October 13, 2011 by Eric Weidl

Fall Changes

Our business cards say "web design and development". As we're working through our re-branding, we realized we do much more than web design and development. We offer a broader range of marketing services.

One of our strengths is Print. Sure, more and more marketing and business is done electronically. Print materials remain an important element in most marketing efforts however, so we've beefed up our capabilities. We want to be a one-stop shop for customers who believe their business cards and website should be similar in design and message. In just the last month, we've done magazine ads, mailers, business cards, presentation folders, and sell sheets. Let me know if you have any upcoming print work we can work on for you.

We have a couple new articles in the "Help Me Understand" blog on our website. Both articles demystify basic web concepts and make you a safer surfer.

Remember when you were in grade school, you had to learn how to read a mailing address? It's time to learn how to read a website address. The How to Read a Website Address article explains the format of a website address so reading one will be as routine as reading a postal address.

Of the tens of millions of computers on the Internet, how does your computer know which one hosts a website you want to visit? How Does the DNS Work? explains the "magic" all computers use to find other computers.

On the project front, the 47th Chicago International Film Festival began last week, so we've been working hard to update and manage the site. Not only do we host the website for the Festival and the other activities and events they hold during the year, we also make sure it survives under the load from a global audience. The site will see around 1,000,000 page views in the month and a half before, during and after the event.

Besides listing the 150+ films being shown at the festival, this year we also added an archive so the festival staff can add a history of the 2,000+ films shown since the festival started in 1965. The site has an online store so fans can purchase posters and clothing and also integrates with TicketMaster so attendees can purchase tickets to individual films right from the site. This year we added some major features to improve the iPhone app. Previously, the app had its own copy of the film database. If festival staff needed to make a change to any film, they had to update on the website and also send the new info to the iPhone app developer. This year, we built a web service which allows the iPhone app to pull the film listings directly from the website, a change which saved the festival staff dozens of hours of time.

Bourbon 2 We've also been hard at work on the tools we use to build websites and manage our own business. Bourbon 2 is the update of our Content Management System. We are strong believers in giving our customers the tools to manage their own websites as much as possible on a day-to-day basis. Bourbon 2 has a number of new features which are going to make it much easier to manage your own site. Look for more information over the next couple of months on this internal project.

As always, we welcome your feedback and thoughts. If there's something you're interested in or wondering about, let us know! We'll do our best to provide you with the resources or knowledge you're looking for. If you don't want to receive this monthly email you can unsubscribe by emailing us back.

Until next month, You Drive The Internet, Don't Let It Drive You.

- The Intersites Team

Posted in Company News, Intercom