Web Design & Development Articles
Insights and advice to help you keep up with the increasingly fast pace of change in web design, brand design and social & digital media marketing.
Pros and Cons of In-House CMS Systems v Drupal
We were very surprised to hear recently of a company using a vendor's own in-house CMS, we thought these had died out years ago!
There are, however, some serious down-sides to using a CMS created by an individual company - especially when compared to a system such as Drupal:
SecurityAll websites are constantly being scanned for vulnerabilities by malicious users, Drupal has a security team issuing patches on a regular (monthly) basis to keep your site protected. It is constantly stress-tested and maintained by its global… Read More
Goodbye Drupal 6, Hello Drupal 9
Last month we said a sad goodbye to our last remaining Drupal 6 sites.
These were set up for Dentsply a multi-national dental supplies company who has since changed name and corporate sturucture. They remained as Drupal 6 sites owing to the changes in the company and a lack of focus to do anything with them - either upgrade or replace.
However, this has been an interesting experience as it has shown us that Drupal sites can live long after their official end of life. According to the official Drupal announcement, the EOL (end… Read More
Drupal Commerce 2 - How to Switch to Dev Branch
Working with Drupal 8 and Commerce 2 requires sites to be built using composer, a PHP dependency manager.
Composer is a fantastic tool for managing code and the ever-growing mesh of dependencies which form the backbone of modern websites. However, it can be a royal *headache* when it won't behave!
We recently had a requirement to switch a Commerce 2 site from the stable code branch to the 2.x-dev branch - and found a bunch of problems stopping us from doing that. The essence of the problem is that everything is dependent on… Read More
New Drupal 8 website for local musician Jon Pollard
We've been hard at work lately gigging around the local area - and working on a website to promote Jon Pollard Music.
In addition to making a simple Drupal 8 website we've been working on Videos, video editing and re-colouring, remixing audio tracks and gig photography. It's a large and varied set of skills that we have been developing, so if you are interested in video and photography, get in touch and watch this space for more developments.
Website Launch, Uncovered Ground
We've just launched a new website for a local covers band - Uncovered Ground.
They are a great band and a singer who is also part of Turtlereality! Uncovered Ground play a mix of classic rock songs from bands like Pink Floyd, Bowie, The Doors, T-Rex and, as they say, many more!
You can find out how to book them at https://uncoveredground.co.uk
Free Drupal Security Audit
For a limited time, we are pleased to be able to offer free Security Audits for Drupal websites.
Drupal has some of the toughest security of any CMS system available - but it also relies on being correctly set up and kept up to date. If your site has not been kept up to date with the latest security patches there is a chance your site has vulnerabilities or has been hacked.
It's possible for websites to be compromised without site owners realizing. In fact, keeping quiet about a… Read More
Drupal Web Development 10 Year Anniversary!
We've been doing Drupal website development for 10 years!!
10 years of Drupal development and design for Drupal 6, 7 and now Drupal 8. It's been a blast, sometimes crazy, sometimes amazing, always intrigung - here are some highlights.
2009 - Drupal 6When we started as Drupal designers, developing sites with Drupal 6 it was hard work. Just to get the thing working was a struggle. But, once you had it running, you could suddenly do a lot of exciting things. One of… Read More
20 Years of Web Design & Web Development
Turtlereality has been in business designing and developing websites for 20 years. In that time the internet and the web has changed fundamentally at an incredible rate. Here are some of the highlights.
1999 - HTML PagesWhen we started out, a web site was very often made up of a collection of hard-coded HTML pages which linked to each other. It was a revolutionary new concept and very cutting edge. The web was where the cool kids hung out reading Wired magazine and checking Web Monkey on their Palm Pilots.
2000 -… Read More
Web Site Launch: Tantivy Exmoor
A brand new, bespoke designed, mobile-friendly website for a small business on Exmoor. The Tantivy is a local institution but had a very poor internet presence. We've changed all that with a great new Drupal 8 website.
Web Design for Small BusinessOur client base is very diverse. We deal with Multi-Nationals and household names, but a lot of our work is with small local… Read More
Web Site Launch: Ed Knight's Logs
At the beginning of the cold weather, I ordered some wood from our regular supplier who then, in turn, commisioned us to build them a new website. Less than 2 months later the new site is up and running:
https://ed-knights-logs.co.uk/
The site is built using Drupal 8 and the new Drupal Commerce version, Commerce 2. The build was a bit of an adventure, lots to learn about the new software, but it's definitely been worth it. Commerce 2 has a whole new architecture which makes… Read More