rhubarb media » Rhubarb Media

Built to spec; with plans to scale

Tyler — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:00:31 +0000

Since coming on board with Rhubarb Media almost 3 years ago, I’ve worked with Chad and our team to produce great web sites for clients to market their services or even sell their products online. As newer web technologies, tools and frameworks have matured, many have become more comfortable with putting their money (and our time) into getting equipped with powerful and engaging web-based tools. Some like to use buzz words like “web 2.0″ or “cloud computing”, but it mostly boils down to features like web forms, embedding or integration of 3rd-party web services (such as weather from Environment Canada, SalesForce Web2Lead, Facebook & Twitter widgets, Snapengage, Disqus, etc…), database-driven content management systems and custom “widgets” or calculators to help their site visitors to better understand their business and open communion channels.

Sites with these types of rich features have a number of dependencies and layers of underlying systems to make them work. Like any system with dependancies (your car… the government…), they require maintenance, checks, balances and strategy to scale and accommodate new ideas and growth.

Growing pains

As usage of these systems increase, there are various areas in which you can “tune things up” to scale. Hardware and memory can be beefed up, caching can be applied at many many levels and code can be tweaked or even demolished to make way for new methods to increase efficiency. Further up the line new features could be requested or recommended to meet new needs. When it comes to the lower-levels of these systems, we like to recommend our own hosting services to better control the end-to-end experience and better serve our clients “when things go wrong”.

Yes, things can and do go wrong… and we own up when it’s on us. Increases in traffic and heavier usage of the various dynamic tools can contribute to systems hiccups and glitches. We see this all of the time on the web with services being unavailable due to many other moving parts (note Twitter’s famous Fail Whale; Chad also recently hit the wall on one of the e-blast services we rely on). Nothing is perfect and in the case of websites (with so many moving parts in both software and hardware) no web site can provide a guarantee for zero glitches and 100% uptime. Well, that sucks! But what we can (and do) strive for is excellence through learning from experience and in how we respond to issues when they come up.

We all need to take responsibility when times are tough. I know that Rhubarb assumes responsibility of managing the server our clients pay for in hosting and in responding to them with solutions to resolve an issue. In serving our clients we take the time to diagnose and identify quick-hits that we can simply take care of or apply a patch and move on, while other times it requires research, code… time. Ultimately, when an problem has been identified we want to build strategies and provide solutions to improve the situation long-term (patching is not a strategy, but it can “get the job done”).

“There is no free lunch, someone has to pay.”

Sometimes a developer’s response is “add more resources”; which is an action we are currently undertaking with server upgrades. While another response may be “hey, a new component could be put in place to automate ‘this thing’ since, in this case, we can clearly see a pattern.” Solutions like this take time (and budget). I’ve noticed that often times Rhubarb will go above the call of duty and absorb the cost to make things excellent.

When the time comes for us to stand back, identify or diagnose the problem and make recommendations to respond and improve, that’s where the technical (or even creative) bits end and good business relationships kick in. We love our clients and are here to serve them well!

As we work to scale our network infrastructure (strategy and details coming soon in another blog post), we invite our clients to follow @rhubarbmedia on Twitter.

– Tyler

Rhubarb Media and the Loss of the Notorious Mr Plewis

admin — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:16:34 +0000

I first met mark at a video shoot for the movie documentary “The End of Suburbia” talking about the peak oil issue in 2005. From there we connected through Door Knob Ads where we hired him to do some design work. After I left DKA and started Rhubarb Media we hired Mark as a freelancer to help build our website (yep, the flash site still there). Once we launched our site we got more requests for web and thus had to hire Mark! I need to count, but I think we’re pushing 50 sites developed in the 5 years Rhubarb has done web – and Mark has touched most of them. Aside from his code ninja skills, his sense of humour and laid backness will be dearly missed. As I stated in my Facebook post, we’ve lost a developer, but not a friend. Keep in touch Mark. Our prayers are with you as you continue on your journey! And if you ever change your mind and tell yourself “why did I ever leave Barrie and Rhubarb…” there’s a bouncy ball chair here waiting for you. The Creative Space would like to offer you a life-time membership. Anytime you’re in town and need a place to work – “your desk awaits.”

Rhubarb Media Rebrands IT XChange

admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 01:12:31 +0000

Rhubarb Media moves to 5 Points

admin — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:01:19 +0000

Over the last week The Creative Space has moved from 89 Dunlop Street E to 12 Dunlop Street E and as we are a tenant we moved as well. Make sure to drop by to see our new digs.

Rhubarb Media designs a cutting edge website for ID Hair Studio

admin — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:43:00 +0000

Id Hair Studio
ID Hair Studio is a hair salon downtown Barrie. After a major overhaul of their salon and brand, they came to us to design a new site to reflect their new brand.

Rhubarb Media rebrands & develops new website for IT Xchange

admin — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:41:20 +0000

www.itxchange.com
IT Xchange sells older model IBM and Lenovo computer systems. They came to Rhubarb Media for a complete rebrand of their company as well as a website design and development.

The Long Awaited Hoodies

admin — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:02:50 +0000

A while back, we ran a hoodie design competition. Here are some pics of our design winner, Collin Gibson, sporting his new hoodie.

Rhubarb Media helps Redbyrd 3D Studio take flight

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:05:35 +0000

Robin Soloy became a tenant of the Creative Space in August. She approached us soon after to help brand her business, Redbyrd 3D Studio. She is a 3D animation artist specializing in medical science. Jess took lead on this design and had a lot of fun with it. Check out the site at www.redbyrd.ca.

Rhubarb Media helps negotiate a fresh a approach to The Mediation Centre

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:02:36 +0000

The Mediation Centre has been in Barrie for over 15 years servicing Simcoe-Muskoka. They came to us for a rebrand and a new website. The Rhubarb Team all worked together to come up with a more modern brand and website that reaches out to both sides of the Mediation Centre’s business. Check it out at www.themediationcentre.com.

Rhubarb Media helps KCP take center stage with a new brand and website

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:59:11 +0000

Kempenfelt Community Players has been a part of Barrie for over 30 years. Rhubarb Media Inc. and the Ballantyne Family have a close relationship with KCP designing their marketing material, volunteering and being a part of the cast in many productions. Chad took lead on the rebrand of their logo and worked with Jess for the web design. View their upcoming shows at www.kempenfeltplayers.com.