Vacation Time After a busy year finishing up exciting new projects, we need a bit of down time! We’ll be on vacation from Sept. 28 through Oct. 9. We’ll get to as many last-minute requests as possible before we leave. We’ll check in occasionally while we’re away, but our Internet access will be limited during this time.  We look forward to helping you with all your website and publishing needs upon our return. Conferences Are Us We’ve been implementing some exciting new designs for our long-term partner, Global Strategic Management Institute (GSMI), a conference creation and production company. AI is the hot topic this year, and we’ve been bringing our experience and skills in creating intuitive content management systems for complex websites to the table. Conferences have their own special needs, for which we have developed methods for managing features such as portals for speakers to upload content, dynamic agenda info, easily reproducible designs for multi-year conference series, dynamic content linking, easy creation of complex pages using a modular editing setup, and so much more. Take a look at a couple of projects we have going: NEXUS Summit & Expo AI Summit & Expo All the News We’ve just completed our third online news project, this time for the town of Harvard, MA. We converted a ton of data from the quite old system they were using before (20 years worth!) into a new Wordpress system using a well-regarded newspaper/magazine system (the same one we have used for the previous two news sites we worked on). With the help of DG Communications and the team at Harvard Press, we created a custom system to meet their needs as a modern print-and-web news publisher. The new system makes it so much easier for them to manage their subscribers, advertisers, events calendar, and weekly news content. Time to Upgrade to the New MODX? Over the past year, we’ve been busy converting a number of websites to the new branch of MODX, version 3, and we’ve been setting up all new websites with this version. The previous branch, MODX 2.8, will continue to be supported for some time, although only for things like bug fixes and security updates, not new features. MODX 3 has become pretty reliable at this point, and just about all plugins have been updated to work with it. So whereas in the past we have told most clients to hold off on upgrading, at this point we are whole-heartedly behind transitioning to keep our clients’ websites current going well into the future. The new version definitely looks more visually appealing and has new features that are pretty great. It’s also much better for programmers, using up-to-date coding capabilities. Need Extra-Secure Login? For clients needing extra security on the back end of their websites, we’ve been installing a two-factor authentication (2FA) plugin. None of our websites have had cases of hackers logging in via the website manager, but with the rise in hacking in general, 2FA gives extra peace of mind. Let us know if you would like this feature; it's pretty easy to set up. FYI, this plugin does not send out text messages; users would need to use a dedicated 2FA app, like 2FAS (our personal favorite), Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator, etc.  Website Spotlight: Collaborative for Health & Environment We recently completed implementation of a complete redesign for our client, Collaborative for Health & Environment (CHE). We worked with the team at CHE and a designer they brought on board. Customize Your Wordpress Site Need to customize your Wordpress website? We do custom coding and database setup. One of our recent projects was setting up and customizing a local news site using a newspaper-style theme and adding features to manage donors and add custom sections. Take a look! New Year, New Phone Number Well, it’s not really a NEW phone number. We’ve using our new number, 845-262-0332, for quite a while now. But we are now retiring our old number, 845-228-8821. Please update your contact info for us.  Vacation Time We’ll be on vacation from December 14 through Christmas weekend, and will be working to tie up any loose ends before we leave. We’ll be back in the office on December 26. Website Spotlight We love partnering with other designers to bring their visions to life on the web. This past year, we’ve been brought onboard to create sites and programming for two different electric vehicle–oriented projects. It’s great to see the explosion of interest in transitioning to a cleaner world. One of these clients produces conferences of all kinds, and sent us a custom design for their series of EV-related trainings. Visit the site at evchargingsummit.com. New Year, New Version of MODX MODX 3 has been out for a while now, and has already been updated twice. It’s a major upgrade, including a massive update to the code base to bring it up to contemporary standards (good for programmers!), as well has interface improvements and new features (good for our clients!). We’ve been evaluating what needs to be in place before recommending an upgrade to our clients. Just about all the plugins we use have been updated for compatibility now. There are a few updates that will need to be applied to some of the custom plugins and coding we’ve created. We’ll be starting with the simpler websites first, then move on to the more complex ones later in the year. In the meantime, the current branch of MODX (version 2.8) will continue to be updated with bug fixes and security patches. Google Analytics Update The current Google Analytics system (called “Universal Analytics”) will stop working in July 2023, so everyone will need to upgrade by then. In most cases, the upgrade is very simple. For those who use a lot of advanced Analytics features, it may take a little more work. We’ve been transitioning our clients to this new system, and will continue into the new year. If you use a different service to manage your Google Analytics, make sure they get you transitioned in the next few months. Find out more about GA4 here.