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.
10/09/2017Why We Love Drupal
The other day we were talking to a prospective client about how we make websites and we started talking about Drupal, which is the open source content management system that we have been using for several years, and I'm embarrassed to say that we sounded a bit gushy!
The truth is that Drupal competely changed the way we build sites - and we've not looked back! So, what is it about this oddly-named software that gets us so excited?
It's Powerful
… Read More
16/07/2017Site Launch: As CAD Services Limited
We've just launched a new site for a new Wiltshire based company - AS CAD Services Ltd - experts in Autodesk® Advance Steel technical, offering specialist training, consultation and draughting services.
We took them from logo design to site programming. The site is built using… Read More
07/07/2017Step by step guide to upgrading CiviCRM
Here is a simple step by step guide to upgrading CiviCRM with Drupal 7, the ideal platform for charity web design.
The full details are here - https://docs.civicrm.org/sysadmin/en/latest/upgrade/?query=extensions#b…; - but we find it handy to have a quick guide without too many unnecessary details
Backup CiviCRM and Drupal databases using Backup and Migrate 3.x dev… Read More
04/07/2017How awesome is Drupal 8? Like, almost totally!
We've been working with Drupal 8 for a while now and I think it's a good time to reflect on what we've learned. Good and bad points - but mainly good.
The Good Points Drupal 8 is more refined and has better workflows. Using it is faster, more intuitive and more user friendly with a better design to the whole system. In lots of ways that you can't specifically put your finger on, it just seems to work better. Drupal 8 is faster - one of the problems of Drupal 7 is that for logged in users it can be sluggish. With Drupal 8 though,… Read More
26/05/2017Using Drupal Commerce Discounts to Ease Stress
Peak times of demand such as Christmas and Easter can put strain on an E-commerce site's physical resources. Encouraging customers to buy ahead of time might help to ease this - and e-commerce discounts can be a good way to do this. Here is a quick round up of the discount and coupon offers available through our Drupal Commercebased systems: Types of offer £ off - fixed amount off total order % off - fixed percentage off total order free shipping % off shipping - applied to each… Read More
19/05/2017Drupal Website Backup Strategy
Backups are vital, but just having a backup isn't enough, what's needed is a backup strategy, which means thinking about what you are protecting against, setting up a system and testing that it actually works.
CodeA Drupal website installation has two elements, database and code. The codebase should be running under some kind of version control which gives you great layer of protection when it's hosted in a private repository on GitHub or BitBucket. The repository contains… Read More
08/05/2017Why Would Anybody Want to Hack My Site?
It's a common mis-conception among website owners that hackers would not be interested in their website because it doesn't contain any information worth stealing, or that hackers wouldn't be interested in attacking their friendly helpful site. The truth is that hackers can benefit from gaining control of any site - so you need to be secure.
So, how exactly can hackers benefit from taking over your site?
SEO SpamThe most common use of a hijacked site is SEO spam - injecting links into your site which point to other sites,… Read More
03/05/2017Web Design Workflow, Reliability Through Drupal & Git
One of the biggest changes in the way we work over the last few years has been the introduction of version control into our workflow. As systems get ever more complex, we need better tools to manage them and this has led to using something called "Git". Git is great because it allows us to easily manage our workflow of "dev", "staging" and "live". Let's break that all down a bit and explain what it means.
Many web design companies, particularly at the low end of… Read More
06/04/2017Permission to send
There is a big difference between having access to a list of email addresses, and having permission to send email to that list.By using this software you agree to follow our permission policy for sending emails, which is required by our Terms of Use. If you don't have proven permission to email the addresses on your mailing lists, you are sending spam.
… Read More
16/01/2017All of These Web Sites Look the Same!
Have you noticed how all web sites are starting to look the same? Is it a good thing? Do stock solutions always work?
Despite the commoditisation of web design, I believe there is still a role for the designer. Buying a template is not the end of the story - it's not how flashy it is, it's how you use it. The elements that you add to the template - imagery, branding, text and even the structure of the pages can be good or bad. Your customer's experience can… Read More