Yesterday Adam Euans, one of our senior developers, forwarded me a link to a blog post entitled Universities Love Using ColdFusion.

Adam loves using ColdFusion (for its speed of development and flexibility among other things) and he once was a ColdFusion developer at Case Western Reserve University.  (Disclaimer: I am a CWRU alum.  Go Spartans!)  So you can imagine that seeing this blog post warmed his little programming heart.

Brice Cheddarn, the blog’s author, provides some pretty eye opening results.  Every single university in the Big 10 uses ColdFusion in some shape or form.  Same goes in the PAC 10.  And almost all the Ivy League does.  The list goes on.  (He does not provide any insight into the UAA, CWRU’s league, but I imagine the results are the same.  The UAA always tries to stay in lockstep with those pesky ivies.)

The blog is clear – ColdFusion is everywhere in higher education.

Here at WRIS Web Services, we’d like to modify the statement a tad – ColdFusion is everywhere in education - including K-12.

Several of the best known private and public schools in Northeast Ohio are using ColdFusion too:

• Beachwood Schools 
• Orange Schools
• Cleveland Heights-University Heights Schools
• Euclid Schools
• Laurel School

And that’s just the list I know off the top of my head because they happen to be our clients.  There’s surely more, both in Cleveland and nationwide, but I don’t have nearly the research persistence of Brice to look for them. 

We’ve always felt that ColdFusion was a great fit for our school clients.  I’m glad to see we aren’t the only ones who believe in this programming language for education.

Does your education institution use ColdFusion?  Why or why not?

We're excited to announce that the Beachwood Schools website, with web design and development by WRIS, has won a Standard of Excellence award in the Web Marketing Association's thirteenth annual WebAward Competition.  The website (www.beachwoodschools.org), won in the School category.  To date, WRIS has won thirteen WebAwards with 2009 marking the seventh consecutive year of wins.

The website WRIS developed for Beachwood Schools was launched in February of 2009 after several months of careful planning and programming.  Located in an east side suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, The Beachwood City School District has approximately 1,600 students enrolled in four separate school buildings. In an effort to streamline communication, the newly designed website includes updateable news and announcements on the home page and a powerful school-wide calendar sortable by school campus and category. All of the site's content, including photographs, is updateable through a password-protected Content Manager managed entirely by school staff.  The mission of the new Beachwood Schools website is to make it easy for prospective families to gather information about the school district, and provide valuable information to existing members of the school community including students, parents, faculty & staff and alumni.

The Beachwood School's website scored well above the industry average for design, content, technology, copywriting and ease of use. Judges from the WebAward competition said, "This site is a great first step toward providing better school websites." Another judge commented that the site was "well laid out and easy to navigate."

Founded by the Web Marketing Association in 1997, the WebAwards is the standards-defining competition that sets industry benchmarks based on the seven criteria of a successful website: design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, copywriting, and ease of use. Thousands of sites were adjudicated in 96 industry categories during this year's competition. The competition was judged by a team of independent Internet professionals representing a variety of relevant disciplines of Web site development. Judges included members of the media, advertising executives, site designers, corporate marketing executives, content providers and webmasters.

The goal of the WebAwards is to provide a forum to recognize the people and organizations responsible for developing some of the most effective websites on the Internet today. Beyond validation, entrants benefit from a website assessment by a professional judging panel, which provides specific feedback on how each site ranks against standards of excellence.

With its new website, Heather Moore Jewelry now has a online presence that reflects the beauty and quality of their products.

Heather Moore Jewelry, a Cleveland based company, is known for their stunning handmade personalized jewelry including rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.  Their jewelry line is often featured in fashion magazines including “Town and Country” and “Martha Stewart Weddings”.

Not only is the site visually beautiful, it features some of our best development work yet.  The site was written in ColdFusion, our language of choice for rapid development time.  We had a tight deadline for this project so efficient programming was of the essence. 

Shoppers can browse and select from HMJ’s extensive catalog, allowing them to create a truly unique piece of jewelry, all online.  This catalog is powered by an extensive database and custom content manager on the back end.

We utilized AJAX driven commands to make the shopping experience easier.  No need to refresh the page when changing quantities or sizes – it’s all done inline.

The site’s shopping cart features functionality often seen with much larger e-tailers.  For instance, the smart checkout remembers who you are, allowing for one-click ordering.  This makes the shopping experience easier for the customer while helping to increase sales for HMJ.

One of our favorite things, however, is that shoppers can create “projects”.  A shopper can design a piece of jewelry, save it and work on it later.  This encourages repeat visitors and promotes brand loyalty.

This site was truly a team effort with everyone on the WRIS team pitching in at some point.  The team leads were Bonny Lafave (Project Management), Craig Minch (Web Design) and Adam Euans (Web Development).

We work with a wide variety of clients who range from web experts to those launching their very first web site.  I ran across a blog post of Web Design Industry Jargon and thought it was a nice comprehensive and easy to understand resource.

A few sample entries:

Below the Fold
This term is a carry-over from newspaper publishing days. In newspaper terms, “below the fold” means content was on the bottom half of the page (below the physical fold in the paper). In web design terms, “below the fold” refers to the content that is generally going to be below the point first viewable to the average website visitor in their browser (in other words, viewers would have to scroll down to see the content).

Breadcrumb
Breadcrumbs are the bit of navigation elements that generally appear near the top of a give web page that show you the pages and subpages the appear before the page you’re on. For examples, on a blog, the breadcrumbs might look something like: Home > Category > Year > Month > Post (or they might be a lot simpler that that). The breadcrumbs term comes from the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel.”

Content Management System
Also known as a CMS, the Content Management System is a backend tool for managing a site’s content that separates said content from the design and functionality of the site. Using a CMS generally makes it easier to change the design or function of a site independent of the site’s content. It also (usually) makes it easier for content to be added to the site for people who aren’t designers.

Landing Page
A landing page is the page where a visitor first enters a website. Oftentimes, a special landing page is created to elicit a specific action from the new visitor (usually in connection with an advertising or marketing campaign).

Really Simple Syndication
Also referred to as RSS. RSS is a standardized XML format that allows content to be syndicated from one site to another. It’s most commonly used on blogs. RSS also allows visitors to subscribe to a blog or other site and receive updates via a feed reader.

TrueHero.org, which was designed and developed by WRIS, was recently featured in Crain’s Cleveland Business (subscription required):

The former CEO of Royal Appliance Manufacturing Co. and Lamson & Sessions Co. [Mike Merriman] earlier this year quietly launched a nonprofit called True Hero, which only now is getting a formal unveiling. The web-based organization, at www.truehero.org, will award a total of $20,000 to 12 public service projects carried out by high school and college students and non-school groups consisting primarily of participants 23 years old and younger.

In a reflection of True Hero's launch in the Facebook/social media age, the content of the web site is almost totally generated by users.
Student groups submit descriptions of their projects, and monetary awards are made based on projects that receive the most votes. (The site's technology prevents people from voting for a particular project more than once, though users can cast votes for up to five projects.)

We've enjoyed working with Mike on this very cool venture.  Go vote for one of the 50+ service projects vying for prize money!