Delaware Design Studio | Delaware web design company specializing in web development, custom wordpress development, and local web hosting » Blog

Office 2010 Tutor

mike — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:31:56 +0000

About the Client:

Office 2010 Tutor is an eLearning website that features interactive tutorials that help you learn Microsoft Office 2010. A free trial of this unique software solution is available to download from the website.

About the Project:

The site was designed to market and push the free demo download of the training software. The website collects email addresses and is integrated with MailChimp and also features an eCommerce payment provider and styled checkout page.

Game Tunnel

mike — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:29:14 +0000

I am very proud to have been the lead project manager on the Game Tunnel relaunch and redesign project. I worked with the exceptional Michael Heald of Fully Illustrated on the design, did a lot of monotonous data entry work, site coding, and feature implementation work. The site has some really cool features including a registration/login, self-service advertising, voting system, content submission, youTube and Vimeo video embed code, and more. It’s a sick site. I also handled the marketing – creating banner ads, press releases, and a custom-designed newsletter that we blasted out.

Here’s some of the ads that I designed:

This was a massive project that took nearly 4 months to complete, but I am thrilled with the results. The site was relaunched on August 1st, 2011 and received over 10,000 unique visitors in the first month! Their site loads quickly from our servers and the voting features and custom WordPress code is among the most complex and best that Delaware Design has done up to this point.

You can check out the old GT here: www.oldgametunnel.com and visit the new site at www.gametunnel.com

How to setup ASP on your Local Windows Desktop

mike — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:47:47 +0000

The project that I am currently working on has to be coded in ASP for a Windows Server. Personally, I prefer PHP but luckily there isn’t anything too tricky about this site. I spent the last 20 minutes searching the internet for an easy way to get my test website up and running locally on my Win7 Machine. I didn’t see a good quick tutorial out there, so I thought I would document this in the hopes that people will save time in the future.

Step 1: Install/Enable IIS and ASP on your Computer

Whether you’re on a Win XP, Win7 or Windows Server – you need get Microsoft’s IIS running. This is pretty easy. Just go to Start->Control Panel->Programs and Features. Then click Turn Windows Features On/Off. Check Internet Information Services and then make sure to enable ASP, .NET and whatever other scripts that you want to work on your computer:

Click OK and go grab a drink while all of this stuff configures.

Step 2: Copy your Web Files to inetPub

Go over to C:\inetpub\wwwroot and create a Folder for your website and copy over all of your web files (ASP, HTML, images, etc).

Step 3: Create a new Website in IIS

Open IIS by going to Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->IIS Manager
Right Click in the left sidebar and select Add Web Site
Fill out the Website Form:

Name your Site
Click the … Button under Content Directory and select the folder you copied into inetpub
Change the Port if necessary
Click OK to start up the site

Step 4 – Check your Local ASP site

For my site, I used port 120 so if you type: http://localhost:120/ into your web browser your site should popup
If this doesn’t work, you may need to go into IIS and set your default document (I had to do this since index.asp is not in there by default)

Hurray! My website is running on my Local Machine!

Some Video Game Promotional Materials

mike — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 03:05:10 +0000

We put together some promotional materials for Graduate Games so that their games could be featured on the Beamdog Distribution Network homepage. Photoshop is a great tool and we were able to get them nice homepage placement:

We used all of their game assets to create some nice custom backgrounds, logos and images to be used on Beamdog’s site.

Here’s some other promo materials that they will use for their upcoming Dog Solitaire game:

Issue 16 of the Indie Game Mag

mike — Tue, 10 May 2011 12:43:50 +0000

The latest issue of the Independent Game Magazine came out today. We did the graphic layout for the issue and took the pictures used in the cover featured interview. You can check out the issue and order it from the Indie Game Mag website.

Here’s the issue description:

This issue features an indepth interview with Philadelphia based Cipher Prime Studios where IGM got an early look at their upcoming iPad game, Pulse. There’s also reviews of Cipher Prime’s other games: Audiotrium and Fractal. This issue also features an opinion piece on Portal 2, an interview with IndieCity and reviews of Trine, Aban Hawkins, Xbox’s Ilomilo, and the Dishwasher Vampire Smile.

Issue 15 of the Indie Game Magazine

mike — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 19:16:12 +0000

We’re a little behind on this, but a new issue of the Indie Game Magazine that we designed came out a few weeks ago. The issue was 30 pages which is the biggest that we’ve done so far.

From Indie Game Magazine’s Site:

Check out all the fantastic games that were at the Independent Game Festival and Game Developer’s Conference this month in the latest issue of IGM. Issue 15 is our biggest issue yet and recaps all of the IGF winners and nominees. The issue also packs reviews of World of Keflings, ChronoRage, Nimbus, and Helsing’s Fire along with an Xbox Live Indie Games Buying Guide!

Our Wedding Designs are featured in “The Knot” Magazine

mike — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:37:16 +0000

Our custom wedding invitations, programs, and seating chart are all featured in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue of the Knot for Pennsylvania and Delaware. Our work is displayed starting on page 170. We took a few pictures of the magazine just to show off the article. You can’t really see our individually designed table numbers in any of the pictures.

New Website 2011

mike — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:31:43 +0000

We’ve got new hardware and a new website for 2011. We recently upgraded our server hardware and took some time to renovate our own site. One of the big goals with the new site is to be more transparent on pricing and start pushing more designs and choice to our clients. It’s impossible to offer a flat rate for all the different design work we do here, but we’ve tried to ballpark and give average prices for common requests like logo design, corporate branding and identity, etc. Of course one of the newest things about our site is that our Web Design process now has standardized pricing. Every website is different, but designing a homepage concept or mockup design is a common thing here.

We are now offering Website Design packages. These packages don’t include coding the site; they are strictly for website design mockups. We hope that this approach will allow customers to easily select their package and get a design that they love. We are dedicated to winning customers over with our designs. After the site is designed, clients will be given all of the design file deliverables. Clients will be free to code the website themselves, hire another company, or use Delaware Design to complete and launch their website project. It’s all about choice. We are pretty confident that our design process and customer service will win clients over.

The other major addition to the website is a tab detailing our hosting options. With our upgraded server and our new data center, we can provide quality Delaware web hosting to anyone. We hope you enjoy the new site.