Maintenance issues: Gallery, Form Manager and Calendar

The following plugins have been causing some problems recently, one has disappeared completely, (Form Manager), another which is a calendar is no longer supported, and the third which managed images in a gallery has broken some websites.

Best Websoft Gallery

It has come to my attention that Best Websoft Gallery which is a photo gallery plugin I have used on some websites now has an incompatibility with WordPress template TwentyTen. Some of the early websites I built were based on the (non responsive) WordPress TwentyTen template. This problem was first detected in December 2016 on a multi site installation equivalent to six sites full of photographs. Continue reading Maintenance issues: Gallery, Form Manager and Calendar

Editing with a cache or …..

Why can I not see my edits?

On some sites I have started using a Cache plugin. A Cache in computer terms is the temporary storage of something that has been built, so that the next person that needs it can pick it up quickly, it does not need to be rebuilt.

The times we are talking about here are measured in 10’s of milliseconds, but they all count.

WordPress is a content management system. The backend is powered by a database. When you request a page, the page has to be built before it is “served” to your browser. This means it is slower than a hard coded HTML page or website, which is built and ready to go but not dynamic.

Caches also work within your browser as well to accelerate the browsing experience. If I have the stylesheet for a website already in my browser because I have visited the home page, I don’t need to download it again the next time I open a page. This saves time as well. The browser makes these decisions, it is transparent to the user.

However while using a cache accelerates the user experience it can sometimes get in the way of editing. Recently I have seen examples where I am pretty sure I have edited something but I cannot see it on the website. Through experience, I know the item has changed and can prove it by using another browser. However it is very frustrating, particularly if you are a newbie, and not that familiar with how these things work. So read on for some tips…… Continue reading Editing with a cache or …..

New Child Contact Centre Template Available

October 2016

I have developed a new template for branch offices of the National Association of Child Contact Centres. The main difference between this template and the former one is that it is responsive. The former one was not.

What is responsive and why is it important

A responsive site adapts itself depending on the screen size of the viewing device. It is mobile friendly, so it works well on smart phones and tablets (iPads). The earlier site which was originally developed in 2012 was a fixed layout which does not adapt the layout for mobile devices.

Around 2 years ago Google commented that there were now more mobile web users than those operating from a laptop or desktop. Google now rates responsive websites higher than unresponsive ones. Google also annotates your site to indicate whether it is mobile friendly or not in some searches.

lccc-desktop

mobile-display-ccc — Mobile view of the same site

The new design is available as a template upgrade for existing users of NACCC websites for a one off payment of £65.

I have to modify some artworks, the application of the template involves adapting the home page to a different layout, and a redesigned sidebar and footer area.

The rest of your content remains as it was. The template also features a special style that can create buttons for links, and a highlighted panel if you wish to promote something. These are used on the front page of the website.

Contact me please for more details.

You can see the Loughborough Child Contact Centre site here.

If you make the width of your browser narrower, you can see how the site adapts to a narrower screen.

New Home-Start sites for July 2016

Home-Start Surrey

This new design is now available to Home-Start organisations that are looking to refresh their presence on the web. It is based on a new style of template and incorporates some premium stock images as well as Home-Start sourced stock images. An example site can be seen here: http://homestartsurrey.org/

Continue reading New Home-Start sites for July 2016

New sites this month

Parkinson’s West Herts Branch

Parkinson’s West Herts branch was launched on the 26th of June. This site has been under development for over three months. This is the second Parkinson’s website I have developed.

Much of the content for the site was taken from the Year Book which is an annual publication that lists the operational details of the group.

The front page was created last providing a sign posting page to allow people to quickly identify the areas they wish to visit from the home page.

The site also uses Modern Tribe Events Calendar, which is one of the best and most comprehensive calendar plugins I have come across. Check out the sidebar on some pages that list the next events.

The site can be located here: http://parkinsons-westherts.org.uk

Aylesbury Vale Rape Crisis

This is a second generation site, the first one was completed wholly in HTML four years ago. The replacement site uses Divi, a premium template that allows a lot of customisation of the layout and has lots of special features built into the template that are easily accessible to the user. I use some of these features on this site. It is lot more dynamic than the former sites I have built.

It also uses stock images for the first time. I have access to millions of high quality images from Adobe. They are not free, but once acquired for an organisation the organisation is free to use them on printed as well as web content.

This site has a “front door” which is deliberately played down due to the nature of the content on the site. It also features quick exit buttons as well from all pages.

The site can be located here: http://avrc.org.uk

Home-Start Stroud District

I have lost count of how many Home-Start websites I have built now, it is probably in the 40’s. This one is based on a standard template I developed last year which is responsive. Of note on this site is the presence of their facebook feed which is reproduced at the bottom of the site on the home page in a window.

The plugin is called “Custom Facebook Feed” by Smash Balloon.

The site can be located here: http://homestartsd.org/

JE Miller Accountancy and Taxation Ltd

For those of you that have assumed I exclusively support Charities and Not for Profit groups, I have provided a few small business sites as well. This one has been put together for J.E. Miller Accountants based in Bury St Edmunds.

If you know anyone that would like a small business site please put them in touch.

It has been built using the new premium framework I am using by Elegant Themes.

You can see the site here: http://jemiller.co.uk/

Home-Start Surrey

Home-Start County Sites

I have been working with Home-Start Surrey and have moved their old site over to a new framework. As is the case with many Home-Starts around the country they have county wide sites that can represent the interests of the consortium of schemes in the region to assist in raising funding and awareness.

While the site is not aimed at providing direct support to families, there are self help pages that will allow a visitor to locate and directly contact the most local centre in Surrey. This allows the scheme to be visible on the web, but not have to spend time in redirecting enquiries to local regional offices.

The site went live in late July. It can be located here: http://homestartsurrey.org/ It uses a brand new framework based on a premium template called Divi adapted for Home-Start. It also uses stock images as well as the standard Home-Start images.

New Home-Start design

A derivative of this template will be available to all Home-Start schemes, please contact me if you are interested. The template can be retrospectively added to an existing site, so you retain your content within the framework. I can also build new sites based on this work.

BT is filtering your mail….

This seems to be true for the past two months, because there is an increasing number of people aware of it, they may eventually do something about it.

The problem

On one of my sites I have an address database with around 900 subscribers. This list has grown organically (people subscribe themselves) over 2 years.

A newsletter is sent out once per month and occasionally there are news alerts when we need to make sure people are aware of an event or meeting. This has worked without too many problems for several years. Until March of this year.

I found that around 17% of the subscriber base had rejected the messages from the server. Closer analysis showed that all of them shared one common attribute, they were all on BT or BT related email addresses. So btinternet.com, btconnect.com, talk21.com, openworld.com etc. None of the other domains rejected the messages. Continue reading BT is filtering your mail….

New range of premium templates available

Over the course of this year I have had feedback from various sources that there is a new style of website around that is more aimed at mobile users and optimised as such. This class of website is more dynamic and has a lot more features in than the free ones I generally use. I use free ones to keep the costs of production down.

Over the past year there has been a shift from the traditional desktop fixed computer configuration when accessing the web to mobile users. These changes reflect this.

Last year I introduced some responsive templates to some organisations, notably Home-Start users. These adapt the presentation of the site to mobile users Continue reading New range of premium templates available

Changes in domain name pricing

The registrar that I use for your domain names has increased their pricing for .org.uk extensions on domain names. As I host a lot of charities this affects most people. There used to be a small cost advantage in buying domain names over 2yrs for .co.uk and .org.uk vs one year. That has now been removed.

Because there is no benefit I will renew automatically on an annual cycle starting in April. The charges seemed to change in January, although my costs only seemed to rise in March 2016 where they almost doubled. This is not something associated with my registrar the pricing has gone up everywhere.

I am also reviewing my internal processes and may realign domain name renewals with hosting renewals. For a variety of reasons some of you are billed twice annually once for domain names and once for hosting. To reduce my paperwork I may align these over the next quarter.

Streaming Video

One of the things I will be looking at over the next month will be the provision of streaming video through a website. This presents a few technical challenges as it would be too impractical to stream live video from a business unless it had a high bandwidth connection. This is for a Radio Station in the midlands. They want to stream video from their studio onto their website.

If this is something you may be interested in, think particularly about security and keeping an eye on your office, then I may be able help once I have this first one up and running.

The general concept is live video is streamed to an intermediate point and this is used to stream video to multiple locations via the website. YouTube are now offering a live video streaming service, but it is in beta test (a pre production test phase) prior to release.

Why not reply below if you are interested in learning more about this.

New Wingrove-Media.Com site

Firstly I am ashamed to say it has taken me so long to do this despite the best intentions, but I have eventually got around to publishing my own site in a WordPress format. I have thinned it out somewhat and got it down to essentials and I will continue to review it. The site is here; www.wingrove-media.com and I would welcome any comments and in particular testimonials I can add to the site.

It is a long time overdue largely because I have been helping everyone else!