Latest news, web design articles, website design tips & tricks

I've been working with Go To Hear for a few years as Head of platform design. Over this time I've become more and more involved in the core of the company and in control of all aspects of design. From today I am now CDO (Chief design officer) for Go To Hear. Huge thanks to the GTH team and here's to doing more great stuff in the music streaming industry!

The short answer Yes. Absolutely. Grab it here. The long answer Normally when designing and developing bespoke Wordpress websites for our clients we'd use the Advanced Custom Fields plugin and create custom template so that the client has full control over their specific content needs. But not all clients need this level of customisation and detail for their content. This is where Elementor Pro can really fill the gap between fully customised content and a basic Wordpress site. Elementor allows you, as the website designer and developer, to create the...

  It's been a while since we've updated our website. One of the hardest things to do when you're busy with other peoples websites is to look after your own. And we have been very bust over the last 12 months. As well as our ongoing work with Fujitsu UK and Fujitsu Global I'm very excited to announce that I am now working with music industry start-up Go To Hear Ltd as Head of Platform Design. Go To Hear hope to revolutionise the music industry and put back money into...

Its been a long time since I've posted on the website, but with very good reason. We've been working for a few years with Fujitsu UK helping redesign parts of the website, working on small microsites and doing other design and web work. Last year we started working with Fujitsu Global as well and so things got a little busier. The Fujitsu UK website has hundreds of thousands of pages and is built on a bit of an old system run by a no so user-friendly CMS. We've been battling...

kc web design are very proud to be a part of Fraser Corsans incredible world record wing suit jump record attempt. We've been working with Fraser and Fujitsu for the last 6 months on the website and brand for Project Cirrus and the time is rapidly approaching for Frasers first jump and first world record attempt. Fraser is now in California getting ready for his first jump. You can read more about Project Cirrus, the amazing equipment they use and watch daily video diaries over on the website...http://projectcirrus.com/ Here's a...

Last week I had a client contact me about a hacked website. On all of our Wordpress websites that we don't host with Pressidium (THE best Wordpress hosting out there!) we use some pretty good hardening and security to make sure our sites don't fall victim to hacks. So I was surprised to see an up-to-date site with good security get hacked. Turns out I wasn't alone and hundreds of thousands of Wordpress sites running 4.7.0 and 4.7.1 had been hacked, all be it not maliciously, due to a bug in...

Here's one little snippet that took a while to work out so I thought I'd post it here in case its useful for others. I had a custom field using ACF (Advanced custom fields plugin) that added an extra field to uploaded images that I wanted to use to sort them in a gallery. Adding the extra field via ACF was very easy but I wanted to copy the title of the image and use that in my custom field. There are many different hooks for manipulating uploaded media such...

Looking after your own website and brand is sometimes very hard. When client website design work comes first it can be tricky to find the time to redesign and rebrand you're own company, especially when you're a small web design agency like we are. About 18 months ago I had the time to look at our existing website design and branding and have a think about where we wanted to take it next. The original website and brand was coming up to being nearly 8 years old and so it was...

Over the last 15 years e-commerce has changed a lot. In that time we've built many, many different types of e-commerce website design - from huge bespoke shops integrated into warehouse systems to the modern day Woocommerce stores. Even though e-commerce has changed one thing seems to have stayed staic - the payment providers. The two main payment providers in the UK - excluding Paypal - have been Worldpay and Sagepay (previously Protx) and most of the e-commerce website design projects we've undertaken have used one of these payment providers. My personal preference...

Owning and running a small web design studio can be very hard work at times. I often work very long hours, sitting at my desk for long periods of time absorbed in designs or working on complicated UI problems or bug fixing code. I’ve also been a website designer for far too many years now and although I have the perfect studio in a wonderful location I still lead a very work focused life. Unfortunately, this has taken its toll over the years and back problems have become a regular...

A web app and website built by kc web design kent in 2013 has won it's second award (It previously won HPM App of The Year 2014). The ThermaSolutions web app, designed and built here at kc web design, has come second in the HEATING & RENEWABLES AWARDS 2015 - Training Initiative app of the year category for its built in 'education centre' app that allows teaching organisations to set tests for heating and boiler engineers. Teachers can set the criteria and the app will give calculations and answers for testing. The idea...

A few weeks ago I saw a tweet by Paul Boag that mentioned a new project management tool for freelance web designers. I've been on the lookout for a simple project management tool for some of the web design projects I work on - some directly for clients but others where I work with a group of remote workers. I'm always a sucker for a new bit of software to play with so I had a look at the Kirby Project Hub. The website looked great but I couldn't see a way...

Second only to password hell comes data backup hell. In an ideal world I'd have super fast broadband (<rant>Yes, I'm pointing the finger at you BT, you who deemed it not economically viable to put in fibre broadband in our village yet less than a mile up the hill you did! Now thats really supporting British rural businesses!</rant>) and back everything up to the cloud in the blink of an eye. In reality, my 6mb internet connection manages to push up a few hundred MB of changed data per day...

Is your website design responsive? Does your website work well on mobile devices? No? Then you need to seriously consider making sure your website is mobile friendly otherwise it could have an effect on your search rankings. Google have announced that from 21st April all sites will be tested under a new responsive algorithm to see if they perform well on mobile devices. Sites that are responsive and do perform well will get a little rankings boost. According to the Google Webmaster blog... “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use...

Google has great tools for search engine listing, analytics to help see what people do on your website all sorts of ways to bring in leads via pay per click ads. But what if potential new clients were coming to your website and not using your nice new contact form or picking up the phone to call you? A lot of hard work goes into creating a good website design and making sure that website appears in Google for the right key words and phrases so that the right kind...

Intranets can be a complicated beast. Multiple departments fighting for importance can cause important tasks and information to be spread all over the content structure. When designing a successful intranet website design there are a few rules and recommendations that will help build a user tool for the user rather than a departmentalised catalogue. Workshops and research - If possible undertake internal workshops and research to try and understand what you user need. What do they use the intranet for? What daily tasks on the intranet help with their day to day jobs?...

We don't do a huge amount of product reviews on the kc web design kent website (but please do send us stuff if you'd like us to review it!  ;o)  but when we get a product as good as this its hard not to write about it. I recently bought a new iPhone 6 which felt like a huge leap forward from my old iPhone 4s in all sorts of ways, most notably the size. The iPhone 6 is flippin' huge compared to my old phone! I even have to...

Googles new No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA could change the way we think about form security. Most web designers don't like captcha security but they are a necessary evil these days. With the huge amounts of form spam we get some kind of auto form submission and bot security is needed on almost every form we create. Personally, I prefer to use simple captchas that don't get in the way of the user such as asking a simple question but even these aren't fall proof and sooner or later the bots beat...

I've been a web designer at kc web design kent for a long time. Before that I was a print designer. Before that I did a design post grad. Before that I did a photographer degree. Before that I used to design and make stained glass windows. Before that I used to sit in my bedroom and just draw. For as long as I can remember I've been creative and artistic and used my eyes as part of my job every single day. It's something I've really taken for granted...

I love sci-fi. Films, books, TV shows in fact anything with space ships, aliens or futuristic concepts normally grabs my attention. Being a web designer I also love typography. Typography in sci-fi films and books can be a wondrous thing and on the wall of the office here at kc web design we have some beautiful examples of 1960's sic-fi book cover design in some fantastic Isaac Asimov New English Library publications. I could bore you for hours about my favourite sic-fi films or book (currently the Void trilogy) and about...