Improved Searching and Tagging, and 20 New Designers and Developers

I think this is the last time I manually assemble the weekly list of new folks to join ByFolio... I'll have to write some code to do it for me, because this list just took about 30 minutes to gather together!

• 108 Digital - Fyshwick, ACT, Australia
• 1stOmni - Natick, MA, United States
• Agency3 - Lexington, MA, United States
• APOK Technology - Ofallon, MO, United States
• CBlackburn Consulting, Inc. - Overland Park, KS, United States
• Chrobis Web Designs - Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
• Computerminds - Clifton, Bristol, United Kingdom
• Digital Loom, Inc. - Cambridge, MA, United States
• Epicsea - Boston, MA, United States
• Gravitate Design Studio - Vancouver, WA, United States
• IMAGEX MEDIA - Surrey, BC, Canada
• Latent Motion - Brookline, MA, United States
• Lighthouse Technology Group - Lake Oswego, OR, United States
• MBA Team - Littleton, MA, United States
• Mediacurrent - Alpharetta, GA, United States
• Monsoon Company - Berkeley, CA, United States
• Palmer Huang - Boston, MA, United States
• Port City Web - Portsmouth, NH, United States
• Scott Jehl - Boston, MA, United States
• squareFACTOR - Boston, MA, United States

I had a chance this week to also make some great improvements to the search and tagging features. Ian from Civic Actions pointed out that clicking on links in the tag cloud on the main page didn't do what he expected for searching... he expected to see the results right away. Originally, I had each click on a tag append the term to the search box, and then you would have to actually click "Search" to perform the search. I believe Ian's expectation for how the search should behave is far more common than my original expectation, and I'm happy to say that this is fixed.

Now, clicking on each tag will immediately start the search for that tag. Clicking on additional tags will further refine the search. Since the site's built using AJAX techniques anyway, it ends up being a very smooth search process for the user, and the search results update in real time with each click. People can of course just type in their own search queries and click "Search", but the tags give a quick starting point for common search terms.

Here's an example where I've click on the tags for Boston, 1 or 2 people in the organization (i.e., a loose definition for "freelance" developers and designers... more to come on this), and cms (content management system):

The first click on Boston refines the results in real-time to Boston, the second click on the organization size further refines, etc. Clicking "Reset Folios" restores the display to like it was before the search.

I've also improved things for the developers and designers specifying the tags for their folios on their account pages. They can now just click on some of the common tags, and they'll be appended to the field (very del.icio.us like). Of course, they can write them in on their own if they'd like as well. Here's an example from the account page:

Posted at 02:44PM Apr 03, 2008 by Cory in Announcements  |  Comments[0]

Welcome to Our 8 New Designers

We've had a busy week, and here are the latest web designers and firms to join us on ByFolio:

• Avidus Media - Newton, MA


• DutchMoney - Providence, RI


• Internal Matters - Newport, RI


• Kenmore Design - Boston, MA


• Nashua Web Design - Nashua, NH


• One Pica - Boston, MA


• Ripcord Design - Waltham, MA


• Web Depiction - New York, NY

Your work looks great, and we look forward to seeing more of it!

Posted at 08:46AM Mar 26, 2008 by Cory in Announcements  |  Comments[0]

Welcoming Hull Creative, Technivant, and Velvet Blues to ByFolio

I'd like to extend a welcome to our latest Boston and Chicago web designers to join ByFolio:

• Hull Creative Group - Brookline, MA
• Technivant - Cambridge, MA
• Velvet Blues - Chicago, IL

Welcome, and we look forward to seeing more of your work on ByFolio!

Posted at 02:55PM Mar 19, 2008 by Cory in Announcements  |  Comments[0]