When ExpressionEngine users have issues upgrading from EE 1.x to EE 2.x they frequently manage to find us; Hop Studios has done more than a few of these upgrades now, big and small. Recently, Engine Hosting graciously sent us another EE1.x upgrade client, Rainmaker Lawyer Consulting. 

RainmakerLawyer.com is a resource center developed specifically to help lawyers make a great living and live a great life.  Their mission is to deliver innovative ideas and common sense advice that will help their clients unlock the limitless opportunity hidden within themselves and their law firm.  The process to upgrade from EE1 to EE2 can go smoothly or can be quite difficult.  This upgrade went very well with a minor detour for the transition of LG Better Meta, which is an EE1 only add-on, to the new EE2 version, NSM Better Meta—that required some database wrangling and careful backups.

In addition, the URL structure changes slightly from EE1 to EE2; the trailing slash gets removed from most URLs, so we did some fancy work to deal with that. Another satisfied and modernized client, hooray!

http://www.northernvoice.ca/sites/default/files/resize/northern-voice-moose-296x200.png

I’ll be taking on a new role at this year’s Northern Voice conference—a speaking role! I’ll be talking on Saturday morning about ways to improve commenting on your blog. I’ve got a lot to say about this topic; there are more options for discussion than ever before, and navigating them can be tricky.

Northern Voice is an amazing, long-running conference about blogging, social media and self-expression that for many years Hop Studios was involved with organizing .

This year, it’s happening June 14-15, and for the first time it’s at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre and the Museum of Vancouver. Tickets are still available, but it’s sold out seven years in a row, so don’t wait, get your remarkably affordable ticket now.

We are thrilled to announce that our client Truthdig has won the Webby Award for best political website.  It is a truly amazing achievement for Truthdig, who were competing this year with FactCheck, 92Y, The Nation and Politico.  This is Truthdig’s fifth Webby win overall, and we at Hop are honoured to have been, and to continue to be, a part of Truthdig’s growth and development.  Congratulations you rabble rousers you!!

We are pleased as punch that our client Stanford Social Innovation Review just won min’s Best of the Web award for the best B2B redesign.

SSIR came to us about two years ago with great content but an out-of-date design and a CMS administrative interface that was clearly overdue for an overhaul.  This redesign was particularly enjoyable for us, not just because of the results but because of the folks at Stanford we got to work with.

SSIR was up against stiff competition, and was selected from more than 400 submissions from publications of all sizes. And this is an extremely meaningful award for Hop Studios, given that we focus on media properties, and Min’s is 60-year-old industry news source covering the media and magazine community.

All the best, SSIR!

It is our pleasure to announce that Truthdig has been nominated for two Webby Awards in the categories of political website and political blog!

This continued recognition for Truthdig’s journalism is heartwarming for us. We think this shows that, with the right set of tools, writers can focus on the content and stay focused on producing insightful, provocative journalism.

It would be wonderful if you would help us out by voting for Truthdig as well—we’d love for them to win the People’s Choice awards. Thanks!

All the best, Truthdig!

Update April 30, 2013: Truthdig wins best site in Politics! View Webby Award page