18 November, 2005
by imaker
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Unfortunately this site and many others were hit when our hosting provider’s servers were badly mangled by an attack, apparently by someone with a grudge against the host.
Most of the sites have now been recovered and business carries on. However it re-emphasises the issues of ‘disaster recovery’ and plain old fashioned ‘backup policies’. When your turn comes it’s never a good time, but if there is a backup available you will be glad you spent the time necessary to create it.
11 November, 2005
by imaker
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The update, refered to earlier has been named jagger. After the longest update I remember and covering three phases, it now appears that the latest google update is all but over. Enough said!
29 October, 2005
by imaker
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Accessibility is about everyone being able to access content online regardless of any physical impairment they may have. There are statutes that compel all web sites to be accessible. iMaker endeavour to build your website to be as accessible as possible, but that means more work for us, so how does it benefit you, the client?
Better search rankings. Search engines find it easier to catalogue web sites that are written for accessibility. As the majority of people find things on the internet using search engines, the easier you can make the engines job, the better for you.
Long term Cost. Building an accessible web site means separating content from presentation to produce a content (xhtml) page and a presentation (css) page. These two files combine to provide the browser with the whole web page for display. There could be many thousands of html files in your site but only one css file. If you want to change the layout for your site you just need to change the one css file, that will change the layout for the entire site!
Compatibility. Again building an accessible site should mean that your site looks the same in any browser, certainly the most popular, such as Internet explorer, Opera, Firefox and Safari. All your users will see the website as you do.
Speed. A website built for accessibility will load much quicker than one that hasn’t and so keep your visitors happy and hopefully interested.
18 October, 2005
by imaker
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After what amounts to a comparitively small amount of speculation Matt Cutts (a google employee and commentator on google) has said that this is a step towards a forthcoming full back link (BL) and page rank (PR) update. He goes on to say that we should see the update over the next few days. The full post can be found here.
17 October, 2005
by imaker
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Some of the seo forums are buzzing with news that another google update is in progress. Screams have been heard, even from the more respectable forums, that google is killing the seo world, and that previously high ranking sites have been dropped from the index. It is still too early to tell what is going on, but it looks like either google is finally biting back against reciprocal linking or, strangely, it has lost it’s index and is trying to cover up, so more later.
17 October, 2005
by imaker
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For some while this has been bubbling in and out of the news and media. The Home Office recently set up a web site to counter the threat, but according to their own figures “more than 100,000 people are affected by identity theft in the UK each year, costing the British economy over ?£1.3 billion annuallyâ€.
How are the thieves getting your identity?
There is a vast amount of information available online about almost everyone. For example if you have recently moved house then your name, address, the price you paid and mortgage details are held by the land registry who will give out this information online, for a small fee.
A utility bill or a bank statement will allow the finder to apply for credit card, open a new bank account, apply for a loan, get a mobile phone etc etc. Your postal address could be changed and all mail redirected to a different address.
Your rubbish may contain documents with all the necessary information required for identity theft. You may be contacted by a fraudster pretending to be from a legitimate organisation in person, by phone or by post. Emails from a bank will never ask you for your PIN or security codes or passwords, but they can look very real.
What can you do to protect your identity?
Shred or tear up anything with your name and address or personal details on it before throwing it away. Be particularly careful with receipts for payments you have made with credit cards, and don’t forget petrol receipts, these all contain part of your credit card numbers!
If you receive an email asking for your bank details do not respond to it. Banks will never do this.
Be on your guard at all times, do not give out any financial details to anyone especially if they are away from their place of business, and always ask yourself why are they are asking this and what for.
16 October, 2005
by imaker
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We are pleased to announce an entirely new section to our web design Bristol website. This is the first ever posting into the new area and we hope to continue to keep readers up to date with events here, as well as providing some interesting articles in the web design and seo fields.
The categories (listed on the right of this page) are the areas we will be mostly concentrating on. There will be regular articles and updates on the subjects written with the new user in mind. We shall also comment on any trends within the web design field in an effort to keep our existing and future clients fully up to speed and informed.
We hope you will enjoy this new venture with us, do feel free to contribute should you wish and to leave any comments you may have.