Archive for the ‘Web Site Launches’ Category


St. Mary’s: Central Maine Hospital Runs on Joomla

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

Flyte recently revamped the website for St. Mary’s Health System, a health care provider in central Maine.

The revamped web site sports a better site architecture to handle and organize the many services that St. Mary’s offers, including Senior Health, Women’s Health, and Prevention & Wellness, to name just a few.

The e-commerce was also upgraded to be more secure, whether people are paying their bills online, making a donation, or buying something from the gift shop for a patient.

Both the current site and the previous were powered by Joomla, an open-source content management system (CMS). As part of the upgrade, flyte upgraded the site from Joomla 1.0 to 1.5 and learned an important lesson: there’s no such thing as upgrading to 1.5. It’s a complete do-over. :roll:

However, with the help of the marketing team at St. Mary’s who are able to handle and maintain the site through the Joomla admin, the final product rolled out, better able serve St. Mary’s community.

Rich Brooks
Maine Joomla Development


Maine Senior Guide: Resources for Seniors in Maine

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Maine Web Design Example - Maine Senior GuideWhether you’re looking for a doctor, a senior community, home support or estate management for yourself or a parent, Maine Senior Guide is the number one resource for online information for seniors in the state of Maine.

Visitors to the site can quickly navigate to some key resources, such as Home Support or Social Seniors (a section of the site geared towards seniors who want to find nearby church groups, education or volunteer opportunities.) Each section has related articles from the Maine Senior Guide Library, such as Facebook: Connect with Those Kids in the Social Senior section, or Alzheimers: 10 Tips for Keeping Your Independence in the Senior Community section.

Once they’ve located a category or sub-category, they can further refine their search by choosing a location. This can be done by clicking on a map of the state of Maine, selecting a region from a pulldown menu, or typing in a desired zip code.

The site is powered by WordPress with a healthy infusion of custom programming from flyte. Maine Senior Guide is able to update and maintain most all of the site, import and export data, run reports and more.

Maine Senior Guide offers both free and paid listings within its growing resource of services. Higher level advertisers get their own page and the ability to update their information, upload photos and even embed a video! This is a powerful tool for standing out from the competition. If you have a resource geared towards seniors you’ll want to contact Maine Senior Guide for advertising opportunities.

Rich Brooks
Maine Web Design


Maine Huts & Trails – Outdoor Adventure Vacations in Maine

Monday, December 20th, 2010

When we first met with Maine Huts & Trails I had a completely wrong-headed idea of what the huts were like.

I imagined having to cross-country ski into the woods where I would find a cold, weather-beaten cabin with a wood stove that I would have to get going. (If that’s your perfect vacation, great! Please text me your photos as I sip margarita’s by the pool.)

While cross-country skiing and outdoor adventure is still part of what makes Maine Huts such a fantastic vacation, the “huts” themselves are brand new facilities with plenty of amenities, all without losing the “roughing it” vibe people are looking for.

The huts are staffed, heated, have showers, electricity, and offer a meal plan. The huts are open year-round, with activities for all seasons. Maine Huts & Trails members get added benefits, free snowshoes and canoe rentals, discounts on rooms, for a low annual fee for both individuals and families. (You can become a member here.)

Flyte rebuilt the web site, created a cleaner interface, and improved the functionality for site visitors. It’s easy now for site visitors to book their adventure, plan their trip, download trail maps and plan for year-round activities. The site was built on WordPress, an easy-to-use content management system that allows Maine Huts to add, edit and delete content, create new pages, upload photos and embed video. Everything the modern web site owner could want. ;)

Flyte also provided search engine optimization and social media strategy, which will continue after the launch to increase the online visibility of the site and attract more visitors.

If you’re looking for an outdoor Maine vacation, regardless of the season, be sure to check out Maine Huts & Trails.

Rich Brooks
All-Season Maine Web Design


Ski Maine Today – Maine Skiing Conditions, Mountains and More

Monday, December 13th, 2010

Last week flyte launched a web site as part of a joint venture between SkiMaine and MaineToday with the perfect mash-up name: Ski Maine Today, your destination for Maine skiing.

Visitors to Ski Maine Today can find information about Maine ski areas, including Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Saddleback, Camden Snow Bowl and many others. More are coming on line each day. On each mountain’s page you can get information about the mountain, check out photos, watch videos, check out conditions, download the trail map, get driving directions and more.

There’s also photo contests, weekly skiing deals and  information about the Sno Kidz program.

Ski Maine Today also has a Facebook page and a Twitter account, so please “like” them and follow them as necessary!

The site was built on WordPress and utilizes a number of plugins and feeds to power the slide show, news and weather and condition reports.

Hope to see you on the slopes this year!

Rich Brooks
Maine Web Site Design


Sales Strategy & Training with Carpenter & Associates

Monday, October 11th, 2010

No business can survive without sales, but too many people believe that sales is a innate talent, or that advertising can replace the need for a sales team, or that all sales are good sales.

Carpenter & Associates focuses on growing your sales profitably. They offer sales training that is aligned with your company’s goals, strategies and planning. They can help you develop a sales strategy that is built on determining which part of your business is most profitable and concentrating on executing on that strategy.

There’s a lot of great content on the web site, including best practices for sales solutions and a new sales blog written by company president Scott Carpenter.

Also, while you’re improving your own bottom line, you’re improving the bottom line of others as well: 5% of net profits go to the Poverty Action Lab at MIT.

This site–like most sites coming out of flyte these days–was built on a content management system (CMS), so that Carpenter & Associates can update the site in house as simply as they would update a Word document. In this case it was WordPress, a powerful, flexible CMS that is the perfect blogging tool.

Flyte’s creative director, Ryan Goan, also created Carpenter & Associates’ new logo as well as designing the business cards and stationary.

If you’re looking grow your sales profitably, be sure to talk to Carpenter & Associates.

Rich Brooks
WordPress Websites Mean Business


Photo Booth Rental – Top Hat Photos Booths

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

We recently completed a relaunch of Top Hat Photo Booths, a photo booth rental company with locations in Floria, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island.

There were a few things that made Top Hat Photo Booths a cool company to work with:

  • Their photo booths are much cooler than traditional rental photo booths; they can be taken apart and set up just about anywhere. That means they would work on a casual wedding in a meadow in Maine or on the rooftop of a Manhattan apartment.
  • Their booths offer great branding opportunities; the sides of the photo booth can be tailored to your needs, whether they evoke wedding images (champagne glasses clinking) or your corporate image for a big corporate event.
  • Their prices are lower than their competitors. With pricing that starts at just $750 they’re hard to beat.

Top Hat had a nice looking site, but as they were about to expand into several new markets, the site wasn’t as scalable as they wished. In addition, they couldn’t make their own updates.

Our solution was to rebuild the site on WordPress and tweak the design and layout to make it more scalable so that it could grow as Top Hat grows. We also added a blog and created a nice feature where Top Hat could upload new photos for the top banner area and the site would automatically add a consistent treatment to all the photos.

The second part of the project, just starting, is to help Top Hat increase their online visibility. This will be a combination of social media and search engine optimization.

Even though Top Hat stretches up and down the east coast, no one is searching for “east coast photo booth rental.” That means that Top Hat has to focus on their local search results as much as general search results, if not more. Now brides, event planners and companies can find information on:

If you need a photo booth rental for your next corporate event, wedding or bar/bat mitzvah, be sure to check out Top Hat Photo Booth.

Rich Brooks
Ready for My Close-up


Nationwide Research Company Launches New Site

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

Last week we launched a new web site for Nationwide Research Company (NRC), a source for court documents and archived records.

NRC’s services include document retrieval, on-site searches, corporate research, case monitoring, chapter 11 filings and more. In short, if you need documents, this is your one-stop shop.

NRC wanted to have the ability to add, edit and delete content on their site as needed, so we built the site on WordPress, an open-source blogging/content management system (CMS). Now they can log in and update information as they need to, without having to run everything through some pricey web developer. (Sniff!)

With offices on both the left and right coast, that also helps keep down costs as they don’t need to buy multiple copies of HTML editing software for multiple people; instead any modern browser will allow them to keep the information on their web site fresh…something the search engines (and your customers) love to see.

If you need court documents or chapter 11 filings, be sure to check out Nationwide Research Company. If you need a custom-designed web site on a content management system, we’d love to answer your questions.

Rich Brooks
WordPress Design


Affordable Small Business Web Sites

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

We often shine a light on the custom web designs we do for clients here at the flyte blog, but we don’t often give that same attention to our clients who use one of our ProSite designs. ProSites are our affordable, pre-designed (by flyte) sites built on WordPress.

They’re cost-effective, quick to setup, and easy to run. They’re perfect for startups, or businesses that would rather put their budget towards search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging or some other web marketing campaign.

Since so many of this year’s crop are using their new web sites to grow their businesses, I wanted to give them a little “link love.” If you see someone who can help you, please feel free to check them out.

If you’re looking for a new, affordable web site, if you’re looking to upgrade your current site, or if you’d like to be able to update your web site in house, a ProSite or one of our other sites may be right for you. Contact flyte today.

Rich Brooks
Small Business Web Sites


Portland, Maine Spa & Boutique Discounts from MainelyMara

Monday, July 12th, 2010

A few weeks ago flyte launched a new site for MainelyMara that offers exclusive, limited-time deals from hand-picked local Portland, Maine businesses.

Whether you live in the Greater Portland area or just visiting Vacationland, you can get amazing deals in local day spas, beauty salons and other boutique style stores.

Membership is free, but you must become a member to get these exclusive, limited time deals which Mara picks herself. You also get insight on local fashion, trends and beauty tips through a local style blog.

MainelyMara’s brand ID (including illustrations, logo & fonts) was created by talented local designer Arielle Walrath. Flyte created the custom backend programming that includes admin abilities to create new offers, retire old ones, set time limits, create tracking IDs, and integrate with an e-commerce solution.

If you’re looking for great deals on local spas and boutiques in Portland, Maine, make your way over to MainelyMara.

Rich Brooks
Pampering Myself


The Heritage of Alaska on WordPress: Goldbelt Heritage

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Last week flyte launched a WordPress web site for the Goldbelt Heritage Foundation, the 3rd web site we’ve completed for Goldbelt Corporation, all done on WordPress so that the company can update and manage their own web presence.

Visitors to the site can learn more about the Tlinglit language preservation project, learn about upcoming cultural events, and even see and hear examples of the Tlinglit language being spoken.

Previous work for Goldbelt included the Goldbelt Tours web site and the Goldbelt Corporate site.

Rich Brooks
Web Design from Maine to Alaska