St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for the ‘Latest Work’ Category

Stop Form Spam - but how?

Form spam, everyone hates it.  That’s when some automated software finds the contact form on your web site and uses to tell you about cheesy offers you’d rather not hear, like how they can get to to #1 on Google for anything you’d like for $9.99!  The most common approach has been to use an image based CAPTCHA script to make sure that a human is filling out the form.  The problem is, they really irritate users and now they make programs for spammers that can read the image the Captcha produces so now image based captcha just doesn’t really work any more.

What’s a web Designer to do then?  We have the answer.  We needed a custom script that was secure, easy for users and easy for web designers.  Years ago we developed one for a client, but it was a bit too custom for general release.  So we simplified it so that even an entry level web designer could customize it and implement it.    We made it more secure and kept easy for the one filling out the form to use.  We liked it so much we use it on our own contact page.   So far it has blocked 100% of the form spam and also blocked everyone who has tried to access the form handler page directly (robots, pranksters and hackers, o my!)

Download the source code, see how it works and get support on our Stop Form Spam page.

Today we announce a new theme. This one isn’t just a WordPress Theme, it’s also been ported form many other content management systems and even a plain HTML/CSS version.

Simple and clean, the Desert Sage Theme has two columns, has a fixed width of 1000 pixels and has clean color scheme of light browns. It has a Search Engine friendly text Headline and Tag line space in the header.

• Drupal
• Joomla
• HTML
• DotNetNuke

Support, download and preview links after the fold below:
Continue reading “Free Theme – Desert Sage” »

We’ve just released our first free WordPress Template! We hope you enjoy this theme celebrating the glory of femininity.  And yes, I’m a man, do I have issues?  No, it’s just a theme I made for client through a third party.  Besides what wrong with loving women, and why are you looking at me like that?  Ahem! I’m plenty manly thank you!

Sadly when you work through a third party extra care needs to be taken as things get lost in translation, like the fact that she didn’t want anything like this.  My wife says this theme is  pretty good so we’ll use it as part of our new WordPress theme marketing efforts.  I hope I haven’t made it too feminine.

Download the Feminine Glory WordPress Template here. Preview the theme here.

Free support for this free WordPress theme!  If you have a problem, please just leave a comment below (and we’re a “Do Follow” Blog).

This free template is released under the Creative Commons – Attribution license.  No cost to you for this theme.

In addition to Web Design, I also perform data services for the small to medium businesses of Florida. One problem I run into quite often is the lack of local businesses that provide networking services. These businesses were suffering for it too.

The following  scenario is why we launched Florida Networking Services:

Your small business lands that big government contract. Now you have to expand fast. 50+ inspectors in the field, 12 new data entry personnel and several new customer service reps. All of them need to access the same data base repeatedly throughout the day. There’s some overwhelming data requirements when it comes to security, maintenance, and daily transfer of data. You’ve call and hire Dream Designs (Data Services unit) and that burden is lifted. you’ll just get someone from the phone book or the internet to take care of your network, and have existing staff help set up all these new computers for the field and the new office right?

Continue reading “Florida Networking Services, Now for the Public!” »

Web Design Screen Shot

We’ve just completed a website design for a Sarasota Business. Sarasota Home Care is a small business serving Sarasota. They provide non medical home care for elderly (and other) residents. Things like, well just read the sight.

This is a 100 valid XHTML and CSS site.  It’s completely table free.  It uses horizontal lists in places.  It also applies CSS styling by using id attribute instead of the class= attribute like we usually do.  I don’t think I’ll switch to this method permanently.  It like to use the ID tag to call programmed actions often instead.  But it can be handy if your already assigning unique ID’s to elements because of programmed objects then you don’t have to clutter your code with css.  Plus that means a web designer can edit it in the future itself a programmer or myself . . .

Another St. Petersburg business has chosen Dream Designs to create a web site for them. Pateco Inc. has chosen us to promote their latest product, a retooled Marine Winch.
They also manufacture electric boat lifts in the Florida Style.