Slice of Lime was awarded 15th Fastest Growing Company in Boulder County at the Mercury 100 Awards last week. We are extremely proud of this recognition, especially because this is the 4th consecutive year that we’ve been on the Mercury 100 list.

We are extremely grateful for the amazing clients we’ve had the opportunity to work with. Thank you for using Slice of Lime as your online strategy, design, and development partner!

Thanks also to the talented Slice of Lime crew for your dedication and great work!

Slice of Lime hosted the 3rd annual TechStars Shuffleboard Smackdown last week. The TechStars teams paired up to compete in this highly rigorous sporting event. We’re pretty sure that we’re the only ones that have used Boulder’s shuffleboard courts in about 30 years.

Thanks to all the TechStars for coming out. Your skills were impressive (including devouring 7 large pizza pies in under 5 minutes).

Created in cooperation with web strategy, design, and development firm, Slice of Lime (Boulder, CO), BigGreenRabbit.com captured the two Webby ‘Official Honoree’ Awards, standing along side media giants Playhouse Disney and the new Sesame Street website and Thomas and Friends.

“Making sure our website was just as engaging and entertaining as our public television show was critical in helping us work towards our vision of improving the health and well-being of children and the planet through entertainment.” said Shane DeRolf, CEO and Chief Creative Officer.

“The Big Green Rabbit website was a pleasure for us to work on. Slice of Lime leveraged our combined skills around cutting edge programming, strategy-based design, and a focus on user testing and reporting to create a project we’re all extremely proud of,” commented Kevin Menzie, CEO of Slice of Lime.

Of the nearly 10,000 entries submitted to the 13th Annual Webby Awards, fewer than 15% were distinguished as an Official Honoree.

BIG GREEN RABBIT takes kids on various adventures designed to help them make better, healthier choices about themselves and their environment. Charlie and Isabelle explore the world through imagination. With a “one-two-three-HOP” they may find themselves in animated worlds including an organic dairy farm with a talking cow, a prehistoric talent show, a tea party in the tropical rainforest and much more. A magic door in Isabelle’s room is a passageway to the real world of nature including a magic garden, an ice skating rink, a typical backyard and more. BIG GREEN RABBIT is available for classroom use and curriculum materials and activities to extend learning beyond the screen accompany each episode.

To learn more about BIG GREEN RABBIT episodes, songs and activities, visit BigGreenRabbit.com or BigGreenParents.com.

About BIG GREEN RABBIT and Big Green Company
BIG GREEN RABBIT is a production of Big Green Company, Inc., in Boulder, Colo. It is presented by Rocky Mountain PBS and distributed by APT. Big Green Company is dedicated to inspiring healthy lifestyles. Big Green Company creates products and programs designed to improve the health and well-being of children and the planet through entertainment.

About Slice of Lime
Slice of Lime is an online strategy, design, and development company located in Boulder, Colorado and has been awarded Fastest Growing Company in Boulder for three consecutive years. Slice of Lime focuses on strategy first and practices results-oriented design for a wide range of clients. To learn more about Slice of Lime visit www.sliceoflime.com.

About Rocky Mountain PBS
Each week, Rocky Mountain PBS invites the 1.6 million people we reach throughout Colorado to experience the world of award-winning local, national and international programming; hear diverse viewpoints; take front row center seats to world-class drama and performances; and enjoy lifelong learning services for children and adults.

Rocky Mountain PBS is celebrating its 53rd anniversary on the air this year. The network began in Denver in 1956 as Colorado’s first public television station. It is now Colorado’s only statewide television network, with stations in Denver (KRMA-TV/DT), Pueblo/Colorado Springs (KTSC-TV/DT), Steamboat Springs (KRMZ-DT), Grand Junction (KRMJ-DT) and Durango (KRMU-DT). To learn more, visit rmpbs.org.

About American Public Television (APT)
With more than 10,000 hours of programming in its library, American Public Television (APT) has been a prime source of programming for the nation’s public television stations for 47 years, distributing more than 300 new program titles per year. In 2006, APT launched Create – the TV channel featuring the best of public television’s lifestyle programming. Known for its leadership in identifying innovative, worthwhile and viewer-friendly programming, APT has established a tradition of providing public television stations with program choices that strengthen and customize their schedules, such as Big Green Rabbit, Sara’s Weeknight Meals, Globe Trekker, Rick Steves’ Europe, America’s Test Kitchen From Cook’s Illustrated, Simply Ming, Doc Martin, Broadway: The Golden Age, Lidia’s Family Table, Rosemary and Thyme, P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home, The Big Comfy Couch, Celine Dion: A New Day, Queen Rock Montreal, Monarchy With David Starkey, Spain…on the road Again, and other prominent documentaries, dramatic series, how-to programs, children’s series and classic movies. For more information about APT’s programs and services, visit APTonline.org.

We are excited to welcome Daniel Feld as a new Partner and COO at Slice of Lime. Daniel joined our team on the first of the year. He currently is focused on streamlining operations, fine tuning our current (and new) services, and Slice of Lime’s sales initiatives.

Daniel has over 18 years experience building and growing service and technology companies. Before joining Slice of Lime, he was an Executive at StillSecure responsible for managing and growing professional services, customer support, OEM relations, and customer retention efforts.

Prior to StillSecure, Daniel served as Director of Operations for Mobius Venture Capital where he was responsible for launching and managing their Colorado-based business incubator which helped successfully launch and support numerous start-up and early stage technology companies.

Before joining Mobius, Daniel founded Intensity Channels, a company that developed and executed channel development and partnership programs for innovative technology companies. Daniel began his career at PGC, Inc., a full-service advertising agency, as an Account Manager working with major packaged goods manufacturers and retail accounts. It’s at PGC that Daniel began his life-long passion for advertising, branding and promotion of products and services. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Emory University.

Welcome aboard, Daniel!

We are pleased to announce that Slice of Lime’s work on Big Green Rabbit was recognized by The Webby Awards in two categories, Youth and Best Animation and Motion Graphics.

The Webby’s are to websites what the Oscars are to Film. Here’s what the Webby Award say about this year’s entries:

With nearly 70 categories, Website entries make up the majority of Webby Awards Winners, Nominees and Honorees. Some are beautiful to look at and interact with. Others are a testament to usability and functionality. And a handful excel across the board. To be selected among the best is an incredible achievement worthy of praise — and perhaps a little bragging.

As a result of the superior quantity and quality of sites entered, the 13th Annual Webby Awards recognized sites and teams that demonstrated a standard of excellence.

Of the nearly 10,000 entries submitted to the 13th Annual Webby Awards, fewer than 15% were distinguished as an Official Honoree. This honor signifies an outstanding caliber of work. Congratulations to all of our Official Honoree selections!

Two of our fellow honorees in the Youth category include Playhouse Disney and the new Sesame Street website, so Big Green Rabbit is in the very best of company and competition.

Congratulations everyone!

Slice of Lime worked closely with Everywun to create an exciting new brand, strategy and design that matched their unique vision.

Strategy

Slice of Lime’s challenge was to create a strategy that tied various actions such as playing trivia, adding badges to Facebook, attending events, volunteering and more into a cohesive, fun and easy-to-use experience that also incorporated ad-supported sponsorship in a tasteful, trusting way.

Highlights:

• Everywun Credits - Every action a user takes (trivia, badges, etc) earns them credits they can use on the cause of their choice. It empowers users to make a difference on their own terms, and return often to support multiple causes.

• Dashboard - The starting point for users is a dashboard where they can view and use credits, take action and earn credits, and see the total impact made.

The strategy was a win-win for users, sponsors, and most importantly the causes receiving support.

Design & Development

Slice of Lime designed a look-and-feel that used natural textures and colors mixed with clean, modern UI elements to reflect Everywun’s grass roots, real-world approach, along with their progressive use of technology.

A series of templates were developed using XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and WordPress, and then handed-off to the Everywun team for back-end integration.

Highlights:

• Interactive Overview - JavaScript was used on the home page to quickly let users learn about Everywun, how it works, and how easy it is to make a difference.
• Impact Viewer - A rotating tally of the impact being made by Everywun users was used throughout the site.
• Twitter & WordPress Integration - Everywun’s latest Twitter status and blog posts were utilized to promote their message via social media.

Results:

• Everywun’s site visits immediately tripled and users were quickly earning and using credits to make a better world.
• The site was also featured on several CSS galleries including CSS Mania and Most Inspired.

Pike Research, based locally in the Boulder area, provides Cleantech market intelligence and research. Pike Research worked with the Slice of Lime team to created the strategy, design, and development for their new website.

Strategy

We began our planning of the Pike Research site knowing that we would need to account for later growth phases. The first phase would include several levels of registered users, content available only to registered users, newsletter content, and a user experience that would allow for e-commerce integration in the future. Another major goal was to create an attention-getting and informative homepage. The research topics covered by Pike can be expansive, so giving the user a quick glance at the major topics was important. We accomplished this goal by creating a five-tiered focus area that the user could interact with to learn more about the five most current research topics.

We identified two main types of users for the new Pike site; Registered Users and Non-registered Users. Registered users would have full access to report summaries and details with the option to obtain both Free and Paid reports. Non-registered users would only have access to limited information and to the free reports offered by Pike Research. Of course, registration is free, but required for full research access.

Apart from the research reports offered by Pike Research, the new site is also home to news, blog posts, and consulting information.

Design

The design we created needed to speak to the environmental aspects of Pike Research. The final design’s colors, white space, and minimal environmental illustrations effectively communicate their ‘green’ message. This allows the research to speak for itself with the design in a supporting role. Choosing the perfect set of icons is both fun and challenging. We went through multiple icons sets using both stock and in-house created options. The task here was to find something that was a balance between industrial, illustrated, and tech.

Development

One major requirement was to make the site scalable, allowing the Pike Research team to update and grow not only their offered reports but the overall page content of the site. We were able to completely mask the fact that the site completely is driven by WordPress, which involved some tweaking of WordPress code in a several places. To create the home page focus area, we customized jQuery code to rotate between the five research topics until the user interacts with the 5 buttons below - at which point they gain full control. Several custom WordPress plug-ins were also created to handle aspects of the report detail pages. This was a first here at Slice of Lime in creating custom WordPress plug-ins, and something we will be doing more of in the future.

It was a pleasure working with Clint of Pike Research and we look forward to continuing to grow the site in the future.

This is Slice of Lime’s first native iPhone Application. iWishi taps into Twitter to find what people are wishing for in real time. The iPhone version (soon to launch in the Apple Store) allows you to choose which character delivers your wish and loads a new wish when you shake the iPhone.

The answer? Define each project as its own module that could access, for example, a common “Auth” session object and a common layout. So we started with the idea that we would have urls like http://mydomain.com/module/controller/action/. However, we preferred to have each project on its own subdomain. Thus we had a new question, “How do we route a subdomain to a module?”

The answer to that turned out to be incredibly simple. Only three things need to be in place:

• Properly configured name-based Apache hosts
• Properly written .htaccess
• Specific code within your Zend Framework bootstrap file

Apache Configuration

Assuming that you’re on a LAMP server, and Apache is configured for Virtual Hosts, your httpd.conf or httpd.include might look something like this:
Note that this has been simplified for the point of explanation here, and you should use the real public IP of your server not the localhost address

This ensures that your www host has its own document root, isolated from your application. Of course, you could just as easily include your www to be a module within your application by leaving out that first VirtualHost declaration.

Notice that in the second VirtualHost definition the ServerName does not contain a subdomain; it simply states the root level of your domain. This will act as a sort of catch-all for all subdomains that have not been explicitly declared within their own VirtualHost definitions. Any subdomain that you do not want included as a module within your application should be explicitly defined via its own VirtualHost definition.

.htaccess and mod_rewrite

I’m of the opinion that examples from Zend Quickstart and other resources over-complicate the mod_rewrite rules necessary for putting Zend Framework into action. Here is the mod_rewrite rules that we use without a hitch:

Note that that is just a sample of our .htaccess file that has numerous features to enhance security and performance. Something we’ll be writing about soon.

Magic in the Bootstrap

Firstly, the standard router in Zend Framework expects the URI to follow a format like /module/controller/action/, and references the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] to find it. The problem is that our subdomain-per-module approach moves the module from the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] to $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']. How then would Zend properly route controllers and actions to the appropriate module? Take a look at the following code:

That first line does three things at once: extracts the subdomain part of the url, converts it to lowercase, and creates a MODULE constant we can use later in our code. Now we need to head off the front controller at the pass so to speak. By default, if no request object was given to the front controller, it will create one itself, and use the default properties the request object generates. In such a case, our module would not be included in the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] and therefore not properly routed. In this case we explicitly create a request object, and set its $_requestUri property via setRequestUri() by prepending the MODULE constant to the existing $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].

From there, we continue on as normal. We create the front controller object and set its controller directories by passing it an array that defines each of our modules and their respective controller directories. That second to the last line, where we call the setRequest method, is vitally important. This is where the front controller is set to use the request object we’ve created and modified.

I hope this will be useful to other developers out there. Please do leave your comments, we’d love to hear how this worked or did not work for you, and other issues relating to routing subdomains to modules in Zend Framework.