Website Design Aberystwyth, Wales

Web 2.0 isn’t really a phrase I like. it means so many different things to so many different people that it really doesn’t mean anything specific. However, it is a buzzword and it seems inescapable, it is becoming widely adopted so it is time I embraced it.

To the lay person Web 2.0 seems to be synonymous with a particular design style. This Web 2.0 design style is characterised by fresh, clean looking websites with large, easy to read typefaces, lots of whitespace and usually some subtle gradient backgrounds and/or reflected graphics. I really like this design approach and it can be used on any website to give it that Web 2.0 feeling, even if the content and functionality of the site doesn’t really make it a Web 2.0 site.

Pixelwave Web Design now has a growing number of Web 2.0 style design templates on offer through its Website Template shop. These templates can be used to give your new website that Web 2.0 feeling, or would be ideal to revamp an existing jaded website. A couple of examples are shown below.

Of course Web 2.0 isn’t just about the look and feel of the site. A true Web 2.0 website is standards compliant, conforms to accessibility guidelines, is a pleasure to use. They also offer certain levels of functionality not found in earlier websites. Often Web 2.0 websites are driven by user generated content, often they allow the end user to customise the content to their own particular preferences and often they include applications that allow sharing of information rather than simply presenting information to the user.

However, even if your website isn’t a true Web 2.0 site, the clean fresh, easy to use design style is valid in its own right and often such a design style will aid readability and usability of your website as well as giving it that modern Web 2.0 look.

It is all good news here at Pixelwave Web Design at the moment. I’m busier than ever and enjoying the work. I do still of course have capacity for new projects so if you need a new website or need website maintenance or re-design work carried out I could be your man!… Feel free to contact me, I’ll be happy to help.

Work on one of my bigger recent projects, OGI-TM (Oil and Gas Industry Terrorism Monitor), has now slowed down as the service went live on July 1st and seems to be going well. I’m sure there will be some maintenance and update work to carry out in the future, but the main development phase is complete and the website is live.

I’ve also recently completed some updates to the Beacons Active website that I built last year. The site has so far been a success and is going from strength to strength. This success meant that the site owners had a budget to make some improvements to the site and I have just completed these. They now have some featured listings, more images for each listing and a few other tweaks to certain functional elements of the site.

I’ve also this week started work on a new project for a holiday accommodation provider here in Borth and Ynyslas. As always it is good to work on websites for local businesses as it gives me the opportunity to meet face to face with the client. The site is a relatively simple brochure style website to promote their holiday cottages and should go live later this summer.

Other projects are ongoing and I’m even thinking about re-building the whole of the Pixelwave Web Design site as it is beginning to look a little dated, but clients’ sites come first so that may have to take a back seat for a while.

Pixelwave Web Design has recently started work on a new project for Intemerate Ltd., a property development and refurbishment company based in Shropshire.

Following a meeting last week where we discussed the aims and objectives of the proposed website and then talked about and devised an outline of the information architecture for the site, I have now started work on the overall design and layout. Over the next month or so Intemerate Ltd. will work on the copy-writing and acquisition of photos for the site. Pixelwave Web Design will then (we necessary) enhance the copy for use on the web taking into account various aspects of Search Engine Optimsation and build the finished website for Intemerate Ltd.

The website is expected to go live later this year.

Intemerate Ltd. is an expanding company keen to develop an online presence. As the business grows, they will be adding to the services they offer and therefore expect the website to grow with them. During our initial consultation this projected expansion was discussed and the website will be structured in such a way that new sections can be added easily. We can’t predict the future but we can plan for it and hopefully Intemerate Ltd’s website will go from strength to strength along with the company. Pixelwave Design will be pleased to be a part of this.

Today is an exciting day for Kumar Saraff, a fine artist living and working in Mid-Wales.

His website designed and built by Pixelwave Web Design has just gone live and is available for all to see.

Kumar’s work

“explores the application and effects of paint on surface, bringing light and life to painting with modern materials and techniques”

His new website provides details about his background and inspiration, lists galleries and exhibitions that his work can be seen in and contains a gallery of his recent work. The gallery section of the site is based around a content management system that allows Kumar to add new albums and images as and when he requires.

The website was designed to be as simple and clean as possible so as to provide minimal distractions from Kumar’s art.

Pixelwave Web Design is pleased to have secured the contract for the design and construction of a website for Ffos-y-Ffiin

Ffos-y-Ffin is a company based in the Brecon beacons offering Corporate development events. Their courses include

• Operation Teamleader – A leadership event
• Cambrian Quest – Adventure Weekends
• Inspiral – Leadership Education
• Mountain Sport – Sporting weekends.

Their website will consist of several brochure style pages detailing the course and facilities they offer along with an easy to use Content Management System that will allow them to update certain sections of the website themselves so that they can add photos and reports from the various events they host.

I’m always reading books about Website Design and Website development. As well as manuals and reference books on various coding languages I also enjoy those books about the general principles surrounding aspects such as accessibility, usability, standards compliance and anything else related to peoples use of websites.

I often buy my books through Amazon and have had a web design book-store set up for several years using the Amazon database for its contents. This website was only ever really thrown together for my own use and to allow me to become familiar with a script for generating such online shops. It had served its purpose and I had all but forgotten about it, but I was reminded of it today, took a look and decided to re-design and rebuild it from scratch.

Amazon now have a nice easy to use aStore system that allows such sites to be built in next to no time, so rather than working with a complex script I just used their system this time (I have set several sites up using the system for clients already). It isn’t as configurable as a more bespoke script, but its ease of use more than makes up for that. You also have little control over the look and layout of the content fed by Amazon, but Amazon know what they are doing so using their layout is probably a good thing.

Anyway, now that it is up and running I guess I should buy some more books!

I have of course been working on clients projects today with a few updates to Fairiesworld, some general maintenance issues for Erozone and some updates to the Get Active Beacons website.

I’ve recently started work here at Pixelwave Web Design on a new project for a local graphic designer.

The designs this new company create are specifically for sports and active wear and will be sold on various items of clothing including top quality ‘T-shirts, hoodies and a wide range if other items under the brand name of Slick Activewear.

Pixelwave Web Design are currently in the process of building a fully featured online eCommerce system allowing Slick Activewear to showcase and sell their products online. The system will have all of the usual shopping cart features and will allow Slick Activewear to easily update the products and categories themselves as well as track orders, stock levels and much much more from within an easy to use Administration panel.

Pixelwave Design has been working in close collaboration with Slick Activewear on the design and layout of the website, which will feature some of their own artwork. So far their catalogue includes designs within the following categories:

• Biking
• Climbing
• Diving
• Equestrian
• Open Air
• Snow Sports
• Wave Sports
• White Water
• Slickwear

Watch this space for more news on this exciting new website.

Pixelwave Web Design is pleased to announce the completion of the first stage of the Oil and Gas Industry Terrorism Monitor (OGI-TM) website.

The Oil & Gas Industry Terrorism Monitor is the achievement of several man-years worth of research, data collation and analysis of militant activity targeting the O&G industry. The culmination of this effort is an extensive database of global incidents and other activities affecting O&G operational activities.

I have been working on this website for a couple of months and the public areas of the website are now live online. The majority of the website is only available to subscribers. These areas are ready to go and will be populated with data over the next month ready for the full release date of July 1st 2007.

The content population is being carried out in house by OGI-TM using a bespoke, easy to use Content Management System which will allow OGI-TM administrators to add new data to the site on a daily basis.

The database is flexible and dynamic in nature with updates and new intelligence being added or updated on a 24/7 basis.

Around this time last year I posted an article about using Google Analytics to monitor your website traffic. I’ve been using this service (along with other Stats Analysis programs) since then for my websites and Google have just updated the interface of their Google Analytics program.

The new interface is a definite improvement. As far as I can tell there isn’t any new functionality or any new features but the new interface makes finding and analysing your websites traffic stats easier than ever. The visual interface helps you to monitor trends and see how advertising campaigns etc have affected traffic to your website.

Monitoring the traffic and the routes visitors take through your website should be an essential part of every website owners routine tasks and knowing where your visitors come from and what they are searching for is invaluable when planning how best to take your website forward.

Once again I’ve been really busy here at Pixelwave Web Design so must apologise for not posting much in the way of news lately, but here is a quick post about certain issues I have been working on.

One problem a few website owners have been experiencing lately is that of spam. Spam is no longer associated only with email, but can also be a nuisance for website owners. For those of us who run community based websites, or even weblogs that allow people to post comments, then removing unwanted comments / content and deleting accounts of unwanted members can be a frustrating and time-consuming process. One approach of course is to simply remove certain aspects of functionality from your site and for one of my clients this was the best approach as the ability for visitors to post comments wasn’t really needed.

Another approach is to set up a moderation facility where all new registrations or comments / content has to be approved by an administrator prior to going live on the site. This has been an option on a few sites I have built for a while now. This works well and certainly prevents inappropriate material making it to the publicly available sections of a website but can still be a time-consuming process. This process becomes especially time-consuming when automated spam-bots start adding content to your website as they can add hundreds of comments or sign up hundreds of times as soon as you turn your back making the job of sorting the wheat from the chaff an unenviable one.

There is a way around this for many websites. It is often possible to install automated spam-checking software to your web application that will do some of the sorting for you. However, as with all automated processes it isn’t completely failsafe, sometimes spam will get through and it is also possible for legitimate content to get marked as spam. It is an option that I’ve used for various sites though and where used it does work well.

The next approach is to add a barrier to the registration process or content submissions process (or usually both) that prevents automated spam-bots from completing the process. This is now the approach I have used on my community based sites and have also added to several of my clients sites, especially those with forums. Of course, getting the balance right between making things difficult for spammers whilst still making the process of registration / content submission quick and easy for legitimate users is always an issue. I have been using ‘captcha’ scripts which are now common across the web and therefore users are fairly familiar with them.

Captcha scripts automatically generate an image which comprises several characters. These characters have to be entered by the user before they can complete the particular process they are carrying out. The idea is that automated spam-bots are unable to read the characters in the image and therefore never get to complete the process. So far it has been a roaring success where I have installed such a system. I’ve had no complaints or usability issues from legitimate users and very little spam has got through the net.

If only I could cut down my email Spam so successfully.