Newsletter Volume 1.1 - February 10, 2007

Welcome to Volume 1.1 of the Pittsburgh Designers Newsletter. I figured it was about time to get in touch with some of our members who might have signed up in the beginning and have not had time to come back to check out some of the new features of the site.

Since the initial launch in late December, we have grown to a 66 member strong community, with many of them saying a project like this was way over due. Just to give a glimpse of the success we have had to date, we have amassed over 1,500 unique visitors and 5,000 page views.

The Pittsburgh Design Community

Pittsburgh Designers was developed to connect clients and designers AND be a community of sorts for the designer community within our great city of Pittsburgh. To kick off this new “community” we started an Interview Circuit to help our visitors and fellow designers gain insight on some of the talent within Pittsburgh. If anyone would like to volunteer to be interviewed or see some one interviewed, drop us a line.

The first in our hopefully growing interview series was Nathan Swartz of ClickNathan.com. Very funny and insightful… you have to check it out!

Important News

• Keep your Business Information Current - Without current information, our visitors cannot make an informed decision if your “designer profile” doesn’t explain your business correctly.
• Finish your Registration - Some of our members registered, but never came back to complete their profile. It is crucial to complete your profile because without it, your business will not be listed. If you have any questions, or somehow never got your initial password email, use our contact form and we will get back to you ASAP.

New Features Onboard at Pittsburgh Designers

• Designer vCards - The vCards are designed according to the Microformats.org specifications and are created using the Technorati Contact service to allow clients and visitors to automatically add the contact information of a designer into their address book application.
• Number of Employees - There is now a new field in the designer profiles for “number of employees”. We highly suggest that any designer registered at Pittsburgh Designers completes it. Some customers see it as a very important field.
• Designer Map - Map out our designers in a whole way with Google Maps. Note: Designers who did not fill out their entire address in the “designer profile” are considered invalid addresses by the script and therefore not shown.
• Tag Cloud - Pretty self-explanatory, but for our designers who entered in tags into their “designer profile”, they can now be searched easily with our TagCloud feature. It is definitely cool to see all the patterns of all the different tags.
• Statement of Work Contract - This sample contract between a client and the designer could prove to be a lifesaver. Derive your own version from it or use it as a basic template for your own. No matter which way you look at it, it’s a necessity.