Armadillo Studios Inc.

Dreamhost goes Gmail

So first it was the upgrade of the “WordPress”:http://blog.armadillostudios.ca/article/wordpress-25 interfacen and now Dreamhost has moved from the archaic SquirrelMail to the new Gmail Email service. I must say April has been a great month for our clients.

For most of our new clients looking for a web hosting service, Armadillo Studios strongly recommended “Dreamhost.com”:http://www.dreamhost.com for all your hosting needs. They provide excellent and prompt support, a very simple user interface and more storage space than you could shake a stick at …

Unfortunately, for quite sometime Dreamhost has been utilizing the archaic squirrel mail system for mail accounts. This has been the overwhelming single complaint we’ve received form clients about their great service.

But now, Dreamhost has upgraded their mail services to function through the Gmail interface. Gone is the frustrating navigation and layout of squirrel mail. Instead users are treated to all the benefits of Gmail’s wonderful mail service, but through their own mail domain.

Users can now utilize everything that “Gmail has to offer”:http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about.html. Customizable contact lists, searchable folders, a simple calendar, and Gchat all through their own domain server.

If you would like us to upgrade your email service for you or would like more information, feel free to contact us at “info@armadillostudios.ca”:mailto:info@armadillostudios.ca.

SXSW08: Advertising for Newbies

We know we’re jumping around a bit on describing SXSW, but it has been a fairly hectic few days since returning from SXSW.

So let’s get back on track, Day two of SXSW was an informative and inspirational day of sessions. As mentioned in the previous post, the very interesting “icanhasacheezburger”:http://blog.armadillostudios.ca/article/sxsw08-guess-the-web-site session really took over the day.

But one of the most important client side sessions came early on Sunday morning. A session simply called “Online Advertising for Newbies”:http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels_schedule/?action=show&id=IAP060555.

Here at Armadillo Studios, have been continuously working with our clients to capitalize on various revenue generating streams; it was nice to see some of the recent success stories and to discover some new ideas.

The session provided ample information regarding different avenues in which web logs can transition their content and passions in to revenue. Some ideas were fairly basic and included; the incorporation of “AdBrite ads”:http://www.adbrite.com or “DoubleClick”:http://doubleclick.com ads into a site’s layout. These ads generate revenue for the publisher based on clicks per million visits. (Basically the number of clicks an ad gets based on a One Million views) Or bloggers can align themselves with large professional blogging networks like ProBlogger or “eMoms at home”:http://www.emomsathome.com/blog/, which will pay bloggers who bring their wealth of new readers to their networks. Or even the idea of bloggers selling local banner space to local restaurants and businesses to provide a local connection to their readers.

Some of the more unconventional ideas included incorporating Amazon.com’s referral program or an iTunes referral program to give bloggers a percentage of all purchases directed from the site. Web logs that deal with pop culture issues or deal directly with cooking can greatly benefit from this form of revenue, as it generates income based on content. This idea works hand in hand with sites that promote or review a variety of products.

If you are interested in ways to generate income on your web log, feel free to contact us. You don’t even have to be an existing client; we really enjoy helping people get the best from their web logs.

Hey! That’s why we call ourselves blogging experts.

Thank You!

It’s been a little over two weeks since we celebrated our one year anniversary at the Art Gallery of Calgary, and we would like to finally thank everyone who came out.

It was a wonderful evening and a pleasure to share such an achievement with all of you.

We hope you all enjoyed the festivities. The wine, the steamwhistle beer, the Jonessoda and food were fabulous.

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We thank all of our friends, family and clients for their support over the year and we look forward to an exciting 2008.

One Year Anniversary

That’s right! Armadillo Studios is officially one year old!

And on Wednesday, we are celebrating this achievement with a little appreciation night at the “Art Gallery of Calgary”:http://www.artgallerycalgary.org/.

We’ve got our friends at “Steam Whistle”:http://www.steamwhistle.ca/ to supply the beverages. “Darryl Bennett and Chef for Hire”:http://www.chefforhire.ca/ will be providing some divine appetizers. Heck, we’ve even gone out and picked up a few cases of lovely “Jones Soda”:http://www.jonessoda.com/ for all of our friends who are just children at heart.

Plus we’ve even cooked up a small little surprise that you’ve probably never seen before.

All of this just to thank you – the clients and people who have supported “Armadillo Studios”:https://www.armadillostudios.ca over the past year.

_If for some reason you haven’t received an invite and would love to come. (BTW that’s probably our fault as we probably didn’t update our email addresses) Just send us an email at info@armadillostudios.ca and we’ll add you to the guest list._

The Power of Sub-Domains

Very few people realize that once they register a domain name, they aren’t just relegated to one specific url address, but rather an entire spectrum of potential web addresses. Many people don’t fully understand the “power of sub-domains”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdomain.

When a user registers a domain at any registration web site (we recommend “domainsatcost.ca”:http://www.domainsatcost.ca) they are granted full rights to the domain name of their choice. For example _www.armadillostudios.ca_ or _www.yourcompanyinc.ca_.

While most users and clients will develop their site using only the main web site address, you can actually create numerous web sites by altering the initial sub domain. A good example is this corproate web blog.

As you can see in the url, this web log is run under *blog.armadillostudios.ca* and is actually a completely separate entity from the main “www.armadillostudios.ca”:https://www.armadillostudios.ca web site. At Armadillo Studios we use sub domains to host our test web sites. At last count we had 13 individual test sites running under the main domain of armadillostudios.ca. (Most “web hosting providers”:http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?conturner will provide an unlimited number of sub domains for each registered domain)

Now you maybe asking _how could this possibly benefit my company_? That’s quite simple. For example if you wanted to create a completely different web site to showcase a new product or even to create a separate web blog, you could set this up under a unique sub domain.

If you are looking for a great example of the power of sub domains look no further than your local University or College. The “University of Calgary”:http://www.ucalgary.ca, uses sub domains to create separate urls for all of it’s “different”:http://library.ucalgary.ca/ “departments”:http://haskayne.ucalgary.ca/.

If this is something that interests your business feel free to contact us and we’d gladly discuss how you can benefit from the power of sub domains.