JLB Blog

Why convert to Sticky Navigation? // Sep 11 // JLB

Sticky or fixed navigation refers to navigation that doesn’t get lost when you scroll down on a website. Although only a few major sites have adopted this design, Facebook and Google + for example, research is showing overwhelming statistics that people prefer sticky navigation to the traditional, even though they may not realize why.

Reasons to step out of the Waterfall // Jul 18 // JLB

Hey everyone! This is my first post as the new graphic designer for JLB Works, LLC. I have a history of graphic design in B2B, B2B2C, and B2C Marketing in everything from an SAAS (Software as a Solution) company serving the agriculture equipment industry, to working with email and social marketing for fortune 500 companies. […]

Responsive Web Design // Mar 27 // JLB

We seem to be getting this request a lot lately … “can you design our new site for a mobile phone?” or “will our new site look okay in an iPad?” or “should we re-design our website to be more mobile-friendly?”

It’s a valid line of thought — and these are exactly the kind of questions clients should be asking. Mobile web usage is at an all-time high (see insightful article and “infographic” from DigitalBuzz). Some estimate that mobile Internet usage will overtake desktop Internet usage by 2014. The way your site looks in an iPhone, on a Droid, or in a tablet matters now more than it ever has. The W3C even has a standards section devoted entirely to mobile.

WordPress Contact Forms Made Stupidly Simple // Mar 22 // JLB

Every once in a blue moon, a WordPress plugin comes along that completely knocks my pants off (or socks, since we have a family-oriented office). The last time that happened, it was Ingenesis Limited’s Shopp commerce plugin.

Searching custom fields in WordPress with meta_query // Feb 22 // JLB

There have been quite a few incredibly useful features that were introduced in WordPress version 3.0, which came out over a year ago. However, perhaps my favorite didn’t come till half a year later when version 3.1 was released. Previously, searching posts, pages or custom post types using custom field required a more-than-reasonable amount of […]

Ruby on Rails functionality within WordPress using Wordless // Jan 11 // JLB

In general, I absolutely love PHP. It’s easy to learn, can be object-oriented and is generally easy to learn. Even more, I love that it opens up the world of Wordpress. However, I often get frustrated when I see new technologies like Haml and Sass popup that simply don’t integrate well with PHP.

Building custom content editor layouts in WordPress // Nov 30 // JLB

Custom Fields within WordPress are no secret.  There are hundreds of tutorials out there documenting how to easily automate them by simply adding a few lines to your functions.php file. 

JLB's got a new e-commerce solution in the house // Jun 09 // JLB

Over the years, we’ve used various e-commerce solutions to meet our client’s needs.  From Cube Cart to Shopify to Zen Cart.  However, there’s never been a single one that we’ve felt really integrated well with the content management system we use or was incredibly versatile in the design department.  Fortunately, Team JLB decided to recently […]

Cross-browser compatibility the JLB way // May 12 // JLB

There are plenty of ways to ways to test your new website across multiple platforms and browsers. You can have multiple computers running Windows XP, Windows 7, OS X and Linux, but that’s just a pain and can be rather expensive. Sure, multiple operating systems and browsers can be installed on your laptop, but that […]

Podcamp – Nashville’s top-shelf (interactive) unconference // Mar 19 // JLB

It’s been a couple of years since we’ve attended PodCamp. It’s not that we opted out of last year for any particular reason, but we didn’t make it a priority. This year is different. This year, we are going again. And this year, it’s bigger than it’s ever been.   “What’s PodCamp?” you ask… well, […]