Category Archives: Uncategorized

Promote Your Website Programme – Waterford City Enterprise Board

Posted on by
Reply

Waterford City Enterprise Board are now running the Promote Your Website Programme.  This involves one to one search engine optimisation training aimed at small to medium businesses that have (or intend to set up) a website and are new to the opportunities that the internet offers.

The individual sessions will offer a ‘checklist’ of the basic requirement for good website design and a general introduction to website promotion. This overview, over two three hour meetings, will help you become familiar with the many routes to market that the internet offers and the opportunities that are at your fingertips to grow your business.

I have personally used the techniques outlined in this course to promote products such as ‘The Model Dictionary of Wexford Slang’ over social networks such as Facebook. Over the Christmas period we managed to sign up approximately 2000 people, predominantly from Wexford, to our Wexford Slang Facebook page, which meant that we did not need to go down the traditional marketing route.  The end result was that we sold out all of our stock of the book before Christmas eve!!!

This is just one of our success stories and UTD Web Design is registered with this programme and is available to talk you through all aspects of online promotion.

Here is the proposed content of the mentoring sessions:

Part I – Understanding the Web (primer)

  • Overview of how the web works basic technologies such as HTML & CSS for creating and styling web pages, HTTP for transferring pages between server and browser etc.
  • Outline of some of the major web programming languages are PHP, ASP, JSP, Javscript
  • Introduction to database technologies such as MySQL, SqlServer
  • Front end technologies such as Flash and Javascript
  • Content Management Systems and their importance
  • Integration of third party components on websites such as galleries, video and audio players etc.
  • Domain names (.ie or .com etc.) and hosting options (shared, dedicated, platform and pricing) and how they work together
  • What you can do with a good hosting platfom
    • Manage email accounts, create and manage databases, install third party applications, create subdomains, FTP access etc. practical example
  • Social Networking, Blogging, Content Sharing etc.
    • FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bebo, YouTube, FlickR, ISSUU etc.
  • Common third party web applications
    • eCommerce: osCommerce, virtumart etc.
    • Blogging & Content Management: WordPress, Joomla etc.
    • Discussion: phpBB, vBulletin
    • Other platforms: OpenRealty, phpList, Movable Type etc,
  • Fighting spam using web forms, captcha, hiding email address etc.
  • Accepting payment online (PayPal etc.)

Part II – Driving traffic to your website

  • Practical examples of how to use blogging, social networking, email etc. for viral campaigns.
  • How to use services like LinkedIn to create a business network
  • Registration with key directories and websites e.g. DMOZ, Wikipedia, WaterfordBusiness.com, ping-o-matic etc.
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
    • Stressing the absolute basics of title tags, heading tags, page naming, meta description tag, site content, site links etc. (basic understanding of html is needed to understand this)
    • Understanding the importance of the Google Page Rank algorithm
    • Importance of good inbound links to your site and how to increase page rank and as a result improve traffic from search engines
    • Importance of Sitemaps and link structure of site
  • Online Advertising
    • Pay per click advertising on Google using Google adwords
    • Choosing good keywords
    • Getting good PPC value
    • Banner ads on third party websites that reach your target market (how much you should expect to pay etc.)
    • Directory listings (paid for links)
  • Webmaster Tools
    • Using the Google Keyword Tool to identify the most valuable search terms for your site and spotting gaps in the market!
    • Using Google webmaster tool for setting region and other key settings for your site
    • Using Google analytics to generate reports on your hits in order to continuously improve a website’s performance

Depending on your business we can tailor these sessions to your needs.

Please visit http://www.waterfordceb.com/promote-your-website-programme.php for more information on these mentoring sessions. There is a nominal fee of 100 euro payable to the enterprise board, which is a fraction of what these sessions might cost otherwise.

What is a Blog???

Posted on by
Reply

I was delivering a presentation to a group of start ups just before Christmas and one of the class members asked the dreaded question…

“What is a Blog???”

Hmmm, I suppose if she asked it then others were thinking it too.

My simple answer was that it is an abbreviation of Web Log, but of course this is just the label and explains nothing.

In a nutshell a blog is simply a website that facilitates the publication of articles.

According to Wikipedia, a blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog).

Blogs are generally organised by date and into user defined categories.  Often blogs present an RSS feed to the web. A RSS feed is a file that contains a synopsis of your latest articles and the links to those articles.  RSS feeds are automatically generated by tools such as WordPress. Other users and sites can then subscribe to the RSS feed in order to be notified of updates to your blog. A podcast is related to a blog in that it presents media to the end user instead of text. I will explain podcasts in greater detail in a subsequent post.

Blogs are a great way to promote your company website as Google likes to check them regularly for updates.  Also, by writing a blog you will get more traffic to your site because you are more keywords and phrases that google can potentially match user searches with. So if you have a company website, you should set up a blog ASAP that you can write about interesting topics that are related to your business.

The best way to learn about blogs is to simply register on wordpress.com and create a blog for yourself to discover all the really cool features inherent in modern blog systems.

Why Everyone Should Install Google Analytics

Posted on by
Reply

I’ll admit I was slow to start using Google Analytics myself but it was totally my loss.  I would advise everyone that has a website to go to the bother of installing analytics to get a picture of how well your website is performing. Most hosting companies provide comprehensive tools to allow you to view your web stats to the finest level of detail but Analytics takes it so much further.

Sample Analytics Screenshot

Sample Analytics Screenshot

Here are a just a few things of the things I like about it:

  • You get all the basics, no of visits, unique visits, page views, bounce rate, time users spend on site, traffic sources, keyword searches etc… and all of these are presented in graph and text format, which you can drill down into.
  • You can compare statistics going back as far as when you first installed analytics and you can see percentage changes in practically everything
  • You can set it up to email you (or a client) a summary of the results as a pdf of spreadsheet, at a fixed time period of your choice
  • You can actually overlay the results on you site so that when you browse your site you can see which pages are visited most etc.

It’s just an amazing piece of kit and is something I recommend that every client I work with sets up.  It takes all the mumbo jumbo out of web site statistics and presents it in a human readable format.

Here is an example of a report generated on one of my sites upthedeise.com-stats-november09

If you have an existing site and need to get analytics installed and talk about your SEO then visit http://www.utdwebdesignireland.com

SEO Works: UTD Web Design Ireland on Page 1 Google.ie for Search Term ‘Web Design Ireland’

Posted on by
Reply

Just a quick blog to demonstrate that when you practice what you preach good things happen.  As of today UTD Web Design Ireland is on page one of Google.ie search results page for the search term Web Design Ireland. OK it’s in 10th position, but when you consider that UTD Web Design is only registered since February 2009 this is a very good result given that this term would be highly sought after with 42,100,000 other results for the that key phrase.

web design ireland

UTD Web Design Ireland in Google's Top 10 Results

In order to achieve this I simply ensured that my content was simplified so that spiders can traverse it easily and got some high quality links back to the site.  Hopefully, as time passes I will further climb the top 10 results based on a continued sensible approach to SEO.

The basics of SEO are so important as outlined in my SEO Simplified blog entry.

Some of my other sites that have done quite well out of SEO are slang.ie (search for ‘irish slang’) and upthedeise.com (search for ‘waterford discussion’).

If you need assistance with your SEO, don’t hesitate to contact me at info@utdwebdesign.com and we can put in place an SEO plan for your business.

Changing Domains and 301 Redirects

Posted on by
Reply

If you want to move your business to a new domain and you have a popular domain name with a decent Google Page rank you will most certainly want to redirect traffic from your old website to your new website.

There are many ways to do this. Some of the most popular are:

  • using meta tags: this is a client side method that redirects the browser after a certain amount of time
  • using a server side script: this could be a simple .php that redirects users from a page (generally homepage) to your new site
  • use a .htaccess file and a rule to redirect traffic to your new site

META REFRESH REDIRECT

The meta refresh mechanism is quite simple, you insert code like this into the header of the page you wish to redirect:

<META http-equiv=”refresh” content=”5;URL=http://www.yournewsite.com/”>

This will redirect to your new site 5 seconds after the page loads on the viewer’s browser.  This method is simple and require no server side scripting knowledge.

PHP 301 REDIRECT

With languages like php you can use the header function to redirect to other pages. Here is an example of how to perform a 301 redirect with php.

<?php
header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
header(‘Location: http://www.yournewsite.ie/’);
?>

NOTE: this code must appear at the top of the .php file as if the script echoes anything at all to the client the redirect will not work.

This method is good as it performs a proper 301 redirect so that your new site picks up all of the page rank associated with the old page, the only disadvantage here is that it must be done page by page.

This 301 has been tried and tested on http://www.utdwebdesign.com and redirects to http://www.utdwebdesignireland.com

.HTACCESS 301 REDIRECT

This is the preferred method of performing a 301 redirect for all pages of a site but only works on Linux hosting. Here is an example of a .htaccess file with a 301 redirect rule for all pages of a website:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yournewsite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yournewsite.com/ [L,R=301]

This .htaccess 301 Redirect has been tried and tested on Godaddy hosting for the website http://www.barrackstreetconcertband.com and redirects the user to http://www.barrackstreetband.com

Do I need a Content Management System (CMS)?

Posted on by
Reply

The short answer is YES.

A Content Management System or CMS is a piece of software running on a hosting account on a web server that allows the administrator of a site to log in to and edit the site through a web browser interface, without having to delve into the mystifying depths of HTML and CSS code trying to work out how to FTP the files over to the hosting account etc.

Generally a CMS is made up of standard HTML and CSS elements, a MySQL database (or other database technology), a Javascript word processor/text editor and some server side scripts (PHP, ASP, JSP etc.) to execute database operations such as saving and retrieving content and to allow upload and management of files on the server.

Most design companies will give a customer the choice of installing a third party CMS such as WordPress or their own bespoke CMS. However, design companies generally prefer to offer bespoke CMS to their customers because they can be tied into a specific design more easily, and the user interface can be made exceptionally foolproof. With third party CMS applications design can often be very restricted unless the company specialises specifically in that technology.

You should expect to pay a bit less for a WordPress or Joomla website as there is practically no coding involved in the set up of these sites, rather developers will find a suitable template on the web and will then customise it to suit a particular customers needs. If a company has to develop a theme from scratch, Joomla and WordPress sites can become even more expensive then their own bespoke CMS sometimes prohibitively so.

Regardless of the technology chosen, the major advantage of a CMS is that you will no longer need to call your web design company every time you need to make a small change to your website, with a CMS you can update the site whenever you have a bit of news, want to add a new link, need to upload a new picture, press release etc. etc. You just simply log in through to the CMS via a specific URL or Web Address and edit your website pages on the fly.

However, with this power there are also caveats. Often designers have a keen eye regarding making content on a site look professional. By transferring this power to administrators, the design of the site can often suffer over time from a design perspective as a result, so if you do go for a CMS try and keep the content true to the design of the site and avoid using your own colour schemes, font sizes etc.

Search Engine Optimisation is also generally supported by good CMS systems. They allow the user to modify the title of the page, the content of the page (encouraging the use of h1 tags) and they also allow the admin to add meta description information. Often with static web sites, design companies do not change the title and description on the various pages on the site which can lead to devastating penalties from Search Engines.

So, if you have an existing site without a CMS, don’t worry, all is not lost. If your site is standard HTML / CSS it should be relatively easy to add a CMS to.

UTD Web Design Ireland can add a lightweight, bespoke SEO optimised CMS to your existing site for as little as €400 depending on your specific requirements, so what are you waiting for, get in to the 21st century and manage your own website content today!

Do not use HTML Frames???

Posted on by
Reply

Recently, I wrote a response to a tender, which stipulated that the web site being developed had to adhere to the design standards set out by the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design.

This is a very good website that all web developers and clients purchasing websites should read to consider all aspects of design and accessibility.

One rule I found very strange was a blanket ban on Frames… these days many technologies use iframes to embed content on other sites. For example, if you want to embed a google map on a site (without resorting to utilising the API) the use of frames is practically unavoidable and actively encouraged by Google. There are also other reasons to use frames, for example if a site has a flash header / menu that you do not wish to reload on each page an iframe could be used to display the content.

Frames by themselves are not evil, though I accept the point that they should no longer be used to maintain common header/footer/navigation sections of sites as at this stage there are plenty of technologies accessible to web designers to make segments of code accessible to all pages of the site (php, ssi, javascript, ajax etc.). However, to just blanket ban them is also wrong.

Finally, I just wanted to address the additional problems mentioned on the site, which, for me, do not seem objective.

  • Not all browsers are frames capable
    • this is true, but you’d be hard pushed to find one that isn’t.
  • People generally do not like them
    • What a statement to make, I don’t think most end users would even know if a site used them so maybe by people the author meant web developers don’t like them because of the other problems mentioned in the document.
  • Search engines can have problems
    • This is true, but this is something that a sitemap can address for any web technology that search engines have problems with, the major problem search engines have is that they can return inner pages, so users that find the site may end up visiting a page without the navigation bar or header or whatever.
  • They are more difficult to update
    • This point doesn’t make any sense to me, I would suggest frames are easier to update as they break code into more discrete, modular parts, making a website more manageable and easier to maintain, however, these days you can get these advantages through back end technologies such as server side includes, php, and client side technologies such as javascript.
  • They can cause issues when trying to link to them
    • I presume that the author is talking about setting the target frame when adding links to the site. Most web developers would not see this as an issue though as it is how the technology operates.

All in all, the site is great but I think in this instance they simply fluffed out the document with points that don’t make much sense.

I’ve heard many developers over the years suggesting that frames and tables are an evil part of html, but, in truth, they have their uses.

Creating a Blog with WordPress

Posted on by
2

There’s loads of free websites out there for creating blogss such as blogger and wordpress, but if you have your own hosting you might as well set it up on that.

I would 100% recommend setting up a wordpress blog for a full blown website as well as a personal blog. For me it is one of the most complete pieces of internet technologies out there and the great news is that it is 100% FREEEEEEEEEE YAY!

So to set it up is simple.

  1. Download the latest release from the wordpress site (just do a search for download wordpress http://wordpress.org/download/)
  2. Unzip the file to your hard drive
  3. Log on to your hosting using an FTP program such as Filezilla (http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client)
  4. Upload the wordpress files that you extracted to your server in the root directory or a specific subdirectory
  5. Once uploaded you should go to your website (to whatever folder you uploaded it to) and a page will be displayed asking you to create a config file
  6. At this point you need to log in to your hosting control panel and create a database for wordpress and an associated user, once you’ve done this go back to the blogs web address
  7. Enter in the database name, username, password, mysql server address (on both blacknight and hosting365 the databases are not located on the local host so you need to set this up, the web address for both can be found on the same page where the database was set up)
  8. Once you click create the file should be created unless you have not got proper permissions set on your wordpress installation folder (if not go to your ftp client again and set the access level of your installation folder to 777, this is often called chmod 777 as that is the way of doing it via the command line)
  9. And that’s it, the wordpress application has been set up, at this point you are given a temporary password that you should immediately change.
  10. Then login and configure to your heart’s content.

Some of the really nice things you can do via the administration interface are set up a google sitemap, download and install new themes, add anti-spam plugins, and of course write blog entries, upload photos etc. through a very nifty and intuitive interface.

Happy blogging.

Website technologies explained and terminology decoded.

Posted on by
Reply

Ever since I’ve started putting websites together I’ve had the same basic questions posed to me from clients, here is an overview of the basics put in plain English.

Hosting: The very first thing you need to put a site live on the internet is hosting.  In Ireland there are a good number of reputable hosting companies but blacknight and hosting365 are probably the most popular of these.  Hosting is basically disk space on a server that is shared by many customers (though you can purchase a dedicated server if necessary). A reasonably decent hosting package can be purchased for around 50 euro, which will include several gigabytes of data transfer a month, several gigabytes of disk space. Most hosting packages include PHP, MySql and Email, which I will explain below.

Domain Name: Hosting is not much good if you do not have a domain name that directs users to your site.  Generally Irish businesses should purchase a .ie domain if their target market is Irish, however .com versions of domains are generally the most sought after.  Irish domain names are more expensive than others because there is a body called the IEDR (IE domain registrar), which administers domain names on an application process.  For most .ie domains the domain must be approved before a hosting company can put it live.  Once a domain is purchased it must then be configured to point at your hosting.  This is generally done by changing the name servers that the domain points to.

HTML + CSS: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are internet software languages that describe how a web page looks.  HTML deals with individual elements on a web page such as headings, paragraphs, images etc. whereas CSS specifically detail how these elements look. For example, a heading’s font size, colour, typeface etc. can be set via CSS.

HTTP: This is the means by which pages are requested over the web and delivered to browsers.  HTTP stands for Hypertext Transport Protocol and whenever you type in http://www.whatever… and click go you are starting a HTTP request, which finishes when the entire page is downloaded and displayed by your browser.

PHP: PHP is a common programming language used to process web requests. Every time you type a HTTP web address (URL) into a browser and sometimes when you click a button on a web site, a web request is made to a web server.  Sometimes this web request does more than just return a web page. Sometimes the request activates a program on the server to perform some activity. For example, we’ve all signed up to newsletters on websites. When you click a button to sign up, the web server will activate a program on the server to process the email address and sign them up to a newsletter database, it may then send out an email to the user to confirm that they have been subscribed.  All this can be done via a programming language called PHP. There are many software languages that can be used besides PHP such as C# and ASP.Net, Java and JSP etc.

MySQL: This is a common database technology available on ALL decent server hosting packages. Often databases full of content and users are stored on the server.  PHP and MySql often work together as PHP performs the processing functionality and MySQL provides the storage facility.

CMS: A CMS or Content Management System is a web based software application that you can log into to edit the content on your website, be it simply the text on the site, images or other media files. WordPress and Joomla are two very popular open source CMSs

Blogs: A blog is short for a web log.  Many people out there have decided to write and talk about whatever subject tickles their fancy on the web via blog services such as blogger and wordpress. Blogs are simply content management systems that focus on managing posts by time and date.  So effectively blogs are online diaries, where the diary entries are web pages managed by the blogging software.

RSS: RSS is a technology used to transfer snippets of a page to subscribed users so that they might come back to a website. RSS is often used with blogs to let people and other websites know that an update has been made. RSS is also used with pod-casts.

Podcasts: Pod-casts are snippets of audio, video that are sent out to subscribers via RSS.  Users subscribed receive a short note on the content and can then download the content via link supplied.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation is the process by which a websites Search Engine Results Page performance is monitored and improved over time. This is generally a two step process of ensuring the content on a site is readable by the search engine and that the content best matches what potential customers are searching for, followed by a link strategy whereby inward links to the site are actively sought out. Google utilises a ranking system which gives a site a measure of importance between 0 and 10 which is called Page Rank. In general if two sites match a search query exactly, then page rank will decide which page comes back first on the search results page.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing is a combination of SEO and Internet Advertising. To back up an SEO strategy a company may also purchase ads from companies such as Google. With Google users can set up Adwords campaigns, which allow the customer to bid on key words and phrases that they think people might used to find their products or services. Once a Adwords campaign is set up and running, ads will appear on the google search pages and on other websites that have chosen to show ads via the AdSense programme.  Ads are paid for whenever a potential customer clicks on an ad and is brought to the web page.

So that’s the major bread and butter technologies tackled, please let me know via comments if I have omitted something major.

Should I use Flash on my Website?

Posted on by
Reply

When developing a site, there has to be a balance between design and functionality.  Often there are sites that should be dynamic that are flat and stale and other times there are sites that should be subtle that have animations and sounds going when there should be no distractions from the content the user wishes to read.

As a general rule of thumb it is a good idea to use Flash on a site sparingly for various reasons

  1. Often they are content rich and of high quality which means download times can be longer than they should which can frustrate end users
  2. By default, they are not searchable by Google and other search engines which means that even though the site might look fab, nobody will ever find it through a search engine
  3. The end user’s browser has to have flash installed on it (and the correct version of it)
  4. Often similar effects can be achieved through CSS, Javascript and HTML

As a result I would suggest that flash be used for dynamic areas of the site e.g. a slideshow on the home page, a dynamic menu, a snazzy gallery component and so on and so forth.  There are some great websites out there such as www.FlashDen.net, which have thousands of flash components that can be installed on any website.

A recent website we built at UTD Web Design was www.harveys.ie,  which has a flash slideshow component on the homepage and a flash gallery component in the photos sections also.