Wednesday, June 30, 2010

FireRescue1 Wins Maggie for Best Online Publication

I'm proud to announce that our company, the Praetorian Group, won big at this year's WPA Maggie Awards thanking home awards for Best Web Publication - FireRescue1 and Best Web Column - PoliceOne:

Praetorian Group Wins Big at WPA’s 2010 Maggie Awards

Company takes home awards for Best Web Publication and Best Web Column

SAN FRANCISCO - The Praetorian Group, the leading online media company in the public safety market, announced it has taken home two top awards at the Western Publishing Association’s 2010 Maggie Awards. Held in Los Angeles each year, the Maggie Awards honor the best print publications and websites in the Western United States, including top media such as CNET, PC World and Entrepreneur.

FireRescue1.com and PoliceOne.com, leading online resources for the firefighting community and law enforcement, respectively, took home the awards for Best Web Publication/Trade and Best Regularly Featured Web Column.

FireRescue1 received the award for Best Web Publication/Trade, recognizing general excellence across an entire website, spanning across editorial, graphics, navigation, functionality and overall design. FireRescue1 beat out a field that included its sister site, PoliceOne.com, as well as other top trade websites such as Private Clubs and Emergency Management.

PoliceOne received the Best Web Column award for Surviving the Streets, written by Lt. Jim Glennon, a veteran of the Lombard, Ill. Police Department and now the lead instructor for the Calibre Press Street Survival Seminar. His monthly column provides honest and straightforward leadership and ethics advice to law enforcement professionals.

“We’re extremely pleased to call ourselves Maggie award winners for the second year in a row, and especially happy to win the award that recognizes the best overall website in our category,” said Alex Ford, CEO of the Praetorian Group. “These awards reflect the contributions of our talented team, all unified by the mission of delivering high-quality, critical content to our audience of first responders.”

The Praetorian Group received five nominations for the 2010 Maggie Awards across both PoliceOne.com and FireRescue1.com. The five nominations ranked the company among the most-nominated media companies for this year’s awards, and added to Praetorian’s total of 16 nominations over the past 3 years.

The Maggie Awards, the Western Publishing Association's most prestigious publishing event, honors editorial, design and promotion excellence in magazine, tabloid, newsletter and online publishing. The Western Publishing Association has represented magazine publishers and companies who interact with magazine publishing industry for over 50 years. The WPA presents more than a thousand Maggie Award nominations each year to publications across the Western United States.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Web design warning signs: #4 - No Content Management System

A Content Management System, or “CMS” as it is frequently called in the industry, is crucial to effective ongoing management of your Web site. In its most simple format, a CMS allows you or members of you team to add and modify content and page layout on the fly. Without a CMS, you’ll need to hire a designer or pay a development firm to make minor changes – a hassle of coordination and often a deterrent to updating your site as often as you should – or at all. In addition, it’s nearly impossible to implement SEO best practices for even a smaller site without a CMS.

Luckily, there are a number of free content management systems out there that do a great job running simple sites. Check out Joomla or Drupal or just do a search on Google for “Content Management Systems”. Even blogging software like WordPress can serve as decent CMS for a simple site. If your Web design firm doesn’t bring up content management in your first meeting, run for the hills.

Here are a couple of reference links:

Read the full series: Top 10 Web Design Warning Signs