There were many pictures that Panthers wanted to use and these have been displayed using a “hoverbox” effect and also incorporated some FlickR slideshows into the training pages. The new website has been launched and is going through some final tweaks, and the club are very pleased with our efforts to provide what they wanted. Panthers are now working on getting themselves some good rankings for searches.

The point is that if there is no competition and, more importantly, no-one searches for crowdedalliances therefore it is simple to rank for the term. Yet many website owners will go for such words.

What should be of concern is what searches are made that your website could fulfill, what those keywords are, and how your content reflects that. Otherwise you too could rank highly for crowdedalliances that returns no searches.

What does it give me?
At the least your web hosting will provide your site pages to anyone that requests them, however most hosting provides a whole lot more. It will maintain a log of all the requests and show these as a statistical analysis of where the requests came from, what was requested as well as information about the browser and computer. The stats will even tell you which search engines were used and what was searched for.

As well as hosting the site it will also provide email facilities, with possible a webmail service so you can access your email anywhere, a number of addresses in the format of name@yourdomain.com, you should also expect antivirus and spam filters for your email.

Depending on the level of your hosting you may also have access to one or more databases that can be useful if you have a “dynamic” website or a content management system.

There is a whole lot more that hosting is capable of, but this post hopefully has given you an overview.

What is a domain name?

In simple terms you may know it as a URL or a web address for example www.imaker.co.uk . It is the name you register for your website for a period (in the case of co.uk of 2 years, a .com for 1 year) that no-one else can use while the name remains registered.

What a domain name does.

The main advantage of having a domain name is that it allows you to set up a website with that name. The domain contains information about it’s owner, contact information and other references to the ownership and registration details of the name. The domain also has something called the MX records and Name server details. Put simply the MX records point at where emails will be sent, while the name server record points to the physical address of the website, that is the address of the machine where the website is stored.

What will a domain name give you.

Full control over the name. That doesn’t sound too impressive, but gives you total control over the name, where the site is hosted, where emails are sent and received which is very important should something happen to your existing services. It means you can change any detail at will. You don’t necessarily have to have a web site to own a domain name. It is possible to use the name to provide a unique email address. Some registrars will provide email free when you register the name and some hosts will let you use the name solely for email.

How to register a domain name

A domain registrar will arrange the registration for you. There are many of them and it’s a matter of your personal choice which one you use, some are better than others. You pay your money and take your choice!

The new look design is very clean and simple, not too many colours and has very simple navigation. All the content is still there, in one form or another, though has been rearranged logically (I hope) to keep it as simple as possible.

The old logo and background has gone as well, and a new logo has been produced. I’ve used a ‘folks’ text which was in the header of the old site and so keeps some semblance of continuity and I’m pleased with it. It’s sad to see the Clifton Suspension Bridge go, but you never know, I may bring it back at some time.

Meanwhile I’m leaving comments open on this post, so if anyone would care to pass judgment on the new design I’d be pleased to hear from you.

Our new dedicated website www.webdesignfirst.co.uk will offer the service with an introductory offer of a site + .co.uk domain name + a years hosting.

This new service will provide a “cheaper” way of getting on the web for the smaller business while still maintaining our principles of good design with accessibility.

Though the layout of the site is pretty familiar the client is very happy with the finished result and it was a low cost venture for all concerned.

For a while I’ve been looking at my blog title tags and thinking there must be a better way. Then Megan’s post just explained it all simply and elegantly.

Thanks very much!

I tried a few providers using a “soft phone” and headset both paid and unpaid through my desktop but really didn’t think it was that good and was on the verge of giving up. However over the last month or so I noticed on a business forum a lot of discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of voip itself and then some further discussion on hardware. This led me to look again at the possibilities and providers.

It seems that not all providers are the same, now there’s a surprise. Call charges vary, to non-geographical numbers in particular, as does the cost of acquiring and using a geographical number. I didn’t want to go for an 0845 or an 0800 number, instead I wanted a 0117 number for Bristol where I’m actually based. The various providers also offer a variety of different services, some useful, some not so useful and some very necessary.

From my tinkering days I’d already got an 0117 number but not used it much, so decided to use this to see if things had improved. Number portability is an option with some providers, so no problem there, except that there maybe a charge. Fortunately I have a number with a fairly decent provider so I began to try again.

The breakthrough, if I can call it that, was when I decided to spend some of my hard earned on a proper phone and bin the headset. Using the combination of “softphone” and usb headset or handset was not working, and I felt assured by the forums that the quality of the line should be as good or better than a normal land line. So lashing out on a Grandstream GXP 2000 I’m pleased to say I’m delighted and so far it is all working very well indeed. Calls are clear and sharp and the ‘phone does what I want it to do. Combined with the facilities offered by my provider I actually feel in control of the whole setup.

Glad I went back to it.