shotgunflat launches new website

Drew McKenna came up with this little ditty on Feb 01, 2012

shotgunflat has launched a new website - this one...the one that you're looking at right now. Its not the same as the one you would have seen if you'd come to the site in January. We wanted to kick the new site off to start the New Year, but unfortunately we got side tracked with client work, births in the sgf family and even more client work. Coming in 2012 will be a large push from our mobile division, a new service the 'site tune-up' and the introduction of Lifesites. Also Mike and Chris will be spending 10 days in Switzerland, so we'll probably get some great photos.

How to Make your Facebook Brand Page Most Effective

Ruston Eastman came up with this little ditty on Dec 15, 2011

A study at Mashable on what people look at on Facebook brand pages shows that a splashy profile image is NOT the way to go (unless you are Victoria's Secret).



The study (with a sample size of 30 users) used eye-tracking software with a webcam to see what people focused on the most. The answer: the Wall.

Content matters, and if you are going to publish photos, put them on the wall if you want your potential clients to notice.

Really, Really, Really Bad Contingency Planning

Mike McKenna came up with this little ditty on Nov 30, 2011

A few minutes ago, I logged on to my online banking account (well, I attempted to). Turns out there was something wrong.

That, in and of itself, is no big deal. Stuff happens—we know this first hand. But when something goes wrong, there should be a nice, gentle let-down. Something like the "Tumblr goes down" error page. But what I just got today was a real disaster, courtesy of Eastern Bank. This kind of thing should never, ever show up during a user experience:



For a banking institute which boasts a balance sheet like this, it’s a bit frightening to see an error message like the one above show up. Let’s see if they hear our chatter…

A Banana, A Sticker, and a Lonely Bottle of Red

Ruston Eastman came up with this little ditty on Nov 11, 2011

This morning, as I was getting coffee going (and breakfast for the kids), I looked at our newly-replenished fruit bowl. One of the bananas had a QR code on it. I thought this was ridiculous. I pictured in my head what would happen. I figured I’d scan the QR code and get something like this:



What actually happened was this: I was invited to join a recipe contest using Chiquita Bananas. Interesting, but I passed.

Then, I started to wonder why Chiquita would go through the trouble of creating a campaign, setting up a mobile campaign, and making the QR code stickers (they should have done something more creative). Is it really worth it? Are people actually using QR codes?

In a word, absolutely.

According to Quearr, the numbers are staggering, too: A few highlights from their data: From early 2010 to early 2011, QR code use has increased by 4,589%. Also interesting: most QR scanners are women in a family. Suddenly the Chiquita contest makes a lot more sense.

Making your own QR code is really, really, really easy. Let’s say for example, that I want to create a campaign that will allow people to view my lovely banana graphic (above). First, I’ll create my campaign online (in this case, it’s just a simple page on our website). Next, I’ll visit a QR code generator site (try the freebie at Kaywa) and tell it what URL I want my QR code to lead the user to. Finally, I download my QR code and enjoy.

Try it for yourself here:

Mount:ee + Coda = EE Awareness

Mike McKenna came up with this little ditty on Nov 09, 2011

Here at shotgunflat, we’re huge fans of the ExpressionEngine CMS platform. We’re very grateful to our friends at story+structure for turning us on to EE a few years ago. Since then, we’ve put dozens of our clients’ sites on EE and watched them thrive on the system.

However, sometimes (ok, always) the process is a bit clunky when we’re trying to edit or build more complicated solutions on the EE platform. Here’s a screenshot of what the editing dialog looks like on the backend:



Easy enough to work with for basic stuff, but having to scroll in a window-inside-a-window, worry about accidentally closing the browser and losing work, etc. makes the setup suboptimal.

A few months back, I started looking around for a better solution—a way to work with ExpressionEngine and its tags and structure locally. It would make for a much greater means by which to work and follow best practices.

I found Mount:ee. Simply put, Mount:ee allows you to mount your entire ExpressionEngine site—templates and all—as a drive on your local machine. By doing so, you’ll have an up-to-date version of your site, mapped to the server, and ready to edit. Here’s the simple setup screen:



But this is only half of the beauty of Mount:ee. In addition, you can take advantage of Mountee’s free developer tools to hook yourself up with some sweet syntax highlighting in your favorite editor (Coda, Espresso, Textmate). Once you install your free tools, you’ll enjoy the following view of your application:



By spending $99 on Coda and $59 on Mount:ee (per computer), we’ve got ourselves the perfect little ExpressionEngine development setup.
Added bonus: saving your file to the server is incredibly fast.