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

We had a very interesting call at kc web design kent last week from Potable Water Solutions. Potable Water Solutions make the Hydro Voyager 3 - a new solution for purifying contaminated water. At kc web design kent we love helping out with good causes and Potable Water Solutions needed a quick landing page created for their new water purification system. We had very little time to get something designed for them and needed to take complete control of the whole process so that Potable Water Solutions didn't have to worry about a thing. We...

We all know we have to do, but finding time to write content for SEO can feel like a chore especially when you're working all hours on client web design work. Keeping on top of SEO writing and keeping your website full of fresh new relevant content is hard work and something that has to be maintained. We've been so busy here at kc web design kent for the last few months that I've let the content writing slip a little. I was writing 2/3 articles per week which really...

Its been reported quite widely  in the media this week that Wordpress has been under attack. Wordpress powers millions of websites so an attack like this is no small thing. Millions and millions of sites will have been hacked and the brute force attached looks like it was aimed at weak admin usernames and passwords. Probably an attempt to gain access to more servers for a bigger attack, the hackers targeted Wordpress websites with weak passwords that were still using the default admin login. Even Wordpress websites with different usernames...

Last week my iMac screen brightness started flickering. At first I thought it was my eyes playing tricks in the sun coming through the studio windows but after a few days I noticed a defined change in brightness in the lower left part of the screen. At kc web design kent we love iMac's because of the huge amount of screen space. Combined with a second 24" monitor and you have an almost perfect working environment for web design and iOS design work and coding. iMacs have been a part...

kc web design kent are delighted to be working with the wonderful Yohondo on their brand new iPad app. We'll be designing the user interface over the next few weeks to create a beautiful UI experience and craft an award winning app. Yohondo is a new iPad app designed for teaching grade 1,2 and 3 piano in a new and intuitive way. kc web design kent will be working with the Yohondo team to take their working wireframe app and turn it into a visual exciting, beautifully design experience for all...

Most people in the web design industry are aware of Mailbox - the new email client for iOS that claims to change the way we deal with email - and at kc web design kent we were very excited when it was launched. And most will also be aware of the sign-up system they used. After sign-up the user joined a queue and the app gave a count down to when it would be available. When I signed up I was about 700,000 in the queue and it took a...

After a good few hours trying to debug a web app in Mobile Safari here at kc web design kent we finally worked out that having private browsing turned on in the Safari settings was causing javascript and local storage to not work. Safari mobile seems to deal with private browsing differently to other browsers and it actually stops any kind of local storage from being set where as Chrome still allows a certain amount of storage to be accessed. To warn users that they have private browsing on we...

To be honest, I can't really remember my first website that well. It was over 15 years ago so specific facts feel a little fuzzy. Before I was a ’proper’ web designer (which is what I call myself now) I was a graphic designer for print and before I did that I was a photographer for a very short time and that's what I was doing when I built my first website. At the time I was at art college in Bournemouth and heavily involved in music. A good friend...

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...