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.

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

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

Hosting Maintenance ( 10 minute loss of service)

I use two hosting companies for websites. One of them is where the majority of sites are located currently. They have advised me that they are going to be carrying out maintenance on their systems this morning (2nd July). There may be a 10 minute period where the website and mail is not functioning between 7am and 12:00pm today.