No ordinary website

Our client Security Wise NW Ltd decided to ramp up their local marketing campaign and snapped up a few domain names dedicated to local advertising.

As a result we at Vivid was tasked with creating them a single page which was aimed at advertising their company for more local searches. We have used HTML5 and CSS3 to make a stunning website which we are very proud of.

So if you  are looking for an  alarm system, CCTV, or other security system in the Chorley or surrounding areas, then why not have a look at http://www.chorleyalarms.co.uk

The website is a single-page design, and the first of this style that Vivid has done. It offers an on-line presence for Reed Solutions and allows for a low-maintenance website. We think it works really well!

It’s a fantastic website, and I am so happy that I asked Gareth to produce it for me. Gareth has also designed me a new Corporate Image which is much needed for 2012. The new business cards that Gareth has designed and is supplying will be a great boost to the image we have already!

Mike Reed - Reed Solutions

Who is Reed Solutions?

Reed Solutions are a Consultancy Company based in South Yorkshire. They provide their services throughout the UK and have an already impressive portfolio of clients. They specialise in several categories including:

• Food Industry – BRC, Internal Audits, Consultancy, Food Related Health and Safety, Training, HACCP, cost reduction, Process Analysis and much more.
• Transport – Cost Controls, JAUPT Approved DriverCPC Training for HGV and PSV (PCV), Transport Related Health and Safety, Drivers Hours, Tacho’s and much more.
• Building Development and Maintenance – All sectors of Building Maintenance and Project Management of developments. All work is carried out by qualified tradesmen.
• Health and Saftey – Reed Solutions act as Health and Safety advisors to several companies in the UK, are up-to-date on the current legislation and are able carry our Risk Assessments and Hazzard Reduction Plans.
• Enforcement Agency Negotioation – Reed Solutions can negotiate on your behalf with enforcement agencies such as VOSA or the HSE.

Experienced AND Qualified

Reed Solutions have been in the Consultancy Business for many years and have earned time-served experience in the fields that they cover. With over 25 years of hands-on experience gained working for some of the biggest companies in the UK, Reed Solutions is the company to contact if you need Consultancy and Advice.

Reed Solutions has a wealth of knowledge and experience, along with the qualifications to support your business. Reed Solutions WILL have the solution to your problem.

Who would benefit from the services of Reed Solutions?

Reed Solutions can benefit any company in the UK with their Consultancy and Advisory skills. Reed Solutions is an ideal company for any business who does not currently have a full-time employee responsible for key positions such as a Health & Safety Manager, or a Transport Manager.

Reed Solutions will help to find a solution to any problem you or your company may have.

What to expect

• New Design
• New Packages
• New System

We will also be removing the Pay Monthly options too due to the cost of running them.

Expect the new site very soon!

Norman Jones: Innocent! (www.normanjonesinnocent.co.uk) is a new CMS powered personal website being with accessabilty, ease of use and style in mind.

Completely powered by CMS, Norman Jones: Innocent! will include a blog, RSS Feed, Information and so much more.

Please keep visiting www.normanjonesinnocent.co.uk over the coming weeks to see the progress of the website.

In actual reality, this isn’t a major issue. Infact, it is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things.

Lets put things into perspective here.

A Major Issue is an issue that causes problems that are pretty serious. While this is self explanitory, what can we list as a Major Issue?

Well, to me, a Major Issue is:

• Web Servers being down – No Server = No Website. This is BAD!
• Email Servers being down – No Server = No Email for you or your clients. Again, this is BAD.
• SQL Server being down – No SQL Server = No SQL Powered website. This is BAD.

So, to clarify – a Major Issue is basically something that kills a website – in my eyes at least.

So if it isn’t a Major Issue I should ignore it, right?

Absolutly not my freind. You see, it may not be a Major Issue but that doesn’t mean it is unimportant. Google and the other major search engines see http://vividwebdesignuk.co.uk and http://www.vividwebdesignuk.co.uk as two different websites. While in essence it is the same website, sloppy link-building can lead to a lower ranking in the search results.

While YOU may be careful to always choose the correct version of the domain in all your links, others may not. Some people always use the www. version of a domain, while others simply prefer the non-www. version of a domain. What you are actually doing is splitting the inbound links in half – thus reducing your ranking by up to 50%. In SEO terms – this is pretty poor.

So how do we redirect?

Firstly it makes sense to understand what kinds of redirects we have to our disposal. We have 301 redirects, know to humans as Permanent Redirects. We also have 302 redirects, known to humans as Temporary Redirects.

And the difference is?

Well, a 302 redirect allows you to add a temporary redirect. So lets say you was running a promotion and wanted to redirect your visitors to a special offer page when they first visited your site, you would use a 302 redirect. A 302 redirect tells the visitors browser to go to a set page, while telling the Search Engines indexing your page that this is only a temporary redirect and it should keep on checking the original URL as it will eventually change.

A 301 redirect tells the search engines that the redirect will be staying, telling them to remove the old location from their index and to replace it with the new one. This is the redirect we need to use.

How to implement the redirect.

For this we are assuming that you are using an apache server and that you have FTP Access to the server at the very least.

You need to create a .htaccess file. If you already have one, try to edit that one first. As with any modifications to any files on a server, make a backup!

We’ll assume you are starting a fresh .htaccess file. Create a TEXT FILE on your PC. Notepad is fine for this if you are a windows user. For Mac users, TextEdit will suffice too. Below is the code you will need to put into your text file.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^vividwebdesignuk.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.vividwebdesignuk.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

Make sure that you change the purple bits to your domain.

If you are happy enough to just get the code and run with it, then simply save the text file as htaccess.txt and upload to the ROOT of your server. Once there, rename it on the server to read .htaccess and you are done. (Note that the file has no name and the extention of .htaccess)

If you want to learn more and understand why you have used the code you have, then please feel free to read on.

The code … decifered.

We can break the code into 4 sections.

Section 1 – Options +FollowSymLinks

This line is required. I tells the server to follow Symbolic Links and is nessecarry for Section 2 to function at all.

Section 2 – ReWriteEngine On

This is the line of code that tells the server to switch on the rewrite code. It is the rewrite code that allows you to redirect the traffic from one address to the other by rewriting the URL. So, section 2 needs section 1 and sections 3 & 4  need section 2.

Section 3 – RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^vividwebdesignuk.co.uk [NC]

This is the rewrite condition. We are telling the server that it needs to rewrite the URL vividwebdesignuk.co.uk. The %{HTTP_HOST} ^ basically means the server root. Also, notice the [NC] at the end? This means “No Case” meaning that it isn’t case sensitive. So, it will detect both VIVIDWEBDESIGNUK.CO.UK and vividwebdesignuk.co.uk and treat them the same. It will also treat a mixed domain like VividWebDesignUK.co.uk the same too.

Section 4 – RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.vividwebdesignuk.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

This last section is the Rewrite Rule and is telling the Search Engines and Browsers where it is to point to. As you can see, the full URL is shown including the http:// as this can redirect to any domain on any server. We are only using the redirect to redirect to the www. version of the site, but if we placed http://www.google.co.uk in there instead it would redirect to Google’s UK Site.

The ^(.*)$ at the beginning of the domain and the $1 at the end are linked together. This tells us that the domain will comes first and anything trailing the domain will come in place of $1. In other words vividwebdesignuk.co.uk/webdesign.php gets split – webdesign.php becomes $1. The redirect takes the vividwebdesignuk.co.uk/ bit and redirects it to http://www.vividwebdesignuk.co.uk/ then appends the content of $1 to the end of the URL giving us the correct URL of http://www.vividwebdesignuk.co.uk/webdesign.php.

The [L,R=301] tells the Search Engine/Browser 2 things. 1) that this is the last  one, so it can stop looking for more rewrite rules if one matches that one. R=301 says that this is a permanent rediret (301). If we missed off the R=301 then the redirect would default to a 302 undoing your hard work.

We have also invested in a new domain name – vividwebdesignuk.com – giving us a much bigger global presence.

What this means for current clients

Not everyone will move immediately – there may be upto 8 months for some clients before we move your website to our newer server. There is no rush to move existing websites or clients, but there is the need to have our new customers get the same level of care and detail as our current clients.

As a result of the move, we will be increasing the Mailbox Capacity of our clients by a whopping 100%. This new change will roll out over the next few weeks.

What this means for new customers

This means we are already prepared for you, ensuring you benefit from the same quality service as our current clients – and you also recieve a bigger Mailbox Capacity too.

And what this means for Vivid Web Design

This gives us greater capacity to produce quality websites for new and existing clients, allows us to offer bigger and better packages, and gives us a bigger global presence thanks to the .com domain name. It also gives us an excuse to make some changes to our own website (when we get chance) so that we can combine both domains together and introduce some new features and pacckages.

Vivid has seen a busy start to 2011 and we wish to keep it up by making a few changes and offering a more robust selection of sollutions for all. 2011 will see the introduction of a new Vivid Website (including a new Client Area), the creation of several new client websits, and new pacakages incluing mobile solutions.

Personal Preference

We fancy a little change, and often the little things can make a huge difference. For that reason we plan on disabling the intro page and making some major changes (and updates) to the portfolio page.

This will all happen over the next few weeks, as we juggle a load of client websites and logo designs, along with a meeting with Brian Cannon of Microdot next week.

SEO

We will also be making some behind the scenes changes to ensure we are doing everything we can for SEO.

Keep reading for more updates, along with a site review of our latest websites.

Bailey Foster has Septo Optic Dysplasia(SOD), Diabetes Insipidus and is also blind. SOD is a rare condition which Bailey was born with, now he needs your help so he can be given the chance to see for the first time in his life.

This treatment will change the way he sees the world and also give him a much better life. We are aiming to raise £40,000 for Stem Cell treatment available in China for our son Bailey.

Please take the time to visit the Official Bailey Foster Appeal website: http://www.baileyfoster.org/

What can we do?

Vivid Web Design UK pledge to support the Bailey Foster Appeal. In order to support the appeal, we are offering 5% OFF any Web Design Package and will donate 5% of the total cost of the package to the Bailey Foster Appeal during the months of March, April and May 2011. Terms & Conditions apply, and can be found below.

Other Fundraisers

Glamhairous Salon in Whelley, Wigan is also holding a Charity Fundraising event by staying open and performing re-styles, Haircuts and much more and donating the proceeds to the Appeal. Get on over to the Glamhairous Salon Facebook Page for full details of this fantastic one-day event!

There are also a number of other fundraising events being held throughout the entire North West of England and beyond. Full details can be found on the Bailey Foster Appeal Website and Facebook Fanpage

Terms & Conditions of offer.

In order to qualify, new customers must fulfil three requirements:

1. You must hold a valid Facebook account and “Like” the Bailey Foster Appeal page and share the link on your profile page.
2. “Like” the Vivid Web Deisgn UK Page.
3. Email us via our contact page quoting “Bailey Appeal” with your Facebook Username so we can confirm you have joined the Bailey Foster Appeal Page.

The requirements above are designed to ensure that awareness is increased for the Bailey Foster Appeal by sharing links. Only members of the Vivid Web Design UK Facebook page can be confirmed as increasing awareness for the appeal. Instant 5% reduction on prices using the “Bailey Appeal” promo-code is only available upon successful joining & sharing of the Bailey Foster Appeal page.

A Vivid Site

The Surrey Dog Life website officially launched last night (Friday 04th February 2011) and is the first website of 2011 for Vivid Web Design UK. The Surrey Dog Life website is the official website for the forthcoming magazine which is set to be distributed throughout all of Surrey in the next month or so. The website has been created througout the month of January and is just one of the websites we have been working on since the New Year.

A complete package

Vivid Web Design UK wasn’t just tasked with the design of the Surrey Dog Life website. We are running a complete package and are responsible for maintaining, hosting, webmastering and development of the website. We also are responsible for the Corporate Identity and have designed a set of Buisness Cards and Letterheads too.

We are also responsible for supplying super high-quality Spot UV Business Cards, along with an Office 2003 Corporate Template.

View the website today by visiting www.surreydoglife.co.uk

What is Nibbler?

Nibbler is a web-based test for your website. It scans any domain name you enter (provided the robots.txt file for the said website doesn’t block Nibbler for some crazy reason) and gives you some very informative results in a nice and easy to read format.

Why is Nibbler useful?

Nibbler scores websites out of 10 for the following categories: Accessibility, Experience, Marketing, and Technology – then gives an Overall Score. The information for each subject is split into several topics. These are indicated visually by either a “Tick” for a fully working topic, a “Warning Mark” for topics which are on the way to being right but need attention, or a “Cross” to indicate a topic that is failing.

Is it all just a lot of visual nonsense?

Not at all. It is easy to over-look many aspects when creating your website, be it for yourself or a client. W3C Compliance should be something you aim to achieve with each keystroke, but W3C Compliance for xHTML and CSS are not the be-all and end-all. Nibbler gives some great pointers on how to get your website running in tip-top condition while keeping you on the straight and narrow too. Don’t get me wrong, having a Nibbler ranking of 10 will not ensure your website gets to #1 in all the search engines – but it will ensure your website is running exactly as it should be.

How often does Vivid use Nibbler?

Vivid uses Nibbler when we create any website, be it for ourselves or for clients as it gives excellent information on how the website is performing. We also use Nibbler to score the websites of our competitors, or of websites new clients already have before we start working on their new sites. A good Nibbler score means a healthy website which works!

Are there any other uses?

For private or basic information there isn’t much better than Nibbler, but if your looking for something much more in-depth then Siteray is the application for you. Siteray is a program that Vivid plans to use in the coming future!

So if you’re interested in how your favourite websites rank, why not enter their website into Nibbler and see how they score. Some websites may shock you, while others may blow you away.

If your interested, Vivid currently score 8.5