Transmissions

Updates from under the hood

 
 

Welcome!

Radical Designs doesn't like to spam our clients. We all get enough email these days and we don't plan to start adding to that stack very often, but starting this year we want to try to take a moment, a few times a year, to let you know what's new with us, our services, and the fast-paced world of online communications. We're also going to use this newsletter to keep you up-to-date on the new technology and features available to you as our clients.

 

in this issue

New look for our site, starring you

After many years of ignoring our own website while working on yours we've finally carved out time to collaborate with one of our favorite partners, Design Action, to give our website a facelift.

The main goal of our new website is to highlight our work (your websites and campaigns), so we're making our portfolio front and center. We invite you to help us make it better by checking it out. Don't see your site or campaign? Email suzi@radicaldesigns.org to get your site added to the list. Send us a description of your site, organization or campaign in a few sentences and we will include it on our portfolio page.

We are also focusing on building out our online organizing resources so drop by occasionally to keep an eye on our News & Updates homepage section.

RD presents: The Website Time Machine

Is your website trapped in the past? Does your site look smaller and smaller every year, left standing alone as left-aligned? Then you might be interested in the new Radical Designs Website Time Machine! We’re offering a special blend of technology and tactics to bring your website back to the future! ...or at least the present.

Radical Designs has been building websites for over 6 years now and that means some are showing their age. Could your site use a little redesign love? Maybe a hand restructuring your content? Looking to build a mobile app or curious about how to optimize your current site to look good on a tiny screen? Excited to try interactive features or new social media support? Give us a call if you’re interested in chatting about different options, even small changes can make a big difference.

Fresh technology and new features

We've been expanding our tech-scope, here's a few nifty things we now have to offer:

AMP, now with Pretty URLs - You asked for them and we added them, our custom CMS now supports pretty, human readable URLs. No more linking to "article.php?id=". See them in action on ForestEthics' site. Get in touch to learn about how to get this feature enabled on your AMP site.

The Spokes Project - Spokes is a new suite of online tools dedicated to building more effective, compelling online campaigns. You can use them on your own, or integrate them with your favorite CRM. We're focusing on creating better ways to develop relationships and promote your causes online, share information with other platforms and leverage social media. Our first Spoke, Templator, helps create complex and reusable email templates, as well as adding much needed editorial workflow to your email campaigns. Contact us if you are interested in trying out the beta release! The Spokes Project »

Facebook Applications - Last year we built a Facebook application for the dedicated folks at College Summit, we're really happy with how it turned out and want to do more. Got an inspiration on how you can leverage Facebook to spread the word or grow your campaign? Don't hesitate to give us a ring.

Goodbye IE6! - As of this July of this year, we will no longer guarantee support for Internet Explorer 6 unless specifically requested. IE6 is will be celebrating it’s 9th birthday and is now 2 versions behind the top release. In January of last year Google announced they would no longer guarantee that their online tools would work in this browser and many services like YouTube and Facebook have followed suit. “You wouldn’t drink 9-year-old milk, so why use a 9-year-old browser?”

Wordpress - We're rocking out with Wordpress these days! As many of you know, Wordpress isn’t just for blog sites anymore, and we’ve leveraged the awesomeness of this humble software (and it’s super-active developer community) as a lightweight content management system for smaller sites. We’ve even contributed back by building a Wordpress plugin of our very own - radSlide, a slideshow plugin created by our newest member, Micah Lee.

Drupal - We are happy to announce that we are now supporting Drupal. It has been in development since 2001 and is the most mature and robust open source content management system on the market today, powering over 7 million sites. Drupal allows us to create powerful websites while keeping costs low. For an example of our work in Drupal, check out Climate Health Connect and RAN.

A word from Catherine, our Operations Manager

Credit Card Billing - Radical Designs was excited to introduce credit card billing a few months ago. You can find it here: radicaldesigns.org/payments. We do not currently have recurring billing, but we plan to in the future. If you have any difficulties please contact Catherine at billing@radicaldesigns.org. Please include as much information about your issue as possible, but DO NOT send us credit card information via email, it is not a secure method of disclosing this highly sensitive information.

Reaching Operations - If you have a question or concern about your bill, need to change the contact people on your account, need to clarify who should be receiving these emails or have another administrative issue with regard to you account please send an email to billing@radicaldesigns.org. Email is the most efficient way to reach Catherine but please bear in mind she only works for us part time.

On a final note... we're a co-op!

Radical Designs is very excited to announce a important transition in our company. As you may know Radical Designs was originally organized as a limited liability corporation but has always acted in a democratic and cooperative fashion. In order to bring the company in-line with our practiced values Radical Designs decided in the last year to reorganize as a worker cooperative. We are excited to join the larger worker coop community and join long-term allies such as Inkworks Press and Design Action in expanding the base of worker-owned businesses throughout the Bay Area and beyond.

With Radical Love,
The RD Team

rd team

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Radical Designs | 1370 Mission St. 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103 | 415.738.0456