This guest blog post was written by Judith Ellison Shenouda, owner of Shenouda Associates Inc., a business that researches, writes, and edits the many professional publications that streamline processes, launch products, and promote each client’s brand. Her team used Flare to revamp the company website and uses Flare to support clients' documentation needs.

At Shenouda Associates Inc., we do so much more than writing grammatically correct content and fixing typos. We do major editing and reorganizing, website and template design, conversion from one application to another, project management, knowledge base management, and publishing in a variety of formats and languages. We love challenging work and often do projects within Shenouda to practice our craft, become experts, and then do projects small and large for corporate clients.

Shenouda Associates Inc. Website Redo

To keep pace with evolving technology and taste, our website needed some updates to adapt it for use on the small screens of mobile devices as well as the large screens of computers, with less need to zoom in on or scroll through dense text, and with more visual appeal.

Since our previous website update, we had become experts in MadCap Flare and considered it an easy choice, the right choice. Its well-designed interface eliminates or minimizes the need to know any of the standard languages used in website development. It includes easily modifiable templates and all the tools needed to create a modern, easy-to-use, visually pleasing website, including:

  • Responsive layouts that can be viewed and navigated with ease on any device
  • Expandable text that gives the reader the choice of what to read and when
  • Graphic components—such as those found on our Home page and on the Our Services page

On the Home page, we freshened the look by replacing text boxes with panels that introduce, both with words and graphics, the content on the website.

On the Our Work page, we added a showcase with links to infographics that we created. Content that was primarily words morphed into content that combines words and pictures. Infographics are now an offering on Our Deliverables.

Today, our streamlined website is more inviting. It’s easier to navigate, with features that allow content to be expanded or condensed. Links provide more detail, graphics add interest, and we’re now better able to show what our team can accomplish for clients.

The Write Angle Website Redo

Our website turned out so well that Gretchen Stahlman, owner of The Write Angle, a business with which we often partner on projects, used Flare to redo her website. The Flare Experts page on her site links to videos that show how together We Create Flare Templates, We Convert to Flare, and We Help Translations Go Smoothly.

The Right Choice For Us & For You

At Shenouda Associates Inc. and The Write Angle, MadCap Flare was the right choice for updating our respective websites. Our team confirms that it is the right choice for our clients, too. Team member Kerry Roberts said of her experience working with Flare, “One document I provide used to take five hours to produce, but with the assistance of Flare functionality, I’ve been able to utilize snippets and can update that guide in about two hours now, only having to update the target variables and a single topic.” Team member Julia Ward said of her experience with Flare, “Most of the work I’ve done in Flare has been with translated files. I see how Flare makes it easy to maintain a single project that allows multiple outputs and multiple versions of some text elements (conditioned for different countries, so that they appear only in the appropriate outputs).”

Have you discovered that Flare is the right choice for your publication projects small and large? We’d love to hear about it, perhaps right here on this MadBlog.

Thank you to Gretchen Stahlman, Van Kurtz, Kerry Roberts, and Julia Ward for sharing their experience as expert Flare users and contributing to this blog.