Bravo TV and Top Chef Season 4 alum, Spike Mendelsohn, continues his foray into American cuisine with the launch of D.C’s newest pizzeria,We, the Pizza. Two years ago, Mendelsohn launched the successful Good Stuff Eatery, a stylish twist on burgers, shakes and fries.We, the Pizzaaims to be something of a revelation, reflecting Spike’s vision of what fresh, unique and fun pizza should be.

For the restaurant’s website, Mendelsohn teamed up with Birmingham, AL-based web firm ASI. “The roots of our software company are in the automobile industry,” says ASI’s V.P. and Senior Developer Mike Strong. “For years our only clients were General Motors and Isuzu of America, but in 2009 we began to see great opportunities with clients ranging from churches to boutique retail shops and now restaurants.”

Since beginning in business web development, ASI has completed over 25 client sites but Lead Web Developer Michael Thomas says it’s not about the quantity. “There are many small firms that will slap your logo on a template and show you the door. That’s not what we’re about. We listen, and then listen some more. Our development process is designed to be collaborative and involve our clients as much as they desire.”

In an industry where creativity is often muted in favor of flash and distractions, ASI delivered a site that is as unique as the restaurant without sacrificing usability and simplicity. “We see web development as digital storytelling,” says V.P. and Marketing Director Gary Adams. “Everyone has a story to tell, and the story is usually so compelling that they’ve gone into business in order to share it. Our job is to get out of the way and let people see a company for who they are: passionate, driven, and talented.”

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The Alabama Franchise Alliance, founded in 2010, is a membership organization of franchisors, franchisees, and suppliers. AFA's goal is to provide valuable resources and connections for our members.  ASI's web development strategy was to increase membership value by providing a powerful membership directory for highlighting the organization's partner-members.  Our work included site design, development, and various marketing materials.

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The Classical School Foundation believes the greatest resource in any school is its teachers. That’s why they were excited to announce the 2010 CSF Symposium and Lyceum.  The CSF needed a easy to navigate mini-site for their symposium and lyceum events.  The sites handled registration for the events as well as serving valuable attendee information.

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Threadcraft Counseling in Birmingham, Alabama is a Christian counseling office experienced in addressing a wide range of personal, relational, professional, and spiritual issues.  Lead by Hal Threadcraft, PhD this organization sought to create a welcoming and informative gateway to potential clients.  ASI created the branding, designed and developed the site, and assisting in content structuring and authoring.

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Alisa Poole is a talented local artist who renown for her visually expressive renditions of local churches.  Alisa, or "Lisy" as her friends call her, sought to create an online home for her paintings and thoughts.  We developed multiple galleries, an integrated blog, and online ordering.

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Oak Mountain is a large congregation of the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) in Birmingham, AL. Their challenge was to create a site with a style and feeling that matched their contemporary worship which contrasted a very traditional style building they had just completed. ASI designed and developed the site, assisted in content creation and organization, as well as various other components.

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Paper Dolls is a hip stationery and gift shop serving the 280 corridor and the Greystone area of Birmingham. The importance of the owner Ashley Dawson's involvement and presence on the website could not be understated. Customers love the attention she gives and it was our desire to bring the in-store experience to the site. The work included brand clarity, web design, development, artwork, newsletter design, and social networking consulting.

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Extreme Fit Training is a rapidly growing fitness program in Birmingham. Specializing in fitness boot camps, owner and lead instructor Rachel Hunt minces no words about getting great results requires hard work. We guided Rachel in the areas of community management, retaining her past customer's interest and using social networking tools to spread her message. Work included web design, content clarification, online registration and payment, blogging, Facebook integration and newsletter services.

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Here's a quick look at the new package layout.  We'll dive further into the changes below.

Bridging the gap

We're introducing the ADVANCED plan to smooth the gap between PLUS and PRO. Now, you have a whole new option for your websites giving you up to 50 pages, 3 GB of storage and 5 users. Storage and users on this new plan are at the levels previously seen on our PRO plan, yet at a cost of $30 less per month.

More value

We've added one extra user to our PLUS plan at no extra cost. All PLUS level websites can now make use of ChameleonCMS's advanced permission features by allowing another person to login and edit or view specific content on the website. Our PRO plan is also gaining added value with a 100% increase in storage capacity (up to 6 GB) and a 100% increase in users (up to 10 users). All with no increase in monthly cost.

Everything's included

Remember that every plan, at every price, includes all of our features. Every plan gets the support of our 9 year old, debt-free, solid company. Every plan gets free, super-reliable hosting in our Tier IV datacenter that's ready to handle whatever traffic you can generate. Every plan gets hassle-free website management with a system that's designed with the clear goal of helping you build your business.

Available Now

The new pricing was implemented on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 9am Central Daylight Time (GMT -5). At that time, all existing ChameleonCMS websites were updated to reflect the changes and our new ADVANCED package became available as well.

Thanks to you!

We're so excited to bring you these pricing and package changes. We're happy to say that throughout our history, we've never raised our hosting pricing and now we're able to offer our product at an even better value. Thank you all for the feedback over the years. We take it all very seriously and look forward to our continued relationship as your web partner.

Thirty-one Eighteen is a handmade baby and bags boutique.  Their products are made for practicality, durability, and style.  ASI designed and developed the logo and website, including customized product catalog, and seamless Blogger template.  Ordering is handled through custom PayPal buttons for no cost to the owner. Visit the site »

Behind the Scenes

Much of the update was behind the scenes internal workings.  Additionally, we've done work to keep the editor up to date with new web browsers and updates to existing ones.

Multiple File Upload

This oft-requested feature is finally here!  Access any file management tool in ChameleonCMS and click on the "upload" button.  The improved upload screen allows you to choose multiple files and send them to the server all at once.  Here's a quick look:

Drag & Drop

Just like on your desktop, reorganize your files by dragging and dropping them into folders. 

Image Properties

Now you no longer have to insert an image before setting it's advanced properties.  See how the file manager allows for advanced properties below:

Full Internet Explorer 8 support

IE8 was just released from Microsoft.  Our latest update makes sure you early-adopters are taken care of!

Improved Rendering and Progress Indicator

Our new progress indicator will cut out the guess work by showing you when things are loading and how long they will take.

Improved User Interface

We have tweaked the editor to be sleeker, cleaner, and easier to use.

The Centsible Shopper is a tool created to assist frugal shoppers in their quest to become better stewards by buying strategically. It is a gathering place of thrifty minds who share cost cutting ideas and save on their grocery budgets.  ASI designed, developed, and deployed the blog site with powerful social features such as Facebook identity, Feedburning, and Email Subscriptions.  The Centsible Shopper is powered by Chameleon CMS. Visit the site »

When you use Feedburner, you give Feedburner the address of the XML feed from your blog element (we will refer to this as the "raw feed").  You can find this feed address by clicking the "settings" button on your blog element and look for the section on RSS.  Feedburner takes this raw feed and enhances it with other special features and then generates its own feed, based on your feed.  You then share the Feedburner address for your feed instead of the address of your raw feed.  You can also insert the Feedburner address into the blog element (again, on the settings) and our system will use your Feedburner address instead of your raw feed address.

Example:

Your raw feed might have an address such as:

http://[yourdomain]/rss.aspx?p=2647...etc.

You would enter that address on Feedburner's site, go through their easy-to-follow setup process and then they would supply you with another address, which might look like this:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeedname

Feedburner's feed pulls information from your raw feed.  It is still updated every time you add new content and pushes that content out to anyone who is subscribed.

So why would I want to use Feedburner?

There are several compelling reasons to use Feedburner to generate a new feed address instead of simply sharing your raw feed address:

1. Feedburner enhances your feed with additional information.  Feedburner gives you the opportunity to add information to your feed that you can't add otherwise.  This information includes things like a feed description, copyright information and even some information helpful to iTunes (for podcasting) like an image that iTunes will use when displaying your podcast.  It is easy to set this information up through Feedburner using their system.
2. Feedburner provides you some statistics about how many subscribers you have to your feed.
3. Your Feedburner feed address will be simpler than your raw feed address, making it easier to share.
4. When sharing your feed, Feedburner provides you a nice landing page which can help your potential subscriber figure out how to subscribe to your feed.  For an example of this, you can take a look at the feed page for this support site.  Click the "subscribe" link on the left.  You will be taken to the Feedburner landing page for this feed.  You can see how this page provides a good bit of helpful information about our podcast, instead of just displaying the raw XML code.

Get Started

We recommend that you take advantage of the benefits that Feedburner can provide your feed at no cost.  This will help take your blog or podcast to a new level of professionalism and quality.  To get started:

1. Set up your blog or podcast feed through a blog element on your site.  See Podcasting Demystified.
2. Take the raw feed address generated by your blog element and burn that feed on Feedburner.  To find the raw feed address, click on "settings" for the blog element and scroll to the bottom of the page.
   
3. Place your Feedburner feed address into your blog element. Visit the blog settings again and paste the Feedburner address into the alternate feed address field.
   
4. Publish and share the Feedburner feed address with your site visitors.
   

Podcasting is a subscription based service.  Imagine that you are the publisher of a magazine.  People subscribe to your magazine and you deliver to them each new issue as soon as it's released.  In the same way, if you produce a podcast, you can deliver new episodes of the podcast to your subscribers instantly and automatically.  People like podcasts because they can get media content delivered to them as soon as new content is released.

What if they don't have iPods?

You may think that people have to have iPods to subscribe to your podcasts, but that's not true.  Podcast is just the brand name that stuck, sort of like everyone calls a tissue a Kleenex.  The truth is that you can subscribe to and listen to podcasts on your desktop or laptop computer, or with any portable media player.  In the future, podcasting will probably become even more widespread as mobile phones integrate podcasting and offer people the chance to subscribe to media content without even having a computer at all.

So what is a podcast?

Let me give you one way to think of a podcast.  This might be oversimplifying a bit for the real techies out there, but for the rest of us, this will do.

A podcast is a blog with media files.

That's it.  Make a blog, attach media files to each post and you've got yourself a podcast.  Now you can start to see the real power of our system's blog element.  Not only can it list information about your media neatly on your website, but it can also simultaneously serve that information out as a podcast.  What could be simpler?

Yeah, but how do I make it go?

Ok, there's just a few more things you need to know, so why don't we give it a try.  Follow these steps:

1. Create a page for your podcast.
   
   
2. Add a blog element to your page.
   
   
3. Add at least one post and attach an mp3 file to the post.  You can do this either by using the "attach file" at the bottom of the edit post screen, or you can link to the file directly inside the text element for the posts body content.
4. View your blog page and find the orange "RSS" button which should automatically appear at the bottom of your blog element.  Click the RSS button. 
   
5. You should see a page with several lines of code written on it.  Look in the address bar of your browser and copy the entire URL from the address bar (this will be something like "http://[yourdomain]/rss.aspx?p=2647...etc").  This is the "address" of your podcast. 

What just happened?

Every blog element generates an RSS feed which is written in the XML language.  When you click the "RSS" button it takes you to the home page for this feed and shows you the actual XML code for your feed.  It also shows you the address for your feed in the address bar.  This address is very important as it is the information others will need to subscribe to your podcast.

NOTE:  You can also find the RSS feed address for your blog element by clicking the "settings" button for that element and looking for the section on RSS.  Either way, you will get the same result.

What do I do with my podcast address?

Now that you've got your podcast's address, you can share it with others so that they can subscribe.  If someone subscribes to your podcast using the address you've provided, they will be updated every time you make a new post to that particular blog element.  Here is more detailed information about submitting your RSS feed to iTunes, http://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/podcasts/specs.html.

The most popular way to share a podcast is through iTunes.  iTunes is a free software that a lot of people use to subscribe to podcasts.  In order to make your podcast available on iTunes, you have to submit your podcast address to iTunes.  To do this, you will need to download iTunes, create an account, then go to the podcast area and click on "submit a podcast".  iTunes must approve your podcast and then it will be listed in their podcast directory.  One great thing about iTunes is that if they approve your podcast, they provide you with a link that will take a user directly to your podcast's page.  You can put this link on your website for people to use if they wish to subscribe with iTunes.

For all other "podcatcher" software, you can simply share out your actual podcast address.  Users of "podcatcher" software can enter your address and add it directly to their list of podcasts.

STOP!  Before you procede to share your podcast address to iTunes or directly, please take a look at our help article entitled, How and Why to Use Feedburner.  This article provides further information about an additional free service that can help your podcast.

1. Start by navigating to your staff or directory page, then add a photo gallery element.
   
2. Click on the settings link from the element options and configure the photo gallery skin to one of the options with captions.
   
3. Click Update, and then select Add/Remove Photos from the element options.  Add your staff or directory photos either in a zip file or individually.
   
4. Now we'll rename each photo to match the person's name and position with the title being first.  Click edit under the photo.
   
5. In the Caption blank enter the title and name seperated by a HTML Break.
   
6. In the WYSIWIG Editor, enter the bios or paste it from another source using the "Paste Plain Text" button.
   
7. Repeat this steps 4-6 for the remaining staff or directory members.  Now view the results by returning to the staff or directory page.
   
8. Clicking on a photo or name will open the bio in a lightbox.
   

Staff Gallery Tips: