Los Angeles Web Design Zuno Studios

By far the lengthiest session I attended at SXSW, “CSS3: Beyond the Basics” spanned nearly three hours while presenting the future of CSS.

A good amount of chatter in the Twitterverse is always reserved for the naysayers that question cross-browser compatibility, “but does it work in IE?” “does it require a browser prefix?”, etc. This session wasn’t tailored to answer those questions; cross-browser compatibility issues are obvious when dealing with a(n) new/upcoming web standard.

Here are my notes from the "Death of Relational Databases" from SXSW on March 13, 2011 by Hank Williams, Founder and CEO of Kloudco

This was a great session for anyone interested in learning why relational databases are being replaced with more robust ways of storing data. This was not an extremely technical session, so if you are already working with document-oriented databases you probably are aware of this content.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The #1 reason for a delayed site launch is usually because there is a delay in having all of the content created, approved, gathered and delivered. It's just one of those things that always seems much easier than it really is. So clients and web teams usually don't pay as much attention to it as they should. Especially early on in the process.

Sure, they know what kind of content will go on the site pretty early on. It wouldn't be possible to complete the site structure without knowing that. But knowing that there will be a "What We Do" page, and having final copy for that page are two completely different things.

So how do you make this process easier?

'Satori' is the state of sudden indescribable enlightenment in Zen Buddhism.
Indescribable perplexity is the constant state of a Joomla! newbie.

"What's the difference between a component and a module?" "Why is my module not showing up on this page?" "Why are there so many HTML tables?" "Why are there question marks in my HTML?"

Questions that seem so trivial to me now had my head spinning and my mouse clicking through folders and files of Matrix-like code. Much like learning anything else, though, taking a step back to understand what I was looking at helped straighten out the learning curve.

I've found that there are two things that need to be understood to truly get your toes wet in the Joomla! pool.

Developing a website for your organization, whether it is a new project or a redesign, can be a huge undertaking. And a very important one. Because so many different elements come into play throughout the process, it can also take a lot longer than expected to get a website launched. Below are 5 things clients can do on their end, to make sure that the project goes smoothly and stays on track.

Ramon De Leon owns 6 Domino’s Pizza franchise stores in Chicago. Yup, you heard right. Chicago - the pizza capital of the U.S., which makes his success all that much more impressive. And not only has he been successful as a Domino’s Pizza franchise owner, he has had great success in the social media world as a visionary and speaker. Ramon has flown to marketing events from Amsterdam to Mexico, and most recently Venezuela, to consult for marketing professionals and companies like Southwest Airlines, and share what he has accomplished with social media.

I first heard Ramon speak at a social media conference at UC Irvine. He impressed the entire room with the amount of knowledge he shared in regard to using social media tools, but what made the biggest impact on me was his passion, his energy and just how much fun he was having. These three things are critical to being a successful business owner (as well as key to loving going to work everyday.)

So what’s his secret? Below are 4 lessons that every business owner, large and small, can learn from the pizza guy to know in Chicago.

We are working on a site that uses the Joomla! page class suffix parameter on each menu item to change the design (through CSS) of each page. In this case each section/page of the site is defined by a specific color.

As part of the design we made the menu item rollovers and drop down menus match the color of the page's background/accent color. This could easily be done in the CSS by targeting the unique "item" class that is added to every menu item as such:

By now I’m sure that a good number of you have heard of Foursquare, Gowalla and the growth of location-based social networks. It seems I can't check my email lately without finding at least one blog post or article related to location-based networks in my inbox.

Location-based social networks (LBSNs) are a trend that marketers and business owners should keep an eye on. Thanks to the rapid growth in the use of mobile devices, consumers are now going online whether they’re at the office or at the grocery store. Just the other day I was having dinner with four friends and at one point we realized that every single one of us had updated our Facebook, Foursquare and/or Twitter status during dinner.

Whether you love him or hate him, it looks like you can learn something from Ryan Seacrest. And I don't just mean his uncanny ability to get information out of every big name on the A-List while managing to dodge any questions about his own personal life. (Nicely done, Ryan.) No, in this case I am talking about marketing.

JDay West 2010 at eBay town hall in San Jose, CA, Andrew Eddie gave the conference an overview of the state of the upcoming release of Joomla! 1.6. He also fielded question regarding the new ACL (access control level), nested categories, and more unified parameters for components, modules and plugins.