New Spin Design

Ringing in the New Year right, the recently launched Harvard Rugby Football Club web site has been accepted into the Wordpress showcase.

The Showcase aims to show the world what can be done with WordPress and help demonstrate that WordPress has tremendous capabilities as a publishing platform.

http://wordpress.org/showcase/harvard-rugby-football-club/

Wordpress is of course the robust yet easy to use content management system that powers the team’s web site.

The one you’ve all been waiting for…

www.nalgened.com

Am I the only one who spills my Nalgene when drinking daily? Happy New Year!

What’s a Mac user to do when the best desktop based solution for small business accounting is Quickbooks?

I’ve been using an outdated version of Quickbooks for almost 2 years now. It’s plagued with ugly invoices, an inability to enter debit card transactions (you have to use “DEBIT” as your check number), and the general feeling that it was not designed for a Mac user or a web designer. Needless to say I haven’t grown any fonder of it in these 2 years.

In a quest to find a more suitable replacement, and right at the start of a new tax year, I spent some time surfing for a new solution. I had expected given the recent popularity of everything Macintosh we would have some nice contenders to give Intuit a run for their money. The results were not so. You results may vary.

The Contenders

• Quickbooks 2009 for Mac. Having not used it I cannot comment on the actual program. I do however get the feeling it may not be very good. When I view the purchase page for this product, on the Intuit site, I get the impression Intuit’s does not use Macs extensively. See what I mean?
• Quickbooks Online. Doesn’t work without Windows and IE6. Nice.
• Peachtree. Nope - turns out it’s only Windows, and even the web-best “ePeachtree” says it requires IE. LAME! Again, web site scary in Safari.

• LessAccounting. OK - now we’re getting somewhere. This is a slick web-based accounting software to replace Quickbooks (they even created “weallhatequickbooks.com” to go after bitter QB customers).
  

  Pros

  • Keeps all data online and you don’t have to worry about losing data.
  • Fairly good value at $24 a month
  • Seems to have all the features I use in Quickbooks currently
  • Designed for regular people who don’t do accounting for a living

  Cons

  • Seems rough around the edges - does not fully support Safari
    Invoice designs are limited - you cannot fully customize your own invoice. You are stuck with a few template designs. This works well for most but not when your business is DESIGN!
  • May have difficulty integrating come tax time with a CPA. I am unsure if I can output the typical Balance Sheet. I see P&L in the reporting area but not Balance Sheet.
• Billings. Turns out this is not a replacement for Quickbooks. Its capabilities end at creating and receiving invoices and time tracking. It does not handle anything related to the business bank account or transactions.

Decision

So what did I go with? Can’t decide. Time for some more procrastination.

Over the Fall New Spin Design worked diligently to craft a new web site for the Harvard University Rugby Football Club. Established in 1872, the team is steeped in ivy league tradition. For its online presence, though the team needed a fresh modern look to last season after season while still paying homage to the team’s history. Of equal importance was something that could be easily maintained and handed off to next year’s team captains.

From a Whiteboard

Before any work began in Photoshop or HTML, New Spin Design worked with the team to determine what they really wanted the site to be - who they expect to visit, how to cater to each audience and how to manage it all behind the scenes. With all that in mind, we worked together to create the site map and list of capabilities.

To run the show, New Spin Design recommended Wordpress, rather than a heavy hitting CMS like Drupal. The blog engine’s ease of use on the back end meant a new set of teammates would have a lower learning curve when taking over management of the site. And with the power of third-party plugins, Wordpress has become very flexible for developers like us.

Look & Feel

Answering the call was resident designer Jenn, providing the site with a striking yet clean look. Clear typography in Georgia font, a slightly vintage look, and clear navigation are hallmarks of the site’s design.

Inside the Playbook

On the technical end the site is powered by Wordpress with heavy use of plugins to enable game snapshots, player spotlight, and other cool tricks. The goal here was to avoid the double entry of data, meaning something is entered once and then is served up in several different fashions depending on the page/post currently being viewed.

New Spin developer Nick Maloney wrote a custom plugin when any off-the-shelf plugin wouldn’t fit the bill.

Visit Harvard Rugby at http://hcs.harvard.edu/rugby

Happy Thanksgiving to all! New Spin’s new talent Jenn and I been busy on far too many projects so don’t take the lack of site updates as a bad thing. New Spin Design’s 2 year anniversary passed quietly last month - thank you to everyone who’s made this business fun and rewarding. Keep an eye out for our holiday card coming to a mailbox near you.

Jeff McNeil