Voodoochilli Design

For years now we have been building calendar and diary systems for our clients. One of our London based clients originally hired us to create a diary for them way back in 2005, something we are still maintaining now and is being used daily by hundreds of staff. The project has evolved considerably since it’s conception and a great deal of experience has been learned about such systems and the best way to make them. Additionally, just in the last year we have been hired to create three separate bespoke event calendar systems for three different charities, check them out here, here and here. As you can see from these examples they all share a similar layout and features so we decided to optimise and combine the code for distribution. Over the next few months we will be releasing an improved calendar system for sale to the public. It will come with a simple install process that will enable site owners and web designers alike to get an events calendar system up and running in minutes. We have looked at the competition and there really isn’t much out there that offers a simple but practical experience for little cost. We will update you when development is nearer completion so keep your eyes peeled!

Recently we have been using Google’s fabulous  website optimizer to improve conversions on a site we are running. The system uses A/B testing and is very easy to set up and use. It does have one major problem however, and that is you cannot exclude the IP address of certain visitors. I discovered this when I started to notice my own results showing up in tests, thereby invalidating the results. you would think that such an otherwise comprehensive system would not have this oversight, but apparently it does.

The Solution

There is however a solution to this problem, albeit one that requires a bit of code know-how, and a system capable of running PHP or another programming language. Simply add the following code to your pages:

[source:php]

<?php

//exclude certain IP address

if ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']!= “YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE”){

?>

[/source]

Google code goes here.

Then simply add:

[source:php]
<?php } ?>
[/source]

Do this for every page that has the tracking code. There, problem sorted, and all results from that IP address will now be ignored as they will not be reported to Google. You could of course use a whole list of IP address to exclude should you need to.

We have just launched a new site for our clients, www.familidrugsupport.com. The redesign holds a special importance to our company as it was in fact the first commercial website built by founder of Voodoochilli, Harry O’Connor way back in 2003. For years he has wanted to redesign the site encompassing a more up to date approach to web design, both visually and technically and we are all very pleased with the results.

The site was actually built with the aid of our 50% charity discount, halving the project cost. Contrary to the beliefs of many in the web design industry, charities have very limited funds and offering a discount can sometimes be the difference between a charity having a professional designed website or not.

The new site features a brand new design, replacing the now very dated one that was online since 2003. People can now make donations via PayPal, connect using various social sites such as Facebook and more. However, the biggest single upgrade has been the addition of a custom built Content Management System allowing staff at FDS to update the content themselves, keeping it fresh while at the same time reducing long term costs.

We are pleased with the results and hope people continue to find the site a useful resource.

We have just launched a new online marketing website, The Online Marketeer. We have only just started it and just written a couple of articles but check back soon for more! Where as the company blog serves tell people what’s happening with the company, and what’s going on in the web design business we hope that The Online Marketeer will be a place where people can learn all about the marketing aspects of what we do.

We have recently been advertising a positing for a freelance PHP developer to join our team. So far the response has been great with dozens of applicants and we have contacted a couple. The problem now is finding the right person from all of these applicants!

As you may not have know already we always hire freelancers – fitting the right person to the right job. Not only is this cheaper than hiring a team of full time web designers and developers, a saving that gets past on to the client, it also means we can hire for specific tasks. For example a client may ask for a flash website. This is not a request we get often as we prefer sites that perform well in search engines, however if a client does specify this we can pool together an ad-hoc team geared towards flash development. For the one or two projects that require flash in a year, we could never justify the £30K salary of a flash developer since the earning potential would be so low. What other companies do is try to make their designers and developers do a bit of everything: jack of all trades, master of none. This is far from ideal and you really should be hiring experts to developer websites on a bespoke basis.

We are currently developing a free company website service. It has occurred to us that in the current clime, many start-up companies are simply not in the position to afford the design and build of a bespoke website. We hope to help solve this problem with CompanySite.org.

Although there are other free website services available on the net – most of them are extremely unsightly and barely function. We hope to rectify this.

The site will be funded mostly by advertising but there will also be a premium service for those that wish to have a website at an affordable price.

It’s all very hush hush at the moment, so I can’t reveal too many details except that we hope to have the system completed soon.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

We just launched NME.

“NME provide a national electrical and building maintenance service custom-built for the foodservice industry. The service portfolio encompasses a range of services from leaking taps to electrical safety testing, all available in one place within a controlled budget.”

We recently launched aggora.co.uk – a site for a company that are a “specialist innovator in the provision and delivery of catering equipment solutions to the foodservice industry.”

AGGORA have some really big clients under their belt including BT, Vodafone, Sainsbury’s, Goodwood Race Course, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Oxford University to name but a few.

I am really pleased with how the site has turned out, no small part of down to our designer Dave who has done some great work for us lately.

Jumping on the proverbial band wagon, I recently started to use Twitter. I quite like this format which is limited to just 160 charters, microblogging I believe it’s called. It suits our busy lifestyles just to write a few sentences when something comes to mind. I find it interesting that it uses 140 characters instead of another number, say 200. Presumably this is because of the fact that mobile phones are limited to 160 letters, and this leaves enough space for the entire message to be sent by text. I find this curious because with all of the advances in technology since SMS messaging was standardised in 1985, why hasn’t this number increased? I think we can safely put this down to profit for the network providers. Twitter itself is highly compatible with mobile devices. Using SMS technology you can update your Twitter page from anywhere. I’m working on a website at the moment that will also need to be updated vis mobile devices. It occurred to me that not only was 160 characters not enough, but that nearly all phones these days are web and email compatible anyway. I believe SMS technology will one day become redundant, I believe this regardless of the statistical fact that people are sending more and more texts each day. The simple fact is that a SMS message, whilst convenient is and expensive and limited way to communicate. An analogy is the BBC licence I have to pay for here in the UK. It seems to me that with more and more people using the internet to be informed and entertained, as well as the constant increases in broadband speeds it’s only a matter of time before we can get all of our television programs online. It’s a cheaper, more modern and more diverse way of communicating. This is not to say that the BBC will cease trying to charge people for the privilege.

One thing that I don’t yet understand on Twitter is why people follow me that I have never met and have no interest in. I think that people must just go though people’s lists and press the follow button without giving it a seconds thought. I guess it’s one way of promoting their own accounts. If someone follows me I do check them out and if I find what they have to offer an interest I will add them, I will not do it however just to promote my own Twitter account.

It’s seems my sites have now been reindexed, thank god. Well all in all they were only offline for 4 days. It just goes to show that sometimes its worth making a noise about things. I’m sure ranting here and in the Google forums helped! Thanks for being responsive Google.

Still the whole thing was very stressful and I hope it doesn’t happen again!