Blog

Upgrade to Drupal 9 - Website Owners Guide

In a previous article, we discussed upgrading from previous versions of Drupal to Drupal 8. In this article, we answer questions website owners may have when deciding whether and... keep reading about Upgrade to Drupal 9 - Website Owners Guide

Google now gives your website kudos for using HTTPS

Google uses HTTPS ranking signal

It's official, Google has announced that they are now using HTTPS (or HTTP over TLS) as a ranking signal. This means google will be checking if it can access your website over HTTPS and give you a higher ranking than if your website was unavailable over HTTPS (although they state... keep reading about Google now gives your website kudos for using HTTPS

Avatar New York let's NYC Tourists Locate Buses in Real-Time

OpentourNY.com responsive website image

As a followup to the recent launch of OpenTourNY.com, the responsive website designed for New York City's premier sightseeing bus tour company, Avatar New York added real-time bus location capabilities. With the addition of this functionality... keep reading about Avatar New York let's NYC Tourists Locate Buses in Real-Time

Avatar Uses ZenDesk and StatusPage to Provide Better Transparency

Avatar rolls out ZenDesk and StatusPage.io Support

Avatar is very excited to announce the roll-out of two additional components to our cloud hosting services. We've incorporated ZenDesk and StatusPage.io to our cloud hosting offering as part of our ongoing effort to provide our clients top notch support and effective transparency.

ZenDesk

ZenDesk extends the methods... keep reading about Avatar Uses ZenDesk and StatusPage to Provide Better Transparency

Upgrade to Universal Analytics now!

Universal Analytics Upgrade

Last week, Google brought it's updated analytics platform, Universal Analytics, out of beta. Our web developers have been testing Universal Analytics since it's introduction back in March 2013, but a few missing features prevented us from adopting it universally. That all changed last week when google took... keep reading about Upgrade to Universal Analytics now!

5 Steps We Took to Survive Black Friday and Cyber Monday with Zero Downtime

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two biggest online shopping days of the year.  They are also the most highly anticipated days for our hosting team, as we generally see triple and sometimes quadruple the traffic levels compared to... keep reading about 5 Steps We Took to Survive Black Friday and Cyber Monday with Zero Downtime

The Workshop is Open for Business

The Workshop

There are big things brewing over at Avatar these days.  One of the projects we have been developing this fall, was The Workshop.... keep reading about The Workshop is Open for Business

Avatar New York Plus

avatar new york on google+

If you have haven't already heard, we're on Google Plus!  Unfortunately, we were not deemed large enough to get our own... keep reading about Avatar New York Plus

This is how we roll!

We not only design and develop amazing e-commerce websites and apps, we've also been know get a five bagger.  This year was no exception with team drupal vs. team magento going head to head.  Enjoy the photos of us open bowling at our anuual holiday party at Frames in NYC. ... keep reading about This is how we roll!

High Performance for the Holidays

Happy Cyber Monday!  We've been working hard over the past few months to get our clients ready for this year's holiday season and want to share some of the tricks of the trade we use to keep our e-commerce clients happy and... keep reading about High Performance for the Holidays

Increase Your Website Intelligence

Google has a neat little tool that is now available to all.  It's called Intelligence Events and it can provide you valuable information at a glance, rather than having to drill down into analytics to see if there is anything stands out.  To see what Google... keep reading about Increase Your Website Intelligence

Operating (remotely) During Hurricane Sandy

As you may know, our office, located down in TriBeCa has been closed since Monday afternoon due to Hurricane Sandy.  We are still without power, but operating remotely until conEd get's us back online.  You can of course... keep reading about Operating (remotely) During Hurricane Sandy

Check Your Cloud Hosting Status

Today we’re releasing v1.0 of AvatarStatus.com to the public.  The site stems from a hackathon proof-of-concept session that we worked on back in August.  The goal of this site is to provide our clients with better visibility into their cloud hosting... keep reading about Check Your Cloud Hosting Status

Your Website: Better. More Responsive. SPDYer.

As a certified hosting partner of CloudFlare, we were invited try out the private beta of SPDY, an experimental application-layer protocol built on top of TLS, developed by Google for transporting content over the web with minimal latency. Yesterday, CloudFlare... keep reading about Your Website: Better. More Responsive. SPDYer.

Check Your Google Ad Without Affecting Performance

If your using google adwords for online advertising, you know that clicking on your ad is going to cost you (literally).  What you may not know, however, is that just viewing your ad in google search results can be just as costly.  If you are... keep reading about Check Your Google Ad Without Affecting Performance