“Call IA Design if you want quick, accurate, but personal, service from a professional.”

Robert Waugh
Flooring Communications Center

“We began working with Phillip in 2004. He and his company have designed and redesigned our web site twice in the last three years. He has always met and exceeded our expectations. We highly recommend IADesign for all your graphic design and web design needs.”

“Dear Phillip, I want to personally thank you for all the effort you put into our new Web Site, OnBlass.com. Your commitment of seeing this project through for us is very well appreciated. We hope that you are available for us as the foundation of Global Technology Solutions grows and gains success. Again, thank you for the hard work and effort.”

Joseph Menefee
President, CEO, Global Technology Solutions, Inc.

“We have been working with Phil Roper and his staff at IA Design for over 2 years. Whenever we’ve had any problems, Phil and his staff jumped into action to make sure the issue was resolved immediately. The IA Design staff has proven to be very competent and a true pleasure to work with while serving our clients.”

Moore Ingram Johnson & Steele is a large law firm located in Marietta, GA, a suburb of Atlanta, Ga. Moore Ingram Johnson & Steele, LLP is a full service law firm providing legal advice to its clients in virtually all aspects of Commercial Real Estate, Zoning and Land Use, Corporate, Taxation, Merger & Acquisition, Estate Planning, Civil Litigation, Commercial Litigation, Insurance Defense, Workers Compensation and Family Law.

Objectives:

• Moore Ingram Johnson & Steele needed a new web site design that would better communicate their firms size and professionalism. Being located within a major city, it was also very important that their new web site give them an advantage over their competition.
• Their new web site had to be optimized for search engines and needed to be compliant with W3C standards.
• A solution needed to be provided so Moore Ingram Johnson & Steele can easily manage the content of their new web site.

Solutions:

• A very professional design was created.
• The new MIJS web site was design with optimal keyword/key phrase placement and was validated using the W3C markup validation system.
• Adobe Contribute was recommended as the content management solution. This was a great choice and proved to the perfect content management solution. Additionally, IADesign trained Moore Ingram Johnson & Steele on the usage of the Contribute software.

The Alliance Displays, Inc web development project is a forever changing e-commerce system that keeps getting better with time. The Alliance Displays web site now sells more than 1000 products. This website is a great example of modular programming. In the last several years there have been many functional upgrades. Each upgrade was completed at a minimal cost, due to the systems extreme flexibility.

Company Overview:

Alliance Displays, Inc is a company that supplies a huge selection of Slatwall, Gridwall and Slatgrid Panels available for SAME DAY SHIPPING. Standard and Custom Manufactured Acrylics. All types of both Standard and/or Custom Designed Acrylics at incredibly low prices. Wire Baskets - Any Size. Shelving bullnose shelving and standard 3/4 shelving. Any size custom design also available.

Problems:

• Alliance Displays was looking for an affordable way to take their products to market and to offer them in a very unique E-Commerce setting.
• Alliance Displays needed a simple, yet powerful way to mange real-time product inventory while selling over the Internet, so online customers were viewing actual availability.
• The client needed to track usage and needed the ability to mange customer invoicing and order tracking.
• The client needed a simple way to manage their online E-Commerce system without knowing online technologies.

Technologies:

• This web application uses a MySQL database back-end.
• The entire eCommerce system is written in Object Oriented Perl.
• This web application uses XML tags and templates for custom data placement.
• This site also integrates with a credit card processing company.

Solutions:

• Using the technologies above, IADesign, LLC developed a very advanced E-Commerce system that integrates with the inventory management system to offer real-time product availability and easy customer tracking.

The Hawthorn University web development project is a true technical marvel. Building this system required our developers to think very broadly and to focus heavily on the users experience. The user interface had to be friendly and easy to use. At the same time, the system had to be very powerful with the ability to quickly retreive and process data.

Company Overview:

Hawthorn University is dedicated to providing dynamic online holistic nutrition education, to train and certify competent individuals to work in the field of holistic nutrition. The uniqueness of Hawthorn lies in th e quality of educational materials used, the detailed individual attention to students, the utilization of forward thinking educational tools to allow students and instructors to connect over distances, and the practical application of concepts using professional tools throughout the programs.The underlying philosophy at Hawthorn University supports the concept of biochemical individuality in our health needs and the learning process. At Hawthorn we support students in deepening their learning explorations of holistic nutrition. Programs are a combination of experiential and intellectual approaches and are comprised of modules which include oral lectures, textbook and research assignments, practical activities, and online and teleclass (conference call) discussions.

Objectives:

• This system was to be completely developed using open-source technologies. Open-source was used, because this system needed to be cross-platform and browser-independent. This systems was to offer the same experience for Windows Internet Explorer users, Mozilla Firefox users, Safari users as well as users of all operating systems.
• The Hawthorn University system also required a “bullet proof” document upload system. Students, Administrators and Instructors needed the ability to upload documents without worry of software error or upload failure.
• This system needed to be modular so enhancements can easily be added.
• Automatic PDF generation was required for student enrollment documents and reports.
• The Hawthorn University system required multiple user levels (Administrator, Instructor and Student) Additionally, the Administrator user level required access restrictions within itself.
• A community feel was need to the student classroom area.
• This system required intense usability development and testing.

Technologies:

• This web application uses a MySQL database back-end.
• The entire system is written in PERL, using MOD PERL.
• PDF files are generated using PERL and PDF::API2

The Carpets of Dalton web development project presented many technical challenges. How do you logically display carpeting, with it’s various colors and weight options? How do you make it simple for the customer to order rugs, carpeting and other flooring surfaces online? This case study will explain these challenges and the resulting solutions.

Company Overview:

Open in 1972, Carpets of Dalton has become the premier source for carpet, rugs, wood, tile, laminate, and vinyl. Here you will find the latest in color, quality, and value. Come in and let our skilled staff assist you with the perfect flooring solution for your home.

Problems:

• The previous Carpets of Dalton web site was very difficult to navigate and was not yielding the results that its developers had promised.
• Carpets of Dalton wished to compete in the online rug and carpet business.
• The E-Commerce system needed to manage store inventory in real-time.
• The web site had to be designed in a manner that would show the enormity of the Carpets of Dalton campus and all the different products offered there., yet is also need to be user-friendly.

Technologies:

• This web application uses a MySQL database back-end.
• The entire E-Commerce system is written in PERL, using MOD PERL.
• This web application uses XML tags and templates for custom data placement.
• This site also integrates with a credit card processing company.

Solutions:

• Using the technologies above, IADesign, LLC developed a very advanced E-Commerce system that integrates with the inventory management system to offer real-time product availability and easy customer tracking.

I am writing this article because a couple of weeks ago this question was asked by a potential client, and I was placed in the precarious position of having to explain why my programming language of choice was the “best”. Oh, I was good! I spewed all the commonly used technical terms, such as: Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Enterprise Level, Modular, Scalable…, you know the rest. And to be honest, I personally do believe that open-source is the best option for most projects. Using open-source (PERL, PHP, JAVA, etc) there is a tremendous cost savings and there are many freely available libraries to extent the application. However, I am not going to say that open-source languages are better than proprietary languages. This is an argument that you can not win.

Before we continue let me say that all modern programming languages are basically the same. The are considered Curly Bracket languages and are all derivatives of the C programming language.

That being said, what is the best curly bracket programming language? Well, that’s a loaded question, because some languages are better at some things than others. For instance, we generally use PERL for our web development projects. Now, PERL is a powerful language, PERL is scalable and so on. But, PHP is just as powerful and PHP offers many built-in functions to work with arrays and My SQL, that can save the programmer a lot of time and coding. On the other hand, PERL offers some very powerful text processing properties that are unriveled by any programming language. Furthermore, PERL can communicate the UNIX/LINUX at the system level, which can make it much easier to setup automatic processes and background operations. So that ends the PERL or PHP debate. They are both good languages, with similar syntaxes, and neither one is clearly the superior.

What about JAVA? How does JAVA fit into the mix? Well, most “hard core” JAVA programmers will snear and scoff at you if you seem to suggest that another language is nearly as powerful as JAVA. Don’t even think about it! In my opinion and experience, JAVA is a great language. As a matter of fact, JAVA is not unlike any other programming language I have used. The hardest thing about learning JAVA (for me at least), was thinking in objects. JAVA is a pure object-oriented language, so there is a learing curve. But, JAVA can’t do anything that I can’t do in PHP or PERL. Now, most JAVA programmers will say that JAVA is fast and secure, and therefore it is the perfect solution for “Enterprise” level applications. Maybe that’s true, but who’s holding a stop watch? Where are the benchmarks? Its all just hype.

Now lets discuss Microsoft’s proprietary programming environment. Microsoft’s modern development evnironment is the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework is a managed runtime environment, similar to JAVA. And to be honest, the .NET framework is by far the best option for development on Microsoft’s servers. .NET applications can be written in (and get this): ASP.NET, JScript, Visual Basic.NET or C#, but also open-source languages like PERL and Python. On Microsoft’s servers, .NET applications are considered to be much faster than non .NET applications, because the entire website and application files are precompiled into one or several .dll files.

I would hate to write an entire article entitled “What’s the best programming language” and not give an opinion. In my opinion the best programming language is… the best language for you, the programmer, to get the job done with. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but you know its true. For me, the best programming language is PERL. I love PERL and use it everyday. I like PERL because if can easily do simple things and then it can “strap it on” and do complicated things. I’m sure you feel the same way about your language.

I know I have missed your favorite language. But, I only mentioned the programming languages that I have personal experience with.