10 Questions Before Beginning Web Development

What every prospective online homeowner should consider before breaking ground

When we’re approached about beginning a new Web presence, ecommerce system, or mobile or web application (referred to simply as “site” below), ERA404 likes to pose 10 questions to our clients. This not only stirs up ideas to begin the process, it also allows all parties to fully explore what the process of Web development entails.Read More

Tags | 10 questions, adjectives, audience, breaking ground, budget, business, citarella, competition, era404, goals, marketing, new web, questionnaire, strategy, success, web costs

ERA404 Turns 20!

Happy 4/04!

This year, ERA404 celebrates 20 years! We started by moonlighting as freelancers in New York City on April 21, 2001, and have grown over the last 20 years to provide print, identity, motion, and environmental design, digital design and development, and strategy services to over 480 clients. With a  fulltime staff of two and 50 contractual designers, developers, and artisans, ERA404 has helped hundreds of companies and individuals grow their brands, businesses, and visions. We owe all our success over the past two decades to the clients that entrusted us with their projects, the family and friends that supported us throughout the years, and our creative network, without whom ERA404 wouldn’t exist.

It’s been a fun, challenging, and exciting ride over the past 20 years and we’re looking forward to the next 20, continuing to help make the world a more understandable, functional, and beautiful place.

Tags | 20 years, 4/04, 404, anniversary, design, design studio, development, ERA 404, era404, error 404, new york city, strategy

ERA404 Hosting Packages

Dear Hosting Customer,

ERA404 began offering hosting solutions in 2003 to alleviate the technical burden of managing web and email hosting for our design and development clients. Over the last fifteen years, the cost of supporting this offering has slowly and steadily increased. In the past, we were hesitant to pass this on to our hosting customers. Unfortunately, in order for us to continue to provide this value-added service, increasing the product costs has become unavoidable.Read More

Tags | advanced, annual cost, bandwidth, basic, databases, diskspace, domain, email, enterprise, ERA 404, era404, ftp, host, hosting, packages, parked, professional, registration, ssl certificate, standard, subdomains, web host, web hosting

CropRefine WordPress Plugin

When an article is published in WordPress, it could likely appear across several of the internal templates, besides just the single post page. For example, you may see “Recent Articles” on the home page sidebar or footer, “Related Articles” at the bottom of other posts, and “Search Results” may show excerpts with thumbnails to help readers to quickly find relevant results. These other applications of featured images not only direct readers to the freshest content, but they also notify search indexers of changes to a WordPress sitemap. This boosts the credibility of the site and its author by showing that the site is maintained and current, and offering cross-links to promote relevance.Read More

Tags | blog, croprefine, distort, era404, featured image, fix, limitation, plugin, recrop, refine, shortcoming, thumbnail, upload, wordpress

www.era404.com Site Relaunch

NEW YORK CITY—ERA404 Creative Group, Inc., the New York design, development and strategy studio, is pleased to announce the launch of its newly revamped website, portfolio and client portal.

The new www.era404.com showcases selected work from the past decade of business and is part of a strategy to reposition themselves as leaders in multi-disciplinary creative and forward-thinking development. The site features an online portfolio, creative reel and dozens of other HD videos that make use of HTML5 and browser-native players, eluding the requirement of plugins for Adobe^® Flash and Apple^® Quicktime videos. Each page of the site is saturated with social media options (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google Plus) and the site has been re-engineered to be optimized for search engines, RSS feeds, Facebook OpenGraph, mobile (and tablet) devices and responsiveness to multiple browsers/platforms/resolutions.Read More

Tags | agency, creative direction, design, development, don citarella, era404, facebook, flash, google plus, mike citarella, mobile, new york, nyc, opengraph, pinterest, relaunch, responsive, rss feeds, site, strategy, studio, tablet, technical direction, twitter, www.era404.com

ERA404 Creative Group Rebranding

Commemorating Their 10-Year Anniversary, ERA404 Gets a New Identity

ERA404 Creative Group, a long-standing creative studio based in New York City, is unveiling the company’s new corporate identity this quarter. ERA404 (formerly era//404) has made the choice to update their 10-year-old mark, its supplemental iconography and palette, even the company name.Read More

Tags | brand, branding, creative, creative director, design, don citarella, era404, firm, group, new york, new york city, nyc mike citarella, rebrand, rebranding, studio