What’s the Difference between Web Design and Web Development?

The terms “web design” and “web development” are thrown around interchangeably. These two topics, while related, actually involve different parts of the website building process.  While the web designer and web developer for a site may actually be the same person, the two terms describe two different parts of the job. Whether you’re building a website yourself or planning to contract out the construction of your website, it’s good to be familiar with web design and web development, and how they differ in the industry.

When Should You Redesign Your Website?

As trends shift in digital marketing, what your visitors will expect and accept will change too. Learn to see the most common red flags that you're in need of a refresh.

What should you know about the Bitcoin Email Extortion Scam?

Reports have been flowing in of a new email threat: pay a ransom in bitcoin or have embarrassing webcam footage of you sent to your contact list. Learn what to do when this phishing scam lands in your inbox.

Communication is the Key to Great Client Relationships

We are proud to share that we have been recognized as a top developer in Chicago for our open communication. Now featured on Clutch.co with an overall 5-star rating and on The Manifest. These ratings and reviews are independently verified by an independent business analyst through a phone interview.

Faster, Smarter Web Maintenance through (Semi) Automation

Website maintenance is the regular monitoring, updating, and patching of your sites core software as well as optional modules and plugins. This is a critical and often overlooked part of owning a website. We automated a portion of the process for increased accuracy, speed, and thoroughness.

4 Key Reasons Why Open Source is Great for Businesses

Open-source is great for business. With the source code being openly available, we can modify, improve, or build on it as we need and updates are actively developed and released in a collaborative community. But open source isn't just good for developers. It's great for business.

Good Office Culture Builds A Model Workplace

We were honored to be recognized by the Greater Oakbrook Chamber of Commerce for our "Model Workplace" culture. Why is workplace culture important? Happy people support each other and make better stuff for their clients.

Benefits of a website are more important than the website

Website design isn't just about delivering a website. It's about delivering the benefits of a website. Your website should be delivering increased sales, or higher conversion rates, or some other specific and measurable goal.

Xeno Media Turns 21

Xeno Media opened it's doors in January of 1997. We're finally 21.

Web Accessibility Part III: Tools and Resources

In our third installment on web accessibility, we look at some of the tests, resources and guides to ensure your website is accessible and useful to everyone that needs it.

Xeno Causes: Geneva Library Foundation

Xeno Media Principal Karen Acklin chooses the Geneva Library Foundation for December's Xeno Cause.

Web Accessibility Part II: What Guides Accessibility Efforts?

There are guidelines and laws that tell you what you need to be doing in order to make your site useful to all of your visitors, regardless of ability. Check out the second part in our series and learn about what's out there to get you on the right track.

Web Accessibility Part I: Do we still need to ask?

Web accessibility is the removal of impediments that could limit access to or interaction with a website by any person with disabilities. Check out the first part in our series on making sure your site can be reached by everyone that needs it!

Xeno Causes: Disabled American Veterans

Xeno Media's Mike Acklin selects Disabled American Veterans as our Xeno Cause for November.

Xeno Causes: October is Dyslexia Awareness Month

Xeno Media's Diane Minton selects Understood.org as October's Xeno Cause

Press release: Xeno Media and Greater Oak Brook Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Partnership Launch New Website

Oakbrook Terrace, IL

Xeno Media - a leading web agency headquartered in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois - announces the launch of a new, WordPress-based website for the Greater Oakbrook Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Development Partnership.

Google Chrome to highlight insecure websites with forms in October 2017

In October 2017, the Google Chrome browser will begin to show the "Not secure" warning when a user enters any type of data on an HTTP page.  This includes search forms, login screens, contact forms, etc...  The time is now to switch to HTTPS if you haven't already!

Xeno Media's Michael Porter to present "Automating Putting Jenkins To Work For You" at Drupal Camp St. Louis, Saturday, Sept. 23

Xeno Media lead developer Michael Porter was selected to present Automating Putting Jenkins To Work For You at Drupal Camp St. Louis, Saturday, Sept. 23.

Xeno Causes: All Hands Hurricane Response

Xeno Media's Kevin Munday selects All Hands Hurricane Harvey Response as August's Xeno Cause

WordPress coding standards for the Drupal developer

Learn how to install the WordPress Coding Standards PHP_CodeSniffer tool along with the Drupal Coder module using composer.  These tools will help any developer who works with PHP, Drupal and WordPress.

Xeno Causes: PAWS Chicago

Xeno Media's Jim Birch selects PAWS Chicago as our Xeno Cause for July.

Entity Reference Roundup

We've assembled another big list of modules to learn and explore the Drupal 8 contrib ecosystem.  These modules are ones that extend or complement the Drupal 8 core Entity reference field so we as developers can build websites and applications.

Xeno Causes: Pebbles of Hope

Xeno Media's Albert Jankowski selects Pebbles of Hope as our Xeno Cause for June.

Why Do Websites Need Maintenance?

Modern open-source web sites need a solid server infrastructure and routine ongoing maintenance to stay secure, available and open for business.

Xeno Causes: UNICEF

Xeno Media's Senem Hartung selects UNICEF as our Xeno Cause for May.

Bootstrap Paragraphs at Baltimore DrupalCon 2017

This powerful Xeno Media-developed module allows content creators to Combine the power of the world's most popular front-end framework, Bootstrap, with Drupal Paragraphs.

Xeno Causes: Build the Dream: STEM Conference

Xeno Media's Caro Manel helps Latinas connect with pathways to STEM success in the Build the Dream: STEM Conference

Xeno Causes: The Melanoma Research Foundation

Xeno Media Site Builder Lauren Manasse chooses the Melanoma Research Foundation for March's Xeno Cause

The Butler Did It: Putting Jenkins To Work For You

Xeno Media lead developer Michael Porter was selected to present The Butler Did It: Putting Jenkins To Work For You at Drupal Midcamp in Chicago, April 1.

Xeno Causes: World Relief

Xeno Media Lead Developer Michael Porter chooses World Relief for February's Xeno Cause

Xeno Media's Jim Birch presents at DrupalCamp Northern Lights 2017

Northern Lights Drupal Camp will take place on this weekend, February 24th - 26th, 2017 at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. The event is being organized by the Icelandic Drupal community, and we are honored that our Strategist, Jim Birch was asked to speak at this inaugural event.

Xeno Causes: Greater Chicago Food Depository

January 2017: Xeno Media's Christine Harder supports the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Xeno Media launches a new responsive, Drupal 8 website for Science Olympiad

We developed a new, mobile responsive Drupal 8 website with a sophisticated custom knowledgebase.

Press Release: Xeno Media celebrates 20 years in web design and development

In January 2017, Xeno Media celebrates our 20th year providing web design, development and consulting to clients around the world.

AMP it up?

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages and is an open standard for delivery of lightweight web content--particularly news and other text-based content--efficiently via mobile devices. It has a simplified coding set and Google-sponsored caching for fast delivery.

Top Thirteen Drupal Twig Helper Modules

What you can do with Drupal core's Twig is pretty great, but the Drupal community always brings so much more to the table after real world use. Here is a big list of Twig helper modules to help build out your next Drupal theme!

Xeno Media's Jim Birch presents at Bay Area Drupal Camp 2016

Our Digital Strategist, Jim Birch, will be presenting on Holistic SEO and Drupal at BADCamp X, the 10th annual Bay Area Drupal Camp being held between October 20th - 23rd at the University of California in Berkeley.

Drupal HTML Formatter Module

Drupal HTML Formatter Module is a simple module that lets you add HTML tags to fields that are strings, timestamps, date/time, referenced and entities. 

Xeno Media dedicated to Drupal, launches new Drupal 8 website

Xeno Media, a leading web design and development firm headquartered in Oakbrook Terrace Illinois today announces the launch of its new Drupal 8, responsive website.

Posting to Slack, Publishing in Drupal

Xeno Media is pleased to announce our latest Drupal 7 contrib module, Slack to Drupal.  This module imports pictures uploaded to Slack to Drupal 7 systems--thereby allowing a community of users to add content to a site while managing their daily business collaboration through the Slack app.

Xeno Media's Jim Birch presents at Open Camps at the United Nations

Our Digital Strategist, Jim Birch, was selected to present at NYC camp, a Mission-Driven Drupal Conference.  NYC camp is part of Open Camps, collection of over 25 Mission-Driven Open Source Conferences & Events which has over 6000 Attendees.

Using Page Manager to Customize the User display in Drupal 8

Being able to create a customized user display with Panels and WITHOUT Display Suite is easier than you think.  

Xeno Media is Hiring

Xeno Media is hiring a Drupal / PHP Developer.  You could be a vital part of a team that crafts beautiful, high visibility, highly functional websites.

Add CSS Classes using a select list field easily in Drupal 8 Twig Templates

A quick Drupal 8 tutorial that covers how to use a select field to add CSS classes in a twig template.  We use this technique often on Paragraph entities where we need to position, or color using CSS.

Dare to Dream

The Dare to Dream: STEM Conference is geared toward increasing the participation of the number of Latina girls in science, technology, engineering and math

Customizing Wordpress User Permissions

To modify WordPress’ permission system beyond the defaults, plugins are needed to add additional specificity and granularity required for a business website.  This article explains some of those plugins.

What Does Facebook’s New Graph Search Mean For You?

On Tuesday, January 16th, 2013, Facebook announced Graph Search which has the potential to change searching the internet as we know it.

Are Those Really Your Frequently Asked Questions?

It’s pretty standard for a website to have a Frequently Asked Questions page. We’ve certainly built our share.

Adobe Flash: Can you have too much of a good thing?

There are very few technologies clients ask for by name. One that we've been seeing a lot of lately is Flash, Adobe's platform for rich content and media on the web.

Wired Reread

I'm really enjoying Wired Reread, a new blog with clippings from early issues of Wired magazine.