If there is one thing we love at Verge Studios, then it is using simple solutions for complex problems. One of the most annoying problems of working in a media rich world is embedding that media in web content. It's no problem if you have a an embed generator like Youtube does where all you need to do is click on the embed link and out comes some copy and pastable html code. However multiply this by 100 different services from twitpic over liveleak to Dinosaur Comics, and you are busy copy and pasting embed code more than you are actually enjoying content. The Joomla Community has been very industrious in the past and has come up with numerous content plugin solutions that will use short code ex: [youtube]link_to_video[/youtube] to render the appropriate embed code. However, the problem with most of these is that they have a fixed number of services, and if you want to add any other services, you either have to add them yourself to the plugin code, or hope the author updates them. The solution: Embed.ly an online service that will transform links for you into embeddable html, which continuously increases it list of supported services. Click on the link below to read more....

Please note: The button you see above the article ↑ is part of the new open graph plugin we are working on. The module demo is below. We will post about this soon!

In Facebook's bid to take over the world, they have introduced the Facebook Like Button. We decided that it might be useful to have a Joomla module that auto-generates the code for this button, so we set to work and in an hour we had assembled a first version that seems to run pretty well. We are assuming that the Like Button will change over time, so we are trying to keep our code as easy to change as possible. For a picture and some more information continue reading below.

Recently one of our clients asked us if it was possible to try some A / B testing on some of their modules and the contents inside them. A cursory glance at the Joomla extensions directory revealed that no such module exists for Joomla. As a result we took it upon ourselves to create this module ourselves and adding a little twist. Instead of testing just one module, we decided it might be interesting if the client could test pools of modules against each other. So for example, custom HTML content vs. image galleries modules. In addition we wanted to put in a mechanism to control how often one pool is displayed so you could create a ratio analysis. For example a poll should be displayed 2/3 of the time vs. 1/3 of the time for the other pool. Below you will find a few screen shots of the administrative back end and version to download of the module.

The rapid proliferation of smart phones with full browser capability has unveiled a strange problem for website and content providers. On one hand it is desirable to be able to show a website in it's full glory and many new smart phones will do that, but on the other there is something to be said about a fast loading, easy to read version of a website that is both friendly on the smart phone screen real estate as well as a visitors mobile data package. Many website will therefore offer to provide two versions of the site, one optimized for mobile browsing and one for regular browsers. CNN.com is a great example where if you visit it from a smart phone, it will most likely take you to http://m.cnn.com, a mobile equivalent of their content. Now clearly, CNN has the resources to build a mobile version of their site with it's own template. Joomla users could do the same, install another instance of the Joomla software package, apply one of many mobile skins, and redirect all mobile users to that site. But that seems redundant to have to install another skin, or even just another instance of Joomla, including a mobile sub-domain name (m.cnn.com). In the following paragraphs we will explore the ways of building a simple component to produce great mobile skins of your site on the fly.

Attached is a the presentation of a 10 minute talk we gave at a private function on the merits of knowledge management. The goal of the presentation was to give clients a quick and easy understanding of what knowledge management can do for a business in the short and the long term. While knowledge management may often be seen as more of a theoretical framework, we emphasize that a lot of the technology employed by Verge Studios directly prompts best practices of knowledge management and helps to build a knowledge management infrastructure. Additionally, our own knowledge management practices have helped us grow and expand beyond what could have been possible without it.

Part of running a design studio that includes custom websites and hosting entails the requirement to keep track of a large number of processes, ranging from server performance to website visitor numbers and interaction. Traditionally, many of the tools used to monitor these processes have relied on email to send out a notification if something is wrong or simply to keep a group of people in the current loop. While this a straight forward solution, it is often cumbersome and hard data to visualize from a knowledge management perspective. After the fold we will explore how we can use recent developments in micro-blogging to overcome some of the innate obstacle presented by monitoring several aspects of server hosting and website analytics.

One common question we have been getting in relation to our last blog post, Writing a Simple Joomla Module, is how we included the module as part of the article without just placing it into a module space specified in the template and appending it to the article itself. Joomla 1.5 has easily simplified this task by allowing the module system to declare custom spaces and have these be loaded through an included plugin. This may seem a little confusing at first but we hope we can clear it up below!

Akin to extending an existing module in Joomla, it is also incredibly easy to writing your own. Using this post, we want to give a quick run through of how quick and painless it is to design your own modules to be included in various areas of your website. To provide a useful example, we will be leveraging Google's Books Search API to embed a preview of a book of our choosing based on it's ISBN number. This way we could, for example, feature recommended reading on a website by providing an interactive and rewarding experience. Lets jump right in!

jQuery is an advanced javascript library that greatly simplifies "HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development". However, jQuery is not the default javascript library choice in Joomla, which relies instead on MooTools. While the merits of one over the other can be discussed up and down the Internet, it leaves us with the problem that they are incompatible when both are invoked at the same time, as one will overwrite parts of the other. Fortunately, jQuery provides us with a no conflicts option that we can call upon to have jQuery play nice with the rest of Joomla.

We are pleased to announce that Verge has received two awards from the Association of Marketing & Communication Professionals (2009 MarCom Awards) for excellence in design.