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

Working in an online business like kc web design kent means that almost every working day I'm logging in and out of services or apps. Every day my whole online life is governed by passwords for email accounts, online web design services, social media, to-do lists and more. It feels like every month or so now some online service gets hacked and we all have to change our passwords again. In the last few months we've had Dropbox, Twitter and now Evernote is the latest victim. On Evernotes website they...

I thought we'd start doing a little Friday round-up here at kc web design kent of interesting things that we've come across during the week. So for our first 'Friday round-up' we're going to have a look at all sorts of interesting web design and development related goodies and just plain cool stuff that we've come across over the last week. Zurb Foundation 4 The latest version of the best (in our opinion, although Bootstrap is coming a very, very close second now) responsive html5/css3 framework is out. kc web design...

Expression Engine is our CMS of choice at kc web design kent and we use it on a lot of larger projects. It has great flexibility, if built on a robust framework and the community of users and add-ons is very good. It is one of the best web design CMS frameworks around and a joy to use. At kc web design kent we recently built a web app based on Expression Engine and needed to create a subscription based service that would allow users to purchase subscription plans and then...

At kc web design kent we create a lot of websites based on Wordpress: blogs, e-commerce websites, corporate websites and even web apps. As soon as we get Wordpress installed on a web design project we always add our own set of plugins for security and other odds and ends. So here's our quick list of Wordpress plugins to get into a Wordpress website quickly... Wordfence In my opinion, one of the best Wordpress security plugins there is. Even on the basic level it will scan your site for all...

Over the last few months here at kc web design kent we've been collecting some useful tools and snippets of code and all sorts of interesting links so I thought we'd share some of those for other web designers out there. First on the list is a great little tool for online typography... www.gridlover.net Gridlover is a great tool for creating a html text with a perfect modular scale and vertical rhythm. If setting out your text styles while creating a new website design feels tricky then this well designed...

Here's a great little tip for mapping a hash (#) character to a better keyboard shortcut. At kc web design kent we do a lot of coding and the hash key is one that gets used a lot and on a Max OSX English keyboard it isn't in the easiest of places and needs a slightly twisted finger combination to hit it on the 3 number key. With a simple change we can map the hash symbol to another key such as the § key which doesn't get used at...

A lot of the articles I write for kc web design kent are to help with Google rankings and SEO in general. Other articles are for information for prospective clients and snippets of wisdom or code for other web designers. Most of the time it's relatively easy to get a few articles on the website each week but recently I've been working on a huge web app project that's taking up every hour of every day and finding something interesting to write about has become a little difficult over the...

I'm sure we've written about Mountee before at kc web design kent but even if we have, it's time to sing it's praises again. While building website design projects you normally have access to files and folders and can upload to servers but when using a CMS such as Expression Engine the template files are embedded into the admin system. There was a time when editing those templates could only be done via the admin interface, then you could save them as a file and edit them directly and then came...

Is it time for email to change? There have been some exciting new apps appear over the last few months that hint to a change in the process of how we deal with email. Should the way we deal with email change? At kc web design kent we think it should. Email is now over 40 years old and the first email was sent by engineer Ray Tomlinson, on Wednesday 8th June 1971. In that time it has changed very little but the way we use it is now integral to...

At kc web design Kent we create a lot of web apps - some for ourselves and some for clients. Most web apps are made to work online but sometimes, we need to create a web app that works offline, say on a mobile device when a connection is lost. How can a web app work with no internet connection you may ask. Well, there are a few things you can do to make sure your web app works with no connection. On a current web app project at kc...

This is a bit of a random post for a website design blog and not one we'd normally do at kc web design kent but I'm selling my 1976 VW Camper Van and thought it might be worth a try to post it on here and see what the power of google can do! Who knows! Photos can be seen here…https://www.dropbox.com/sh/q532rkbn2bb6a6w/OyE1UoD6sE Green tin-top 1976 late bay in great condition with 12 months MOT. Has been well looked after (by Vanshack and Rusty Kampers) and cherished over the past 10 years...

This is less of an article and more of a question (and a bit of a test) really - does having comments turned on and letting other users comment on your blog post have any benefit on SEO? Normally I have comments turned off on all the articles I write on kc web design kent but I'm wondering if it will make a difference to Google rankings to gather more back links by letting people get more involved in the conversation. Would allowing comments on kc web design kent articles...

On a recent web app project that we're building here at kc web design kent we needed to utilise HTML5 localStorage quite a lot. With the complexities of the forms we were building we also had to manipulate the DOM a lot and create whole batches of new form fields based on user input. One of the inherent problems of creating or cloning form fields using Jquery is that those new form fields aren't accessible in the normal way. You have to use Jquery .live events to reference newly created...

At kc web design kent we believe that website design for start-up businesses is very, very important. Any website design created for a brand new company needs to work very hard and be cost effective, especially if that website is the whole business for an online start-up. Anyone starting a new business venture will have limited funds, big plans and big ideas and will want the best possible website for their new venture. The key to getting a great website design for a new business is to be considered and...

Bootstrap vs Foundation. It's the age old fight of the frameworks. The two main contenders are still battling it out but here at kc web design kent we're using both on 2 different projects so thought I'd write a little about how I feel about the two frameworks. At kc web design kent we're currently using the Zurb Foundation framework on a website design project and the Twitter Bootstrap framework on an internal project and a big web app design project. So how do they stack up? I'm a big...

As more and more mobile phone companies are producing cheaper smartphones the more the mobile market grows. For web designers the mobile market has become very important over the last few years and this is set to grow even more rapidly in 2013. For kc web design kent and other freelance web designers and website design studios, responsive web design (RWD) has now become the normal way to create new websites. Almost all clients now want their new websites to work on mobile and tablet devices and responsive web design...

On Monday evening the kc web design Kent website went down. Sometimes it does this when our hosting company reboot servers or do routine maintenance. We host the kc web design Kent website with a company in California called AISO.net who are an eco-friendly hosting company powered by solar and wind energy. kc web design Kent have been hosting with them for over 7 years now and they've always been great, until Monday night. What we thought was a maintenance blip turned into an 18 hour outage with no website...

It seems like every other week there's a new weather app for the iPhone. All beautifully designed with lots of swiping and pinching but all missing one key point - a lot of people that use weather apps don't just want todays temperature and a nice cloud icon, they want weather information, all weather information. As the talented Mark Boulton tweeted the other day... The problem with pretty weather apps on iOS is the data is usually pretty shitty and generic. I want beautiful *and* accurate. And by accurate, I...

kc web design ltd work on web design and development in kent, Canterbury, the South East, London and the rest of the UK. We also have global clients from all over the world such as the Toll Group and Fujitsu amongst others but for 2013, as a freelance web designer and user interface (UX/UI) specialist, I'd love to do some work with a local web start-up or Apple software company. Working on web design and development in kent is a lovely way to work and the web design and development projects...

Happy New Year from kc web design kent! 2012 was a great year for kc web design kent and 2013 is going to be even better with some exciting new projects on the horizon! What's happening at kc web design kent in 2013? We have a few projects going live in the next few weeks while we get started on a new web app client project which will last a few months. This web app is going to be very special and utilise HTML5 only technology to create a web...

When we moved 4 years ago with kc web design kent I thought this area might be a really cool place to work as a freelance website designer in kent. I was expecting lots of meet ups and gatherings and conferences but sadly there hasn't been much of that at all. A while ago I did try to help resurrect what looked like a great night called Canterbury Geeks (akin to the Oxford Geek Nights) but sadly this didn't happen for one reason or another. Another interesting night, similar to Canterbury...

At the beginning of this year kc web design Kent built an e-commerce website for Drai Fine Art to sell fine art paintings and prints. We created a responsive website design to work on mobiles and tablets and built the website using Expression Engine and the Brilliant Retail e-commerce add-on. The initial build of the website was a relatively smooth process and working with Expression Engine and Brilliant Retail on this website design project was no trouble at all. Brilliant Retail hooks into Expression Engine perfectly and allows you to...

Here's another Dribbble PSD freebie from kc web design Kent. It's just a simple button but free for everyone to use. You can download the free Dribbble PSD freebie or see the post on Dribbble. If you're a professional website designer or just a freelance web designer, Dribbble freebies can help spark that little bit of creativity or give you a push in the right direction if you're struggling with a web design project. This Dribbble freebie photoshop file is free to use on any of your web design projects,...

Adobe quietly rolled out an update to Photoshop CS6 yesterday and I almost didn't notice two amazing new features for web designers. Apart from retina support, an improved crop tool, smart filters for video and a few other small updates there were two big additions that are going to get web designers and everyone at kc web design kent very excited. Copy CSS Yes, you read that right! Copy CSS! What, web code in Photoshop you say, it can't be true! Just right click on a layer and you'll see...

I'm Paul, a freelance web designer in Kent. It's taken me a while to actually come out and say it but yes, I am a freelance web designer. When I started kc web design Kent back in 2007 it was a collection of very talented web designers and developers all working as freelance web designers or freelance web developers in their own right but would come together under the kc web design umbrella for special projects. I still work with some of the original freelance web developers I did back...

Reading the articles on kc web design Kent you'd get the impression that we're a small design studio - which we are - but more and more these days I'm doing pure freelance design jobs on user interfaces and getting involved in bigger long term projects. As a freelance web designer in Kent and the owner of kc web design Kent it's important to let prospective clients know what we do and how we do it. At kc web design Kent we do a lot of small bespoke web design projects...

Everyone loves a freebie and everyone loves Dribbble freebies so kc web design Kent have given you a little present to use in your own designs. Its a simple infographic that can be used for all sorts of number presentations. You can download the PSD file from Dribbble or here. Over the next few months we'll be doing some more Dribbble freebies and giving back to a great web design community. If you're a web designer that isn't on Dribbble yet then do it now! Get some of your best work together...

iTunes 11 came out today and the internet has been a flood of praise and criticism for Apples new version of its flagship music player. The top 5 latest features in the new iTunes are the completely redesigned interface, iCloud integration, a new mini player, up next queuing and a much better search as well as being much much faster and integrating a common look for the iTunes store across all Apple devices. Working at a small web design studio like kc web design kent means working mostly in a...

kc web design kent - Google Nexus 7 review. I talked about the need for hardware testing for responsive web design a few days ago and mentioned the devices we were going to add to our arsenal here at kc web design Kent. One of those was the Google Nexus 7 tablet. First good thing I have to say about the Nexus 7, and more specifically about Google, was the delivery was super fast! Ordered 1 day, came the next, even though the order stated 2/3 days. Well done Google,...

As responsive web design becomes more and more relevant and the majority of websites that get built now are made to work on most devices, the problems of testing become more appearent. At kc web design Kent pretty much all of the websites we build now are responsive and testing them on all the devices out there is becoming impractical. You can get away with testing specific break points in the browser and there are a lot (more than 19 at last count) of responsive web design tools out there...