As of November 22nd, FireBox Studios, the Mid-Ohio Valley’s premier web development company, has a new mailing address and phone number. Please revise your address books to reflect the following:

FireBox Studios
313 Scammel Street
Marietta, OH 45750
740.373.4114
info@fireboxstudios.com
www.fireboxstudios.com

Look for more exciting news and updates on a regular basis from FireBox as we continue to expand and improve our services.

For the second year in a row, FireBox has received the “Best Website” award at the 2005 TIGAR Awards. The annual honors, sponsored by ITAAO, were held on July 27th, 2005.

With a total of eight nominees, FireBox accepted its second TIGAR award for development of the Hocking Hills website at www.1800hocking.com.

We would like to thank ITAAO and all the judges for this honor, as well as thank Hocking Hills for their support over the past year.

FireBox is proud to announce the latest release of our custom content management software, paraSite 2.2. Since we released version 2.1, there have been 15 entries in the software’s change log. Many of these are minor tweaks that the client never sees, but everything we do to the software ultimately makes it a more stable, faster, more functional tool for our clients.

Note: If you are a client running paraSite 2.1 or earlier, let us know when you would like us to upgrade you to 2.2 at no charge.

Notable revisions and enhancements in the past few months include:

• All content types can belong in multiple categories and sub-categories
• ….plus many behind-the-scenes code revisions and performance enhancements, too many to list

What’s next for ParaSite 2.3?
ParaSite 2.3 is on track to be a fairly significant upgrade. Our CMS development is driven by our clients’ needs, both for functionality and ease of use. Planned upgrades for paraSite 2.3 include:

• All-new user permission system. Instead of simply specifying 3 user levels (Content Editor, Site Manager, and Developer), we will be able to set specific permissions on a per-group and per-user level for all content types. For example, you could assign one user to be able to add and edit news articles, and nothing else. Or set up another user to be able to only add events which would require approval from the Site Manager.
• Content Syndication. All content types (ie, news, events, products, members, etc) will have the ability to be “syndicated“, enabling other sites to share your content and allow visitors to get your content in multiple ways. For instance, a user could add your “feed” to their news reader (or news aggregator) and instantly download new articles, blogs, events, etc as soon as you post them.
• Brand new skin. We’ll also be redesigning paraSite’s admin “skin”, or graphical template to allow for easier reading, better navigation and faster loading.
• Custom URL’s for all. We’ve offered the ability to specify custom URL’s for any page within your site, but soon you’ll be able to specify custom web addresses for ANY page or content type. In other words, instead of an article address that looks like this: www.yourdomain.com/news/45/405, you can make it look like this: www.yourdomain.com/myarticle. This allows more relevance in search engine listings, and is easier to read and remember.

We’ve just created a new toll-free number for the convenience of our clients. If you’re outside the Mid-Ohio Valley and would like to contact us without charge, just dial 1-888-882-2296.

FireBox is proud to announce the recent launch of mariettaohio.org, the official site of the Marietta/Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Their new site features their comprehensive (and quite full) calendar of all local events in the Mid-Ohio Valley, as well as their entire partner membership, separated by categories.

Other features and enhancements include discount coupons, travel packages, maps, itineraries and even online lodging availability and booking! Click here to check them out!