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brexit website design

Brexit, how will it change web design

In a word and to save you reading this news feed – not a lot! In fact I can only think of one piece of legislation that impacted on web design and that was the cookie rules, which by the way only the UK adhered to! Fortunately there are very few rules us web designers have to abide by and most of them are to do with publication law. Copyright is important, hence the header image was paid for and supplied by an image library, but in general most of the rules are made up by: devices reading web pages, ie: mobile phones, ipads etc delivery speeds, ie: broadband, 4G,...

your dog poodle parlour

Poodle parlour website re-design continues the shaggy dog tale

We love dogs so working with Tom and Denis on their third website design in nearly 10 years was a great pleasure and an endorsement of our long term partnership with one of Kent’s top dog grooming salons. Presentation is everything in this trade so the new dog grooming website had to reflect the very high standards set by the Your Dog team. The most important feature apart from the continued SEO success was the mobile friendly requirement. Tom and Denis had identified that the majority of new inquiries come from customers using a mobile device. This is a trend reflected in the vast majority of local and national modafinil...

www.cockroach

Kent pest control business smell a rat (cockroach, mouse, wasps……) new WordPress website coming soon

This is a first for Oast House Media. We’ve just received confirmation of a new website design for Crofters Pest Control based in Charing Heath, Kent. We met the business owner last week and already have a holding page up and running: crofters-pest-control.co.uk Initially a small start-up design, the client hopes to expand the web pages as business increases. OHM haven’t built a design for a pest control company so a new trade for the list! see trade list Note: the image above is a copyright free photo of a cockroach (yuk) from FreeDigitalPhotos.net. The acknowledgement is part of the usage agreement but the image is perfect for blogs like...

google boolean searches

More accurate Google searches – the Boolean way using ‘search operators’ and symbols

We’ve been aware of Boolean searches for some time but we thought it would be a good bit of research for our website design clients to investigate how to improve search results using Google. A Boolean search is the same as any search you carry out on Google but by using the Boolean technique it is possible to create a hybrid search that delivers more accurate results. Here’s an example: you know roughly what you want but can’t remember the exact word or phrase so you can insert ‘*’ (asterisks) to act as a wild card. Google then tries to match the missing word(s) a * saved is a *...

richards taxis dover website hosting

Hosting transfer IN, new client moves their existing website to OHM

We don’t just design websites, we also host our web pages and occasionally we receive a transfer ‘in’ request. Our dedicated London based servers are used to host 1000s of web pages for 100s of business. The vast majority are designed by us. Last month we received an inquiry from local Dover based taxi company Richard’s Taxis who’d been having ‘update and reply (sic) issues’ with their Middlesbrough based design company. After receiving the WordPress web pages and database it was a relatively simple ‘reload’ process. Now we have control over the pages we can add missing SEO and complete the updates the client had been waiting for. We will...

Eric

Image use on websites

Every website we build has images. Everyone of those image belong to someone. So, the basic rule of images use on websites (and any other media) is…. if you don’t own it, don’t use it. That may come as a bit of a shock to some of you who probably think if its on Google, it’s free? This is a common misconception and in truth the likelihood of getting caught is slim. But if you do get caught, the penalties are high. basically the owner/creator could take you to court for copyright infringement for £1,000’s not including court costs. We did it! many years ago a local business used our...

password hacking

LinkedIn hack, press hype?

Having read the LinkedIn report about the alleged hacking recently it all appears to be an old storm in a tea cup. These days we must accept that everyone, right down to the sole trader with one email account, is likely to be hacked at some time. That is to say a malicious attack on their IT and web infrastructure.

website design proposal email

Our prices and quoting process

Some web design companies are a bit cagey about their pricing structure but here at Oast House media, we offer an open tariff that can fit every business budget.

wordpress website design for dover security company

New website secures the future for NSL

Long term Dover security company NSL have been keeping an eye on our monthly newsletters and their website performance since Google changed its priorities to ‘mobile friendly’. Having digested the fact that Google now prioritises ‘mobile friendly’ web pages plus over 50% of their searches come from mobile devices, owner Mark Hughes decided to commission a new website, but that wasn’t the only influence. [all our clients receive a monthly newsletter to keep them up to speed with what is happening with Google and the www in general] NSL also use Harbour Print in Dover for their van signage (who are also our clients). Harbour Print had a recent WordPress...

Queen announces – Broadband for all, or is it?

Not sure what the government is up to on this one but it is now official – high speed broadband for all and it came from The Queen! “Measures will be brought forward to create the right for every household to access high speed-broadband”… “Legislation will be introduced to improve Britain’s competitiveness and make the United Kingdom a world leader in the digital economy.” Changes of law can take some time to be ratified so don’t get your hopes up it you’re waiting for your 2Mb download speed to increase in the near future. Once the law becomes official like your legal right to water, electricity and the post, there’s...