January 2015
Contents
What do you do when you replace your aging website with a brand spanking new one and within days you fall off the face of the Google planet? When you get kicked off page one to, Oh, I don't know - nowhere? You dust off your old site and put it back up "as is" and hope the search engines will forgive you.
Two years ago we shuttered our original printfire site and redirected visitors to morningflight.com, a Drupal CMS. Sadly, the new site never made it past the third page in the rankings. Might have fared better had we gone with Wordpress, but given the volatility of the software universe, my hunch is this won't be the last time our crystal ball has us picking the wrong horse.
In our September 2012 FlyBy I promised to "never again build a static HTML website." Turns out that wasn't to be, either. Our just completed makeover has been meticulously handcrafted in HTML5/CSS/Javascript.
It took us years to work our way up to page one. Wasn't going to get bumped this time. I'm comfortable there. So for the next few days, I'll be holding my breath again.
Hal Heindel
Unitac International Inc.
New Printfire Website
Our website makeover is one of those "feel good" projects. Good to finally get off the plate because it's been sitting on the back burner for so long, and good because we worked really hard to make you feel at home so you'll stay a while. Not to mention that we had fun building it.
And we're not done yet. A whole new wing is still taking shape, the Morning Flight Academy. Between our online help system and the forum archives there is now enough material in our library to answer most support questions. The problem is accessibility. How to find that needle in the haystack even when you do know what you're looking for.
The Academy will start with ground school - quick video tutorials of the basics, and lots of them. Our current tutorials are sort of obsolete anyway because they're Flash files produced with Adobe Captivate, and Flash no longer works on iPhones or iPads. Fortunately, Adobe has seen the light. The new Captivate 8 will generate both Flash and HTML5 files. We just renewed our subscription.
Please click on the link below to visit us at our new home on the web. We'd love to see you there.
DISQUS - Can it replace our old Forum?
I really miss the old Forum. Despite all the problems with spam and forum software not keeping up with the times, in its day the Morning Flight Forum was incredibly helpful for getting user input and feedback on new products. Besides, I've yet to find a better platform for just chatting with Morning Flight users.
Will Disqus work? I'm not sure, but you'll find a Discussion Page at the Insider Club of our new website. Until we discover a replacement that works, I'll keep looking.
Tip of the Month
Question: Why does a spiralbound booklet cost significantly more than the same booklet saddlestitched?
The answer is, it shouldn't. The most probable cause for the disparity is that an 8-1/2 x 11 saddlestitched booklet has to be printed on no less than a 4-page press sheet. When you change the binding to spiralbound, the program defaults to 8-1/2 x 11. Increase the press sheet size for the spiralbound booklet to 11 x 17 and the prices will be much closer.