As a quick note to our customers.

After testing the latest WordPress for the past month, Armadillo Studios will be upgrading all of our CMS-based web sites to latest 2.7 release.

As the CMS of choice for all of our projects, the newest version of WordPress is a far more intuitive upgrade to it’s predecessor. (To be honest, we really “thought 2.5 and 2.6 were pretty dramatic improvement over the previous versions”:http://blog.armadillostudios.ca/article/wordpress-25 )

You can watch this video from WordPress.org for a little bit of a walk through for the changes or you can skip below and read some of our initial reasons that you’ll love the new system.

* *Stronger Security Features* – The New WordPress 2.7 fixes many of the security vulnerabilities found in WordPress 2.6 or 2.5. Which is essentially a roundabout way of noting that your site will be less susceptible to being spammed.
* *A More Intuitive Interface* – 2.7 has a far more intuitive design, which allows users to edit pages and create posts with less clicks.
* *QuickView Function* – This is a new addition to the WordPress Interface and essentially allows you to toggle comments, pings and other information straight from the list of posts/page. Again this is an element of a more intuitive Interface, but it is a quicker way to edit your posts.

If you have any questions regarding this upgrade, feel free to contact us at any time. We’ll be happy to answer questions you may have.

A couple of days ago, we notice an influx of visitors to our little corporate site and to our blog. Upon further investigation we discovered an interesting business card gallery called “Cardobserver.com”:http://cardobserver.com/.

And with a little scan of their beautifully designed site, we discover that our first run of “Armadillo Moo Cards”:http://cardobserver.com/gallery/armadillo-studios was the *featured business card for January 21st, 2009*.

It’s always neat to be recognized for our design work and we’re happy to see that our corporate branding has made a bit of an impact. We want to thank Cardobserver.com for the recognition and spreading the Armadillo brand.

If you are curious, Cardobserver.com is a recently launched web site and a fantastic gallery for those looking for corporate branding inspiration. Have a quick look and examine some of the unique ideas coming out of our industry.

That’s right, “Armadillo Studios is officially on Twitter!”:http://twitter.com/armadillostudio.

It’s not secret, that members of the Armadillo Team have been avid users of “Twitter”:http://www.twitter.com for the past year and a half. So today we finally decided to take the big plunge and create an official Armadillo Studios presence on Twitter.

We will be connecting with some of our other friends through out the industry (Great companies like Stalelife, NonImage, PrairieHippo, louderthan10, Veer, etc.,) and also using this account to spread some of the twitter love around. We also plan to promote our blog posts, our client releases and to also forward on some of our favorite bits of advice from the Twitter-sphere. Essentially spreading the news and also answering any of our clients questions.

So if you have an account, what are you waiting for “start following us!”:http://twitter.com/armadillostudio – @armadillostudio

But Wait! What is Twitter?

Whoops! I guess we got a head of ourselves a bit.

For those unfamiliar, Twitter is one the most popular emerging Social Networking sites on the Internet today. As described on their web site:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called “tweets” of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.

In essence, Twitter is a great watercolor of ideas. (Thank you Andy for the description) A great way to connect, build relationships and share information.

Armadillo Studios is excited to announce we have now adopted “Paypal”:https://www.paypal.com as a new form of payment for all of our client transactions.

Not that this is a relatively new concept, but in effort to improve our clients bottom line and our own; we are excited to give our clients this avenue of payment. While, we will still accept the tradition methods or payment; here are some of the benefits to our clients by using Paypal.

# *Convenience and Speed* – Instead of mailing or arranging a time for a drop off, you can now pay the remainder of your invoice online through any major bank account or credit card.
# *Take Advantage of your Credit Card* – We understand that finances with small businesses or start-ups can be a rocky road, but with Paypal you can now clear your invoice instantly through your Credit Card. Even better you can use this transaction to gain some valuable Business Reward points for Travel or other expenditures.
# *Paperless Transaction* – In this green age, sometime it’s nice to do all that we can for the environment. While this won’t dramatically change the world, this is something we can do to limit the amount of Paper used in a transaction. Because Paypal is an online transaction, you will receive an email detailing the entire transaction.
# *Security* – Paypal is an “industry leader”:https://www.paypal.com/ca/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Merchant/popup/WaxAboutPaypal-outside and an internationally renowned client for secure transactions.

Starting February 1st, Armadillo Studios will be implementing Paypal as a new method of payment. If you would like to move forward with this form of payment for all transaction, please contact us.

Working together with Caitlin Currie (a very close friend to the company), Armadillo Studios Inc. proudly launches “Glutastic.com – A new lifestyle site about living with Celiac Disease”:http://www.glutastic.com.

Utilizing the WordPress Content Management System, we handcrafted a template for Glutastic.com. With this site, Caitlin wanted to create a little enclave on the web to provide important information about Celiac Disease and the struggles of living a Gluten-free lifestyle to the 20-30 year age bracket. The catch was she wanted to bring the information with a lighthearted and positive outlook and provide more exposure to the disease in the Calgary region.

Utilizing Veer’s wonderful “Candy Script”:http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=UMT0000254 and an assortment of vibrant colors we crafted an engaging and enjoyable layout. We designed this site to catch the eye while balancing the fine line between bright and intrusive.

In addition, to the engaging layout, we also included some helpful plug-ins to increase WordPress’ usability and to also increase the interaction with the site. We included an advanced Rich Text-Editor to allow for better control of the layout for the posts. We also incorporated social networking links, which allow readers to share their favorite Glutastic articles to their favorite social networking site.

So we encourage you to check in with “Glutastic.com”:http://www.glutastic.com and learn a little about the struggles and joys of life with a gluten allergy.