Newsletter Volume 1.2 - March 12, 2007

Welcome back to Pittsburgh Designers for Volume 1.2 of our newsletter. These newsletters will not become a regular feature here at Pittsburgh Designers, but seeing as how we’ve added so many great new features lately and the overwhelming need we have to communicate some important information to our members, it was about time for Volume 1.2

Since the launch of the Pittsburgh Designers website and community, our website has racked up over 7,300 page impressions coming from well over 2,500 unique visitors. The community is a hit, and just recently we have been getting quite a bit of traffic from the likes of the big three search engines: Google, Yahoo and Live.com.

To keep this traffic coming in, we would like any of our members that find this community to be worthwhile and any other Pittsburghers that find this site beyond helpful in choosing a designer, to link to us in any manner that you deem appropriate. We need the link love from Pittsburgh to really make a dent in this growing design city, so any help would be greatly appreciated because we have the advertising budget of next-to-nil. (We were going to try and throw a Port Authority joke in here, but we have regretfully abstained… for this time!)

The Pittsburgh Design Community

In February we started an Interview Circuit to help our visitors and fellow designers get an in-depth look at some of the design talent in and around the Pittsburgh region. Lisa Fargo from Fargo Designs has decided to drop in to be #2 in our interview series. Lisa talks about the quirks of her office in McKees Rocks, how she started her business from scratch and how she ended up right here in Pittsburgh doing design work. Check it out, it is definitely a long interview, but we promise - the time is well worth it!

NOTE: Once again, if any of our readers would like to volunteer to be interviewed or see some one interviewed, drop us a line.

Important News

• Web Standards are Important - We have decided to conduct an un-biased report card of sorts in a few months that will highlight the designers who design conforming to web standards and those who do not. We feel it is a very important aspect of designing for the web, and we hope that more of our members will become aware of the Web Standards Project and start designing with valid code and CSS. This does not mean that they need to use table-less design (although that is without a doubt optimal) to receive high marks, but instead that their own portfolio sites don’t generate any HTML or CSS errors upon validation by the W3C. For more information on this project and report card visit our post about it here.
• Keep your Business Information Current - Without current information, our visitors cannot make informed decisions.
• Finish your Registration - Still, some of our members registered, but never came back to complete their profile. It is crucial that you complete your profile fully, because without it, your business will not be listed her at Pittsburgh Designers. If you have any questions, or somehow never got your initial password email, please use our contact form and we will get back to you ASAP.

New Features Added at Pittsburgh Designers

• Comments Enabled - Comments have now been enabled for the rest of our internal pages. We’ve decided to allow comments on just about everything because of their especially important part in community involvement. I would like for everyone to start this off right, and leave comments on any article that you have an opinion on, good or bad. It’s a great way to stimulate dialog between the designers and clients that bounce around the site.
• Service Search - Search for a designer based on the services that they provide. It’s a sort of confusing search form, but once you get the hang of it, its decently easy. (We plan on perfecting it soon, but in the meantime, take it for a test drive.)