Since opening in April 2007, Yoga Plus has become Toronto’s leading Yoga and Teaching Training facility. What makes Yoga Plus unique and specialized, is their multi-disciplinary styles of yoga participants can choose from that best suit their needs and lifestyle. Yoga Plus offers classes and courses with highly-trained and experienced teachers who lead drop-in and pre-registered classes, workshops, corporate packages, and Teacher Training courses. These classes can be held in one of their newly renovated studios, an office or even in a high school gym. Yoga Plus also offers several Pilates, dance, meditation, yoga philosophy.

Client Objective

Yoga Plus approached Parachute with several goals in mind and after an in-depth discovery session we were able to break everything down and rebrand the company from the foundation up. Starting with a new logo design to create a cleaner more contemporary image, we experimented with colour and form. Once these building blocks were in place, we worked together to create a website using WordPress as a content management system to allow Yoga Plus to update their own gallery images, class schedules and teacher bios.

Our Solution

• Create new logo to convey a more contemporary image
• Create new website combining both studio locations into one easy-to-use information system combining class descriptions, course schedules, teacher bios and more
• Setup new website design on WordPress for use as a content management system to allow Yoga Plus to modify their own photo galleries, content and schedules
• Custom Twitter profile design
• Updated photography of newly renovated facilities
• Add blog and social media features to engage Yoga Plus’ internet savvy audience.

View the full case study.

WordPress has grown from a simple open source blogging engine into a very powerful content management tool. With the upcoming release of WordPress 3, the software will be more robust than ever. Below are some of the awesome new features we can look forward to.

Multiple Sites With Single WordPress Install

We will now be able to create multiple sites using a single installation of WordPress, where each site may have its own set of themes and plugins. Your multisite setup can work with sub-domains or sub-directories:

• Subdomains work by using wildcard subdomains. You must have this enabled in Apache, and you must also add a wildcard subdomain to your DNS records. Some hosts will not support this, so you may need to ask your webhost before enabling this feature.
• Subdirectories work based on mod_rewrite. If you are using pretty permalinks in your blog already, then subdirectory sites will work as well.

By default, the Multisite feature in WordPress is disabled. To enable this new feature, you will need to do the following:

1. Go to Tools > Network under WordPress admin menu and specify Network settings
2. Create “blogs.dir” in wp-content folder
3. Add following line in your wp-config.php file: define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);
4. You may also need to modify your .htaccess file

Once the above steps are completed, you will see a new menu section called Super Admin. This section will allow adding and managing additional sites in your network. Your base WordPress install is now the main site in your network.

New Default Theme

Believe it or not the long time default theme “Kubrick” has been replaced with new default theme: Twenty Ten.  Twenty Ten is a theme with features like:

• two column layout
• support for custom background and header images
• provides built-in support for microformats, widgetized sidebar, and horizontal drop down menu.

Twenty Ten has been developed keeping in mind that a large number of theme developers use default WordPress theme as base for learning and designing their own themes. It therefore illustrates several new features like:

• Custom Background Images
• Editor Styles
• Improved Child Theme Support, etc.

Custom Menus

This is probably the most useful new feature for theme developers. WordPress 3.0 allows you to register any number of menus and display them in your themes template files using a simple function call. Most importantly it provides an easy to use menu section in the admin area – from where users can easily add, edit and remove menu items. Users will be able to add, edit and remove: pages, custom post types, categories, taxonomies, and custom links to these menus.

Custom Post Types & Taxonomies

Custom taxonomies were added in WordPress 2.8, enabling developers to create new ways to classify content. WordPress 3.0 improves this feature significantly by including support for hierarchical (category-style) taxonomies, and providing end users with custom taxonomy UI for pages as well as for posts.

WordPress introduced custom post types in version 2.9, but a lot of work was left for plugin and theme developers. However, WordPress 3.0 provides full support for custom post types, simplifying the whole process. This is a big deal – developers can now build easy to use CMS solutions for wide range of sites, meeting needs for specific type of content (portfolios, projects, video libraries, podcasts, quotes, chats, etc).

Implementation is pretty straight-forward. All you need to do is register post type in your functions.php file. WordPress 3.0 will automatically add admin section for your new custom post type, enabling content managers to add, edit and update content. To add a template for your custom post type, you will create a new template file named “single-{post_type}.php” (you can use any standard WordPress template tags in this file).

New Template Files

In addition to other enhancements, WordPress 3.0 has also added several new template files in its template hierarchy. Here is list of new template files for quick reference:

• Template For Front Page of Site:
  Will be used for both your latest posts or a static page as set by the admin (File: front-page.php).
• Template For Custom Post Types:
  If custom post type is books, WordPress will look for single-books.php (File: single-{post_type}.php).
• Author Specific Templates
  If the author’s name is “admin”, WordPress would look for author-admin.php. If the author’s ID is 1, WordPress would look for author-1.php (Files: author-{nicename}.php, author-{id}.php).
• Templates For Custom Taxonomies
  If the taxonomy is “sometaxtonomy”, and taxonomy’s slug is “someterm”, WordPress would look for taxonomy-sometaxtonomy-someterm.php (Files: taxonomy.php, taxonomy-{taxonomy}.php, taxonomy-{taxonomy}-{term}.php).

So when can we expect WordPress 3 to be available for download? RC3 is currently available in beta mode for testing. For a stable release, we can expect an updated release sometime between August and November 2010. What do you think about the new tools and features available in WordPress 3? What would you add to the mix?

pVelocity is a highly specialized team of computer engineers, sales and implementation professionals, change management and data mining experts. Beyond implementation, they help their clients embed pVelocity’s Profitability and Cost Simulation Software as a set of working tools that focus Production & Supply Chain, Sales and Marketing, Product Management, and Finance departments, as well as leadership teams, on common profitability targets — locally or globally.

Client Objective

pVelocity’s mission was to take their online presence to the next level. Having an existing site that served it’s purpose for several years, it was time to step things up and make a leap to the next plain. Working in partnership with Amanda O’Donovan [copy writing and project management], Parachute was up to the challenge providing design and art direction as well as web development throughout the project to raise the bar and help pVelocity meet their project goals.

Our Solution

• Analyze and tear-down client’s existing website for a navigational restructuring to enhance user experience and create a more intuitive site structure
• Develop a more contemporary, Web 2.0 style design to bring the website into a modern focus and ensure a relevant interface for years to come
• Development in current XHTML and CSS to ensure cross-platform and browser compatibility
• Content-rich footer for easy navigation from anywhere within the site
• Data collection forms throughout the website to collect user data, registrations and special interest
• Search engine optimization.

View the full case study or visit pVelocity.

Generation Media Group is a future-focused mobile application design and development agency based in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. They specialize in the design and development of mobile applications, mobile web, mobile geo-location software, mobile marketing and stratgey, quick response codes (QR code) and mobile content management.

Generation Media Group has a very talented web and mobile application development team, and approached Parachute with the challenge of developing the design and CSS styling for the new company website. Working together both Parachute and Generation Media Group were able to design and develop a successful web solution built on a custom content management system.

• Create an engaging and exciting design for integration with content management system developed
  in-house at Generation Media Group
• Provide art direction through strategy, planning and design process
• Develop CSS templates for setup on content management system that are compatible with all major browsers from Internet Explorer 6 and up.

View the full case study here.

Toronto’s Festival of Beer is a celebration of Canada’s rich brewing history, hosted by experts of the brewing craft from around the world. Featuring more than 120 brands onsite, this is Canada’s premier celebration of the golden beverage.

Visit the site today to get your tickets before it’s too late!

Ramping up for this year’s Toronto’s Festival of Beer our client required a brand new exciting and dynamic design developed on a content management system by Intrigue Development with social media integration to allow for interchangeable modules and a flexible website design for many years to come.

Our solution included:

• Design a visually exciting interface to capture user’s attention and drive users through the site
• Create promotional modules for ticket sales, event dates, social media, etc.
• Live dynamic countdown to the festival
• Development of content management system in partnership with Intrigue Development.

View the full case study.

The Fred V. Fowler Company is globally recognized as one of today’s leading suppliers of quality control and inspection equipment. Founded in 1946, they have a dedicated 62-year history to supplying the most innovative measuring products possible.

Fowler Tools of Canada approached Parachute with the hopes of redesigning their existing site to meet todays quality and programming standards and we were all too pleased to oblige. With an in-house web developer our job was a little simpler than usual as we were able to focus on providing web design and art direction as well as initial CSS templates from which they could expand on.

Working in partnership with Intrigue Development we are proud to announce the launch of the brand new website and online information centre for the Responsible Gambling Resource Centre. This brand new online tool offers helpful information to the public about responsible gambling, where to find help, and many other useful facts and games.

View the live site.

We’ve just launched a brand new website and social media platform for The Color Company; a London-based paint and colour tools retailer. This project presented new challenges in merging two existing sites which operated under different brands. In the end we were able to come up with a design that created visual excitement while merging the existing websites and integrating a blog and Twitter theme with live feed into the website itself. Accompanying these items are various AJAX-based colour tools to aid and interest visitors of this website.

We have also integrated a custom HTML email campaign tool into this new website design. Visitors, customers and contractors alike can easily register through the website to be included in monthly mailings and keep in touch with the experts at The Color Company.

This project was a joint effort between Parachute and partner Retail Prophet. Retail Prophet is a future-focused retail consulting group specializing in work with independent retailers, their buying groups and associations. Working together we were able to combine talents and deliver a great information and social media platform for The Color Company.

See for yourself!

We’ve just launched a brand new website and online real estate search tool for Toronto Condo and Loft buyers. This new site gives potential buyers instant access to one of Toronto’s top real estate blogs as well as a condo and loft search tool developed by Real Web Leads. Working together with their real estate listing search tool we were able to integrate it seamlessly into the new website for Search Local Condos. Also included within the site are countless neighbourhood search options providing detailed descriptions of neighbourhoods and listings that are available any desired area, making Search Local Condo’s slogan “live where you love” more of a reality.

All built on a content management system giving the team at Search Local Condos complete control over their own content, real estate listings and site management.

View the case study for more detailed information about this project.

Vassos Law recently launched a new website sporting a rich new look by the hands of Parachute Design. Site development was done in partnership with Intrigue Development. A small brochure-style website this may be, but it is always a challenge creating a website that uses such dark tones. When everything comes together to create such a rich look, you can only wonder why more websites don’t go this route.

Visit Vassos Law.