After a great development period with resident DJ Ben Oprstu, I’m proud to release version 2.0 of DanceConnectLA.com. The theme of the site is designed completely from scratch in-house, and utilizes WordPress as a reliable, scalable CMS.

DanceConnectLA is a portal for local DJ’s and music enthusiasts in the Hollywood, CA area.

Check it out, I just set up a new links page.

If you’re interested in linking to one another, I’d be glad to add you! Just shoot me an email on my contact page.

We’re working closely with Bogies Bar in Westlake Village as of late. It’s been a blast so far, both working in the website world, as well as handling photography on busy nights. Here’s a little teaser of the great things to come!

Happy holidays! Here’s a free how-to about creating a simple Concrete5 template.

I’m beginning a new website for Bogies Bar (map). The client desired a simple and effective way to manage and update content on their site without having to pay an IT support person each time. As a result, I’ve opted to use a wonderful new, open-source content management system, called Concrete5. The Concrete team’s tagline for the product is “A CMS made for Marketing, but strong enough for Geeks!” Essentially this means a marketing team that has minimal experience with web design and scripting languages can still easily and effectively manage a C5 website. At the same time, C5 is extremely extensible, and web-designer geeks like us can write add-ons and themes, and even sell them in the C5 Marketplace!

I’ll provide some more detailed how-to’s after the first of the year, but this CMS is shaping up to be extremely helpful to many businesses looking to make more extensive use of their internet presence. I’ve implemented websites in many similar softwares, such as Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, and ExpressionEngine. I can confidently say that C5 is by far the most client-friendly, elegant solution I have seen to date.

In order to get a Concrete5 based site up and running, you will need a web-server with PHP5 support. The following is a brief explanation of how to get a C5 site running, and how to implement your own theme. (more…)

Ben Radler Designs is proud to be a host for Shem Dahud’s new 2009 EP release. Shem is a Music Producer and Session Drummer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. After sitting on hundreds of songs for the past few years, Shem has selected five (5) to be placed on his first EP. Fans of all instrumental music, but namely hip-hop and trip-hop, will enjoy Shem’s first release.