Delta Blog

As you may have heard, WordPress v3.2 is now available.  With this update, the WordPress 3.2 minimum system requirements were also increased.

Unfortunately, for some website hosting providers, upgrading from MySQL 4.0 to 5.0 may not be an option. This will eventually leave your site without the ability to upgrade plug-ins and apply security patches.

How is Delta Web Hosting Different?

How is Delta different? The Only Way to Know is to Talk to Us

1. Our cloud-based website hosting servers are ready to host WordPress 3.2 sites.
2. We’ve had MySQL 5.0 running on them for quite some time.
3. As with previous WordPress updates, we will help all our clients climb into WordPress 3.2.
4. All we need is a quick phone call and approval to upgrade your site
5. Your website is backed up every 4 hours
6. Server image snapshots are taken often

Learn More About What’s New in WordPress 3.2

Taken from the WordPress official blog:

We are WordPress Design and Development Experts

The focus for this release was making WordPress faster and lighter. The first thing you’ll notice when you log in to 3.2 is a refreshed dashboard design that tightens the typography, design, and code behind the admin. (Rhapsody in Grey?) If you’re starting a new blog, you’ll also appreciate the fully HTML5 new Twenty Eleven theme, fulfilling our plan to replace the default theme every year. Start writing your first post in our redesigned post editor and venture to the full-screen button in the editing toolbar to enter the new distraction-free writing or zen mode, my personal favorite feature of the release. All of the widgets, menus, buttons, and interface elements fade away to allow you to compose and edit your thoughts in a completely clean environment conducive to writing, but when your mouse strays to the top of the screen your most-used shortcuts are right there where you need them.

View Delta Systems' Website Design Portfolio

Delta Systems is pleased to launch a new look for their online portfolio.

The portfolio showcases Delta’s web design talents.

Check it out at

http://JustCallDelta.com/portfolio/

Need something done? Just Call Delta

Delta Systems is a full-service computer consulting company with a suite of web development, web design, and computer network support talent.

How is Delta different? The Only Way to Know is to Talk to Us

Building online applications and data management systems that are intuitive yet powerful is our specialty.

Do we build simple websites too? You bet. And we do it well using WordPress, Drupal, Expression Engine, and custom solutions.

We also have experts in Microsoft Access Development, EXE development, product commercialization, training on all major software, and more.

Give us a call and find out why over 800 companies have trusted Delta Systems with their networking, web, and programming needs since 1986. Ask around.

You’ll hear people say, “Just call Delta” so much that we made it our website – http://JustCallDelta.com

Job Point Provides Job Training and Related Services to Mid-Missouri

Delta Systems is pleased to announce the availability of http://JobPointMO.org

This new site provides a platform on which to highlight featured client success stories as well as newsletters and fundraising events. The site is designed to help job seekers find training, coaching, re-education, and life assistance in Mid-Missouri.

This is the latest effort in a long-standing partnership with Job Point.  Delta Systems is pleased to help an organization that been empowering people with skills and training needed to get work since 1965.

“We extend our warm appreciation to Delta Systems Group for donating the redesign of our website.” – Nancy Silver, Vice President of Job Point

Eldon, MO School District's New Website

Eldon, MO launched a new website for each school in their district this week

For our latest project, Delta Systems was asked to design and develop a comprehensive solution for managing the websites of the Eldon School District and each of its indiviual schools. The challenge was to seamlessly and comprehensively distribute the management responsibilities of the site across the schools, rather than have everything controlled at the central office.

Using the Multi-Site functionality built into WordPress 3.0 (formerly exclusive to WordPress MU), we were able to build a system that allows moderators within each individual school to update and maintain their own respective sub-sites while leaving administrators at central office the ability to oversee the entire system from a single login.

We are WordPress Experts

Now, the district can spread out the responsibilities of content updating by school, department, and teacher, avoiding the potential of a bottleneck at the central office.

Client Quotes

“The new website looks amazing! We are getting a lot of nice comments about it.”
Colleen McGirl – Secretary to the Superintendent

“Like the banner! Like the design! Everything looks great.”
Matt Davis – Superintendent

Check out the new website at http://www.eldon.k12.mo.us/

Need something done? Just Call Delta

Delta Systems is a full-service computer consulting company with a suite of development, design, and computer network support talent.

How is Delta different? The Only Way to Know is to Talk to Us

Building online applications and data management systems that are intuitive yet powerful is our specialty.

Do we build simple websites too? You bet. And we do it well using WordPress, Drupal, Expression Engine, and custom solutions.

We also have experts in Microsoft Access Development, EXE development, product commercialization, training on all major software, and more.

Give us a call and find out why over 800 companies have trusted Delta Systems with their networking, web, and programming needs since 1986. Ask around.

You’ll hear people say, “Just call Delta” so much that we made it our website – http://JustCallDelta.com

Screenshot of sabew.org featuring an image carousel and rss feeds from other blog sites

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers has partnered with Delta Systems for over 10 years. In the early days, Debin Benish trained Carrie Paden and her staff on the use of Microsoft Access.  Seeing that their time would be better spent on serving their thousands of members, SABEW turned to Delta Systems to build a membership management system, a conference management system, and a system to handle the hundreds of entries they receive to their annual “Best in Business” (BiB) contest.  The latest iteration of these systems is now online at SABEW.org. Members can now renew their membership directly online, view member-only content, as well as submit entries to the BiB contest as well as handle the judging all online.

Based on WordPress, Custom Built Plug-ins

Delta Systems used a unique blend of off-the-shelf and custom designed systems. WordPress was used to handle the front end content displaying. A custom WordPress plug-in was built to handle the image carousel on the homepage.  Another custom WordPress plugin was built to handle the contact form.  The site also directly integrates RSS feeds from Talking Biz News and several other business journalism related blogs.

New Website Features Include:

1. Completely powered by WordPress
2. Membership management system
3. Conference management system
4. Online Contest Submission system
5. Contest Judging system
6. Custom WordPress plugin to more easily handle content in the image carousel on the homepage
7. Completely integrated Google Analytics
8. Great Search Engine Optimization features

WordPress Experts

We are WordPress Experts

As an early adopter, Delta Systems has the most experience building and hosting WordPress powered websites of anyone in the area. And just in case there isn’t already a plugin built to make WordPress do exactly what you need, we are experts in building WordPress plugins as well. Ask around and you’ll find out why we’re the best. We have an extensive list of references.

Need something done? Just Call Delta

Delta Systems is a full-service computer consulting company with a suite of in-house development, design, and computer network support talent.

Building online applications and data management systems that are intuitive yet powerful is our specialty.

Give us a call and find out why over 800 companies have trusted Delta Systems with their networking, online, and programming needs since 1986. Ask around.

You’ll hear people say, “Just call Delta” so much that we made it our website – http://JustCallDelta.com

Delta Systems has built a website to showcase a luxury beach rental home on Captiva Island, Florida.

Visit www.AlmostHeavenCaptiva.com

Almost Heaven Captiva

Enjoy the animated crab that shows you snapshots of the house and the unique treasure map feel of the site.

When a user visits the page, we pull live 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.

With help from Delta Systems, private donors, and tax credits from the State of Missouri, the Central Missouri Food Bank recently completed a complete network upgrade.

This network upgrade included replacing close to 30 workstations and a new server running Microsoft’s Windows 2008 with Hyper-V technology.  This technology allows CMFB to run several “servers” while really only having 1 physical server.  By taking advantage of virtualization technology CMFB will save on on-going maintenance costs not to mention storage space, electricity and heating/cooling for their server room equipment.

Peggy Kirkpatrick, Executive Director of the Central Missouri Food Bank, was heard to say that upgrade went “Great!” that Delta’s service was “Great!” and the network is running “Great!”

That’s GREAT to hear! We didn’t expect a long, drawn out comment from Peggy as she is running an organization that is busy distributing millions of pounds of food to people in need around Missouri.

About the Central Missouri Food Bank

The Central Missouri Food Bank (CMFB) is a regional disaster and hunger relief network that acquires and distributes millions of pounds of donated food annually. CMFB distributes food to people in need through a network of 145 agencies in 32 Missouri counties. CMFB provides free food to soup kitchens, emergency food pantries, shelters for the abused and homeless, programs for low income children and senior citizens, and rehabilitation centers.

To donate or learn more, visit http://www.centralmofoodbank.org

About Delta Systems Network Support

If your company is in the Mid-Missouri area, call Delta Systems for all your hardware support needs. We specialize in Windows network support and have helped several companies migrate to Windows from Novell Netware.

To assist the Columbia Missourian‘s website staff in publishing election results quickly, Delta Systems wrote an Excel spreadsheet converter that will take an XLS file from the county clerk and convert it to Flash-friendly XML for their online election maps.  Some additional ActionScript was also written to help meld it all together well.

Since results aren’t expected until 2am, and we want to get some sleep, the converter is conveniently located on a webpage they can access at any time.

The good people at the Business Times Company electronically delivered the latest issue of the CBT to Delta in PDF, printer ready format. Delta then publishes the PDF and dumps graphics and stories into WordPress to get the individual stories properly indexed by Google News and a myriad of search engines. The official publication date is every other Saturday. The online issue is set to automatically go live at 5:00pm on the Friday before the day of publication since print copies start arriving in mailboxes on Friday.

The Columbia Business Times can be found online at http://www.columbiabusinesstimes.com

Everything you see on that site is database driven – no human layout is required for each issue – it is automatically handled by the system and all stories in each issue are pushed live simultaneously and automatically.

Articles started appearing in Google News within 8 minutes of them being posted. Not too shabby.

The good people at the Business Times Company electronically delivered the latest issue of the CBT to Delta in PDF, printer ready format. Delta then publishes the PDF and dumps graphics and stories into WordPress to get the individual stories properly indexed by Google News and a myriad of search engines. The official publication date is every other Saturday. The online issue is set to automatically go live at 5:00pm on the Friday before the day of publication since print copies start arriving in mailboxes on Friday.

The Columbia Business Times can be found online at http://www.columbiabusinesstimes.com

Everything you see on that site is database driven – no human layout is required for each issue – it is automatically handled by the system and all stories in each issue are pushed live simultaneously and automatically.

Articles started appearing in Google News within 7 minutes of them being posted. Not too shabby.