A geek's blog about nerdy stuff, with an array of musings on SEO & web design, Barnsley based but internationally read. Honest.
Blogging
Ramblings about anything and everything from The Design Loft.
Moving From PC To Mac, Finding The Best Mac Office Software & Migrating Your Outlook To Mac
Feb 3rd
A while ago I considered making the move from PC to Mac. There were a few reasons really, to be honest the main one was the seemingly inevitable degradation of Windows after a bit of use.
We’ve all experienced that!
Of course, Macs look great and we all know they perform well; given that Apple brought out a new range last Autumn it seemed like a good move.
As a web designer and general business owner I had a few concerns:
- How could I best transfer all of my files from my PC to Mac?
- As a hoarder, I have some serious email storage, so More >
Adding Custom Author Information To WordPress Posts
Feb 1st
With the intent to grow this blog into a valuable online resource for designers and web professionals, I’m working towards developing a network of guest bloggers. I already have some great people lined up to blog, but before I set this up I’ve been wanting to tweak the blog theme to include custom author information after each post, so that of course the bloggers get proper credit and backlinks.
After doing some research on the most extensible way to do this I’ve come across Justin Tadlock’s excellent little tutorial “Adding and using custom user profile fields“.
Justin provides a very quick, clear More >
Should You Tweak Your SEO Now That Google Personalises Search Results With Web History?
Jan 22nd
There’s been a lot of hype recently about Google’s Web History functionality. If you’re not sure what that is, I’ll try an explain:
As a “guest user” of Google (i.e. you’re not signed in with your Google Account credentials), all of the web searches you perform are logged, and stored for a period of 180 days. The click throughs that you make based on these searches to any given website will then affect how that website is placed in your personal SERP (search engine results page) for any related searches. Following the 180 days, old entries are displaced by newer searches More >
Small And Perfectly Formed – Look Out For The Little Guy And You May Be In Luck
Jan 21st
I’ve just been directed to a fantastic little article by a great designer friend of mine.
Oddly, it kind of links into what I was blogging about yesterday; increasing customer services skills as a web designer.
The article briefly talks about how freelance designers can easily segregate their clients into the “big clients” and the “small clients”, and how sometimes that might not be the best way to think.
Its very easy to flag or leave until later the small requests from your smaller or more sporadic clients. Those little requests for small or low money jobs can sometimes get “lost” as they More >
Easily Boost Your Customer Service Skills As A Web Designer
Jan 20th
As a web designer, and especially a freelance web designer, it’s sometimes hard to choose the projects that really get you going.
We all love projects where we’re actually engaged by the subject matter; we recently did one for ADL Tattoo Removal Lasers and the subject matter really intrigued and interested me – it was a great site to be involved in.
Of course, as a designer you have to give the same level of customer service and engagement to all clients, regardless of the sector or industry that they’re in. It helps make us better designers, helps our business grow and equally More >
Migrating easily from BlogEngine.Net to WordPress
Jan 6th
Just before Christmas we posted a blog called Migrating from BlogEngine.net to WordPress – first thoughts and why we did it; now it’s time for the how..
We couldn’t find too much on the subject and if you do a Google search for “Migrating from BlogEngine to WordPress” there isn’t too much information, with a few exceptions:
- A couple of posts from the ever informative WayneJohn: Migrating from BlogEngine to WordPress and Migrating Blog Post Images from BlogEngine to WordPress.
- my6solutions have a good BlogEngine to WordPress migration post on their blog
- The best post on this subject I think though is Merill.net’s Migrating from BlogEngine to WordPress post
The More >
The Best CMS Tool – choosing the best website CMS for your clients.
Jan 2nd
Howdy! Looking for the best cms tool? Read on and see what you think…
We’ve spent alot of time over the last few years putting together content management systems for clients. And when I say “putting together” I mean various things; skinning existing open source CMSs, building “mini” CMS systems for clients wanting a little bit of bespoke functionality, themeing blogs, integrating forums and much more.
And so far we haven’t found the best CMS tool. Why? Because there’s that much variation in what customers want.
It’s very easy to say things like “Actually, I think that XYZ is the best CMS tool More >
