Viget Labs - We Build Web Business

Think back to your school days, when you were tasked with writing the longest research paper of your life. Chances are, you pulled an all-nighter before the deadline and miraculously cranked out an acceptable essay (double-spaced, of course). Looking back, do you think this was your finest work? Would you want the rest of the world to look at this hastily thrown-together effort as the ultimate representation of your abilities?

No, I didn't think so.

It surprises me how often companies take this "all-nighter" approach for their websites. They want their new site to do X, Y, and Z ... and they want it NOW. A website, like a research paper, isn't something that should be pieced together as quickly as possible without proper preparation. A research paper without research is often a disorganized jumble with no coherent vision or purpose; a website without strategy will reach the same fate.

This is where the 7 P's come in.

Continue reading "The 7 P’s of Web Projects … And 7 Reasons Why They Work"

One of the more productive uses of the iPad -- there aren't that many, after all -- is the ability to unobtrusively take notes. The device's small footprint makes it the ideal companion for carting around Viget to meetings, or quickly recording an idea, particularly for project managers like myself. And surprisingly, the onscreen keyboard is responsive enough to closely mimic typing on a physical one.

The iPad is a clear win, but the programs available for it with which to document your musings are a more complicated equation. After seven apps and four weeks of iPad ownership, I can't say that any of the options described below are perfect. Some are better than others, and it depends on your note-taking style (e.g., words versus pictures). These apps represent a small portion of those available in iTunes store, and I arranged them according to the ones I found least and most useful.

 

Continue reading "Note Taking on the iPad"

We knew this would be a fun project.

Our relationship with PUMA has evolved significantly since our first meeting late last year.  What started as a user experience and visual design project grew into a major development effort running in parallel with a series of marketing services. Each time our friends at PUMA learned what else Viget could do, we were happy to do more.

Today, we’re proud to announce the launch of the new PUMA Running site. To accomplish this relaunch, our team:

Continue reading "PUMA Running Strong with Viget"

Continue reading "Studying Salutations"

Last year, on this day, I told the story of Viget's incorporation on December 27, 1999. It explains how we can thank my dad, Viget's first developer, whom we all affectionately called Pop, for being able to say that our company was established in 1999.  In that post I neglected to include a photo of Pop, so here's my favorite one (taken closer to 1979):

Continue reading "Ten Years"

Back in January, Doug let the ... uh ... bear out of the bag, so to speak, with his post about using geometry in design.  In it, he showed his design process for the Pointless Bear -- the mascot of Pointless Corp.  What's Pointless Corp. you ask?  Well, it's neither pointless nor a corporation.  But, first, some history.

Ever since we started Viget almost a decade ago, people have often said "you guys have all the talent to build web apps -- designers, developers, marketers -- and you must have ideas.  Why don't you launch your own products?"  It's a fair question with a simple answer: we don't want to be a product company.  Our goal at Viget has always been to be a great consulting company, working with great clients on a wide variety of interesting projects. 

Consulting isn't easy.  There's a ton of work that goes into all aspects of the business, including traditionally boring things like accounting and operations and interesting things like how you can closely collaborate with clients with methods that are customized enough for their needs but still structured enough that you can count on the results.  The standard advice we all give start-ups is to focus.  Without focus, a business has no hope.  At Viget, our focus has been consulting, and trying to build products would put that focus -- and our success -- at risk.

That's not to say we haven't built our own stuff.  Like most web shops, we built our own content management system in 2002 (since phased out).  Being open source advocates, we're constantly contributing code to the community.  When we have time between client projects, we're always playing with new technologies and ideas in one way or another.  Even with all that, we felt that we could be more effective with our downtime, learn more from our experiences, and become better consultants providing more value to our clients if we had a more structured approach to internal projects.

Enter Pointless Corp.

Pointless Corp. is a way for our teams to rally around an idea and work together to launch a web app independent of client work.  It's not an original concept, but I think we have a slightly different take on the approach.

Continue reading "The Point of Pointless Corp."

Brian said I should blog about my car, and so I've been trying to come up with some way to relate it to the web. I'm not sure just how that will work, so I'll start with a little story about sibling rivalry. My sister, Krisna, has been two years older than me for as long as I can remember. This means that she learned to whistle and snap well before I could produce anything louder than a slightly reedy wheeze. She drove first, voted first, was the graphics editor of our college paper a full two years before I was, etc. She minored in art, so I made it a double-major.

Things went on like this for a while until she eventually started a family and I decided to do my own thing (not start a family). Then, about a year and a half ago, she and her husband (let's call him "Chuck") bought a new, used car.  Then, they bought a kit from Greasecar.com. They installed the kit and started running their car on waste veggie oil (WVO) they got from a couple of local restaurants.

I immediately saw my chance to rediscover the art of copying my sister. And so I looked on Craigslist and bought an automatic version of exactly the same new, used car they'd bought, except that it's blue (thanks Wayne!). I also bought a kit from Greasecar.com. And then my brother-in-law selflessly gave up two precious weekends to help me install that kit so that I can run my car on WVO (I get mine from Elevation Burger - THANKS!), just like my sister.

Now here's the thing (the way I relate this back to the web). I once worked in a car shop when I was 16, but I mostly filed papers. I've never changed my own oil. I once paid a shop $80 to replace my air filter. I was never a mechanic. And neither were Krisna or Chuck. But with the help of four very active forums, we all have the knowledge we need to take up our own wrenches, along with some level of confidence that we aren't going to break things that we shouldn't. Or be left totally stranded once we do (we won't, of course, but just in case). So I'd just like to give a shout out to all of the really helpful community members who post photos, resources, and step-by-step instructions for newbies on tdiclub.com, greasecar.com, frybrid.com, and biodiesel.infopop.cc. You're the best!

And Greasecar — that step-by step DVD with the encouraging music was awesome, even though the whatever-you-call-ems that held on my heat shield did not unscrew as easily as yours did in fast-forward. Not bitter ... just sayin'.

Anyone who has been blogging for more than a few months knows that WordPress is one of the dominant blogging platforms, with millions of blogs using it as a content management system. This makes it an attractive target for bloggers, who look to it for its abundant repository of plugins and addons, as well as to attackers, who only need to find a single security hole to unlock the entire install base (again, millions of blogs and other sites) to serve whatever purpose they like. This is a list of ten ways to help prevent this from happening to you.

Continue reading "Ten Ways to Avoid WordPress Crackery"

A team of Viget folks spent a long weekend in Texas for South By Southwest. We saw some interesting panels, reunited with folks we hadn't seen in months or since last year, and got to meet and talk to dozens of folks we hadn't ever seen. It was definitely a great time, but it was also lacking a lot that we look for in a great event, especially one being paid for by our professional development budgets.

Continue reading "Building a Better SXSW"

We last redesigned viget.com almost two years ago.  As part of that effort, we launched the FourLabs blog, dedicated to sharing “insights and commentary reflecting the four key aspects of our work: strategic consulting, interactive design, application development, and online marketing.” We also noted that it was “ever-evolving” and today, “it” has evolved substantially.  Multiplied might be more like it.

We found over the past 22 months that writing for the FourLabs was hard because of you, frankly.  Who are you?  A designer? Developer? Marketer?  We found our readers to be each of these, but not all of them.  That made blogging tough.  A post about code couldn’t be too techie for fear of scaring off the design readers.  A post about UX needed to define what UX is if we expected the non-UX folks to keep reading.  You get the idea.  A good rule for blogs is to know your audience and stay focused.  We were trying to be broad ... but no more!

Today, we’ve launched five blogs, one for each of the four labs (strategy, design, development, and marketing) and a newly focused FourLabs blog.  FourLabs is all about us - our work, our clients, our team - and is written for those who care to follow what’s happening at Viget (and thank you for caring!). 

Our niche blogs are all about you. 

• VigetAdvance, our web strategy blog, will focus on web start-ups, new product launches, and how the web continues to transform every business.
• If you’re a designer, keep up with VigetInspire and the thoughts our design team have about stuff like user experience, web standards, and Flash as well as notable site launches and events like SXSW. 
• If you’re a developer, we hope you’ll enjoy VigetExtend and our development team talking about open source, Ruby on Rails, test driven development, and events like RailsConf. 
• Marketers should check out VigetEngage, where our marketing team will share tips and ideas on search, email, and social media marketing as well as analytics. 

If you think you’d kinda like to follow all four of these, no problem—just keep keepin’ up with FourLabs, where we’ll have a week digest of what’s covered in each, or join our email list for a monthly update.

By launching these focused blogs, our growing team here at Viget can more effectively connect with their peer communities.  We can share ideas and generally contribute to the vibrant and ever-expanding industry that we’re all in.  And since each Lab here at Viget shares knowledge between them, we think our perspective will be a little unique.  We hope you do too!

You’ll notice they each have a different look, and none really look much like Viget.com or even reflect our branding.  That’s no accident!  We’ll write most of the posts (though guest bloggers are welcome) but we want the content and discussion to be about you, not us.  FourLabs will continue to cover all things Viget.

Will this plan work?  One blog is hard enough to keep up on—will we be able to sustain five of them?  The only thing we can promise is that we’ll give it our best shot.  We welcome your thoughts and suggestions!

One more thing: kudos to Rob, Doug, and Steph, who led the charge here at Viget to get all this put together while juggling plenty of client work.  Internal projects are notorious for slipping, but these guys were dedicated to getting this done in time for SXSW.  Nicely done!