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Play Flight of the Monarch Beta Version 1.0

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This game is called “Flight of the Monarch” and is programmed in Flash, as a prototype for a 3d version I have dreamed up.

My plan is to get better artwork and make it into a game called “Kylie’s Bubble”.   Kylie being a mystical fairy who has been entrusted with carrying the sacred bubble of water through the forest filled with peril, to a thirsty tree.

The game play is mostly based upon simple dodging of obstacles.   Kylie hovers around her bubble, rotating at a specific distance from it.   Whichever direction she is, she can push the bubble by blowing gently on it.   The bubble and Kylie therefore move as one up to a certain speed.

There will also be some objects that will need to be interacted with in a certain order in order to be able to bring the bubble to the tree.   This will make it a thinking game with multiple levels.

Then I may add some artificially intelligent creatures, both good and bad, to make it more fun.

And finally I’ll make it sparkle with some particle effects!

The client, YogaKula.com, approached us with their existing site and their needs

1) An easy to maintain site filled with information that frequently changes such as a Calendar of Events.   They want a great looking design that allows the visitors easy access to the content.

2) An online store solution that can manage a large catalog of products, both physical and digital (downloadable).    They also want integration with other online tools such as automatic UPS shipping calculation.

3) A graphical HTML email list that has supports thousands of users, automatic subscribe and unsubscribe and easy management of  mailing list groups.

Solution to Need #1:

We chose WordPress as the Open Source Content Management System platform to drive the site.   WordPress is easy to use for the multiple members of the YogaKula staff who will be managing the content.   It also has some great tools for managing an events calendar.   I wrote some custom code to the Events Calendar management system to allow for an extra heading title and an image to be associated with each event.

We also installed several Social Marketing plug-ins to integrate content with Facebook, Twitter and AddThis making the YogaKula site as open ended to the World Wide Web as we can and bringing in as much traffic through honest social advertising.

The design was largely borrowed from other sites.   The client browsed around and found several sites that they liked very much and we adapted the design from there.

Solution to Need #2:

ZenCart is our favorite open source  e-commerce platform.   It allows for easy setup, has hundreds of tools and is the result of years and years of online store owners optimizing the process.  It’s easy to setup a full catalog ranging from CDs to DVDs to Books to Yoga products to digital downloads. We setup a YogaKula UPS account to allow for automatic UPS shipping.

ZenCart is reasonably easy to understand from the code perspective too and allows for total re-writing of code and design to allow complete seamless integration into the site.

Solution to Need #3:

I researched online email list management solutions and found that all the pay by month services are a rip-off unless you are doing sophisticated ad-tracking and google analytics based research onto your email campaigns and require all sorts of trackback data.

Most of our customers just want an email list that looks nice, is easy to use, and allows for the subscribers to manage their subscription themselves.   Oh, and no monthly fee!

So the best solution I found was to install the Joomla engine just for the purpose of taking advantage of the Joomla Mailing List Manager component.   It’s a one-time purchase fee of $50 and it does everything the client wants.   I had 1 client who wants trackback info and I was able to re-write some of the code to allow for that.

UPDATE : Keeping abreast of new technology is imperative!   After releasing the site I disovered WP-Ecommerce, a great package that uses WordPress to manage online product catalogs, orders and customers.  As much as I like Zen Cart, it’s better to have everything in one place, so we swapped out ZenCart in favor of WP-Ecommerce.    WP-Ecommerce is great, if you get the full version, easy WordPress admin interface and support for downloadable products.

The Down-low:

BePresents.com wants to meet with you, get a list of verything you want to represent on the web, teach you of new technology that can expand this presence and come up with the best solution to meet your needs, save your money and create a great looking site.

The Follow Up:

A very important part of the BePresents.com business philosophy is that we are here for the customer.   We want all our customers  to know what it is they bought and how to use it.   We want to build a relationship that will last.

For YogaKula.com I spent hours teaching them how to use their new WordPress system.   I often do touch-ups or assistance for free if it’s less than 5 minutes of my time.

I created a YogaKula “How to” WordPress PDF Document that you may find interesting.

I treat their site as if it is my own.

Do you want to be able to make changes to your site yourself?   So do millions of other people, and after years of R&D we’ve got to a place where it’s easy.

Content Management Systems, or CMS, give you an incredible amount of control over your website via a private Admin Interface.   They allow you to make changes to your textual content in an easy to manage interface.   You can add entire pages, change the text, pictures, add a flash photo gallery, email lists and even add and remove entire components such as user Forum via the WordPress Admin Interface.

A CMS like WordPress has 2 sides, the Public side and the Admin side.   The Public side is what the world sees.   Most sites have repeated content such as the header images, menu bar and footer.   This is called the “Theme” or “Template” of the site/page.    The part that changes, in the middle, is termed the “Content”.

So the CMS Admin tool gives you a way to organize the pages and media (images, etc.) of your site easily.   The text editor technology has come along way and the current WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get) text editors are amazing!   It’s like having Microsoft Word (r) inside a web page!.

So, using a CMS, the only things you might need another person for are the initial setup of the Graphic Design of the site.    You can choose one of the templates from an existing library, or any site really, as the starting point.   Then we can customize it to your liking and needs.

And the cool part of a CMS like WordPress is that it is an easily expandable, open ended “plug-in architecture”.   That means if you’ve seen a cool feature on another site, there is probably a module that we can install for your site, in minutes!!! What used to take me a week now takes an hour because of the open-source movement.   It’s all been done before, so why don’t we share it?

Which CMS?

There are many Open Source (free!) CMS systems.   I recommend WordPress for it’s ease of use and featured packed plug-in library.

I also recommend Joomla for people with websites that are more business oriented and require some real powerful expansive plug-in packages.

Contact me today and I’ll show you examples of what a CMS can do.

Some of these stores are:

What’s a Template?

A template is the part of a design that is repeated or has some consistency to it. Like on the page you are looking at now, the template is the graphics at the top, the menu and the background and font selections. What is not the templated is the information on the page. So a template is like an overlay or general format for you information.

Where do I get one?

Many of my customers are using a free template from one of the sites listed below. The web is very cut & paste, in fact it’s spirit is free exchange of information. So we are free to take a menu from one site, the background color from another and use the fonts from a third. Take a look at other sites and the templates below and begin to buid a list of what you like. You can be very specific or give general outlines and I’ll fill in the blanks.

Free Templates

Launch “Flight of the Monarch” my Flash Video Game (Beta Version)

Launch Xasi Designs 100% Flash Site

Simpler Animations/Banners/Fun Eye Candy:

Nataraj ~ One Frame Animation

Be Presents Intro

Be Presents FLEX Project

Seane Corne Intro

Sequioa Records Flash Banner (on home page)

Sphatika Jewel Shop

The rest are here for fun :

screen.swf

mp3PlayerBlack.swf

whatsNew.swf

kaliShantiRight.swf

stickyOm.swf

cocoIntro.swf

opie.swf

fingers.swf

dialogRecent.swf

menu.swf

circleNav.swf

base.swf

yogakulaRight.swf

turningLeafLeft.swf

spinClip.swf

flashSamplesLeft.swf

flashyOpening.swf

turningLeafRight.swf

yogakula.swf

slideshowBananah.swf

circles.swf

screen2.swf

intro2.swf

chakra.swf

tejas-rainbow.swf

portfolioCover.swf

aum.swf

skimmer.swf

fist.swf

xasiNavigation.swf

sciFli.swf

loader.swf

flashSamplesRight.swf

sciFliWhite.swf

xasiSmall.swf

cursor.swf

sliding.swf

home.swf

yogakulaLeft.swf

contactOrganic.swf

kateMaembeRight.swf

zenhealyngRight.swf

lakshmiMenu.swf

port-a-folo.swf

portfolioFlip.swf

greenpathTogether.swf

samples.swf

dots.swf

phone.swf

plane.swf

slidez.swf

email.swf

mp3player.swf

fire_dots.swf

bluePearlAum.swf

shiva.swf

intro.swf

homeEarth.swf

ganesh.swf

dancersIlluminated.swf

waterfall.swf

xasiLogo.swf

delilah-intro.swf

carousel_sites.swf

xasi.swf

sciFli2.swf

kashikidsLeft.swf

contact.swf

portfolioBackCover.swf

bird.swf

musicinthezoneRight.swf

xasiGreen.swf

water.swf

dialogScifli.swf

flipBook.swf

kashikids.swf

untitled.swf

splash.swf

fractal.swf

arrows_right.swf

samples2.swf

screenFuturistic.swf

turningLeaf.swf

doublemint.swf

musicinthezone.swf

arrows.swf

simple.swf

I am very good at custom solutions so please ask all your “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” questions.

Here are some quotes from some of my favorite customers.
Please feel free and Contact Me if you want to add a quote.