We’re super excited to announce the launch of our new website! This has been a long time in the making, as our last website was created two years ago and was in need of a major overhaul! Let’s go over some of the changes, in addition to aspects that stayed the same.

General layout is the same

The biggest constant between the two websites is the navigation. We stayed with the same layout, as we felt that it was effective and easy to understand. Here it is in bullet form:

• Home
• Company
  • About
  • FAQs
  • Testimonials
  • News
  • Email List
• Product
  • Services
  • Portfolio
  • Regions
• Pricing
• Legal
  • GenAI Policy
  • Web Design Agreement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
• Contact

Some pages were changed considerably; others not so much

For some of the pages, the content within varies considerably compared to its earlier version. For example, we completely rewrote the GenAI Policy; ironically, the original version was written using ChatGPT! However, we left the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service pretty much the same — those are standard boilerplate documents anyways — and only changed the “last updated” date on each, in addition to some new contact information. Similarly, the Contact page was left mostly intact, as we carried over the language verbatim from the original version.

The FAQs page was moderately modified. We added more relevant questions, got rid of few old ones, and split all of them into three broad categories — general, technical, and pricing.

Lastly, the Services and Portfolio pages underwent massive changes. We added several services that were not on the old website and rewrote all the copy for each service as well. On the old Portfolio page, we had several demo websites listed. This is because when we started our business two years ago, we didn’t have any client work to showcase. However, in the past two years, we’ve been able to amass a significant portfolio of actual projects, and this “real” work has now become the cornerstone of the Portfolio section.

Custom WordPress theme

Interestingly enough, the most significant difference between the old XenonPrime website and this new one is not outwardly visible. Underneath the hood, the website is actually using a custom theme. We downloaded a very basic version of WordPress from Automattic, the for-profit arm of the WordPress organization, and heavily customized this basic installation into the new XenonPrime website.

One great example of significant coding work that was done was developing the website’s header. Many widely used WordPress themes — for example, Astra, Kadence, or Blocksy — come with a built-in customizer to flesh out the header at the top of each page. However, in the basic WordPress installation from Automattic, this feature is completely missing, so we designed the header from scratch. Specifically, we wrote a considerable amount of HTML code in the header.php file and and CSS code in the styles.css file to create the navigation bar, in addition to making it responsive on tablet and mobile screens.

Custom JavaScript and PHP

Lastly, we coded a significant amount of JavaScript and PHP to create many of the websites cool effects. The hero section on the homepage, for example, is actually a joint PHP and JavaScript algorithm that takes several words and randomly arranges them into a crossword puzzle. The curtain effects used extensively throughout the website make heavy use of JavaScript’s Intersection Observer API, triggering only when a specific amount of the section is visible on the screen. And the horizontal scrolling effect in the Services section was developed using GSAP (GreenSock Animation Platform), a powerful JavaScript animation library that allows us to create these types of awesome effects.

We can do this for you

Thanks so much for reading our blog post and learning more about our new website. We’ve poured a considerable amount of time and energy into it, and we hope you find it a high-quality and comprehensive product. But here’s the more important takeaway — we can do this for you! As part of our web design services, we’re able to recreate many of these animations and effects on other websites. In fact, we’ve been utilizing the curtain effect extensively, as well as scroll trigger effects where words in a passage are progressively highlighted as the user scrolls down the page. Book a free consultation today so that we can learn more about how we can help you!

I’m extremely pleased to announce that I joined BNI Capital Business Alliance, one of the largest virtual BNI chapters in the country and the largest in DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

What is BNI?

BNI is a networking group I’m part of where small business owners come together to pass referrals to one another. Members who belong to the same “power team” are particularly strong referral partners, as there tends to be a strong overlap in prospective clients.

Why did I switch?

I really liked my old chapter, BNI Manhattan 29. It was also a virtual chapter but was unique in that we met in the evenings at 6 pm on Tuesdays. However, a major rule in BNI is that there can only be one member per seat category. As such, when the web design seat opened in Capital Business Alliance, I knew I had to grab it as quickly as possible, or someone else would inevitably take it. Moreover, it’s extremely difficult to find an open web design seat in a 50-person chapter — the web design seat is generally considered a very “hot” one — so I pounced when the opportunity arose.

My hopes for the future

I’m hoping to get more business. I’ve already had 1:1s with many chapter members, and there seems to be considerable opportunities for collaboration. I’ll let you all know how things go!