With estimates of as much as 90 percent of travel planning taking place online, this family oriented resort was feeling the need to open up a clearer conduit between staff, customers, and potential customers. The former static, brochure-like site’s outdated look and feel, lack of functionality, and difficult maintenance had become liabilities. Outdated photos and information gave an inaccurate picture of facilities that have undergone significant renovations. After a thorough selection process, CB&F was brought in to make changes.

We created a flexible framework to show not only the updated facilities, but just as importantly the carefully cultivated family friendly atmosphere at the resort. The result is a site that can be easily and quickly kept current, and shows off the business to good advantage. Key communication channels are quick, easy and reliable, encouraging quality contact from returning and potential customers.

Check it out! And if you’re coming to Saltspring with your kids, and need a place to stay and swim and soak in the island atmosphere, be sure to contact the friendly folks at Cedar Beach Resort.

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.

Highlights of this project included:

• working with Lynda and her team to develop a custom WordPress theme incorporating the strong visual elements of the older site by Renee at earth spirit creations, to preserve the consistency of look and feel with Lynda’s existing print and digital assets
• using a variety of great WordPress plugins to increase the functionality of the site, from the sophisticated and customizable menu system, to the AJAX-powered client testimonials, to custom forms
• and most significantly expanding the control Lynda herself has over the site and it’s growing content.

The WordPress CMS provides a friendly, efficient interface for managing content, including adding new articles, editing existing materials, and working with images, audio and video. Video is especially important to Lynda’s plans, and YouTube content is already becoming a part of the site.

Lynda said, “Charles cares deeply about the work he brings forward in the world and is dedicated to making a difference with his work and within his community. He is a true artist, not just at the helm of website design, or with camera in hand, but in his way of seeing what is possible. I value my connection with Charles on many fronts and highly recommend him on any project that calls to his muse.”

I know we’ll see great things to come from this creative and inspiring dynamo!

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.

It’s been great to work with you and see the evolution of Sotheby’s Saltspring, and your site. It’s always a pleasure to see your enthusiasm for what you do, for our wonderful Island home, and sharing that with both locals and newcomers. Your openness to new ideas, and to find just the right solution, whether technical, procedural, or graphical has surely been a big part of the success of your busy, busy site.

Thanks for making me a part of your journey! I’m looking forward to seeing what we come up with next…

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.

2009 was great year for community service here at Charles Buchwald & Friends, with contributions to the SSI Farm and Barter Network, the Jazz and Blues Society, Griefwalker films, photography for the Raincoast Conservation Foundation‘s Predator Survey, and most notably, a major new site for the Centre for Child Honouring. (Congratulations on the new digs, Raffi and friends!)

Of course continuing support for the Bandemonium Music Society, the Crofton Airshed Citizens Group, the Luna Rose Prison Project, and the Salt Spring Vipassana Community was a pleasure to provide.

2009 was a great growth year for CB&F, including some fresh new projects. Retail Marketing Group and G. A. Industries helped start the year with some outstanding work in Adobe Flash. (Thanks, Doug, and Joern and Petra for being such great clients!) Later, 2009 welcomed new clients including Peter Allan’s Noble Sculpture Studio, North End Fitness, Hands On Healing Bodywork, and Westwind Translations.

Another major effort debuted in August, with the WOLF Kids website. What fun to celebrate the next stage of their programs with Harry Manx, Valdy, and friends on New Year’s Eve! Word is that another past client, Royal Roads University, may join forces with this innovative island school in the coming year.

Although it was a small project on a short timeline, it was an honour and a pleasure to renovate ronaldwright.com for one of the island’s, and the nation’s, more famous and insightful authors, Ronald Wright.

And wrapping up the year, new clients Greening Sports, ChemainusRental.com, and Hampton Stone Coaching worked with CB&F to create strong, focused new online marketing programs.

For more about CB&F’s history, activities, portfolio and so on, see the Archives.

Thanks so much to all the new clients for the year… especially those of you who are already working on new initiatives with CB&F for 2010!

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.

I can’t take much credit for design, since the theme came from the outstanding http://elegantthemes.com. But please don’t think that getting up and running with WordPress is just a matter of finding good hosting and the right theme… it’s really worth spending some time on expert SEO, so your visitors can find you, and organizing your site so that it’s accessible and understandable.

Please do leave feedback here or at http://hamptonstonecoach.com as it’s much appreciated.

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.

By converting and updating a static, iWeb based site into a modern, user-editable and user-maintainable CMS based site, CB&F kept cost and time under control. The new site allows for easy updates, an RSS feed, tagged articles, and more fluid categorization, too.

Ronald is “a novelist, historian and essayist, he has won awards in all three genres and is published worldwide in sixteen languages. He is the author of nine books, including the 2004 CBC Massey Lectures, A Short History of Progress, which won the Libris Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year and is now in production as a documentary film.”

A very low bandwidth, customized theme makes for the fastest loading WordPress site we’ve ever designed and hosted. CSS sprites, amalgamated CSS and JS files, and intelligent layout make this one a speed demon.

Special search engine optimization (SEO) helps to ensure that this new site will make Ronald even easier to find on the web. A set of special plugins and routines focuses on the clearest and most meaningful content, and presenting that clearly and cleanly in the titles, meta data, page links, and other parts of the system.

We are honoured to be working with him!

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.

Working with Centre staff, Charles facilitated the move from an older site, focusing and expanding the message, and keeping it on point, conceptually and visually.

The CMS-based site delivers… through a clean, friendly design incorporating social media and rich media. An open architecture ensures the site can expand as it increases it’s important role in their vital outreach and education programs. Hosting on CB&F’s carbon-neutral, green server was a natural for this group. Easy, secure online donations and a basic web store will help raise funds for the next stages of their meaningful growth.

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.

If you don’t know about Raffi’s recent efforts, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about them:

In recent years, Raffi has devoted himself to “Child Honouring”, his vision for creating a humane and sustainable world by addressing the universal needs of children. His “Covenant for Honouring Children” outlines the principles of this philosophy.

In 2006, with Dr. Sharna Olfman, he co-edited an anthology,Child Honouring: How to Turn This World Around, which introduces Child Honouring as a philosophy for restoring communities and ecosystems. It contains chapters by Penelope Leach, Fritjof Capra, David Korten, Riane Eisler, Mary Gordon, Graca Machel, Joel Bakan, Matthew Fox, Barbara Kingsolver, and others. The book’s foreword is by the Dalai Lama. Resisto Dancing: Songs of Compassionate Revolution is the companion music record album for that book.

In a 2006 speech, Iona Campagnolo, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, referred to Child Honouring as a “vast change in the human paradigm.”

For a bit more, check out Raffi’s Troubadour Music and What is Child Honouring?, as well as our local newspaper, the Gulf Islands Driftwood, and this recent editorial piece, Child Honouring Urgently Needed.

One of the lovely things is that the philosophy encompasses both social and environmental responsibility and sustainability, so that the efforts are inherently green, community-building, and peacemaking.

CB&F are seeking pro bono donations from highly qualified web professionals; please contact us if you are interested in participating in a world-changing movement!

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.

WOLF Kids web site

The WOLF Kids program is a very exciting “nature immersion” program on the leading edge of educational curricula. Here’s an excerpt from the program description:

Wolf Kids offers a nature immersion and home school program where students interact with their natural environment through adventure, challenges, and a lot of fun. A core principal of the program focuses on experience in nature, as it has always been fundamental to the education of young developing human beings. For instance, climbing trees and running, tracking animals, building shelter and watercraft, making fire, discovering edible and medicinal plants, students acquire a keen knowledge of the taxonomy of flora and fauna, as well as traditional outdoor skills. These activities lead to an ecological integrity, which answers the call for affirmation and maximization of the potential of our children. Their classroom is the forest, ocean, fields, streams, and mountains. Their teachers are the otters, birds, shifting winds, and the people who make up our tribe. This full immersion program, utilizes both scientific and indigenous studies. Through hands-on outdoor experiences, students develop an ingrained knowledge and awareness of the natural world, and their place in it. They become eager and quick learners, the stewards and unshakeable voices of our environment, in whatever they choose to do for the future.

Please check out the site and leave a comment to let us know what you think!

©2010 Charles Buchwald & Friends. All Rights Reserved.