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    Welcome to Website design and Development

    Blogware to Wordpress - Telemarketing

    Posted on March 2011 in Articles

    We’re just transferred the blog of telemarketing company Broadley Speaking to Wordpress. Previously on Blogware meant the telemarketing company was missing out on the wonderful features of Wordpress including automatic sitemap submission, so each time the Wordpress blog is updated search engines will be notified of the change to the page. Other features include better search engine URL’s and indexing.

    Wordpress continues to grow in features and popularity. It can be used to develop a blog or a brilliant CMS.

    For more information on Broadley Speaking  telemarketing services

    Telemarketing Site Map

    Comments(0)

    Random CSS background for Wordpress theme

    Posted on February 2011 in Articles

    I’ve just been searching to find the best way to randomly change the header background image for my Wordpress theme and couldn’t believe some of the complex solutions I found, whilst browsing some mind blowing over engineered ideas I realised you just need to do this…

     <div id=”header” style=”background-image: url(<?php bloginfo(’stylesheet_directory’); ?>/images/<?php echo (”headerimg”.rand(0,4).”.jpg”)?>)” ;>

    The above solutions just checks the images/ folder of your theme for 5 images headerimg1.jpg, headerimg2.jpg, headerimg3.jpg, etc etc.

    Comments(0)

    BT Broadband sales pitch -hhmmm

    Posted on February 2011 in Articles

    BT Customer service

    4DW have relocated their business to Wykeham in Scarborough, since we are a web site design company we need the Internet. The first thing we did is ask around the village to find out just how good (or bad) the Internet speed was, the response was as we expected, fairly slow around 1.5Mbit/s. Our next step was to call BT to sort our telephone line and whilst were already talking to BT we enquired about broadband speed, the response was “10Mbit/s to 15Mbit/s”, which of course is rubbish considering how far we are from the exchange and the fact that we had already talked to people. We asked them if they could guarantee that! The response was as expected “No!”.

    Simply by doing online tests and talking to people, it was very annoying knowing that BT are up-selling a service. If you didn’t know just how this type of broadband service worked and you talked to BT with a promise (not a guarantee) of fast Internet you would be tied in to a contract for at least 12 months and have a disappointed service.

    If you need broadband then you put up with the speed, you don’t have a choice, if BT could make it faster then they would, that’s not the point. Not telling people the facts when you’re enquiring about a service is just wrong.

    The flip side of customer service from Zen Internet

    Some weeks ago I contacted Zen Internet, I know they used to do a 1 month rolling contract so I rang them and they still do! I gave them our postcode and phone number and the response was “you’re quite far from the exchange, you’ll be lucky to get a maximum of 2Mbit/s”, I knew that! BT the people who put the service together apparently DIDN’T.

    With some much advertising from BT broadband and Talk Talk, I think people are forgetting just how many other companies provide the broadband service, yes BT have to install it, but you don’t need to know that. A company such as Zen Internet provide a fantastic service, ok the broadband speed depends where you live and that can’t be changed, but as Harry Hill would say “FIGHT” the Zen Internet customer service would win every time and without lying.

    We’re getting super fast wireless broadband!

    The Wykeham estate where the Scarborough web design office is located will soon be getting at least 10Mbit/s connection delivered over wifi. The connection speed is set to increase over time but for now we are very happy.

    Comments(0)

    Your best marketing tool for just a £1 a day!

    Posted on September 2010 in Articles

    In most cases a website is your best marketing tool, promoting your business 24 hours a day 7 days a week all around the world, that kind of marketing isn’t available anywhere else is it?

    Website prices vary, I’ve heard people pay just £250 to anywhere around six figures, but on average a good company will charge on around £1500 - £3000, now bear in mind, a good well developed website can last around 4 years that works out about a £1.00 a day! It’s easy to see that getting a return of your investment shoudn’t take very long.

    How do we know that a good website lasts around 4 years? Well, we’ve been running Four Degrees West website design services for 8 years now and we’re still running the same websites we created 4 years ago and they’re still driving business to most of those customers.

    If you’re thinking of having a website price is obviously a factor but quality, design and developed (make sure your web design company meets W3C standards) should come first, your website will stand the test of time and should help your business grow for several years.

    For free advice about creating a long term website for your company please contact me: andy@fourdegreeswest.co.uk

    Comments(0)

    Time to Toggl.com one brilliant time keeping application

    Posted on September 2010 in Articles

    The company has been using Toggl for several weeks now and we’re so impressed we had to say something.

    Toggl is a timekeeping application, you simply create a project and assign a client, then with just a couple of clicks time spent on the project is recorded. What’s more Toggl comes with a desktop application that actually tracks if you’re working on your computer, for example when you nip to the toliet (restroom) the client clock could still be running but Toggl sees that you’ve stop working and asks whether that last 10mins (while in the toliet) needs to be recorded. With simple well thought out basic configuration means that Toggl really does help keep a accurate account of time spent of a client project. Each client project takes less than 10secs setting up the Toggl.

    To find out more about the wonderful Toggl -  https://www.toggl.com

    Comments(1)

    Don’t bother to optimise your website, optimise your company…

    Posted on June 2010 in Articles, News

    I’ve just had another email exchange regarding missing meta tags such as keywords, and having to explain that it will help putting these things right, but they’re still not going to get a top 20 listing.

    Although you could probably say that the majority of websites don’t contain the right page content keywords, descriptions, header etc. etc. that would still leave a minority which would still leave a few million!

    So, with the majority out of the way and you’re only (sarcasm) left with a few million competitors you’ll stand very little chance of hitting that top 20 natural listing (anywhere before page 3), so just forget it and try and concentrate on optimising the company.

    Time to tell the world how successfully you were this month, how many exports you generated, maybe there is a new member of staff this month, or it could be you’ve just decorated your hotel room. You need to join the network of news or social media, there are people around the world who want to know about your company, so spread the word by creating interesting articles, create a company Facebook account, get Linkedin and get tweeting.

    Comments(0)

    A cheap budget website is false economy, just don’t bother…

    Posted on May 2010 in Articles

    I’ve just spent half a day (around 4 hours), making sure a fairly large website has the correct keywords, descriptions and relevant page content so that hopefully our customer will beneifit from search engine optimisation. The new website replaces an old website which is already established in Google and other search engines, so I also recreated a function called a RewriteRule which tells Google for example that the old page is no longer there but to send people to the new page. That way current search results still appear to be valid.

    Spending half a day just on the background development of a website areas not seen by the public is just a small part of what some companies don’t bother with, that’s why we are sorry to say that we can’t create budget websites, we like to create websites that will hopefully work for our customers thus giving them a return of investment, rather than just throwing money away find a company that will help you get the most from your site, getting a return on your investment is the key to success and when it pays for itself it doesn’t get much cheaper than that.

    Comments(0)

    Want to spy on your website visitors!

    Posted on April 2010 in Articles, News

    Web stats are useful, you can see who’s visiting you, what web pages they’ve looked at etc. etc. but now you can actually record them! With Usefly, you can actually capture their screen movement and mouse clicks and play it back at a later date. It’s free to for 10 screen captures, so if you want to know what your visitors are up to now you can watch!

    For more information: http://www.userfly.com/

    Comments(2)

    Free Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) test software helps reduce the pain…

    Posted on April 2010 in Articles

    If like me you want to make sure that the those people who still insist on using Internet Explorer 6 (and there are still lots of them out there) get to view your website as it should be seen then download this fantastic piece of free software that allows you to test your website on all Internet Explorer versions…

    http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

    Comments(0)

    Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) why should I upgrade?

    Posted on April 2010 in Articles, News

    Leave your house keys in your door and someone will probably do the decent thing and knock on your door and tell you, but there of course annoying worms out there who would probably steal them only to return once you’re out. Yet when it comes to security the Internet police still can’t get through to people about security, one of the most popular stupid things is people not updating their computer.

    It’s still popular, the old website browser called Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), I know it’s difficult to keep up to date with software versions but when it comes to security (for one thing) then there isn’t any excuse for being lapse about upgrading. I know it looks like it works, you check your bank account online, order stuff from Amazon yet the fact are that it isn’t very secure, it’s not supported anymore by Microsoft so you will not get essential updates, I could rant on.

    Updating your browser is free, new versions are there for a reason, they improve security, stop spyware and adware, new versions are released to help protect your personal information from being stolen! So stop using this browser, be sensible upgrade, it only takes about 5 mins.

    Next time you check your bank statement and find someone else is using it to buy stuff ask yourself, I wonder if it’s because I use Internet Explorer 6?

    Comments(0)

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