Delta Blog

The Columbia, MO Chamber of Commerce recently switched to using Delta Systems for website hosting and support.  As we blogged about back in August, previously the site at http://www.columbiamochamber.com was suffering from a dismal 20% outage rate. 

Since then, the site has been up 100% of the time, has been monitored 24/7, and is backed up daily; just like every one of the dozens of websites Delta Sytems provides hosting for. 

Site Navigation Improved

In the past few days, Delta quietly rolled out some website usability and layout improvements that better utilizes the amount of space dedicated to website content, replaced a homegrown content management system with WordPress, and applied some search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to increase the searchability factor of ColumbiaMOChamber.com. The site can now easily be administered by several people with little to no training required.

About the Chamber

Since 1905, the Columbia Chamber of Commerce has been a voluntary, member-supported organization of business, industrial and professional people who are dedicated to developing, promoting and maintaining a sound and healthy economic climate for Columbia. The Chamber is a non-profit organization with over 1,500 members working together to enhance the Columbia business community.

An all new Callaway Bank web presence went live this week at http://www.callawaybank.com. Delta Systems was hired to create a fresh, clean, updated website for the bank as well as provide secure hosting. A third party will also be updating the online banking portion of the website in the weeks to come.

callawaybank.com screenshot

The site features

• A branch and ATM locater that incorporates the use of Google Maps
• Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to allow Google, Yahoo, etc to find content quickly and index it properly.
• An EV-SSL certificate which is designed to ensure an extra level of trust when viewed from Internet Explorer or Firefox
• 5 different homepage graphics that are randomly displayed during subsequent site visits
• Google Analytics statistics collection and reporting
• An easy to use content management system (CMS) so the client can add/edit pages as well as the content on those pages.
• A blogging system that the marketing department will use to update the list of currently available promotions and possibly update interest rates on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis
• An internal, password protected newsletter that employees can now publish

In addition to that. . .

• The site was tested for use in IE7, IE6, Firefox, and Safari browsers.
• “301 Redirects” were put into place to avoid dead links while search engines re-index the website

Delta Systems delivered the site on schedule and on budget.

Putting the site live was intentionally delayed for 2 weeks by the client due to this crazy stock market and financial crisis.

“The team at Delta Systems was great to work with throughout the entire design and production of our new website. They provided guidance and support as we stepped through the process. We were especially impressed with their quick response to our questions and their dedication to reaching every deadline and going LIVE on schedule.” -Debbie LaRue, Director of Marketing

“We asked Delta Systems to help us completely overhaul our web site and rebuild it from scratch, and they did a great job for us! They stayed on schedule and within budget. Plus their team made the process extremely easy for us. We are very pleased with the site and how well they worked with us.” -Jeff Jones, V.P./Director of Sales

Thanks Debbie and Jeff! We’re glad to help.

Mizzou’s 2008 Homecoming Blood Drive Donor Tracking System is Live! Live statistics can be viewed at http://www.donateblood.com/graphs/linegraphs.asp

The University of Missouri has partnered with the American Red Cross for more than two decades in pulling off some of the largest blood drives in the United States. Delta Systems has been providing registration systems and support services for every Homecoming blood drive and Greek Week blood drive for at least the past 14 years. In 2007, this is what we had to say about it.

Delta Systems is proud to be instrumental in helping make sure the donation process go smoothly by keeping wait times to an absolute minimum.

You can now follow Delta Systems announcements on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/deltasystems

It is our intent to announce such things as new services, acquisitions, discounts, promotions, special offers, client happenings, and other quick notes that don’t necessarily warrant an entire blog post.

Feel free to bookmark this post as well.

We have a weather status message at the top of a website we built for a luxury beach rental home on Captiva Island, Florida. When a user visits the page, we pull the weather information from Yahoo’s weather RSS feed, and then we parse out the information we want to display.

Once the information is parsed, we compare to a database of images and weather types and then show an appropriate icon for the weather type. We use tango icons, because they have transparent backgrounds and are a higher resolution than the Yahoo images in the feed. This provides a better look and a more site-specific integrated feel to the weather portion of the page.

When Yahoo throws us a wrench, and we don’t have an icon for the weather type, the system immediately sends us an email and are able to go in and associate the appropriate icon for the weather type. We have some defaults in place, but sometimes you just don’t know; for instance, they added ‘Strong Thunderstorms’ and then ‘Wind/Rain’.  We’re waiting for ‘hurricane’ to be added as well.

Visit www.AlmostHeavenCaptiva.com

Delta Systems is pleased to announce the delivery of v1.8 of the patent-pending title insurance policy tracking system hosted at http://www.FarmersTitle.com

A plethora of improvements and new features were added to the system including preliminary Google Maps integration (more coming later), an online newsletter, and more.

UPDATE: Farmers National Title Insurance became Agents National Title Insurance on January 1, 2009. Their new website is at http://www.agentstitle.com

AirPlay Direct today announced a strategic partnership with the Hollywood Music Awards.

“They are a like-minded organization that support quality music regardless of the origin: independent or major label.” – Robet Weingartz, AirPlay Direct CEO.

The main event will take place on November 20th, 2008 at the Hollywood Highlands in the world-famous Kodak Theatre Complex (Hollywood, California) featuring live music performances, award presentations, celebrities, a VIP reception and dinner banquet catered by Wolfgang Puck, Inc. The Hollywood Music Awards (HMA) is the first red carpet event of its kind that celebrates music of mainstream and independent artists in popular and new visual mediums. 

Delta Systems is part owner in AirPlayDirect.com and Delta’s President, Steve Powell also serves as the CTO of AirPlay Direct.