New Home-Start Template Available

Following some work on another project I have developed a new low cost framework for Home-Start sites. This is now the 5th generation for Home-Starts from when I started around 5 years ago.

Responsive site — Desktop/ Laptop display

Responsive display — Same site displayed on a phone

Some people do not like the heavy dominance of the orange sidebar in the old Home-Start Lite site template. The new design is cleaner and brighter with more white in the background, and more open than the former design, although the former design is still available if anyone wishes to use it.

This has been built largely because of the demand for low cost responsive websites. It also compliments the premium Home-Start websites I have been building over the summer and autumn period. The premium sites have a lot more work involved in creating them, so I felt it was necessary to continue to provide an entry level solution.

The new template is available to existing Home-Start websites for a single fee starting from £60 (up to ten pages) to swap the templates over and change some of the layout to fit the new style. Your content can be retained in this framework. Higher page counts will be based on £5/ page.

I also upgrade the contact form to a new style of form.

I can also import an old website, even those not built in WordPress to this new framework. Contact me for more details if this is of interest.

In case you are curious there is no Home-Start Seething, this is a demonstration website only for the purposes of displaying this example.

Windows 10 upgrades

There have been several reports over the past month about Microsoft upgrading people’s computers to Windows 10 from Windows, 7, 8 and 8.1. This seems to be happening without the consent of the computer owner.

Windows 10 is a free upgrade, however it appears that in some cases including my own (because I checked) I was going to get it whether I wanted it or not.

MS Office Disappeared!

I helped out a colleague two weeks ago whose computer was upgraded without her permission. She just accepted it after it happened, and then could not find anything because the interface had changed. I think I am correct in saying that Microsoft also download a version of Office onto computers as well as the operating system. It is not activated, just sitting there as an install file. In this case the user clicked on it and started to use the latest version of MS Office. It stopped working 2 weeks later asking for a licence key.

In this case she had an older version (circa 2003) of MS Office on the computer that was licenced, however it appears the installation of the latest one removed the old one! So I could not roll it back. Needless to say nobody had retained the disks for the original version so in this case Microsoft had deleted Office because of operator error and Microsoft installing an operating system that was not required. It can happen to anyone.

An easy solution to this?

In this case I loaded Open Office on her computer and she was able to continue editing Office Documents without MS Office for free. Just bear that in mind if you find yourself in a similar position and don’t know what to do.

GWX in the system tray

I was aware of an application that sits in your tray in the bottom right hand corner of your screen which is called GWX.exe. It is installed by Microsoft during one of the many updates that you need to get as part of the maintenance of any Windows machine. See the image below.

gwx upgrade

Having checked my colleague’s computer and done some research, I thought I would check out my computer. Sure enough an upgrade was scheduled two days later! I turned it off.

Open and Check

If you go to your system tray and open the icons and click on the Windows 10 Upgrade icon you will see a screen that gives you some options. In my case I declined the upgrade so my screen may look different to yours.

gwx upgrade2

Do you need it?

I prefer to consent to have my computer altered. I have experience of Windows 10 on a non-touch screen laptop. It is really an adaptation of their operating system for touch screens so it does not have any major benefits for me personally on a desktop machine.

If you have Windows 8 or 8.1 installed (which are also touch screen operating systems) then you will benefit from installing it. It looks similar and is an improved version.

If you have Windows 7 installed and you are happy with Windows 7 then I would recommend hanging on for a point in time when you have the opportunity to set some time aside to learn the new operating system rather than have it provided when Microsoft gets around to doing it for you automatically. There is nothing worse than waking up one morning with a huge list of things to get done and finding you have wasted several hours in relearning how to use your computer.

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

Slow Internet? A guide for improving network performance.

Or… the Onion of Discontent

There are many reasons why an internet connection may be slow, some of them will be directly under your control, and others will be under the control of the equipment manufacturers of the devices used that the communications pass through. The extent of which is from the device you are using to the server at the far end of the connection. Various services providers share the responsibility of carrying the traffic. It is a complex picture to reconcile.

Where is the problem?

When trying to establish where a problem exists the first person you call is your service provider (BT, Talk Talk, Virgin etc). They will follow a fixed trouble shooting process which will try to prove that the problem is something you are doing, or have done or is within that part of the network you control. They adopt this approach because if nothing is listed as a fault in your area, then statistically it is most likely to be something at your end.

That will include your router/ hub, your phone wiring, the building materials used in your house, the location of WiFi access points, the list is large. They will not be as direct as that, however those are the implications. Continue reading Slow Internet? A guide for improving network performance.

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