. Some things I should have been telling you about include the following:
T'ai-chi / qigong instructor and traditional Chinese external-qi healer Rich Marantz of Green Mountain T'ai-chi in West Pawlet brought his website at GreenMountainTaiChi.com to us at W. Hardy Interactive. We ported his previously static site to our content management system platform, allowing Rich to easily update every page of his site through a password-protected administration, complete with fully-detailed, daily-updated and monthly-archived website traffic statistics.
Motorcycle travel writer Carla King's MotorcycleMisadventures.com became the second website to be powered by W. Hardy Interactive's new AuthorFriendly product, an all-in-one author website solution.
Colorado fly-fishing, wingshooting and big game hunting lodge The High Lonesome Ranch released a new, enhanced edition of their website at TheHighLonesomeRanch.com, designed and produced by us at W. Hardy in cooperation with Strategic Outdoor Marketing of Sunderland, Vermont.
12/21/2006 — Yesterday, outdoor outfitters The Mountain Goat of Manchester, VT launched a revised and enhanced MountainGoat.com that we at W. Hardy Interactive, who have been hosting the site since 2004, are very happy to have developed and produced. Every page in this new website is powered by our content management system, allowing their staff to update the site's contents (including photographs) through an easy-to-use graphical interface that's very similar to today's common word-processing programs for immediate effect from any web browser.
12/06/2006 — I'm quite excited to tell you that NetBeans.org has recently posted a new, interactive Flash demo for the NetBeans 5.5 IDE - a free, open-source integrated development environment for software developers to create professional cross-platform desktop, enterprise, web and mobile applications - that we at W. Hardy are very proud to have produced. The Overview of the NetBeans 5.5 IDE Flash and more info on the IDE can be found on the NetBeans IDE main page.
11/28/2006 — I'm pleased to announce that last night, author and psychologist Dr. Anton G. Hardy of East Greenbush, New York (NY) launched a new site at AGHardy.com - the first website to be powered by a new software product we at W. Hardy Interactive are developing.
02/06/2006 — This weekend, acclaimed author Richard Tarnas, who wrote best-selling The Passion of the Western Mind, launched a new website to promote his recently published book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, at CosmosAndPsyche.com, which we at W. Hardy Interactive were very much pleased to design & develop.
01/26/2006 — Yesterday afternoon I received notification that two sites I had developed (CAPcreative.com and SarasotaOriginals.com) have each received an ADDY® Award from the American Advertising Federation in the Flash-based B2B and consumer website categories. The awards ceremony is 2/17 in Sarasota, FL. More details soon.
01/25/2006 — I am very excited to announce that Sun Microsystems today launched major revisions to the Sun™ Java Studio Creator developer resource center, including an interactive Flash-based demo of the new Creator 2 integrated development environment (IDE) that we at W. Hardy Interactive produced. To learn more about Java Studio Creator and to take the Quick Tour, visit the official Creator site.
12/14/2005 — I've been avoiding building up my own website for a long time now. Anyway, I finally did it and here you are... Now what, right? Alright, first I'll just get it out of the way and say it myself...
“Do I have the most annoying ‘logo’ in the world or what?”
|
|
|
|
|
ValErb.com, its logo(s) and all associated imagery are the property of Valentine R. Erb II.
All other names, brands, logos and associated imagery featured on ValErb.com are trademarks
and/or copyrighted materials of their respective owners. All other content copyright 2009
ValErb.com. All rights reserved. ValErb.com links to many other websites on the Internet,
the content and privacy policies for which are the responsibility of their respective owners.
ValErb.com uses no cookies. Most advertisements on ValErb.com are provided by outside
advertisement companies and may contain cookies. These cookies are collected by their
respective owners and are not accessible to ValErb.com. Credit card payments are processed
by the respective advertisers, who are responsible for the fulfillment of orders placed with
them. Only very limited information about sales is supplied to ValErb.com. ValErb.com's
servers log basic information about visitors for traffic statistics reporting only. Under no
circumstances is any information collected by ValErb.com ever sold or otherwise distributed
to third parties. Questions and concerns should be directed to GuessWho @ ValErb.com.
|
|
|
|
