CHROMATIC Blog

Responsive Grid Building with Sass and Zen Grids: The Tale of the Breakpoint Grid Breakdown mixin

gus — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:41:18 +0000

A discussion on responsive Sass strategy and how to solve the common problem of numerous grids needing varying numbers of columns across many breakpoints. Can we accomplish this with one mixin?

Coming Down the DrupalCon Portland Mountain

dave — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Another DrupalCon down. More memories, more connections, and a little more Drupal knowledge. Here’s Dave’s take on DrupalCon Portland 2013.

The Black Magic Effect

chris — Fri, 24 May 2013 04:31:38 +0000

Drupal development can feel a bit like “black magic” when you’re getting started. Here’s a high level guide aimed at beginners to help point them in the right direction.

Cron Hasn't Run in HOW LONG!?

dave — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:08:42 +0000

If you work with Drupal long enough, cron will hang and fail on you. It has failed us all. This may not always be a big deal, but it becomes a real issue when your web application or Drupal site has cron-dependent processes, actions, triggers, etc. We whipped up a clever solution to alert us when there's an issue with cron.

Using Imagick with Drupal

adam — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:40:53 +0000

A common response when someone asks, "Can Drupal do that?" is almost always a resounding yes. However, when a recent project required that Drupal merge CMS capabilities with Photoshop-like functionality, I began to question if Drupal really was the right solution.

Which Responsive Drupal 7 Theme Should I Use?

gus — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:06:12 +0000

Finding a responsive theme for your next Drupal project isn't difficult, but selecting the right one for the job takes a bit more thought. Surprisingly, we found very little advice when doing so for our latest project, so we decided to do some research.

Project Follow-up: Applied Motion Products Website Redesign

chris — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:24:57 +0000

Over the past year or so, CHROMATIC has worked closely with Applied Motion Products. Applied Motion manufactures and sells precision motion control products. They make motors, drives, and power supplies for various manufacturing processes and have been doing so since 1978.

9 Reasons Blogs Are Great For SEO

steven — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:18:45 +0000

While blogging is not the answer for all websites, it can greatly benefit the majority of sites and businesses regardless of industry. If your website struggles to have the impact for your business that you would like it to have, take a look at what a blog can do for your website's search engine optimization (SEO).

10 Effective and Time Efficient Social Media Marketing Tips

steven — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:36:20 +0000

Social media and social networking present incredible opportunities for bloggers and website owners who want to reach a larger audience. However, many people who have tried social media marketing have invested a considerable amount of time only to experience less-than-stellar results.

10 Practical Website Link Building Tips for Bloggers

steven — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:37:31 +0000

As the number of online blogs continue to increase every day, it becomes more difficult to make your blog stand out from the crowd. Many bloggers want to build a strong reputation in their industry, but they just don't know where to start with marketing and promotion.

9 Practical Tips for Building Your Website Authority

steven — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:08:24 +0000

For businesses that are aiming to build a website that achieves long-term success by being the face of the business, making sales, or promoting services, one of the primary goals should be to develop a website that becomes recognized as an authority in its industry.

6 Keys to Effectively Promoting Your Website Through a Blog

steven — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:15:09 +0000

Over the past few years, one of the biggest trends in online marketing has been the growth of blogs. Although they started out primarily being used for personal reasons, a growing number of businesses are recognizing the potential of blogging.

Drupal Tutorial: Form Overrides and Element-Specific Validations

chris — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:00:18 +0000

Last week, I was working on some Drupal form customizations and validations for a client’s site (launching soon) and thought I’d share how you can easily alter Drupal forms. That is, if you know how and where to tap in.

9 Logical Reasons Why You Need to Integrate Twitter into Your Website

matt — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:41:14 +0000

Regardless of who you are or what you do, the advantages to integrating Twitter into your website will almost always outweigh the disadvantages.

10 Ways to Keep Your Precious Followers on Twitter

matt — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:44:28 +0000

How much do you value your Twitter followers? If the answer is "a lot", then here are some general guidelines that you should consider following if you'd like that latest follower to continue following you for the long run.

9 Brilliant Ways To Ensure Client Satisfaction and Project Success

matt — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:49:58 +0000

Arguably the two most important aspects of a web design freelancer or web design firm's operations are client satisfaction and project success. Without client satisfaction and project success, you'll be hard pressed to obtain quality referrals, testimonials, and additional work from a client.

19 Essential WordPress Plugins That Every Professional Website Should Use

matt — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:02:39 +0000

Pretty bold title, huh? Well, I've been a fan of WordPress for years. I'm an avid supporter of the robust and highly intuitive blogging platform and have contributed to the WordPress community over the past few years by launching a professional WordPress themes website, creating a useful plugin (Twitter ReTweet) for Twitter/WordPress integration, and advocating the use of WordPress to clients and friends alike.

11 Absolutely Necessary Web-Based Tools for a Freelance Web Designer

matt — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:00:44 +0000

I'm feeling extra generous today, so I'm going to share the most important web-based tools that we use at CHROMATIC to run the majority of our operations.

Who Likes a Messy Office? (Tim Jahn)

admin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:32:47 +0000

Chances are prospective customers are going to check out your website before anything else about you. It's important that your website is just as inviting as your office. Is the place a mess?

Drupal Tutorial: Adding a 'Related Posts By This Author' Block With Views

chris — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:15:19 +0000

In this post, I’m going to show you how you can easily leverage the power of Views 2 to create a simple block that displays “Related Posts by this Author” information. To break it down, here’s exactly what we need to do: when a user has navigated to a specific node, we want to use that node author's user ID as a key to load other posts by that author.

Conversion Magnet: 10 Tips to Creating a Brilliant Landing Page

matt — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 07:54:47 +0000

Building a great website and building a great landing page are two completely different things. While a strong website can grab the attention of visitors, a strong landing page can (and should) take those visitors and transform them into conversions.

15 Common Drupal Problems That Make You Scream (Solutions Included)

chris — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:47:14 +0000

Whether you are a Drupal newcomer or a seasoned Drupal ninja, you're bound to run into one, some, or all of the issues outlined below. Some are obvious, some not so obvious, but I'll show you how to troubleshoot them all regardless.

7 Impressive Twitter Customer Service/Brand Management Cases

matt — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:11:39 +0000

It's no secret that Twitter continues to spread like wildfire. More and more businesses - small, medium, and large - are hopping on the Twitter bandwagon. Are they doing it for the right reasons? Well, some of them sure are.

WordPress Plugin: Twitter ReTweet

matt — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:40:10 +0000

I spent the last few hours scouring the net, searching for a WordPress plugin that we could use to output a basic, stylable link anywhere on a WordPress post or page which, when clicked, would allow our visitors to quickly and easily ReTweet (RT) the current post.

CSS Image Rollovers: Accessible, Standard Compliant, Flicker-Free

matt — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:01:00 +0000

Although we thought this problem had been perfected years ago, we still manage to come across professional, high-trafficked websites using broken and outdated CSS image rollover techniques. This is absolutely unacceptable and unnecessary.

10 Must-Have Drupal Modules for Drupal Web Developers

chris — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:47:57 +0000

Each Drupal developer out there has their own list of their "must-have” modules. These modules are the tarballs (.tar) that each developer downloads and unzips immediately after installing the Drupal CMS. The following list is partially mine and partially that of my Twitter followers.

jQuery Tutorial: Selecting Multiple Select Form Elements on the Fly

chris — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 02:55:14 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, a client of ours needed a simple way to select some or all options in a multiple select form element that contained hundreds of options. Basically, they had various State/County combination's that they needed to assign to different pieces of content.

11 Reasons Why a Web CMS Will Make Your Life Easier and Your Wallet Fatter

matt — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:19:01 +0000

Nearly every website owner or web developer has asked this question at one time or another: Why should I use a Web Content Management System (WCMS)? If you value your time, money, and sanity, then there are several reasons why using a Web CMS is superior to hand-coding a website.

The Official 'Successful Website Checklist Challenge'

matt — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:26:03 +0000

If your website doesn't stand out and do a heck of a lot of things right, then chances are it's going to crash and burn. Take our "Successful Website Checklist Challenge" (below) and see what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and what you're forgetting to do. We've even included notes and resources for nearly every item on the checklist (just to make your life easier).

13 Reasons Why CSS Is Superior to Tables in Website Design

matt — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:38:05 +0000

For the past few days, we've been scouring the web searching for the top 13 reasons why Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are superior to table-based layouts when designing a website. Some web designers swear that table-based layouts are better than CSS-based layouts, while others believe that table-based layouts are ancient history and XHTML combined with CSS is the only real solution to coding a web site's visual layout. Since we're one of those CSS die-hards, we've compiled a list of 13 reasons why CSS-based layouts are superior to table-based layouts.

12 Steps to Creating a Professional Web Design

matt — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:11:36 +0000

Before we share some of the necessary steps used to create a professional web design and website, the following question must be addressed: What constitutes a "professional web design"? More often than not, a web designer or web design company claims to offer professional web design services for their clients. However, should they be promoting "web design services" rather than "professional web design services"? When measuring the professionalism of a web design and website, one must take into consideration a number of factors/steps:

Chromatic Launches Professional WordPress Themes Website

matt — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:30:49 +0000

We are pleased to announce our brand new WordPress themes website now available for viewing. Looking for free, high-quality WordPress themes? Check out our Professional WordPress Themes website today!

The Dos and Don'ts of Website Navigation Usability

matt — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:47:29 +0000

Having poor website usability is like driving your car without a map through an area that you've never visited before. Unless you have an incredible aptitude for finding your way around, you're going to get lost. In addition, the more that you drive around, the more frustrated you're going to become. The possibility that you'll never want to return to that area significantly increases as the frustration is compounded. The same holds true for a website that possesses poor usability.

Essential Guide to Creating SEO Friendly Website Design

matt — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 06:58:24 +0000

The process of creating a successful search engine optimization campaign can be compared to the construction of a new building - without a solid foundation (SEO friendly website design) the building (your website) won't be sturdy or safe to occupy. Ultimately, the risk of the building collapsing (your website SEO campaign failing) significantly increases because of a poorly constructed foundation.

5 Things to Hate About Web Design (and how to fix them)

matt — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:16:40 +0000

What do you hate most about websites ? If you browse websites as much as we do, then there is a lot to hate. Because there are so many terribly designed, user non-friendly websites on the Internet today, we have put together this short but detailed list of things to hate about web design. In addition to compiling this list, we've also provided a solution for each of the problems.

The Dos and Don'ts Guide to Great Web Design

matt — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:00:07 +0000

When followed, this guide will prove to be quite a valuable web design resource. From the inexperienced to the experienced, this guide has something for everyone.

Web design: Keep it clean

matt — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 03:51:00 +0000

When designing your website, remember one thing: Less is more. Some people make the mistake of filling up every pixel on their web page with a different image or graphic or piece of text. Not only does this usually look bad, but it greatly diminishes the chance that the visitor will be able to find a focal point. People don't like being confused when they visit a web site. They like simple.