Announcing Partnership with Karl Mecklenburg’s REACH Foundation

Posted on April 10 2013 by Jason

About a year ago, I was teaching a WordPress class, and imagine my shock when I arrived and in the front row was one Karl Mecklenburg, former All-Pro Denver Broncos linebacker and one of my childhood heroes. It’s not hard to miss a former NFL player in the front row! Once I got over my fan-boy moment (ok, it was more than a moment), we proceeded with class. Afterwards, we stayed in touch and I ended up proposing that Mad Lab take on the task of developing a new website for his foundation. We talked for a bit, and finally agreed, and he put me in touch with the foundation’s director and we worked hard to put together this website that we are all very proud of. I’m excited that we’ll be able to continue to help the foundation define and build on its digital strategy over the coming months. So go ahead and check out our portfolio entry on this project, and feel free to check out the site.

It’s not everyday a current or former Denver Bronco lands on my portfolio, but anyone who knows me knows that it makes me giddy every time I see it, and couldn’t be more thrilled with this partnership.

Seeking Maniacal WordPress Developer

Posted on September 13 2012 by Jason

Mad Lab Media is currently looking for a freelance WordPress junkie to take on some development tasks on a couple of our clients’ sites. This is an intermediate level position – you don’t have to be the most adept WP Ninja in the world, but we can’t afford to be taking time to teach you the basics either.

We have a client with a highly customized WordPress site, and the first thing we have to do is sort out the code the previous developer did and make sure it runs well. Then we reskin the site with some new marketing materials, then the fun stuff begins. This is just one of several projects that we need a little support on.

You need to be comfortable with WordPress themes and plugins, as well as custom post types and taxonomies. You needn’t be a designer, though an eye for balance is helpful. Attention to detail and thorough follow-through is an absolute must. Goggles and lab coat optional.

This is a contract position (1099) for a LOCAL (Denver/Boulder) freelancer. Total number of hours on this project is unknown at this time. Pay rate is negotiable.

Interested? Please fill out the following form – this initial project is ready to go immediately!

[contact-form-7 id="619" title="Maniacal Developer"]

The two sides of building a website

Posted on July 20 2012 by Jason

When we build a site — and the bigger the site the more pronounced this dynamic is — there’s a clear division between the two main components of the site. The engineers are concerned with function. By its nature, most of the time the function serves to push the user through the appropriate steps to accomplish whatever goal the site has for its users. There is a specific set of steps, and the functions are made to PUSH. The designer on the other hand, is trying to PULL. By that I mean that design is meant to draw the eye, to gently bring you along to the next logical step.

But the best applications with the best user experiences (UX)/user interface (UI), don’t do either. Or perhaps more accurately, do both — they guide. They walk along with the user, they make you feel like every step is natural, and you’re not being forced either by being forcibly pushed or gently pulled – the “system” is walking along with you.

Our goal is to build systems that walk with the user, so he or she never feels pushed and never feels pulled, but guided. What do you think makes a good “guidance-driven” interface?

Is my writing ability being surpassed by a computer?

Posted on April 25 2012 by Jeff

As if it wasn’t tough enough to make a living as a writer these days, I just read this story about computers replacing journalists. Fortunately it was mostly about sports journalism, and the story didn’t say whether computers have mastered the sports journalist’s ability to ask the same inane question nine times in a single interview.

I think we’re safe for now. Read it here: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/can-the-computers-at-narrative-science-replace-paid-writers/255631/

Are You Driving Into a Wall?

Posted on January 10 2012 by laurel

Does driving fan interaction on your Facebook brand page, Twitter, blog or YouTube feel like driving into a wall—over and over again? We know it can be painful. The idea of starting your social media outreach is daunting, yes; and actually doing it can be disheartening if you don’t know the best ways to go about it.

MadLab Media is here for you because, while social media marketing is simple in concept, you’ll need some serious know-how put into the job to make your company stand out . . . (and a few little tricks some mad scientists can cook up are helpful too). So let us help get you past that wall and onto better things.

Get in touch with us about that job that’s just over your head and we’ll get back to you shortly.

We’d love to hear from you!

Have You Utilized Social Network Marketing?

Posted on January 7 2012 by laurel

Staying caught-up with all the new technology and social networking sites these days feels overwhelming to many small business owners. But learning the basics can put your business a step ahead.

While paid advertising is essential, social networking is a new and exciting opportunity to further develop your business. Did you know more than 800 million people are active users of Facebook, more than 50 million actively use Twitter and you can connect with them about your company and products? That’s millions of potential customers! Learning how to use these new opportunities now gives you a competitive edge over your competitors who wait until later, or choose not to join in.

Simply create a profile page for your business on Facebook and sign up for a Twitter account. It’s fast, easy and free.

Click here to create your page on Facebook and sign-up for your Twitter account here.

One important aspect to the strategy of successfully using social networking to your advantage is content. Quality and quantity are important. By consistently adding content to your Facebook or Twitter page you will constantly be flickering through the minds of passers-by. Catch their attention. Hold it. Make them remember you. If they like what they’ve read from you in the past they’ll take a moment to read your new update or status in the future.

Much of the social marketing world is an online version of word-of-mouth advertising, which is the most powerful kind — powerful because it’s based on trust. If your friend “likes” a hair salon on Facebook or follows them on Twitter and you’re unhappy with the salon you’ve gone to for years, won’t you consider trying theirs out because you trust and value your friend’s opinion? I thought so.

While social networking is an effective outlet for you to tell the world about your services remember that the effectiveness in the long run is solely dependent on your service. News about your company will spread whether it’s good or bad—it will spread the quickest if it’s exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. When companies treat their customers remarkably well and offer great products the talk going around will match the outstanding service.

WordPress and Network Solutions

Posted on December 20 2011 by Jason

Oh, Network Solutions, let me count the ways I despise thee. From your overpriced services, to your impossibly cluttered control panels, to your evil domain sniping practices…

It’s a general rule for me that if I’m installing WordPress on a host I’m not familiar with, I will not use the automatic script but instead will opt to install manually.

Side Note: When at all possible, we try to use WebFaction for hosting – we’ve been using WebFaction here at Mad Lab for all our hosting for a few years now, and especially for our Django and WordPress projects, WebFaction has been nothing short of fantastic. If you’re looking for a host, give them a try. Their control panels aren’t exactly the most intuitive as they’re geared towards the more tech savvy customer, but their customer support is second to none. Final disclaimer: if you do sign up, please.use one of the links in this paragraph, and Mad Lab gets a tiny cut of what you spend. In closing, USE THIS LINK.

So back to it. Network Solutions forces WordPress into a subdirectory, which can wreak havoc with your .htaccess rewrites (I know it can be done, but why complicate matters?). So in order to put WP into your domain root, you have to do it manually. Not going to walk you through this… the part that’s a bit of a bear is the wp-config file. Normally, you’d put in ‘localhost’ as the DB server. In this case, Network Solutions needs the IP to the database server. So you need to go to your Network Solutions control panel, find the DB you created (manually of course), and find either the host alias or the IP to that DB server, and when creating your wp-config file, replace ‘localhost’ with that value.

Simple little fix, but knowing this will save you all sorts of time looking for the right way to connect the database to the WordPress installation.

Homer would be proud

Posted on December 16 2011 by Jason

In the never-ending quest to eliminate IE from our lives, sometimes we have to take the more pragmatic approach – since IE is so bad (especially in its earlier versions, which still persist), and since we can’t just ignore it, we fix it.

That’s right. We fix IE, since IE is too helpless to fix itself. Now I’m not a huge fan of browser hacks, but our analytics show that we still see between 40 and 60% IE users across our sites. That’s too significant to ignore.

Along comes CSS3Pie.

Homer Simpson dreams of pie.

CSS3Pie is a little javascript and browser behavior file that takes all the CSS3 behaviors that we are learning to know and love, and jams them down the throat of IE (well, technically, IE8 and earlier, since IE9 supports many of these properties), allowing a more consistent cross-browser user experience. That’s right – so all your rounded corners, linear gradients, box shadows, all at your fingertips to all browsers. It’s just a couple extra lines of code. So THANK YOU to the folks at CSS3PIE. Give us a hollar if you’re ever in town, we’ll take you out and buy you a slice – of the traditional kind, the kind Homer dreams of.

 

Giving Back To The Open Source Communtiy.

Posted on December 13 2011 by Paul

Many of us think just because we are aren’t writing the software we cannot contribute. Recently, I have started taking my first steps into helping out in my small way. I’m trying to do two things. The first is by writing posts here. Currently most of them are quite short, but hopefully people will find still find them useful. The second is by answering questions on Stack Overflow. I have found that service, and the users on it very helpful (even though I rarely ask a question directly).

So if you don’t think you can help, you’re wrong. Even as a user, by filing DETAILED (the key here is detailed!) bug reports when you find a problem in some open source software, you’re helping out big time.

(stepping off soapbox now)