Each week you can expect to learn What’s New here on Greenroofs.com through our “This Week in Review” video.  Here’s the transcript from July 8, 2011 from our daughter, Anjuli - click on the photo below to see the video, or here.  Enjoy!

-  Hello, I’m Anjuli Velazquez and welcome to This Week in Review for this week, July 8th 2011 on GreenroofsTV.

- Project of the Week

- Our project of the week is Universal Studios Singapore, built in 2010.  Asia’s first movie-theme park, Universal Studios Singapore is a casino-resort off the south coast of the island nation.  It’s an integral part of Resorts World Sentosa, and celebrated its grand opening on May 28th of this year.  Among the make-believe world of movies, roller-coaster rides, theme dining and shopping, the Park also has dealt with down-to-earth issues and has sustainable green features including solar panels and green roofs, which were extensively integrated into the theme park’s concept and design, showing its firm commitment to energy conservation and responsible environmental management.  Totaling about 35,000 square meters, the massive green roofs provide an insulating shield against Singapore’s tropical temperatures, helping to cool building interiors and their immediate surroundings, mitigating urban heat island effect as well as contributing aesthetically to the ambiance of the park.  Elmich Green Roof was used as the wide structural spans of the immense roofs with their VersiDrain® 25P water retention and drainage layers, EnviroMix® GRs and VersiCell® structural drainage and insulation cells.

- To learn more about Universal Studios Singapore, click on our project of the week photo on our homepage.

“What’s New”

-  Advertiser Press Releases:

-  KISSS America’s Water Efficient Product Is “Smart” For Smart Irrigation Month.

- Over at the Sky Gardens Blog, check out Linda’s latest posts: Enter the International Skyrise Greenery Awards 2011 by August 1!  GRHC Awards of Excellence Submissions was due this week on July 6th, “Roofmeadow Creates Philly’s First Bus Shelter Green Roof,” and our GPW as well as Greenroofs.com’s “TWIR” on GreenroofsTV.

-  “Upcoming Events”

- July 9th: Green Roofs for Healthy Cities is having an Introduction to Rooftop Urban Agriculture Course in New York, New York and another one on July 11th in Toronto, Canada.

- July 9th-12th: is the 2011 Association of Horticulture Professionals (OFA) Short Course in Columbus, Ohio.

- July 14th-15th: Green Roofs for Healthy Cities is having a Green Roof Boot Camp in Kansas City, Missouri (101 and 201 courses only).

-  And don’t forget our Greenroofs & Walls of the World™ Virtual Summit 2011 – Connecting the Planet + Living Architecture: People, Projects & Design conference and expo is coming up next month, August 23rd & 24th online around the world!  Registration information coming soon!

-  “In the News”

-  Katherine Scott of 6abc.com invites you to “Take a tour of PECO’s green roof.” The 45,000 square foot green roof on the eighth floor of the PECO Building is the largest ever installed on an existing building in Philadelphia. Liz Williamson of PECO says they “made a very definite decision to choose plants that were drought resistant or drought tolerant.” Such plants include 12 different species of sedums, which have a root system that help retain moisture and are low-growing and low-maintenance, ornamental grasses and perennials, all of which are growing locally in Pennsylvania. You can go directly to 6abc.com to watch their news story about the greenroof.

- Amy Zimmer of DNAinfo talks about “Upper East Side Co-op Builds Rooftop Garden For Children.” Plymouth Tower co-op resident Sheila Tendy in Manhattan had a vision about letting children of the building learn about food by getting their hands dirty, planting and taking care of fresh herbs, hot peppers, eggplants, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, and strawberries themselves. She says, “It’s just a matter of realizing you can grow things in small quantities and grow food for yourself. It’s not that difficult. A ‘farm’ could be a 6-inch pot on your windowsill.” Tara Reddi, another parent in the building, who runs several Plymouth Tower kids events, long dreamed of doing a garden for the co-ops’s kids; and says “The best thing has been planting with the kids and having them discover how wonderful it is to put their hands in the earth and plant something and watch it grow.”

-  To learn more about these stories and new ones posted daily, go to our In the News or newslinks section of our website.

-  Have something you think we should know about and post on our website?  You can send us your green articles, videos and images to editor@greenroofs.com.

-  Stay up-to-date with what’s going on at Greenroofs.com by subscribing to our greenroofsTV channel on YouTube, following us on Twitter, liking us on Facebook and being a member of our network on LinkedIn.

-  This has been This Week in Review for July 8th, 2011 on GreenroofsTV.  I’m Anjuli Velazquez and I’ll see you next week!

*This week’s episode is sponsored by The Greenroof Directory, brought to you by Greenroofs.com.*

Did we miss something?  We’d love to hear from you!

~ Linda V.

We’ve begun the Greenroofs.com website redesign starting with the Homepage. Our new design is about improving page navigation and making it easier for our visitors to find the content they want.  More white space has been created and we changed the font type and size for better reading.  We also kept in mind that search engines like to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger picture of our site, and we think that this has been accomplished.

HERE’S WHAT’S NEW:

Project of the Week
The Project of the Week section has been moved to the top of the left side in order to attract the first look of our visitors.  Well-documented eyetool analysis has revealed “hotspots” where visitors looked the most on a webpage – and people look most at the left top side. This visual image of the featured greenroof project should instigate additional interest and thus a click-through that brings the latest project profile to the forefront in a separate window.  As you probably know, the project profile contains various photos and detailed content describing many important and relevant aspects of the case study.  The data associated with these profiles is administered on our MySQL Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database via PHP scripts.  Our database currently has 1,022 project profiles with many more being added every day. By the way, the content of this database is currently indexed by Google and Google News – which means when visitors search online, the results page will contain links to the data from our database.

The Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database has been open to the world since 2004, evolving from the “International and North American Case Studies” portion of Linda Velazquez’ initial 1999 independent research study.   Read more about how Linda selects the Project of the Week.

The Greenroof Directory
Visitors looking for companies to work with on their projects now have a quick search capability from the homepage, direct to the Greenroof Directory.

The Greenroof Directory is also a MySQL database which contains essential information (contact, products, services, photos, etc.) about Manufacturers, Suppliers, Professional Services, and Organizations in the greenroof industry.

All this information is searchable from the main Directory page and now, for the first time, from our homepage with our new quick search feature.  The most popular main categories are highlighted in this new search box, and you can also access more categories from here, too.

In a guest feature article submitted by Adam Henige, a Web consultant, he states “An analysis of search engine data for 2009 clearly demonstrates a rising trend in the general public’s awareness of and interest in green roofs. Looking at these estimates for a cross section of the most popular general roofing terms and green roofing terms performed on search engines, there was growth in both areas, but by November the monthly search volume had grown only 51 percent for general roofing terms while green roofing terms had grown 155 percent.”

No one knows the secret formula that search engines use in order to optimize a particular site and improve rankings, but fortunately for us, we have enjoyed the number one spot in all the top search engines for the most significant keywords in our industry for over 10 years.  In addition to creating lots of organic content on a consistent basis, we also have a high number of sites that consider us a great resource and thus add links back to us, which also improves search results positioning and site PageRank.  So, if you want your company to be found online, make sure you get listed with us (shameless plug!).

Video player
An embedded video player showing the latest videos from our greenroofsTV channel on YouTube has been moved to the top right side for better viewing.  YouTube is the most popular video hosting and sharing service and is owned by Google.  Their service lets users view and upload video files, and in addition to hosting videos, the service lets users rate videos, add comments, and subscribe to their favorite producers.

Public videos uploaded by YouTube online users are selected by us based on their relevance to the greenroof and greenwall industry, and then added to the respective playlist that feed the various video players throughout our entire website.  We encourage all of you to upload your videos to showcase and increase your exposure by sharing experiences, projects, interviews, tours, product demonstrations – with our marketplace and the rest of the world.

Industry News, ResearchLinks & Industry Support
The extremely long Industry News content that used to be displayed in the center column has been consolidated to a short list of the latest news with links to a new separate page fully dedicated to all the industry news associated with the greenroof and greenwall community.

The ResearchLinks section on the Navigation Bar has now been replaced simply with Industry, which now houses Industry News, Industry Support and ResearchLinks.  Industry Support used to be under Greenroofs 101, which was the basis for Linda’s 1999 paper and Greenroofs.com.

Guest Features
You’ll find them now in a highlighted box displaying the latest two features with links to the full articles. If you are an expert on a particular greenroof or greenwall design topic, you may submit your content to our Editor and it will be reviewed for publishing on our site – just email your information to: submissions@greenroofs.com.

NewsLinks
The long list of NewsLinks has also been reduced to a shorter one of the latest few, with links for more news on our page dedicated to all our NewsLinks.  We have also added a section that will highlight a particular event during the month – like the 2010 Olympics, Earth Hour, etc.  Make sure you visit often for all your industry news!

Contributing Editor Columns
Similar to Guest Features, another highlighted section now houses the latest from our contributing editors, prominently displayed within the body of the homepage with links to the respective columns.

Other changes
· The Google Search Box that allows for searching our entire website is now more visible.

·  The banners on the top and bottom of the page rotate randomly with a fade transition instead of the old slide in a sequential order.  This will allow for all of our advertisers’ banner ads to have equal exposure to our visitors.

·  Social Media icons are now top and center for easy clicks.  Make sure you stay connected with us by following us on Twitter, becoming a fan of our Facebook wall, joining our Greenroofs.com Network group in LinkedIn, subscribing to the greenroofsTV channel on YouTube and our monthly eNewsletter.

·  Finally, the bottom of the page is now filled with small logos from all our sponsors linkable to their respective color brochures in The Greenroof Directory filled with lots of pertinent information about their products and services.

·  The Sky Gardens blog box, Upcoming Events, JobLinks, and our Advertiser Press Releases and are still pretty much in their respective spots, just cleaned up a bit.

We’re still in our tweaking stages, and have a lot more work to do to the rest of our site, but we welcome your feedback for what we have done so far.  Keep us informed of all your greenroof and greenwall happenings, and stay on top of the greenroof world with Greenroofs.com!  We look forward to hearing back from you.