Okay. We sent out an issue of Spam last spring pimping our "new" Web site. So here we are with another one. What gives?
We got better. The previous site – which we liked just fine, thank you – admittedly suffered in a couple of areas. First, the goddamn contrast was too low. We took a coupla shots from an accessibility advocate for this; and as much as we liked the look of it, we had to admit that there were no solid reasons for not making a change. Secondly, the old site fell short in the SEO department: though the page structure was just fine, the titles of individual pages and URL structure carried no useful information for search. I screwed up and designed the original project records to use altogether too many clicks to get anywhere; and finally, we got some traffic from a few of your better design aggregators and took static for having small pictures.
While any one of these things could have been handled without too much trouble, all of them taken together seemed to indicate a re-architecture. The new site uses more of your screen real estate (1024 × 760 vs. 800 × 600 for the old one). The pictures are big and if you click on them they'll get even bigger, thanks to Cabel Sasser's FancyZoom. Project records now load all pictures on the same page; you navigate by scroll rather than clickthrough. The site now passes every contrast test we were able to find. We've also added a sitewide search function and a properly formatted RSS feed for Bespoke, our Weblog. Page titles and URLs are now much more friendly, both to humans and to search entities.
The whole thing is run through EllisLabs' ExpressionEngine, a powerful, flexible content management system made right here in Portland, Oregon, which allowed us to do much of the back-end work ourselves, and will allow us to make incremental changes relatively easily. Which is great, because I'd rather not do this again too soon.
Have a look, and .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) what you think. We've sweated it on IE6, IE7 and Firefox on the Windows side, and Safari and Firefox on the Mac side; if you run into something that smells gamey, give us a .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Pinch has installed a proper, enterprise-strength server to help us slake our burning thirst for fast iron. Er, that is, meet our clients' expanding needs. The machine, an Apple Xserver Quad Xeon loaded with all sorts of technical crap you don't need to know about, was purchased from and configured by our pals at IrisInk. Craig Blanchette and Chris Williams helped us out.
Besides general file-serving and library duties, we'll be using it to maintain and serve a web-based corporate asset archive for one of our larger clients, a service that we hope to expand to other clients.
Man, it is freaking awesome. And by awesome, I mean it is totally sweet.
This spring, Pinch will move out of Portland's Pearl District (where we've been, in one space or another, for fifteen years) and into new space in southeast Portland. We're moving for a couple of reasons. First, we had a good opportunity to buy and we took it. We're not getting any younger, and we figure you shouldn't pay rent unless you absolutely have to.
The larger reason has to do with the direction our business has taken. We've been working with Columbia Forest Products for the past several years. During that time, they have transformed from an old-school manufacturer to one of the leading lights in the sustainable building movement. The experience has transformed us, too.
We bought Pinch House so that we could experience and understand firsthand the challenges and rewards of sustainable building. Here in Portland, green projects are popping up everywhere, usually with hefty price tags attached. We wanted to see what you could do with—not to put too fine a point on it—plenty of enthusiasm and not much money.
Additional benefits: both Pinch principals live in southeast, and in fact Hillerns lives in the house next door. The fence between the properties can be removed, giving our children a double lot to play in. McIsaac can walk or bike to work.
Downsides? Well, there isn't much in terms of restaurants at the edge of Woodstock as yet, and we'll have a harder time making it down to our beloved Bouchon on Fridays. We're trying to get them to move east.
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