DDA does a great job at interweaving the various internal departments with each other. The advertising copywriters, website designers, programmers, search engine optimization specialists, and graphic design artists all collaborate throughout the project(s) so as to make sure that each portion correctly fits into place and to not displace other portions of the project. Communication as well as collaboration are what this advertising company does well. In my opinion, this is why more prospects choose DDA over its competitors.

Designers bless their little cotton socks, love to make web pages look cool, fashionable, and stylish and use their huge array of fonts and skills to create beautiful graphical headlines and titles for Websites.

Then the SEO team gets involved and sparks fly. The problem is that search engine spiders cannot see text in pictures. To define a picture, I mean a graphic on a web page that is a gif, jpg or png.

Therefore if you need a spider to see it, you have to use HTML fonts and this then limits designers to only six fonts that are classified as web-safe fonts. These are Arial, Courier New, Georgia, Times New Roman, Verdana, and Trebuchet MS. What that means is that it is safe to assume that these fonts are installed on the website viewer’s computer.

When you are reading a webpage and that page is displaying text in Arial font, what it is in fact doing, is telling the user’s computer to display the text using Arial. The user’s computer then looks into its fonts directory, finds Arail and display the text correctly. If you were to tell it to use a font the user’s computer did not have, it would substitute it and the text would not display as the designer intended.

So is there some middle ground that will stop the war between the Website Designers wants and Search Engine Optimizers wishes?

Well…Yes this “Treaty of Ghent” style, both sides winning compromise does exist but just like the battle of New Orleans, they go on squabbling unbeknownst.
..and this holy grail hybrid of Design and Optimization is called……..

This post concludes tomorrow.

In the past six months we have noticed a distinct increase in website form spam — forms that are filled out with junk content in them and submitted.

What causes this problem are bots — small programs, like search engine spiders, that can read and traverse websites. Unlike Spiders, these programs have malicious intent, be it just to cause vandalism, to create links to websites, or worse still, attempt to hack an unsecure form-mail system. These predatory programs can submit hundreds of forms a minute and not only cause chaos to your inbox, but slow down your server and website at the same time.

The solution is to make the form unsubmittable by a bot, this is achieved by adding a “CAPTCHA” which stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” You have probably seen these hundreds of times and not realized what they are for. The most common type is an image CAPTCHA, which looks like this:

You then type in what you see and therefore the form knows your not a bot and allows the form to be submitted. Here at DDA, we use these standard image versions but we have also introduced our own simple math equation version too.

As part of our website design standards, and thanks to our top notch programming team, all future forms for our clients with be built using some form of CAPTCHA system. But not resting on our laurels, as always, our team of expert website designers will keep a constant lookout for whatever future chaos spam artists try to throw at us next, and be sure we will be able to combat it just as effectively.

When I returned to work on Tuesday (my son was sick on Monday), I was asked by several co-workers, “How’s your son feeling?”. At DDA, it’s like having a second family, a home away from home. Instead of brothers and sisters, we have SEO specialists, programmers and copywriters. We celebrate birthdays, have baby showers, bridal showers and support fund raising efforts for each other. We even have a dog running around! When lunchtime comes around, if someone is ordering takeout, they always ask if anyone would like to order as well. We even have a beer night. (I am out of the office when this time comes, but I imagine it’s a nice way to end a Thursday)

Like sisters share clothes, our website designers share projects. If one designer is overwhelmed and a deadline is near, another designer can help out finishing a project. We all try to help one another out if possible. Everyone appreciates the talents that our staff members possess. Looking through any of our portfolios including 3d animation, website design, virtual reality and more, you will see how talented this (at times) dysfunctional family really is. A fellow employee once said, “It takes a rare breed to work at DDA.” I think this is true. You have to be able to keep up in a fast-paced environment, manage your time properly, be able multi-task, and the hardest thing to remember in the beginning: logging in and out of our TRAC, our online tracking system that keeps our time accounted down to the minute for clients’ projects. And each improvement that is made on the TRAC, whether big or small, it is appreciated. (Thanks Amy!)

So to all of my fellow project coordinators, animators, programmers and designers…

Have a great weekend!

The green grass of spring is finally here. The landscapers are visiting for the first time and the bushes, lawns and even the rocks are being pruned, pared back, raked and mounded in preparation for growth. Hope springs eternal and spring brings eternal hope for the promise of growth through good weather and hard work.

So it has been for thousands of years and so it will be.

At DDA, the growth is as much a personal one as it is corporate or financial. The human condition does not allow for stagnation. We are all either learning, and striving, and growing or we are ignoring lessons, slacking, and dying.

Every day I see our photographers learning, our programmers improving, our website designers testing, our search engine marketing specialists tracking, our artists illustrating, our writers illuminating, our video production crew stretching, our flash artists animating, our branding team clarifying, and our ecommerce technicians polishing and presenting.

The weather is not always great, the world is not always perfect, but it seems the growth comes not from the results but rather from the effort. Spring is here, again!

There is something about seeing the flowers begin to bloom and putting those bulky sweaters and jackets away that makes me smile. I just love opening the windows and feeling the fresh air!

What better way to start the new season than with a new website. DDA has several talented website designers on staff. Whether you need content development and keyword research or interactive flash segments and 3d animation, DDA can handle it all.

We have clients that come to us for website redesigns that also include pre-launch search engine optimization. After the site launches they are entered into our SureThing Program, and their website receives additional optimization to achieve higher rankings in the search engines.

When looking for a website design company that can provide all of these services under one roof, be sure to check out DDA!

Today, I am writing about the writing of the blog, as well as my usual submissions assignments and accounts receivable duties.

Our blog writing is an interesting assignment where each of DDA’s employees describes what he/she is doing. The writers write about their copywriting services, as well as their additional roles within our advertising company. The website designers may blog about their new custom web design that they just created or a graphic designer may talk about their design for a new brochure and introduce themselves as a graphic design specialist.

The point being is that all of Dynamic Digital Advertising (DDA) employees, myself included, write about our daily tasks and assignments and how we plan on handling a project or the tasks we are working on. This is the creativity which separates DDA apart from all other advertising agencies.

Wednesdays are not so bad around here for us 4 day workers. Thursday is in sight, and that is when our weekend begins! DDA has been on a 10 hour 4 day work week for several years now. Come to think of it, I can hardly remember what it was like to work on a Friday. When I tell people that we are able to work a 4 day week, the responses are usually the same: “Wow, you’re so lucky”; “I wish I could work a 4 day week”; “I’m jealous”.

DDA’s website designers, programmers, illustrators, project coordinators and animators are able to manage their time so well that the 4 day work week is here to stay. Our clients know that if there is an emergency on a Friday, we are still able to help. Staffers may be “on call” on Fridays, but it is not usually necessary for us to come into the office.