David Behan's Web Design Ireland Blog

FeedMyInbox

Yesterday, I was browsing a cool application directory called feedmyapp.com, which has lists of some really cutting edge web applications. I’ve found some really neat stuff over there. One that I found yesterday and I thought I’d share was, feedmyinbox.com. FeedMyInbox allows you to add a website url and your own email address. Once you verify your email address, it will keep an eye on the RSS feed of the website to see if anything is new and when it finds new content, it make an email out of it, and sends it to you.

If the site you visit uses FeedBurner to manage it’s rss feeds (for stats and sharing), there is an option to put in your email address there too. However, as far as I know, the site needs to have been previously set up with feedburner. I just thought this was a nice, quick and simple approach for those that don’t use rss readers or maybe prefer not to have someone’s rss feed in their rss reader that’s not updated often. I added my own website to the app and my own email address, and this morning I had my most recent post in my inbox (and before feedburner had delivered it too).

I think they could expand the application to include some new features, maybe a control panel, a widget for websites to submit to their database, etc. For now anyway, it’s a nice, simple web app that’s worth checking out: FeedMyInbox.com.

Amazon.com

I was talking to a client this morning about mobile phones and he directed me to the amazon.com website to check out some prices. I’m not usually a visitor to their site. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever bought from them in the past. The first thing that jumped off the screen at me was an Irish flag and a message: “Shopping from Ireland? Visit Amazon.co.uk”. I really found this strange from such a large organisation. They have amazon.ie, they have it redirecting to the .co.uk store, why not just put amazon.ie in the message?

Ok, it’s probably a branding thing and they don’t have a .ie store, but it still looks strange to me from such a big company. A lot of smaller companies trading in Ireland and the UK try to secure both .ie and .co.uk domains (or get a .com to cover both) and target their sites towards each country. This has just got me thinking about how perception might effect the purchasing decision of a customer in country A, buying from a website with a domain extension from country B. The .com seems to cover all countries but should you have the different country extensions for your online business when you are targetting them in particular? This probably doesn’t effect Amazon due to their size but smaller online businesses, are they losing revenue on a global scale if they only advertise through their .ie (for example) website?

Anyway, food for thought. I didn’t buy anything in the end.

iFoods.tv

Last night saw a new episode of Dragon’s Den on BBC2, this time featuring the guys behind iFoods.tv, who were looking for £100k investment in their cooking video social network website. Unfortunately, they were not successful in taiming one of the dragons and getting them to invest but at the same time, I think they did extremely well in what they did achieve. They had a great pitch, came across very well, and achieved the respect of the dragons. However, their only fault was that there is a similar type website with a very similar name, and the dragons felt they could loose a number of visitors if users accidently found the rival site instead of their own.

I’ve known of iFoods.tv for awhile but I must admit, I’m not one for cooking too much at all so it hasn’t been a website I would visit often. I have just had the opportunity to have a closer look through their site and watch a couple of their cooking videos. Ignoring the fact that I’m now craving a BBQ’d T-Bone Steak, the site is very well done… nice design, great content, and quite unique. This post is really to help boost some sort of link love for iFoods.tv and give them a little more exposure than they have already gotten. I’m sure by appearing on Dragon’s Den, they’ve gotten their name out to so many potential visitors. I’d love to know how many visitors they have gotten to their site over the past 24 hours.

I just want to add a well done to the guys for going on Dragon’s Den. It must have been a nerve wracking experience but they seemed to handle themselves very well. If I ever aim for that stage, I may knock on their door for some advice.

All the best in the future!

Well, it’s that time of year again… awards season for the Irish web industry. This year sees a new awards being launched, making it 3 awards ceremonies for us webbies to go to.

Irish Web Awards 2008

Irish Web Awards 2008 - October 11th
The Irish Web Awards is the new awards to launch this year. Following the success of the Irish Blog Awards over the past couple of years, Damien Mulley has launched the Irish Web Awards 2008. Categories for the awards include News & Media, Entertainment, Technology, Government &Community, Education & Science, Commerce, Speciality, Technical Awards and an overall Grand Prix. There’s something for everyone in there. Damien is promoting full transparency with these awards and has released the scorecard that will be used to judge nominations. Also, sponsors of the awards cannot have a nomination. These awards will be a bit more casual (as you won’t need a penguin suit) but Damien promises it will be more fun. If the Blog Awards are anything to go by, I’d well believe it. Very nice logo I might add… by Spoilt Child I do believe.

IIA Net Visionary

IIA Net Visionary - October 30th
The Net Visionaries are run by the Irish Internet Association, and according to the IIA, are unique in that they are run and voted on by the Irish web industry. They may not be unique anymore with the launch of the Irish Web Awards this year. A large range of categories are available to get nominated in, including Best Business Blogger, Innovation Award, Internet Entrepreneur, Internet Marketer, Student Project Award, Web Designer Excellence, and Web Developer Excellence. There is something new with these awards this year in that if you (or someone from your company) have won an award in a particular category over the past 2 years, you cannot be nominated in that category. Not a bad idea to allow a rotation of winners. The awards night is a black tie affair and having attended these events a couple of years ago, I must say, it’s a great night.

Golden Spiders

Golden Spider Awards - November 20th
The Golden Spiders are run by Business & Finance magazine and always raise debate about the validity of the awards. So far I haven’t seen anything this year but I’m sure it’s on it’s way! Regardless, I stick to the opinion that the Golden Spiders are a business awards and it is seen as this. We’ve won a Golden Spider award twice in the past for clients and it really does help our business and our clients in promoting their website. The difference with Golden Spider Awards and the other 2 above is that they charge for you to enter and you might not get short listed. The cost of entry is €150. There’s a whole host of categories ranging the business community from finance to professional services, property to recruitment, and many more. There’s a new award this year for Young Designer of the Year. It’ll be interesting to see who gets nominated for and wins this one. This year, the Golden Spiders have published their judging criteria on the website and have added additional information about web standards. The Spiders are a black tie affair as well and having attended the past 2 years, I found it to be a great night for networking with a lot of the larger companies in the web industry. I’ve made a number of contacts from these nights.

Well, I’ll hopefully be putting a couple of sites forward to each of the awards this year and in turn, I should be attending each of them. Hopefully I’ll see you there.

I was reading a post this morning about CMS vs Frameworks and it got me thinking about how I like to work on projects. I think there are some great CMS’s (content management systems) out there to allow you to manage content on your website, including WordPress that I’m using to write this blog post (you may have noticed that I’m writing a lot more in the last week since I upgraded to the latest version). They come with some great features and are really great to use for me and for my clients. What this article highlighted for me is two things… there is usually a learning curve around a new CMS in terms of setting them up, tweaking them, customising them to way you want, etc. and also that you often loose a lot of control over the output because you are using the accompanied frontend code.

For me as a designer and developer, I like to have a lot of control of the pages that appear on the frontend but I often need to include CMS functionality for my clients so they can update the content on an ongoing basis. So, what do you do… do it all with a custom build, e.g. custom database, custom cms, custom frontend development? Or use an off-the-shelf CMS that you can build the site around and include sections that you need? I’ve done both of these a number of times over the past few years and which one really depends on budget and timeframe.

We have our own Property Manager CMS (see www.gorhomes.ie for a sample) for our property company clients that we’ve built and maintained for the past few years. This was a custom build but we try and keep costs down by specialising in this market. On the other hand, I’ve used the likes of ExpressionEngine to build a couple of CMS driven sites (see www.trimgaa.ie for an example). Both options have their pros and cons, such as:

Custom CMS Build

• Pros - Complete control, works the way you want
• Cons - Costly to develop and maintain, takes longer to develop

Off-The-Shelf CMS

• Pros - Code updating managed for you, quicker to deploy, cost effective
• Cons - Less control over outputted code, learning curve (e.g. EE tags in Expression Engine), frustration with new development procedures (e.g. editing css/xhtml in a browser instead of in your favourite development programme)

So, what I’ve done a few times now is try a hybrid solution and I think I want to do it more in the future. Instead of using a full off-the-shelf product for the CMS and the frontend, I’ve tried using the CMS and database only, and then integrate a custom frontend website/application into that database. This way, i feel you’re getting the best of both worlds: a CMS that is quick and low cost to deploy and maintain while still taking full control over the frontend with custom hand written code.

An example of a fantastic CMS application that I’ve used in this hybrid fashion is SlideShowPro Director. I’ve used SlideShowPro a number of times on sites and it’s a great way of showing a gallery of photos or a portfolio but these days, I’m tending to stay away from flash if I can, and use javascript instead. Therefore, I don’t want to use the SlideShowPro frontend flash output but I do love the CMS that Director is. So, I’ve been able to use SlideShowDirector as a backend CMS to manage a portfolio and at the same time, custom write a frontend javascript based gallery to work directly with the database and it works the way I want it. I didn’t need to extend the CMS in any way, just see how it worked in relation to the database and away I went. I’m thinking of trying something similar with the new ExpressionEngine when it comes out as I love the way you can build custom sections in the database from within the CMS.

So, what do you think? Do you lock yourself into a particular CMS and feel confined? Or do you custom build every CMS and find you’ve never any time? Or are you looking at this Hybrid CMS Solution and if so, can you tell me any other ones you’ve used or would recommend?

No, I’m not talking up my own company this time… I’m talking about Blacknight Web Hosting. Ok, this might just be my own personal opinion but I’m not the only one to think this (they are a well respected provider in the web industry). Blacknight are a medium sized company in Ireland but with a lot to offer when it comes to web hosting. I’ve been doing business with them for over a year now and in that time, I’ve developed a good relationship with them. I’ve dealt with a few web hosting companies over the years and when I compare the service and support that Blacknight provide, they really are second to none.

Blacknight Web Hosting

Well today sees the launch of their new website, which I must say looks pretty cool and reflective of their companies commitment to quality service and support. Along with the new site, they are also launching brand spanking new hosting plans. Only a couple of months ago, they launched some great VPS Hosting plans that are very attractive for companies out growing shared hosting but not ready for full dedicated servers, which they also can provide.

So, if you’re looking to register a couple of domains, or in the market for a hosting company for your new website, or just not happy with your current host, I would 100% recommend you check out Blacknight. You won’t be dissappointed.

I welcome readers to leave their own comments on their experiences with Blacknight and whether you would recommend them or not.

There’s an Irish Webmaster Forum meetup tomorrow evening in the Harbour Master, IFSC, Dublin. The last one was very successful and we had a great attendance and we’re expecting a good turn up this time. A couple of confirmed people include:

• Richard Hearne
• Dave Davis
• James Larkin
• Micky Wall
• Louie (sorry, I don’t know Louie’s second name)
• Gavin Doolan

There are many more expected as well. So, if you are interested and fancy a bit of fun and a chat about industry stuff and maybe even do a bit of business, come along.

Last time, we were kindly sponsored by Blacknight for a few drinks. We might be able to twist their arm again this time. I believe they’re going to be launching their new site in the next day or so, with some great new price plans. I promise we’ll get a new blog post especially for that.

More information on the meetup can be seen on the IWF website.

Looking forward to seeing you on the night.

Over the past 2 months, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a great company, to upgrade their web presence. There was a number of requirements for the site: make it look good, make it more accessible and visible to search engines, and make it pink.

The company is the Select Digital Print Group, based in Tallaght, Dublin 24. They specialise in digital printing, sign and display, creative design and print. Here’s a preview of the site and I think we’ve ticked all 3 requirements for their site: looks good, seo friendly and pink!

www.selectdigital.ie

I’d like to wish Tara and everyone at Select Digital, the very best with the website and their continued success. As I mentioned, it was a pleasure to work with them and I’d recommend you check them out for your creative design and digital print needs in the future.

I’m already looking forward to designing my next pink website. Any takers?

As oppossed to writing “test post from iPhone” like I’ve seen a few times today, I decided to write a little post telling everyone that you can now update your WordPress Blog using your iPhone or iPod Touch. I’m writing this post using my iPod Touch and I must say, it’s quite handy and fairly fast suprisingly. There is also support for uploading pictures from your device directly into the post.

Now, I wonder will this actually make me write more posts and more often when I’m not at my PC or MacBook. I think it will push me to get the iPhone though so I can take pictures, create posts and upload them using the new 3G version.

Well done to WordPress for creating this app. Very nice indeed.

http://iphone.wordpress.org for more info.

I’m happy to report today that one of our clients, Blue Sky Mortgages, has done very well out of Google’s recent SERP shuffle. They’ve reached no. 2 for the search term “mortgages” on google.ie.

When we took over the site late last year, one of our objectives was to increase search engine traffic. By employing standard SEO techniques during the development process (such as compliant code, css based design, naming conventions, search engine friendly urls, etc.) and some help from 2bscene with a targeted link building campaign and optimisation of the site, we are really happy with the results this week. Being no. 2, pushes Blue Sky Mortgages above the likes of GMC Mortgages, Permanent TSB, Irish Mortgage, Mortgage Store, Ulster Bank and Simply Mortgages - to name but a few.

Blue Sky Mortgages also rank very well for other terms such as “mortgage”, “mortgages ireland”, “mortgage broker”, etc. We’re looking forward to analysing the statistical information and improving on the current results. This actually coincides with a new service we will be offering our clients that makes use of PPC campaigns to achieve exceptional results. We’ll have more on that soon.