I need editing help

I appreciate that while my intent is to help you all to manage your own editing, that is not always possible. Some people just don’t want to do any editing. Or it is too large a job to handle.

If you want me to update your sites on your behalf, I can do that to help you. There are a couple of sites where I provide this service.

It is fair to say I can probably make changes more quickly than you can. If you want me to make changes on your behalf; group a set of changes together along with all of the information that is needed. I will reply with an estimate on how long it will take to complete the work. For ad hoc changes my charges will be £20/ hr in increments of 15 minutes. So asking me to add a couple of events to your site and a supporting article would take me 15 minutes to add and test and a charge of £5. I will always advise how long it will take and seek your permission to proceed.

If there is something that you cannot change easily I will continue to handle these at no charge provided I do not too many requests from the same site.

If you need more than this level of help, then contact me and we can figure out how I can help.

Got a server? Then you may need one of these.

This might seem like a luxury, they have been around for a long time and also very expensive. Now however they are available to home users and small businesses for less than £100.

UPS

A UPS is an Uninterruptable Power Supply. It is used to maintain power to devices that need to run continuously. Things like servers, network attached storage (NAS), and to a lesser extent your router and some key network devices if you are backing up your server.

You can also use it to power your desktop PC, which should mean you never lose anything through a power failure.

They perform several important functions, one is power line conditioning, and the other is continuing to provide 240v AC to a device when the mains power to a property or office fails.

The way they do this is by charging a battery (or several batteries) in a box. The power from the batteries is passed to an inverter which regenerates the 240V AC at an output or several outputs.

If the incoming mains power is interrupted then the output of the device continues to run based on the available battery power. That is, until the battery is exhausted.

The more sophisticated ones can send signals to attached devices to ask them to shut down (gracefully). Continue reading Got a server? Then you may need one of these.

Understanding how to use this site

I have added a page under the main menu that shows you how to use this site. There are currently over 350 news/ self help/ information items on the site with hints and tips and 34 fixed pages. I realised that some of you visiting here may not be aware they are there because they cannot be located directly through the main menu.

They are news posts that are accessed through the news and alerts page. Each is categorised according to the content in the page and it’s relevance.

To help you get as much information as possible from the information on this site please see this page for more an explanation of how the site works. How to use this site.

For clients of Wingrove-Media

If you have recently been working with me, and I have developed a site for you, or I am hosting your site you can sign up to a monthly newsletter using the form below:

Please note that if you are not recognised as a client you will not be added to the mailing list. Most general articles on this site are freely available to everyone, I have made this available in the same spirit of many other developers who wish to help people, if only in thanks to those that have helped me in the past when I first started. The purpose of the content in this site is primarily targeted at my client base who have a specific implementation or are using specific services to support their website and email.

Please check the sidebar for a list of articles, or search the site for something using the methods described in the sidebar. There is a category cloud in the side bar which is used to categorise posts. You can use this to narrow down your search.

Social Media – Spread the word

Social media in all of it’s forms is increasingly important, particularly for organisations with small budgets, or no marketing budget at all!

I have come across a very neat plugin for WordPress, it is called Social Media Feather. I have incorporated it on a couple of sites and it seems to be moderately easy to set up.

I have also set it up on this site as well. You can add it to your website by logging in as an administrator and going to Plugins, Add new, and searching for Social Media Feather.

It provides two sets of buttons, one for sharing a site/article/page and another set for following a Facebook/ Twitter or similar feed. Continue reading Social Media – Spread the word

Sites under development this month

Desi Radio

The project ported an HTML site I developed three years ago to a responsive (mobile friendly) WordPress framework while retaining the look and feel of the original site.

The former site required editing through a special HTML editor (Kompozer) and then uploading to the hosting through an application called FileZilla. With the changes to WordPress everything can now be edited live online through a browser.

Follow this link to see the site: currently located at http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk/desiradio

Home-Start North West Hampshire

The project required the development of a new site based on a WordPress Responsive template (this was a specific requirement in this case). The client’s former site was difficult to edit and the formatting was no longer functioning correctly.

The template behind this site is available to other Home-Start organisations. Contact me for more information.

Follow this link to see the site. http://homestart-nwhampshire.org.uk/

Home-Start Spelthorne

This was an upgrade from an older template to the newer responsive design to make the site easier to use for mobile users.

Visit the site here: http://www.home-startspelthorne.org/

Home-Start Tamworth

This was an upgrade from an HTML site (1st generation) to the newer responsive design (3rd generation) to make the site easier to use for mobile users.

Visit the site here: http://www.homestarttamworth.org.uk

Home-Start Derby

This project was to replace an older site which was difficult to edit with a new WordPress platform. In this case I am using the new Home-Start Responsive template to base the site on.

Visit the site here: http://www.homestartderby.co.uk

Home-Start Uttlesford

This was an upgrade from an older template to the newer responsive design to make the site easier to use for mobile users.

Visit the site here: http://www.homestartuttlesford.org.uk

Home-Start North Somerset

This was a replacement site for Home-Start North Somerset. The previous site was difficult to edit with formatting errors. The new site was put together some time ago but there have been issues identifying the owner of their domain name in order to release it. The site is now published using a new domain name and there is redirect code at their old website.

Visit the site here: http://home-startnorthsomerset.org.uk/

News Flash not Flashy enough?

This is all a matter of personal taste; there used to be a <blink> tag in HTML, the majority of browsers no longer support it. It seems that one of the reasons it was dropped was because of overuse and too many flashing things on a site becomes a distraction. Personally I do not like any sites with more than one moving image on them. It becomes distracting and irritating have lots of things all demanding your attention.

I have had a request for a flashing News Flash message, something to make it stand out a little more. Particularly when the News Flash entry on say a home page is always there. Regular viewers may no longer notice it, it becomes part of the wallpaper. So how can you make sure that people notice something new, or that you wish to draw their attention to it? Continue reading News Flash not Flashy enough?

Fundraising

There are several types of donations you will receive, broadly speaking they fall into the following categories:

Grants. These come from funding bodies, and it is likely you had to go through a process to receive them and were in competition with others, they will generally be in £x000’s

Fundraising Event. A one off event such as a table top sale or something your volunteers did to help raise some money. From £50-250.

Single donations. Largely coming from the public or from the commercial sector, from £1 to several £100.

Repeat donations. Generally from a person that knows what you do and wishes to support you on a regular basis. Often in the form of a standing order directly to your charity account, or through a 3rd party collecting on your behalf such as Virgin Money Giving.

While the latter group monthly contribution may be small, the fact that it is there each month is arguably of higher value to you than the single donations. The question is what can you do to encourage repeat donations to your cause, grow the volume of donations, and how can your website help in this regard. Continue reading Fundraising

Upgrade Offer

(Home-Start WordPress sites only)

In theory, I can remove and replace the WordPress templates I have used on your sites and replace them with a new template that is currently under development and viewable at this location: wingrove-media.com/homestart/

It is not quite a simple replacement as I will also need to replace some artworks in the header and in the sidebar and reconnect everything, and reconstruct the menu and then test.

I think this will take around 4 hours to complete per website. If you are interested in upgrading to a responsive website (mobile friendly) then please contact me. I can provide this upgrade at a fixed cost of £45 per Home-Start website over the next two months. Continue reading More on Home-Start Responsive site

Creating Banners for Home-Start (Revisited!)

If you tried to use this Tutorial and failed: Banners for Home-Start then I empathise with you.

I was working with a client this week who told me that she had tried to use it with no success. I tried it and did not succeed either. The problem was very subtle!

I had carefully formatted the text as Courier in the example. Assuming (rather foolishly) that this would be “safe and foolproof”. It was not.

In the examples I have given the quote symbol ” is incorrectly mapped to a different ASCII code, it is not the standard quote symbol used in writing code. It is a special version. This corrupts the code if you cut and paste from my example. When you paste it into a page in Text mode and save it, the code is removed! Why? Because the ” symbol is not recognised and therefore the code is invalid. Rather than accepting invalid code, WordPress strips everything out so as to avoid the website from crashing due to poor or buggy code. That is good if you know what is happening, but bad if you don’t!

Making it foolproof

I have gone back and amended the tutorial by adding a downloadable text file with the correct text in it. Simply download it, open it with NotePad and then copy and paste the relevant section it to make it work. Do not use MS Word or any word processor to do this. Just a plain old text editor. You can either go back to the original article or download the text file from here: boxes code

Just one tip, if you ever find something here which does not work, don’t assume it is something you did, it could be something I did! So drop me a line.

New Responsive Template for Home-Start

I read an article a few weeks ago that stated that there are now more mobile devices (iPads, iPhones, Android and Windows phones and other tablet devices) than desktop/ laptop computers accessing websites. This has interesting implications on websites. Up until a 3-4 years ago, most websites were static layouts. You just got a smaller version of your site on your iPhone/ iPad, but it was essentially the same site and the same layout.

Now it is becoming increasingly important to have different versions of you site for mobile and computer users.

How do you know the difference?

When a device tries to access your website, the server (where the website is located) can ask the device for information about the screen width. Once this is known decisions can be made to adjust the screen width and layout of your site depending on the device that is accessing it so that it is optimised for the device.

Home-Start Responsive Template

I had a request in July for a responsive Home-Start website. The sites I have built for Home-Start satellite offices so far, (40 of them), have been fixed layouts. While I have some experience with responsive layouts and adapting them from free templates, I had not created one for Home-Start sites. Well, the good news is we have one now, and it is close to being completed.

Here are two different versions of the same site: Continue reading New Responsive Template for Home-Start