Welcome to a round up of the latest websites we have launched in September 2013, a wide range from e-commerce, estate agency and bespoke website builds.
If you would like to know more about having a great looking website designed and developed for your business, please get in touch. Funding for up to 40% of the total costs of each web project is available for certain types of business – please ask for more details.
I’m not usually alarmist – but here’s a question. Do you actually own your website? Could, if you wanted, you get a copy of your site, code, database, images etc. on a CD or via a server? If not how do you claim ownership of it – even though you can’t physically access it?
I’ve come across some ‘alternative’ ways of purchasing a website. They mainly revolve around paying a monthly fee, rather than an up-front cost and then any additional annual hosting charges. These methods sounds very good – you get a new website without the initial ‘hit’ of paying for one upfront. However I have yet to see one of these offers where you actually get a website – where you pay monthly and have the website on your servers, or on your computer or given to you to use.
These types of sites tend to be built into systems and software which are the property of your provider. Although they have your company details and branding, the actual code behind the sites are run by software you cannot get a copy of – doing so would breach their Intellectual Property. Therefore you don’t actually own the website, you are essentially leasing the website on a Pay-as-you-go basis.
Imagine if you bought a car, but couldn’t access the engine. Only one mechanic with a magic key could open the lid, work on the car, service it and change parts. Even if you just wanted to fill up the water, imagine if only he or she could do that for you? What happens if the mechanic isn’t available, goes out of business or loses the key?
So why should that matter? Well it doesn’t, until you want to improve and upgrade your site and move it away from your current provider. Bespoke websites are built from the ground up and are created so they can work on any standard hosting platform (of which there are only 2 main types – Linux and Windows). They can be put on a CD (code + database) and given to another company to be worked on, improved and extended. Also key is the database – if you have an ecommerce or dynamic website, the last thing you want is to have to re-input all your orders, customers or products. Any reputable development company can take another’s code and data and use that to create a new site or improve a current site.
If your website is just an extension of your advertising, and you are happy to consider paying monthly a way of leasing space on the web, that’s great. If you consider your website as an investment, as something you have invested time and money into, you should want to have the piece of mind that if you wanted to, you could at any time get a copy of the site and code and do what you wish with it. Do yourself a favour and double check.
By Colin Harris
(all our customers have full CPanel access to their sites, we have no transfer or termination charges and all design and development is 100% the properties of our clients)
Looking for a new website? Or want to replace your old, outdated site with a fresh, modern website? We’re feeling rather generous and have created the perfect package for you this summer.
For £600 (including VAT) we will provide you with a stunning website, hosted and maintained by ourselves at our secure hosting facilities. The full package includes:
Upgrades are available if you would like the site to do a little more, and funding is also applicable to certain types of businesses and website projects – ask us for more information.
To find out more contact us or ring the office on 01665 714433. Examples of our work can be found on our Website Design Portfolio. Offer ends 31st August 2013.
Colin Harris Website Development have worked on over 300 projects since 2006 providing website design, development, e-commerce, hosting and support to businesses. They work with clients of all sizes both in the North East area and across the UK.
By Colin Harris
A revolutionary new website has been launched this month by two entrepreneurs from the North East. Street Review UK is set to transform the way in which tenants and owners make decisions on their next property – the “Trip Advisor” of the property market.
The website, www.streetreviewuk.com, allows users to quickly search and browse for any street in the UK. Once there they can see reviews of each street, allowing them to see how other people rate the street with a star rating. They can also view statistics about the street such as house prices and crime rates, and submit their own review.
David Hodgson, Co-founder of Street Review UK, says “The idea of this website came when I was myself looking to move to a new home in a new area, there was no information to let me know exactly what the street was like to live in, were the neighbours friendly? Were their many children in the street? How easy was parking? StreetReviewUK.com will hopefully solve this problem for all home movers in the 21st Century and revolutionise the way residents of the UK find their next property, we will soon be able to calculate, from reviews written on our website, which streets in the UK are ranked the highest, we will also provide details of ‘dream homes’ in your area as well as houses for sale or rent”
Colin Harris, founder of Colin Harris Website Development, stated “David and Stephen came to us with his unique idea and immediately we were interested in providing the technical solution for his website. We really enjoy working on exciting projects such as Street Review and found it an enjoyable challenge meeting their requirements and tight deadlines to launch a new site with such potential.”
The site is currently running a competition to win an iPad2 or iPad mini, all you have to do to enter the competition is write a review of any street you have lived in on their website – so why not pay a visit and leave a review of your site for a chance to win? For more information about the site, please visit http://www.streetreviewuk.com or contact Customer Support on [email protected].
By Colin Harris
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MORPETH Town Council has launched a new website giving residents greater access to the latest council information whilst ensuring they still have the services they would like to use at their fingertips.
The site has been developed as part of Morpeth Town Council’s dedication to improve access to current news and information regarding the services, activities and events relating to the authority.
The website, designed and developed by ourselves features a revamped and improved homepage, a simplistic navigation system and search facility as well as the ability to download the latest council documents.
Colin Harris said: “We took the underlying structure of the old website and modernised it throughout, reflecting the informative and efficient ethos of the council.
“The site is a WordPress based content management system which allows the council staff to amend and update information on a real-time basis, ensuring the site is up-to-date with the latest council news.”
Councillor Ken Brown said: “The new website is an exciting development in our drive to grow our online presence and most importantly our efficiency. Due to the content management system the council staff have direct control over the uploading and modification of any online content allowing us to provide our users with the most relevant and current information.
“We were delighted to award Colin Harris Website Development the contract due to an excellent balance of cost-efficiency and high quality results, as well as an extensive proven track record.
“We will continue to develop the website, including the addition of an online voting function – allowing users to have their say on local issues. This is just the beginning of what we hope to be a long and fruitful relationship with Colin Harris Website Development.”
Colin Harris Website Development was also responsible for the design and formation of The Morpeth Neighbourhood Plan website, a project in which Morpeth Town Council takes the lead.
To take a peek at either website visit http://www.themorpethneighbourhoodplan.org.uk/ or http://www.morpeth-tc.gov.uk/
As featured in The Morpeth Herald
By Colin Harris
Welcome to the new Colin Harris Web Development site!
To coincide with the expansion and success of our team we have have relaunched our website to showcase our products and services in a more friendly manner.
Following the launch of our new website and blog, we aim to create more useful and interesting content within the web development industry ranging from comment pieces to tips and advice to the latest examples of our work.
This will not only provide content that you (hopefully) find interesting and useful but will help you keep up-to-date with our team and company news.
By Colin Harris
I’ve come across a couple of very cool tips to decrease the loading time of webpages to the browser using Apache 2. They only take a few minutes to do and make your pages up to 50% quicker to load, which is never a bad thing. They also decrease the traffic between your users and your server.
These instructions are for Apache 2.2, they work equally well for earlier versions but you’ll have to work out your own ways of enabling the modules (step 1)
1) Enable three module - mod_deflate, mod_expires and mod_headers
cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
ln -s ../mods-available/deflate.conf
ln -s ../mods-available/deflate.load
ln -s ../mods-available/headers.load
ln -s ../mods-available/expires.load
(any file exists errors mean they are already installed so don’t worry)
2) Open your httpd.conf file
cd ../
vi httpd.conf
3) Add in the rules
(press i to enable the insert function)
copy and paste this lot:
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault “access plus 300 seconds”ExpiresByType text/html “access plus 1 day”
ExpiresByType text/css “access plus 1 day”
ExpiresByType text/javascript “access plus 1 day”
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript “access plus 1 day”
ExpiresByType ext/x-js “access plus 1 day”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access plus 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/jpg “access plus 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/png “access plus 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access plus 1 day”SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript ext/x-js application/x-javascript
Press ESC
type :wq!
4) Restart apache
/etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Explanation
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault “access plus 300 seconds”
This turns on the Expire module – this tells browsers when they should next look for a new version of a file. For static content like images this can be a long time, for files that are likely to change often this should be a shorter time. Default set as 5 minutes.
ExpiresByType text/html “access plus 1 day”
ExpiresByType text/css “access plus 1 day”
ExpiresByType text/javascript “access plus 1 day
…. and so on
For each file type (MIME type is the technical term) we can fine tune the rules. 1 day for text, js and html files, 1 months for images and so on. You can set these to what ever you wish or remove/add as you please
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript ext/x-js application/x-javascript
Turn on the Deflate module – this sliently compressess the output specified in the line below – bit like when you use Zipping up to send large files to someone via email. All browsers decompress the output files without any trouble.
The text files are the ones targeted as they tend to be the most compressable – between 50% and 80%.
Conclusion
So there we have it – a very quick and simple way to make web pages quicker to load. It also makes Google love you that little bit more when its Bots are crawling your site, and that’s never a bad thing.
By Colin Harris
Facebook has very kindly provided web developers with a simple code to insert into any page, which will allow anyone logged into Facebook to ‘like’ a page.
Instructions are here:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like
So if you “like” this – please click the “like” icon above. Go on it won’t help put food on the table, but it will help to demonstrate the usefulness of this piece of technology.
By Colin Harris