Austin Web Design & Internet Marketing Blog

There are a multitude of benefits in serving your website over the secure HTTPS protocol, instead of over the unsecure HTTP protocol.

Ethereum has been making headlines in the investment community due to it's explosive growth, and potentially revolutionary technology of enabling smart contracts. In the world of cyptocurrencies, Ethereum is currently second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization at over $25 billion.

Pallasart was chosen to create and program a website for Translations and Dialogues: The Reception of Russian Art Abroad a SHERA Conference in Venice, October 25-27, 2017.  The site has been completed and is live.

Since I wrote my last article on Pocahontas I have received dozens of emails and telephone calls from people asking this question.  Here's my answer.

Hopfields is a close as you can get to a true Austin experience. Discover why the locals have made it their second home

We recently redesigned and launched a new website for Metropolitan Custom Homes - an award winning custom home builder in Austin, Texas.

We recently redesigned and launched a new website for The Husbands Company - a real estate services company in Austin, Texas.

There is no doubt that mobile use of the internet is growing exponentially. Larger screen sizes have made it easier to enjoy web content directly from your phone or tablet. So when developing for a mobile device, which is better a web app or a native mobile app?

The Texas Municipal League needed a mobile friendly web application that would allow members to easily search their directory of city officials from their mobile devices as well as their computers.

Although we are primarily known as an Austin web design company, Pallasart has being selling decorative art and furnishings for many years.  This business started online in 1997 and expanded to a retail store in the decorative center in Dallas...

We lost that spirit of allowing others to make their own choices with the  defeat of Proposition 1 on May 7th, 2016.  A tiny fraction of registered voters ultimately decided the outcome of PROP 1, and effectively imposed their will on everyone else.

From spring until October, the Congress Avenue bridge in downtown Austin is home to about 750,000 Mexican free-tailed bats,  doubling to 1,500,000 once the pregnant females give birth.

I was amazed when I took my raw DNA test data from Ancestry.com and ran it through GEDMatch. My Eurogenes K36 and other tests showed amazing information Ancestry.com won't give you

Learn about the latest in color trends  to keep your home, wardrobe, and website current and fresh

Local geologist Dr. Mustafa Saribudak is a modern-day Indiana Jones. He can be found spelunking through Austin’s many caves, and is an expert on all things found under the ground.

The new Google algorithm that will affect the way websites show in mobile search results

Austin - dynamic, unique, business-friendly and a creative place - it's our home.

Upgrade your site and prepare now to win in the next round of Houzz awards

EGA is the author of important Texas environmental reports for Barton Springs and the Edwards Aquifer

In 2014 Olson-Defendorf won the award for best website design from the Texas Home Builder Association and now it's the 2015 Best of Houzz award for Design.

Ancestry.com DNA test verifies Bob Atchison's descent from a Cherokee chief and his wife, who was captured in a 1797 raid on Morgan's Station, Kentucky.

Home Builders can grow their business with a new website design that incorporates new features that your potential customers demand. Read our article for some tips and advice.

This is a third generation website design for one of Pallasart's best customers. Gery Wilde builds superb homes and the new design showcases them in a fresh new way.

Pallasart launches a new website for Reece Albert Trucking.

More and more people are wanting to learn more about their family roots and origins. Researching Jewish Heritage and Jewish Genealogy is different than for most people.

Texas hill country's Hummingbird Farms has launched their new Pallasart designed website.

Meet Nick Long Jr. the forgotten dancing star of Broadway Melody of 1936. 

Here are some helpful tips to determine the best way to calculate shipping on your website.

The Texas Association of Builders (TAB) announced and presented the 2014 Star Awards Winners. The highly-coveted Star Awards are given annually to recognize excellence in all areas of the home building industry. Olsen-Defendorf Custom Homes won best website for 2014.  Pallasart designed and programmed the site.

Pinterest has introduced an extremely valuable tool called "Rich Pins" for businesses looking to drive traffic and sales to their websites. Rich Pins allows businesses to add extra valuable information and content to photos pinned from their website. This information is automatically added when items are pinned (or re-pinned) from the original website that has implemented rich pin functionality.

The core concept behind "responsive web design" is to implement a single website that is optimized for easy viewing and use regardless of the device and its display size.

Don't give up on finding your Irish Roots - here's how we helped a friend build her tree.

It's SXSW time in Austin, TX again, and there are tons of unofficial free parties and events going on around town. Most of the parties have live music, and many have free drinks and food too.

Profile of my 32nd great Grandfather, Viking Lord of Orkney, who was assassinated by Thorkel Forsterer in 1046.

New Sugar Babies Gifts website is launched in Austin, TX offering unique, fun, and fanciful baby gifts.

Pallasart implemented a fresh, clean redesigned look for the Texas Municipal League. We implemented the new website using "responsive design" in order to make the website function well and look nice on mobile devices like smart phones and tablets. The site's layout adapts as the browser view port size changes.

Twitter recently relaunched their site Twitter for Business that aims to help businesses learn how to harness Twitter in their marketing efforts.

With New Year's Eve right around the corner, it is that time of year that many people start making their New Year's resolutions for the upcoming year. Getting in shape, exercising more, and eating better are often at the top of many resolution lists.

Instagram has announced that they are reverting to their old "Terms of Service" following the uproar over revised language that indicated they might sell their users photos or provide them to advertisers without compensation.

Often we get potential customers asking us about developing mobile websites and apps. Sometimes people confuse the two -- since they are both accessed from mobile devices. This article discuses how they are different.

QR codes (abbreviation for Quick Response codes) are two dimensional matrix barcodes that have become a very popular method for allowing smartphone users to quickly scan a QR code on printed materials and automatically be directed to a website without having to type in a long URL.

These days, people are often accessing the internet through mobile devices like smartphones and tablets - the number of mobile  users is only increasing. When designing a website, one should always remember to consider these users and their needs -- with the ultimate question being "Will my website work on a cell phone or tablet?

The web is now the number one environment for business marketing and you need the top-rated Austin web developer and design company to get the success you want.  Learn more about the benefits of working with Pallasart...

I first met Nick when we worked together on the Jewels of the Romanovs Exhibition that toured around the USA a few years ago.  Pallasart did the website for the exhibition and I gave a lecture at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts on the Alexander Palace and daily life in a Russian palace.  In this blog posting Nick gives us an introduction to one of the favorite painters of the last Russian Empress, Alexandra and her sister, Elizabeth....

Great design delivers sheer aesthetic pleasure. It sparks the imagination and inspires that “gotta have it” feeling. Great design tells a great story, the story of your brand and who you are. Every design element helps your story to unfold; every functional aspect advances the plot. Learn about our philosophy about great design and how we create award-winning designs for our clients..

Timothy Corrigan is renowned for his ability to create lush, comfortable and incredibily beautiful interiors.  Tim is regularly featured in leading publications on design and living around the world.  This article offers guidleines anyone can use to make your home more beautiful and liveable at the same time.  Pallasart, top rated web designers in Austin Texas have been working with Timothy for many years...

Everybody seems to be talking about Pinterest.  Companies here in Austin and across the world are exploring ways to integrate it into leading edge web design.  In the last week I have had a number of people ask us for ideas on how to integrate Pinterest and how it works...

Austin local PBS affiliate KLRU visited the home of Pallasart Web Design President and Founder Bob Atchison to film his garden for their program Central Texas Gardener....

On Sunday April 15, Pallasart and its President Bob Atchison hosted their annual Russian Orthodox Easter Open House. There was an amazing Austin connection relating to the 100th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Titanic.,.

Fleur-de-Stone commissions Pallasart to add exciting Instagram functionality to their popular website "order your own" process with a new feature called Coastergrams.  With Coastergrams customers will be able to upload images directly from Instagram onto a set of stone coasters.  Pallasart recently completed a complete redesign of the Fleur-de-Stone website. Pallasart is a web design company based in Austin, Texas.

From time to time Pallasart publishes a short summary about Austin and its attractions.  As a web design firm with its offices here we are rightly proud of our hometown and like sharing some of the things that makes Austin unique and a fun place to work and live...

Here's a real example of a stunning web design transformation Pallasart just completed for Amanzi Party Rentals.  It's amazing - see a new bright and fresh web design for an Austin company. SEO was very important to this customer....

Everybody wants to maximize their business presence on Facebook.  This posting explains the image sizes you will need to use, image quality issues and the end results. Pallasart is an Austin, Texas based web design company ...

The new iPad resolution of 2,048-by-1,536 pixels allows more content to be viewable onscreen at one time, but at that resolution the text would likely be too small to read without zooming in to enlarge. Learn about the iPad Retina Display and related issues. If you are looking for a web designer in Austin Texas contact Pallasart...

Records numbers of shoppers are turning to the internet to make their holiday purchases. Black Friday and Cyber Monday were extremely popular days for shoppers to make online purchases this year. Tech savvy shoppers are always looking for a bargain, and most use the internet to compare prices and find deals. This holds true for both online and in-store purchases. Users will often view the in-store advertisements online ahead of time, before they venture out to the stores.

An old friend of mine, Bob Massie, has a new book out I think you'd be interested in reading.  It's a biography of Catherine II - called 'the Great' in the West.  She was a minor German princess in the small state of Anahlt-Zerbst - Sophie was her original name - who came to Russia to marry the heir to throne at the age of 14.  Catherine went through many adventures to become the most richest and most powerful woman in the world....

Having an iPhone myself, I'll guess we'll never know how a Flash player would have performed on Apple's hardware. It is likely true that highly interactive Flash elements would have been processor intensive and a battery drain. Given the wide variety of hardware specs on mobile devices, it would have been difficult to determine how your Flash application/element would have performed across those devices....

Courtney Mills has just published an important new article on the recent Google algorithm update and what it means to webmasters and companies with sites on the internet.  A link to the article can be found here.

The advantages of Clean URLs and URL rewriting from an SEO perspective are topics we are incorporating as a standard part in the process of planning, designing and programming customer websites.  Pallasart has created our own custom PHP rewrite engine for the web and are implementing in all of the sites we create with great success.  The most significant advantages are; one, static URL’s rank better in Search Engines; two, Search Engines crawl the content of the static URLs much faster as compared to the dynamic URL and three, static URLs look much prettier and friendlier to the end-user....

TypeKit is a Web-based typography service and it making the web more beautiful, readable, and fast. It offers subscriptions to those who want to use sophisticated fonts in their websites with new abilities in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). We have used TypeKit in a large number of websites with great success.  TypeKit is a great way to add a fresh new look to a sie at little or no expense.  It is easy to set up and easy to manage...

Learn about integrating with Facebook by using their API to improve your users experience and help foster social media site interaction.

A few days ago I received an email from a group I subscribe to called  "Web Pro News".  They provide great information on what's happening in the SEO world and what impact various changes have for web design companies and website mangers who are concerned about search engine placement (isn't this everyone?)....

Well, it has been said — "put a cute dog on a website and you can sell anything".  Today is July 4th and what better way to celebrate the holiday than to talk about dogs. Americans well we love our dogs, they are part of our families.  There are around 80 million of them sharing our lives here in the USA and that's a lot of dog food (who can guess the number of fleas!)....

Today I read some encouraging news for home builders in Austin.  There are signs the market in Austin is about to take off. Shonda Novak of the Austin American Statesman reports new home starts in Q2 of 2011 totaling 1,794.  This means builders are close to a turning point.

Here are page views from the "Schaffer Collection of Authentic Imperial Russian Art Treasures".  This is a historic catalog of Romanov items - mostly from the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, which was the private residence of the last Tsar, Nicholas II and his family....

There was an article in the New York Times Antiques section about a new exhibition opening at the Virginia Museum of Art.  The exhibition has been organized by Geza von Habsburg, one of the recognized experts in Faberge...

The art market on the web is exploding.  Collectors are out there spending thousands online for the works of people like yourself —  paintings, graphics, sculpture, fine crafts — anything you can create.  Now this assumes you have something people want to buy and the price is right...

The Austin American Statesman is reporting a possible deal between the State of Texas and Amazon over online sales tax.  Barry Harrell reports that Texas is negotiating - and may be close to a deal - to create 5,000 jobs and invest $300 million in the state.

Here I have created three images showing the same items and text on a white gray and black background.  I had to change the text colors a bit because white text and black text would not show up on the same colored backgrounds...

Here are some more pictures of the new life-sized bronze of Artemis Diana and the Hounds we posted a few days ago in the blog...

There was a very interesting article in the New York Times today on a new start up e-commerce website targeting the men's luxury market, J. Hilburn....

The U.S. Grand Prix is going to be hosted in Austin on June 17, 2012. According to the official website of Formula 1...

A year ago we commissioned a special Savonnerie carpet to be made by one of our suppliers.  There are two types of classic rugs, the Aubusson, which is a flat weave and the Savonnerie which has a sheared pile...

In 2001 Pallasart ordered a number of replicas of furniture from Russian Imperial Palaces to be made by wood carvers and gilders that worked in the palace museums of Tsarskoe Selo...

This past Monday Steve Jobs unveiled iCloud, and Apple has now joined Amazon and Google in this new phenomenon.  iCloud - like its counterparts are rival companies, will store documents, photos and other content on the internet and sync it across multiple Apple devices at no cost...

HostGator has announced they will be increasing staff from 280 to 500 within 12 months...

As follow-up to my blog on stock photography I'd like to share a list of favorite photographers on Dreamstime...

Google has posted an important announcement online today....

Today we learned that Governor Perry vetoed taxes on sales by online retailers...

Recently we were doing a redesign and reprogramming in PHP of a popular wine site.  They have been a client of ours for 10 years.  I had a chance to look at many of the famous wine sites again and I have a few comments for this blog...

We have more than 20,000 images in our stock photography database here at Pallasart.  They come from a number of stock sites on the web...

Customers often ask me what they can do to make their site a success.  Pallasart has built many luxury and fashion websites for customers in Austin, all over the USA and abroad...

Recently, I discovered Amazon Music, which seems to sell DRM-free high quality MP3 albums at price points that are a little lower than those sold on Apple's iTunes Music Store - I bought an Amazon album for $6.99, which is $3 lower than the $9.99 charged for the same album on iTunes...

"Browser text" -- or text that is rendered by the browser has always proved challenging for web designers....

One of the hottest areas in online e-commerce these days are websites that allow like minded individuals to buy and sell goods to others with their same interests...