Blog: February 2008

Hop Studios Prepares for SXSW

February 26, 2008

imageWithin days everyone at Hop Studios (that’s right, all three of us!) are heading for Austin, Texas, for the annual SXSW Interactive Festival. Last year we had a great time, met tons of people, had some BBQ and made some excellent connections with companies. We’re hoping for more of the same this year.

SXSWi is five days of panels and parties, and the conference for savvy Web 2.0 geeks across North America. We’re planning on reconnecting with EllisLab, Blogads, Moxie Design Studios, E.Webscapes, The Blog Studio, and lots of other folks. I’m even doing a book reading on Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m.

SXSW Interactive Festival
March 7-11, 2008
Austin, Texas
Going to be at SXSW and want to meet up? Let us know!

And be sure to attend the “Blame Canada: Seven ways we’re ahead of the game” panel on Monday, March 10 at 10:00 a.m. in Room C of the convention centre. Canadian technologists Kris Krug (Raincity Studios), Jennifer Ouano (Elastic Entertainment), Steve Bocska (Cambrian House), Ron Thiel (Xpan Interactive) and Keith Clarkson (Xenophile Media) will be pontificating.

Posted by Susannah Gardner at 5:24 PM | Comments (1)

Hop Studios Has a Brand New Site, and a New Duck, Too

February 22, 2008

Hop Studios LogoLast month, Hop Studios launched a brand new identity, logo, and Web site design.

I didn’t mention it on this blog at the time—you’d call that a soft launch, I suppose.  I guess I didn’t want us to fly to close to the sun, Icarus-like, with our new wax brand wings.  Also, we were so darn busy LAUNCHING the thing, that TALKING about it seemed almost superfluous.  What is it the say about the shoemaker’s children having no shoes?  Well, I guess this buzz marketing web site design company didn’t spend enough time marketing their latest Web site…

And to be sure, we haven’t changed much.  Our slogan, “Good. Clean. Fun.” still describes what we are, what we do, and how we do it. We’re still the company with the duck.  What has changed, though, is how we present ourselves, and in a way that’s surprising to me, how we feel about ourselves.  I can see it in the way people react to us, and us to them, and it’s wonderful.  And for this change, I have to thank one person: Matt Gardner, the designer we hired officially last year, whose personal project it has been to get our brand identity in line with what we are now, and what we are capable of.

Matt has done some great designs for our clients, but it’s his work on Hop Studios itself that might have the most lasting effect, and I think you’ll appreciate his work if you come to our site and take a peek.  From little things like the phone icons in the footer, to big things like the site search and the clients page, our site now reflects what we believe: that simplicity on the Web is hard work, and pays off.

And, if you’re at the Northern Voice 2008 conference in Vancouver tomorrow, check out our new business cards and pick up one of our free buttons; we think you’ll look dapper.

Posted by Travis Smith at 12:27 AM | Comments (0)

We’re Hiring: Web Developer

February 18, 2008

Job Description: Web developer

Hop Studios is looking to hire a versatile Web developer who has experience in journalism, building communities and content management systems.

Required skills and experience:

  • ExpressionEngine templating
  • PHP
  • CSS
  • Javascript
  • Basic SQL

Nice-to-have skills:

  • Advanced SQL
  • ExpressionEngine extensions / modules / plugins
  • Other blogging tools: MT and WP
  • Perl
  • DNS
  • shell scriptig
  • AJAX

Additional details:

This is a full-time, permanent position. Our first preference would be to hire someone who lives in Vancouver, Canada, but remote employees are a viable option.  Pay will vary with experience—we’re not locked to a pre-set salary figure.

You’ll like working for Hop Studios if:

  • you like working on several different projects in a day,
  • you enjoy working with the latest Web technologies, things like Google Maps, social networking, Flickr integration, Jquery and YUI
  • you’re a life-long learner
  • you noticed the spelling mistake in this job posting
  • you’re a night owl (we’re 70% night owls currently)
  • you’re not particularly interested in building ecommerce sites
  • you like a workplace without a lot of drama

Why work for Hop Studios?

We’re a small company that offers a premium design and development experience to our clients and our employees.  We specialize in sites with large amounts of content, and sites that create a community.  We hire really smart, motivated people and let them do what they do best.

How do I work for Hop Studios?

Send your cover letter to
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

We treat everyone equally well.

Posted by Travis Smith at 1:14 PM | Comments (5)

Why Backups Are Important Before Upgrades

February 9, 2008

Last night, we attempted to upgrade the OpenAds installation of one of our clients. (OpenAds is a free ad-serving tool.)

We’d done this upgrade before for other Web sites, and for this client, too.  This time, we were going from OpenAds 2.4.0 to 2.4.3—to close some security holes and maybe get a little bug or two fixed.

Doing it late at night means less disruption to the site’s visitors, and no disruption to the site’s editors.  It also means you’re tired and you want to go to bed sooner rather than later, but hey, that’s part of the job.

Before you do an upgrade, it’s always a good idea to make a backup.  In this case, a backup of the database as well as a back up all the program’s files were both necessary.

I uploaded all the new OpenAds files, which ended up taking about an hour because I was kind of dense and because OpenAds is based on a lot more files than I initially thought. (Tangent details: OpenAds ships in a ZIP archive, and our Web host’s control panel can only unpack GZIPed archives.  I could have unzipped and gzipped it, and saved myself a bunch of time.  Ah well.)

I ran the upgrade script, which took about 5 minutes, and when I went to see how the upgrade went, it turns out that all the zones for the ads were gone. Doh!  This is a bad thing—it means that while the upgrade completed, it failed in some important way along the way, which is truly hard to untangle. When this happens, the only thing you can really do is downgrade back to the way it was before you upgraded.  Which means you need an exact backup of everything.

Luckily, I had in fact made a full database and file backup before I started. (Did you like that dramatic tension?) Unhappily, the database backup was a backup of ALL data in the database (articles, mailing lists, forums, and ads). Because of this huge amount of data, restoring the database took more than 2 hours, and in fact may not have run correctly.  I could tell this, because after the restore, EVERY database-related service was down.  Oh no.

Some more troubleshooting was necessary, and by the time the clients site was up and running, it was 7:30 a.m., and I’m still not sure that everything is perfect.

The moral of the story: Even when you do everything right, things can go wrong.  Lessons can be learned from every failure.  In this case, I learned that a) it’s worth it to think of efficient ways to upload, and b) it’s worth it to make backups of just specific parts of the database, in case a restore is needed.  And the next time someone looks at me funny when I tell them to backup before doing a routine update, I’ll point them here.

Posted by Travis Smith at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)

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