What to do when there’s nothing to do

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 last few weeks. So what to do when you have writers block or not enough time to spend researching interesting subjects?

I could talk about our SEO here at kc web design kent and drone on about the keywords we’re trying to hit such as ‘website design kent‘ or ‘freelance web designer kent‘ but that just seems a bit cheeky and a bit lame. I could take about something inane or silly but what I should be doing is finding a really interesting topic to write about. Maybe what I need are a few guest writers to help out at kc web design kent for those times when inspiration is low but it’s not really that kind of site. Actually, what it really comes down to is time. When we’re extremely busy here at kc web design kent on intense, schedule dependent projects we tend to focus, put the blinkers on and get things done and that can have an impact on all those daily jobs that normally fit nicely into your schedule. Once this large web design/web app project is finished and things get back to normal at kc web design kent then I’ll have the time to find interesting subjects to talk about but until then I might just have to resign myself to the fact that I might just have to waffle for a bit. Hopefully the next article will be a little more interesting and a lot less waffle!

kc web design kent review – Mountee

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 Mountee.

Mountee is a little app and a plugin for Expression Engine and we’ve been using it for a while here at kc web design kent. It’s on a current large web app project that we’re building with Expression Engine that Mountee has shown what an indispensable app it is. Mountee allows you to mount your Expression Engine template folders as a drive on your Mac and access those folders and files like you would any other files. When you open and edit them and then save those changes are automatically saved back to Expression Engine (where it saves the files into the database). While working on our current web app design project at kc web design kent we’ve used Mountee every day to build the web app and without Mountee the process of building the website and updating the templates would be tricky. Mountee makes it very easy to get access to your template files and this means that development time on Expression Engine website builds is a lot less.

One issue we have found with Mountee though is sometimes after sleep you try and save a file but it doesn’t update. If this happens you have to eject the drive and then re-connect before the files will save again. Its caught us out a few times and is something that I’m hoping will get fixed although I suspect its something to do with the Fuse system and how it deals with remote connections.

kc web design kent specialise in Expression Engine and WordPress website design.

Is it time for email to change?

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 every business on the planet. There can’t be many people in offices now that don’t check their email in Outlook at least every ten minutes, every day, 5 days a week. Thats a lot of email usage for a system that hasn’t changed much in 40 years.

Normally, email comes in to your inbox, you deal with it (or ignore/delete it) then store it in an appropriate folder. There are many, many email clients that let you do this (at kc web design kent we’re big fans of Postbox) but they all mostly deal with it in exactly the same way. An inbox and then subfolders for filling. When we use email here at kc web design kent its more than just an inbox. It becomes a filling system to store messages, sometimes from many years ago. It becomes part of a to-do or GTD system. It’s a way of sending files and images. It does all of these things in a kind of ok way but isn’t really made for doing any of them properly. This is why email should change. We use it differently now, not just to send a quick message but to organise and run our whole day or even our businesses.

A few new apps have appeared that are trying to change the way we use email, to make it behave more like the thing it has evolved into and to create something beyond just email sending and recieving. There are ways of using standard email apps that can improve the process and integrate email into more of a business process for getting things done. There’s a great article on Appstorm about using smart folders and a whole new method called The Secret Weapon that are both worth reading. But, new apps may be the way forward and the 2 main contenders are Mailbox and DotMail. I think DotMail is a little way off yet but Mailbox has starting rolling out a limited preview of it iOS app. Currently, kc web design kent are number 754,280 in the queue so it might be a while before we can do a full review!

Web apps that work offline

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 web design kent we did just that.

Firstly, make sure that your web app really needs to work offline. There’s no need to work towards an offline web app if you don’t need to. If you do need it to work offline then make sure you know that before you start as this decision will dictate the code base you use. For an offline app you’ll really want to code things in a client side language such as Jquery with a minimal amount of PHP or server side coding. If you do need some PHP to communicate with a server then wrap it in Ajax calls so that you can check for a connection before you do any communicating with the server. There are a few scripts out there that help with this and we’ve used a very good one from Tom Riley.

Using Jquery or other client side languages means you can get all the main bulk of the app coded and working without any server interaction. For the few things that may need a server connection you can check for that connection and then alert the user that those features won’t be available until a connection is available again. Another way to make apps work offline is to utilise HTML5 local storage and save all form fields and data locally in the browser until a connection is available again. We’ve played around a lot with local storage at kc web design kent on a recent web app design project and be warned, it doesn’t always behave as you might think.

There are also other methods of making sure that your web app works offline and we’ll go into more detail on those in another post.

If you have a web app project then give kc web design kent a call. We’re experts in all types of web apps, iPhone apps and business websites.

1976 VW BAY CAMPER FOR SALE IN KENT

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 but sadly (in fact very, very sadly as I met my misses and had many great adventures in this van!|) it’s time for it to go to a new home.
This is a very solid van, well cared for and in tip-top condition. Solid underneath (never had belly pans so no horrible surprises) and wax-oiled regularly. Interior could do with an upgrade at some point but has worked very well for us over the last 10 years. Lots of original parts but a new engine was put in 4 years ago. The new engine is a larger 1641 with twin Weber carbs, sports cam, electronic ignition and lots of upgraded parts. It really does make a difference and pulls very well up hills and improves the driving a lot. Makes a change to have a bit of power in a van! It’s believed to be originally a Holsworth commercial van conversion, so has better gearbox and suspension but has beaded windows rather than the inset camper style windows.

Vehicle condition 8/10
1976 late bay
10 months MOT
Not Tax Exempt
Located near Canterbury, Kent

Other features…

  • Lowered (cut and twist beam)
  • Original wheels with nice chrome trim
  • Original interior rubber mats and other parts such as gear stick knob, headliner, etc.
  • Stereo with mp3 connection
  • A tow bar
  • 3/4 width bed
  • 2 ring/grill cooker and gas bottle
  • sink
  • storage cupboards
  • wooden interior floor

I’ll also throw in…

  • A great Bluebird tunnel awning in excellent condition
  • A large 3 way camping fridge
  • Some opening quarter-lights (need rubbers and fitting)
  • JK full cover
  • Other spare parts

£11,950 ono

Contact Paul at kc web design kent on 07802 838698 or email paul @ k-collective.co.uk

kc web design kent – Comments and SEO

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 help with SEO?

As a question this is fairly broad but I’m wondering if it will make a difference. I’m leaving comments open on this post and making sure my Akismet filter is up-to-date and working. One of the major problems with having comments open is the spam, so that needs to be stopped straight away so I don’t get bogged down in comment administration. If anyone reading this has any experience with SEO and comments then please do…leave a comment. I’d love to know your experiences and what you think about the effects of comments on SEO. As a bit of a test on the kc web design kent website I might do a series of articles with comments on and see if that improves back links and trackbacks and if the spread of the article reaches a wider audience. I’ll need to think up some good subject matter for those!

Social Media and Google rankings

While we’re on the subject of Google rankings, over the past few months at kc web design kent we have made a bit more of a concious effort to build up the profile of some of our social media pages and it does seem to be having a positive effect on our Google rankings. Were we where ranking on page 4 fairly consistantly we are now almost getting into page 2 and the only changes we’ve made at kc web design kent are on our social media pages. We’ll be trying some more tweaks to social media over the next few months so lets see if that improves things further.

Jquery, HTML5 LocalStorage and DOM manipulation

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 DOM elements as click functions will not work.

Local storage issues

While building this web app at kc web design kent we wanted to use HTML5 local storage to be able to keep a reference of all data locally so that the web app could be used in off-line situations. Local storage seems like the obvious choice but we ran into problems with form fields that were created by the DOM. Local storage just would not see these new fields and no matter what we tried we couldn’t get the fields to save. There isn’t a lot of detailed information around on local storage problems like this and after a few hours on Google we came up empty. So, we decided to get our heads together at kc web design kent and build some kind of work around.

A kc web design kent fix!

After trying a few failed attempts to force local storage to see the newly created fields we decided to take a different approach and use Jquery to ‘listen’ for any changes on form fields created in the DOM and then force them to save to local storage with the correct name and value. We tried a few complicated methods but found the best way was to keep it simple. If you come across the same problem then maybe this will help. Just set up a global event to listen for all form fields and then when they change manually set the local storage values. Seems too simple to work, but it does.

$("form").on('change', function(e) { 
 var $this = e.target;
 localStorage.setItem(e.target.name, e.target.value);
});

kc web design Kent | Bootstrap vs Foundation

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 fan of frameworks, anything that saves time on processes that you do again and again is a good thing, and these frameworks do that very well. They give you all the building blocks to create great websites, in fact you can quite easily get a basic website up and running using one of these frameworks within a few hours (it wouldn’t look great though, but would work well as a wireframe or prototype). There is a danger of lots of websites springing up that use these frameworks all looking the same so its important to use them as starting points and to make sure that your unique design is crafted onto the framework. Use them as a starting point and not as a theme.

While using both frameworks on website design projects at kc web design kent a few points worth noting have come to light. If you want more themes and plug and play components for your framework then choose Twitter Bootstrap – It seems to have far more community generated resources than Zurb Foundation and is very easy to find ready made themes and website templates that you can stick on top of the basic framework. Zurb Foundation on the other hand feels like the more ‘grown-up’ framework. It feels a bit more logical, the documentation and examples are better and the grid feels a bit easier to use. To be fair though, there’s really not much in it and at the end of the day, like it does here at kc web design kent, it’ll all come down to personal preference. Try them both and decide for yourself.

kc web design kent website offline for over 18 hours

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 or email and lots of panicking!

kc web design kent are a very conscientious company and the environment is high on our list of concerns, especially for a tech based company, so we do what we can to help the environment with our solar powered hosting. All well and good, but the hosting company being based in California did cause a few problems this week because when the kc web design kent website was down it was the middle of the night in California and so no support staff were contactable. Hence even more panic. To be fair to AISO.net, once I’d got hold of their support staff they were very good (and I apologise for the language used prior to that!) but the wait was unbearable and almost a whole night and day without the kc web design kent website and email was starting to take its toll.

Two things came up in the panic – backups (yes, we had them, no they weren’t up to date) and Google rankings. How would our rankings be effected after the site was down for over 18 hours? We don’t know yet but hopefully nothing. After looking into our backups, which were done by the host, we’ve decided to take a different line and do offsite backups from within WordPress using the ‘WordPress Backup to Dropbox’ plugin. I’m a lot happier now that I can see the kc web design kent website getting backed up to Dropbox!

So why did the kc web design kent website disappear for 18 hours? Well, it turns out it was human error and some account spring cleaning…the wrong button was pressed and our account was terminated by mistake! Lets hope it doesn’t happen again!

Weather apps for the iPhone

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 actually mean nerdy. I want beautiful *and* nerdy. Is that even possible? Ever?

Well Mark, at kc web design Kent we think beautiful and nerdy IS possible, which is why kc web design Kent have been working on a new weather app for iOS called Cirrus One which we’ll be launching later this year. The main focus of Cirrus One is to make weather apps useful again as well as looking great. And by useful we mean nerdy, and full of weather information, not just a summary but all the data you need to satisfy any weather nerd. Initially we’ll be dealing with weather data for the UK only from the Met Office but phase 2 will allow us to integrate other weather data for other parts of the world. The data is very important so we’re spending time making sure the data for each location is accurate before we start using it and for the UK the Met Office is by far the best.

Even though Cirrus One will look great and have all the relevant weather data you’ll need it will also have a killer feature that will make every designer and weather nerd rejoice. We can’t say what it is right now – ssshhhhh, it’s top secret – but it will change the way you use weather apps for good and is completely unique within the marketplace. Stay tuned for more info here or signup for launch info on the Cirrus One website.

And if you have a great iOS app idea and need a team of designers and developers to bring it to life then give kc web design Kent a call for a chat.