Naughty Husky � On the Web

10 things a web designer would never tell you

Björn — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:34:38 +0000

I found this really funny article the other day, http://boagworld.com/design/10-things-a-web-designer-would-never-tell-you. Being in the web design industry myself, I found this to be totally hilarious. Very witty. We get some strange requests sometimes. This article just highlights all the things we need to explain to our clients prior to starting any development.

R6.5 million website?

Björn — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:47:17 +0000

What constitutes a 6.5 million rand website? Curious? Well so am I! Recently Durban (South Africa) spent R6.5 million for the development of it’s 2010 website which will showcase the country’s FIFA World Cup developments to the country and its visitors.

According to IT news website, ITWeb (article here), the website www.fifaworldcup.durban.gov.za, will have features such as a live webcam of the stadium as well as interactive postcards and galleries.

After scrutinizing the website myself, I am unable to figure out where the high costs come into play. As a web designer, I can’t help but be critical about the site. The design is definitely nothing to write home about and looking at some of the code on the site, it was built using outdated coding standards, such as tables. Even though the site was built using ASP, it is not any different from any open source content management systems I have seen before. In fact, I know of far more advanced CMS’s than what I see on that site.

True, there might be something going on behind the scenes which the public is not aware of, but R6.5 million??

There is a discussion on this at the famous Port Elizabeth website, MyPE.

I would really like to hear people’s opinions on this! If any professional web developers read this, please leave your comments! I would like to believe I am missing something here!

Personalised Email

Björn — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:01:45 +0000

Having your own personalised email address is not as expensive as you might think. All internet service providers offer their clients free email addresses. But these aren’t very brand orientated.

You do not have to have a website in order to own your own domain name. Domains are not expensive and neither are hosting accounts, especially if you only use it for email.

I recently noticed that there is some confusion about this and decided to make it more clear to my clients on my website. Having an address like, yourname@yourcompany.com is much more professional than the alternative.

How many emails do you send out everyday? Do they reflect your company or brand? This is a very cheap way of getting your brand across.

Find out more on my company’s website, personalised email.

Web Designer in Port Elizabeth

Björn — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:20:22 +0000

My site has been long overdue for an update. So not too long ago I started working on it in-between projects. You can view it here, Web Designer in Port Elizabeth.
On the new site I also added a feed to this blog for SEO (search engine optimisation) purposes. I also wanted the site to be more clear about what it is I do, now directly from the frontpage you can click right through to where it is you want to go.
I also adjusted the urls to be more search engine fiendly. One thing about being a web designer, your own site is always lacking and you can never quite be happy with it. It’s like the age old saying, ‘a mechanics car is always broken’.
So just in case you missed that link, Port Elizabeth (PE) Web Designer. Check it out!

Google and dynamic vs. static URL’s

Björn — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:57:28 +0000

For a long time now I have been trying to get concrete evidence on the whole dynamic vs. static URL issue. Some webmasters say, you absolutely have to have static URL’s for good ranking in Google, while others say, it is a thing of the past. Well at last I have found that concrete evidence on Google’s own Webmaster blog.

We have never really had much to go on. The problem in the past was that as soon as there are multiple queries in a URL, the search engines do not follow the links. The reason for this being out of fear that the ‘spider’ might get trapped in an infinite amount of queries as might be the case with a calendar for instance that dates into the future.

It seems that this issue has been resolved though and is no longer the case. Hoo ha! Good news for us struggling with Apache’s mod_rewrite.
You can read more on the official Google Webmaster Central Blog, here.

Golf Estate Website

Björn — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:55:58 +0000

One of my clients, Pin High Group, deals solely with the marketing and sales of golf estates and golf developments. This is very unique. There are not many companies that specialise in this area. The director of the company is in his element of course because he is all about golf.With staff all over the world Pin High Group is quite a diverse agency. Being a property marketing agency that specialises in golf developments they have managed to stay ahead of the current property market crisis here in South Africa.
Recently they ran a competition on Algoa FM in Port Elizabeth giving away invites to 11 lucky winners who could each choose 3 friends to take along and play at St Francis Links in St Francis Bay.The competition was also sponsored by Fijnbosch Estate and Betterbond.
If golf is your game and you are interested in an investment that keeps on rewarding, visit Pin High and see the golf estates they have on their golfolio. While you’re there also check out the brand new Legend Golf & Safari Resort.

Install AVG without LinkScanner

Björn — Sun, 25 May 2008 13:13:12 +0000

It seems like just the other day that I was wondering when AVG will be upgrading their old logo. Now with Vista and all the other new software and their new looks, AVG’s little icon in my system tray looked pretty dull.
So to my surprise it was not long afterwards that a notifcation came through asking me if I’d like to upgrade.
There must be millions of people out there using AVG’s free version. After all these years it has never let me down, so I do not see the need to pay for an anti-virus that just hogs my system resources. AVG is quiet, sits in your system tray and only bothers you when you really need to know about something. And most importantly, it just works.
They have now incorporated their anti-spyware into the free version. A while back AVG took over the well known Ewido anti-spyware which worked really well.

One very annoying thing I have found in the new version is the LinkScanner component. When you do a search on the search engines, it checks all the results and displays a little icon next to each link telling you whether the site is safe and free from malicious software.
This slows down the whole process and in general is just very annoying. So I eventually found the following instructions on their website on how to install without this component:

If you wish to install AVG 8.0 Free Edition without the LinkScanner component, or uninstall this component from your program, please proceed as follows:

* Download the AVG 8.0 Free Edition installation package from our website.
* Run the installation with the parameters /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch. One way to achieve this is to:
o save the AVG Free installation file directly to disk C:
o open menu Start -> Run
o type
c:avg_free_stf_*.exe /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch
* The installation will be started, and AVG will be installed without the LinkScanner component.

Replace the * with whichever version it is you downloaded. Also make sure you get the path to the file right, easiest way is to just stick it directly in the root of your C:/ drive, that way you can just copy and paste the command above (remember to replace the *).

Local comedian starts online DVD portal

Björn — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:06:31 +0000

Local comedian, Barry Hilton, has taken the initiative and started an online DVD portal here in Port Elizabeth. Now I don’t know about you but I think this is the next best thing since sliced bread.
We tend to lag behind a bit here in PE so it is great to see a new innovation like this in our little town.The site is called, Cousin’s DVD and you can select from a whole range of titles from latest releases to older movies. You can even purchase a contract online.
It’s not obvious what the charge is for delivery or whether there is in fact a charge, I guess that will become obvious once you checkout. Whatever it is it is sure to beat paying those fines for late returns!
Now I just need to convince Barry to do delivery way out here in Cape St Francis!

Load shedding desktop application

Björn — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:20:44 +0000

I just had to let everybody know about this cool desktop application I discovered that helps you keep up to date with Eskom’s load shedding schedules. If you are from South Africa, this might just be the thing you were looking for.
The application is very small and sits in your system tray once installed. You can add your location (plus many others) and it will automatically keep track of the scheduled load shedding times for your area directly from the Eskom website.

It will give you notifications and you can even set it up to shut down your pc just before a scheduled downtime.

Thanks to the guys from myenergy.co.za some of us that can’t afford a UPS might be able to get away with it now with this nice application doing the monitoring for us.
Visit their site to download the application, www.myenergy.co.za.

Well Formed XML tags

Björn — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:37:10 +0000

Geeks, developers and web designers have always been known to have quite a dry (but good) sense of humor.
Here is one of those inside jokes which I really consider to be a classic. I received the image below in an email stating, “Geek joke, well formed xml tags”.