Despite the Association of National Advertiser's (ANA) protests, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is expected to issue a new batch of domain names at the end of the month. While the initial thought of being able to have a branded top-level domain seems exciting - and a marketer's dream - the threats that could come with this expansion could (and really should) stifle a majority of that excitement.

Read Full Post

An Event Apart you say? Didn’t you guys just blog about it last week? We’re glad you noticed! Now it’s my turn to take the hot seat. I’ll try to keep it short, and thus will focus on two of the topics that are particularly challenging me at the moment.

Read Full Post

True inspiration can be measured by its longevity. It's been a week since Banks and Andrea and I visited Atlanta for An Event Apart (@aneventapart), but I'm still giddy about being a web developer. And this is a breakthrough, because there's been a problem...

Read Full Post

Hello, world – this is my first post! I’ve learned a bunch since joining the Studiobanks team three months ago. Lots of that learning has been dedicated to becoming accustomed to a new workplace (workflows, project history etc), but at least one universal pearl of wisdom comes to mind that I think would be helpful to lots of folks – testing Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, and 9!

Since we’re all Mac here at the office, I’ve become reasonably familiar with the process of setting up multiple virtual machines to provide a rock-solid (and free) testing environment on my local computer. I’ve employed other techniques over the years (IETester, online screenshot services), but nothing comes close to having the actual browsers loaded in their own sandboxed environment. We’ll achieve this by creating four separate virtual machines in VirtualBox.

Read Full Post

Occupy-NorthPole.com is now live and fighting the good fight against cookie inequality! Learn more about the movement on their site and then check ‘em out on Facebook and stay up to date about all the news by following the movement on Twitter:

@ChandlerWobble: Head spokes-elf for the ONP movement.

@Occupy_NP: The official twitter account of the ONP movement.

@Red_NoseRudolph: Santa’s 9th reindeer and proud member of the Reindeer Union for over 72 years.

@Sam_theSnowman: Lead reporter covering the movement for the North Pole News Network.

Read Full Post

When Florida-based Cornerstone Community Bank decided they needed to redesign their website, they started their search where most people do: Google. Search “web design for banks” and it’s not hard to see what happened next. One community bank in search of a company who could help them redesign their website and one guy who happened to be named Banks running his own digital agency. All it took was Google to bring us together.

Read Full Post

When Studiobanks first landed the Bojangles’ account, we knew one element of the digital platform would test our problem-solving skills: the menu. If you’re from the South, you know Bojangles’ is famous for its chicken and biscuits. All told the menu includes over 30 different entrees, 10 types of side items, 12 drink choices and countless meal, dinner, box and combo combinations. It’s a lot to choose from and even more to content manage.

It wasn’t the number of menu items or even organizing them into categories—we’ve done that before—that proved to be challenging. No, it was the nutritional values (of all things) that would become our nemesis. The nutritional values needed to display accurately for all menu items, including all possible meal, dinner, box and combo combinations. To up the ante even further, it’s common for Bojangles’ to tweak its recipes, thereby changing the nutritional values on a fairly regular basis. The digital platform would require a database and content management strategy that would allow for an easy, scalable approach to the way nutritional values are recorded. Challenge accepted!

Read Full Post

Notice something different about us? Yessire, we decided it was about time to give the old URL an update, and update it we did! The new site you’re currently browsing features a brand new design strategy and modern development languages like HTML5 and CSS3. If you’ll scale your browser size for just a moment, you’ll notice that the grid-based layout scales automatically so it can fit monitors of all sizes and even smartphones and tablets. Petty neat, huh?

Read Full Post