Programming Portfolio

Alegra's Discount Bridal

"Lone Star Internet has done a fantastic job to make my small company have a national presence. What started for me as a modest undertaking has expanded over the past two years into a major income producer. The folks at Lone Star have taken my ideas and made them a reality. Their response time is amazing. I like the fact that I can call up and get the head honcho on the phone. My project is quite different than their usual stuff and very complex but they wrapped themselves around it and made it work. I have worked with other designers in the past and the headaches were monumental. I plan to continue with Lone Star Internet for the foreseeable future and recommend them heartily."

Nancy Owen
Owner ~ Alegra's Discount Bridal

Alegra's Discount Bridal needed a way to market their custom designed products outside of their store. Because the products are so customizable, the application had to:

• Allow for customizable order pages with multiple steps
• Allow customers to select colors and styles for the various products
• Also allow customers to enter personalized text to be saved with the product ordered
• Manage complex pricing based on customizations and personalization
• Work with flexibility in design and functionality

JB Goodwin - Austin Area Realtors

"Lone Star's programming of our site is incredible. We have a constantly changing front page and programs that work to update internal pages. The site allows us to do updates also and the user interface for this task is easy and quick. The coordination of information though out our site that Lone Star has managed has really made our site helpful to our users. We recommend their services highly."

Byron Schilling
President ~ JB Goodwin Realtors

JB Goodwin Realtors needed a comprehensive content management system for their listings and agents.

Due to the constantly changing nature of the content, the application needed to be easy to use with a navigation designed for quick data entry as well as automatic retrieval of the latest listing information via the RETs feed from the Austin Board of Realtors.

The resulting application has a number of advanced features including the following:

• The main page of the site has constantly changing promotional messages as well as featured agents based on the agent's sales history. So the site doesn't appear static and stale.
• Listings are updated daily from the RETs feed from the Austin Board of Realtors.
• Mapping of listings is generated automatically from listing data.
• Agent data, while displayed in many locations throughout the site, is maintained in one area of the content management system. So if an agent leaves the firm, upon deleting the agent's information, all listings are passed to the backup agent record.
• Agent's may have dynamic web pages on the web site pulling current listings as well as archive listings (sold or leased properties) from the current data so an agent's current and past performance is available for review by clients selecting an agent.
• Agent specialties including foreign languages spoken are displayed in a manner allowing prospective clients to make an agent selection easily.
• Agent sale and leasing transactions are managed and maintained for reporting.
• Flyer ordering and payment are managed via an "agent only" interface.

The result is a flexible and easy to manage content management system that allows the client to access the most current listing information in various interfaces and maintain their own constantly changing information.

Continuing Legal Education The University of Texas School of Law

"Ken Biggs and the programming staff at Lone Star Internet have been superb at every phase of our custom web application development; including back-end site architecture, database design, custom development, data migration, general ledger implementation, site launch and hosting. Lone Star delivered what they promised on time and on budget, and they are there every day for us to add enhancements, manage web hosting, and tweak the system. I've been involved in a number of software development projects and these guys are the real deal -- I highly recommend Lone Star for robust, cost-effective web development with great follow-up and support."

Michael Esposito
Assistant Dean and Director
Continuing Legal Education
The University of Texas School of Law

University of Texas School of Law Continuing Legal Education's legacy accounting and conference management system was becoming a burden. With the shift to on-line information delivery and sales, the legacy system just didn't offer the flexibility and ease of use they needed. It also had no interface with their on-line offering. Duplication of effort was substantial and reporting was being produced by hand from data dumps.

The new application had to allow for:

• Integration of on-line sales with a new accounting system.
• Ability to develop complex conference offerings with a simple interface.
• Allow for maintenance of client records by clients.
• Complex accounting and management reporting.
• Flexibility in design and functionality.

LSI's Plug-In-Cart was used as a base for this application. With exceptional flexibility in layout and presentation along with enterprise level solid performance, Plug-In-Cart allowed a wealth of functionality to be the starting point for the application.

Added to this strong base, LSI developed:

• eLibrary with smart search, subscriptions and a' la carte access to conference assets, and ability to manage selections in client account.
• Online courses developed from conference assets.
• Conference role management.
• Email, fax and traditional mail campaign management.
• A double ledger accounting system to manage on-line and off-line sales.
• Administrative interface for conference development.
• Administrative interface for user management.
• Administrative interface for mailed-in sales entry and financial management.
• Administrative report generation interface.

Complete Book Media Supply, Inc.

"I just wanted to take a moment to thank you and your programmers for designing a superb shopping cart system which has proven to be easy to use and understand, highly customizable and trouble-free since its inception."

Peter Coomaraswamy
President, CEO ~ Complete Book & Media Supply, Inc.

Complete Book & Media Supply needed a site that could compete in the on-line media sales arena. With especially stiff competition, the site needed to be very feature rich and easy to use. Client management capabilities were required to allow Complete Book to modify pricing and book availability on their schedule.

Their requirements included:

• Lightning fast complex search capabilities on a 3 million + record product database.
• Enterprise level ecommerce application.

Client customization including:

• Custom welcome headers.
• Custom pricing by client and media type.
• Custom checkout data and client approval methods.
• Custom "Featured Books" pages.
• Email list management by client and subject of interest.
• Integration with CommerceOne.
• Use of Oracle for advanced context search capabilities.

Complete Book's requirements fit extremely well with a Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) solution. Utilizing Jakarta Struts and java servlet design, the site makes excellent use of memory management to deliver lightning fast performance and exceptional flexibility of design.

Camp Doublecreek

"This application, in our first year of using it, has cut our office man hours in half as well as allowing us to reduce the number of staff we use in the office. LSI has done a great job of customizing the program to our needs and listening to what we need."

D. Scott Kirtley
President ~ Doublecreek Farm, Inc.

Doublecreek Farm, Inc. was spending a great deal of time entering camper information from mailed-in forms into their day camp management software. Managing payments and collections and scheduling campers for horsemanship lessons was also taking an inordinate amount of time.

LSI developed the Camp Manager application to cut down on Doublecreek's administrative management requirements as well as to allow guardians an easy to use interface to manage camper information and make on-line payments.

Camp Manager has a number of advanced features including the following:

• The administrator sets up sessions, bus routes, optional activities, lunch selections, snack card selections, and pricing.
• Camper guardians create their own account and enter all necessary contact information, camper information, medical information, etc.
• Guardians select sessions for attendance, optional activities, schedule horsemanship lessons, bus assignments, lunches, and snacks for each camper.
• Business rules are utilized to determine the due dates for all items.
• Guardians are prompted for payment of deposits prior to finalizing a registration.
• Payment reminders are automatically sent via email prior to due dates.
• Accounting is managed using a "double ledger" accounting system.
• Quick and concise reporting provides administrators with financial and attendance information at a glance.

Doublecreek Farm has seen a significant reduction in management expenses while customers have enjoyed the ability to manage their purchases.

The Psychonomic Society

"The web based applications developed by LSI have eliminated hours of data entry, saved thousands in postage and reams of paper. Our members are very appreciative of the ease and efficiency these applications have afforded the Society as a whole. Any problems or changes are handled quickly and with great concern for quality."

Robert Sanford
Director ~ Psychonomic Society Publications

Psychonomic Society Publications needed several applications to cut down on management data entry as well as to communicate more effectively and efficiently with their members.

LSI was selected to perform the work based on our varied application development experience as well as an excellent history of client satisfaction.

The new applications included:

• A system for submission and management of papers for inclusion in the society's annual meeting.
• A management system to schedule and approve papers for the annual meeting.
• A system for members to manage their own contact information as well as to search for members and/or download up-to-date membership lists in PDF format.
• A content management system allowing for cut-and-paste updates of web site publication information.
• An on-line nomination and voting application.
• A membership email application allowing the ability to compose and transmit email to specific member selections.
• A searchable database of previously published articles.
• Membership sales and renewals.

Utilizing Object Oriented Perl, MySQL, and HTML template, LSI developed each of these applications. The reduction of administrative hours and expense to manage membership requirements, annual meeting content and scheduling, web content management, and member contact has been substantial.

RGK Foundation

RGK Foundation's application to manage grant applications had become difficult to manage and was badly in need of a rewrite. Using Ruby and Rails, LSI reorganized the application as an object oriented project adding needed features, ease of use, and a well documented organized platform for development.

eEmployers Solutions

"As eESI has grown through the years, Lone Star Internet has been there for our web design, hosting, and value added web based programs. From the beginning with a simple informational web page, to client login interaction, and the development of our proprietary document manager, Lone Star Internet has been a key part to our growth in the information age. The entire staff's attention to detail, project turn around times, and customer service is very much appreciated. We look forward to our continued partnership with Lone Star Internet to meet our company growth needs"

Corey Hookstra
eEmployers Solutions, Inc.

Document management was becoming a time consuming headache for eESI. They needed a solution allowing them to manage a large number of documents that would be customized for each client. The application needed to allow them to manage the document in a single location, but allow them to selectively include the document by client or to create groups of documents and/or clients to make management as easy as possible.

Clients are issued logins and are presented with an organized list of helpful documents allowing eESI to eliminate a large number of phone calls, faxes, and employee time managing this important part of the services they provide.