All our clients want to improve their search engine rankings.  Every week we are asked ‘how?'.  Alas, there is no easy fix or magic button to raise a website to the top of Google.   There are no ‘tricks’.  There is no shortcut.  Companies offering Search Engine Optimisation services are often more interested in Manipulating than Optimising.

What then do we tell our clients?  Focus on ‘Best Practice’?  What does that actually mean?  It means focusing on people, and one of Google’s updates to their algorithm (they do about 400 – 500 a year) in 2011 perfectly illustrates this. 

This update renders the page of a website and measures the relative usage of content and advertising... and negatively ranks those websites that are 'top-heavy' with advertising.  Again, what does this really mean?  It means that Googlebot is now proficient enough in website rendering to identify what a real user can see based on the Javascript, CSS and images in use in a page.  Googlebot is taking another step towards seeing a website as a human sees a website.  It is becoming more human.

The search engines will never stop in this quest to become more human.  Their robots are trying to see a website as a person sees a website.  In the context of the change to the algorithm we mention above, this means that there are penalties for putting too much advertising at the top of your website.  This is annoying for a user, as they have to scroll and search for the content the search engine told them would be on the page.  In the same way there are penalties for over loading a page with keywords, in an attempt to trick the search robots into believing your website is more important regarding a topic than it really is (this is an old trick, long ago rumbled by the robots).  This is a poor experience for a user, having to read the same word over and over and the search engines prescribe the appropriate penalty, a drop in ranking.

The change to the algorithm we mention above is not something that affects most of our clients.  Our designs promote the page content to the greatest possible extent and we don’t encourage our clients to make extensive use of advertising banners at the top of their websites.

Why do we mention it then?  Because it illustrates what Google is saying to publishers (our clients or you) and that is to continue to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your website and not to focus on specific algorithm tweaks or tricks.  Instead of worrying about how you can get inside the head of a robot, try getting inside the head of a person.  This is after all, what the robot is also trying to do.  The days of Google only reading the page source and page text are long gone.  Search engines are becoming more human and need to be treated as such.
 

To find out more about SEO and Online Marketing you can do so through the Hammer Design Workshops.
 

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Sometimes called a ‘welcome tab’ or ‘landing page’, the ability to create a facebook ‘welcome page’ for your businesses facebook account is a key way to get more people to follow you or ‘Like’ your page.

So what is it?  Put simply, it is a page which normally contains a large graphic image that visitors will arrive on when they first come to your facebook page.   Normally when people arrive at your facebook page whether searching facebook itself or through a search engine they arrive at your wall.  Having a ‘welcome page’ allows you to say exactly what you want to say, in exactly the way you want to say it, to all new visitors.  This is in contrast to them landing on your wall which could be displaying any one of a number of comments.

What are the key points to consider with Facebook Welcome Pages?

Brand strengthening
Through a high quality graphic representation of your business you strengthen your brand image.
Crystal clear indication of the benefits to someone liking your business
With a welcome page you can clearly explain to people what they will be getting from you if they like your business e.g.: ‘follow us to be kept up to date with special offers, top deals and competitions’.
In a Nutshell
It allows you to explain succinctly what your business does and who you are.  Your wall might be engaging to someone who knows your business but says little about it to the first time viewer.
Indicates Facebook professionalism
A proper welcome page shows you care enough about facebook to make one and indicates a certain level of commitment to the platform, making people more likely to ‘Like’ you.

What can you do with a Facebook Welcome page?

The welcome page is highly flexible.  If you are trying to increase the number of people who ‘Like’ you or are following you then the graphic can focus on encouraging this.  If you have a one off promotion that you want to push then it can be used for this.  If you want the landing page to be clickable and bring people out of facebook, back to your website, this is also possible.
If you are thinking about creating a welcome page consider what step you want people to take when they see it: Click ‘Like’, enter a competition, visit your website etc.

What else is there to know?

It is possible to create a ‘revealable’ welcome page.  This means that someone who is following you sees a different page to someone who is not.  In this way you can encourage new visitors to like you so they can see your second welcome page, which, for example, might contain a competition available only to your followers.

What are the actual mechanics of getting a facebook welcome page?

We are not going to go into the details of how to create a facebook welcome page here.  It is enough to say that first you need a graphic 500px wide and about 700px deep and then you need to install a Static HTML: iFrame tab (this is really, really, easy).  That’s it.

The graphic is where Hammer Design can help you out the most (and we’re happy to explain about the Static HTML: iFrame bit too).  If you’d like to know more then Drop Us a Line or Give Us a Call on 01433 650555.

The Hammer Design Facebook Welcome page. 
Visit our welcome page and Like Us to keep up to date with what we think and what we are up to.

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New legislation is making sure we don't store information about website users unless it follows the latest directives.

Some info on the EU regulations with respect to cookie storage

We are confident that the way our CMS currently uses cookies is in line with the requirements provided that clients have appropriate privacy policies or notes on cookies on their websites.

The grey area, affecting ourselves and our clients, is the use of third-party cookies for analytics - i.e. because Google Analytics uses cookies and these are 'third party', any and all websites using Google Analytics will need to have an appropriate measure in place to comply with the requirements. It may be sufficient to amend privacy policies / terms and conditions of use, but too be sure we feel that more action will be required later.

This blog entry from Paul Boag summarises it pretty well:

http://boagworld.com/news/do-you-need-to-worry-about-the-cookie-crisis/

The ICO provides a PDF document giving guidelines with respect to the new cookies regulations (attached) and more complete detail is held here:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications.aspx

A couple of weeks before Christmas the ICO produced a news release on how they view the UK's implementation of the requirements going, which is basically 'not very well'. That release is here and contains a link to their full report at the 6-month point of the implementation of the regulations:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/latest_news/2011/must-try-harder-on-cookies-compliance-says-ico-13122011.aspx

This is law, but there is a 'lead in' period of 12 months dating from 26th May last year (2011), so no-one can be prosecuted before 26th May this year (2012) unless they do not have a implementation plan in place to be in a position to comply with the requirements by 26th May.

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Ever into the extra curricular the team at Hammer Design were out and about in force over 2011.  Though we love our work it’s a cast iron fact that we also love our play.  This sometimes leads us to get carried away.  Last year Si needed to be evacuated from a hut in the Swiss alps when over exuberance at altitude led to dehydration. This unfortunately then combined with a dodgy contact lens to precipitate a speedy descent (skidoo) to the Grindlewald valley and proper medical facilities.  No one likes the idea of loosing an eye, fortunately Si suffered no permanent damage! 

Si taking on the famous traverse of the Auguille D'Entreves in the Alps

Just around the corner from here, at about the same time, Henry managed to get lucky and climb the North Face of the Eiger (without a hitch). 

Henry on The North Face of the Eiger

Closer to home and sea level Ben, Adrian, Meilee and Si have all been hammering the mountain bike trails the length and breadth of the country.  From Glencoe to Cornwall the Hammer Design team have been going further and faster whenever they can.

 

Steve (left) having just recieved his award with his little boy Sam

Burning slightly less calories, but putting the fitties in their place a little, Web Developer Steve won a top award.  Steve studies Web Systems Design at Sheffield Hallam and after getting the top grades in his year and in his faculty, two years in a row, he was awarded the Ede & Ravenscroft Academic Prize.  Well done Steve!

You can be sure that we’ll all be out in force for 2012.  Si’s already eying up the Matterhorn, Henry’s thinking about Alaska, Adrian’s eye is always on a trail centre somewhere…

Hope to see you out there!

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Look complicated to you?  Us too.  Fortunately, you don't have understand how this works to produce a great website.

At Hammer Design we pride ourselves on understanding each individual business model for every website we produce. Our client base has traditionally been highly diverse.   When we were invited to quote for a new website for a Marie Curie Initial Training Network being run out of the University of Sheffield we jumped at the chance.  However when we read the brief to provide a fully content manageable website to S³Nano, which will be investigating Quantum Dot Spins’ many of us were left scratching our heads.  Our Senior Developer, who holds a Ph.D. in physics, was only able to offer this useful explanation – ‘it’s complicated’.

Shortly however it became apparent that a complete understanding of what was being researched was not necessary and we could focus on the research group’s online needs.  These needs centred around creating a repository for research notes and a focus point for a research network, with 16 researchers, 11 Ph.D. students and 5 Post Docs based out of 4 countries: UK, Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.

With this in mind we have proposed and had accepted our plan to design, develop and host a website for S³Nano, a Marie Curie Initial Training Network.  Along with our Chameleon CMS system and standard levels of service and security the website will also encompass several other key features.  Different groups or members of the research network will have different access rights to various parts of the website.  This will allow specific content to be clearly directed and provide specific areas for the relevant links, files and information for members and groups.  Other features of the website include the ability to send regular newsletters, a registration system for events and workshops, researcher profiles and resources and notes that will follow on from those workshops or events.

Another unique client to add to our eclectic client base.

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Here at Hammer Design we focus a lot of our attention on producing websites that are easy to navigate, easy to maintain, easy to update and are built on a foundation of solid systems.  Making websites easy on the eye is however just as important.  When Ethical Kidz challenged us to produce an ecommerce website to appeal to children (or the child in any adult) we jumped at the chance.

Pulling out all the stops our design team worked with a set of beautifully illustrated visuals for the Ethical Kidz website. With inspiration from the likes of Quentin Blake the graphics were designed to lend the website a strong character but, so that they did not take over, be used sparingly in conjunction with neutral background colours.  Striking this balance is key in web design, offering a strong look to a website without crowding the senses and making a page look cluttered.

Now that Ethical Kidz has been given the green light we are looking forward to building another website that is easy to use but which has a truly unique look and feel.

Keep your eyes peeled for the launch in the new year!

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Click here or the graphic below to read our latest Summer 2011 eNewsletter.

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See our Chocolate Hammers being made...David Golubows and his 'not so secret' chocolate factory in Edale the Peak District.  Mmmmm... Thanks David.

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Great Ideas Website for Ideas for Websites....

Best to go and look see >

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YUKON FOX - Stunning, simple and seriously powerful

The brief was simple:
To demystify and simplify e-commerce. To make the most powerful solutions available to the smaller and larger business alike.

The Fox leaps out:

If you’re envious of those companies that provide a streamlined e-commerce system, which allows you to browse, shop, browse some more and then easily add or delete further products...then be prepared to be envious no more.

Hammer Design has spent the last 3 years planning, researching, programming and testing Yukon Fox, an all-new e-commerce system that links elegantly to a fully managed website, all third party payment processors and above all to all products - in all ways.

A system where the product is King, where everything can be linked to everything else.

Stress free, easily manageable e-commerce:

Yukon Fox has been designed to remove all the stress of managing your online business, there are no scale restrictions whether you have 50 products or 50,000. No matter how large or small your business, you are left free to spend time on other aspects of your business that increase your online sales.

Boxing clever:

The beauty of the Yukon Fox software is that it seamlessly integrates with your website to provide your customers with a secure and easy-to-use e-commerce experience and you with the greatest management tool available.

With Yukon Fox you will be able to completely transform your customer’s online shopping experience by offering the simplest and most helpful experience in a professional secure payment environment. Experiences only previously available on the largest of shopping sites.

With Hammer’s new foxy software installed your business can be safely left selling and processing orders at any time of the day and night, reliably producing search engine information, and word rich links for products and pages that increase search engine exposure and ultimately help increase sales and profitability.

The Yukon Fox software is effectively free, you only pay Hammer Design for the integration with your website and an annual software license to keep things current.

Yukon Fox is ready to use straight out of the box and requires no technical knowledge.

Si Homfray

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This may seem very old school but I found this list of top 10 things a website should be delivering, but I felt it really still applied 7 years on!

Top 10 Functions of a Website
What your website should do for your business:

1. Tell your story.
What you do, where you came from and who you are.

2. Answer questions for you.
Make it easy for visitors to find out answers so you dont have to repeat the 'same old' verbally over the phone - it's what the computer was invented for.

3. Add to your list.
Collect interested parties information, ideally an email address, and store it for prospecting later.

4. Give directions to your place of business.
Surprisingly often omitted - even nowadays.

5. Provide clear contact information.
That's clear contact information - there is an inverse rule of size which seems to mean the bigger the company the less the likelihood that you will get to find a useful contact - especially utilities companies!

6. Build credibility for your business.
An opportunity for you to appear knowledgeable on your specialist subject.

7. Qualify your prospects.
Make sure that the information they are giving you is for something relevant you want to sell.

8. Make a good first impression.
And represent yourself honestly. If you are a small company of six persons - show it off.

9. Bring in customers that you would most likely have not reached without having a website.
Long gone are the days of printed Yellow pages ads and companies who could soley depend on this for business.

10. Make you money!
The last rule on the list but the first rule of business. 

Si Homfray, April 14th 2011

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Yukon Fox: a fox in a very clever box
When you’re in business you need to make sales
But your e-commerce system is slower than snails
Your customers browse, but your check-out’s confusing
And then you get e-mails from customers abusing
Your tailor-system that simply won’t work
Then you spend countless hours with technicians that shirk.

They just want to shop and buy with no hitch
But your system can’t cope, the code has a glitch
So they give up and drift to a site that can cope
With their simple demands and their hearts full of hope.

On sites that are welcoming and easy to browse
Customers are delighted and wallets are roused
They add to their basket and then go back for more
Customers are virtually emptying the store.

But on the horizon a character appears
A fox with a box and he shouts as he nears:
“I’ll knock the spots off competitor sites
They won’t know what hit them; dust they will bite”.

He jumps to your computer and sits down at ease
A click and a whirr, and he’s done in a breeze
You look at the sales figures they’re up in no time
Why all this waiting, the sales loss a crime.

Sales are now soaring; we’re selling and sending
With all this support we’ll have more time for spending
Time doing what we like to do the best
Not fighting with code that is just like the rest.

There’s promises, promises, and more promises too
If only you buy the latest version and coo
At its performance that’s promised but never fulfills
You just need Yukon Fox for online sales without spills.

Many thanks to Dr Seuss and Mr Simon Turton of Opera PR

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To be a profitable business it needs to:
· create and deliver something of value
· that other people want or need
· at a price they are willing to pay
· in a way that satisfies the customers needs and expectations
· so that the business generates enough profit to satisfy the businesses owners to continue

The more formal titles for this are:
Value creation
Marketing
Sales
Value delivery
Finance

But really it's common sense that we all need to remember periodically.

“A business is a repeatable process that makes money – everything else is a hobby”

Si Homfray

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At last - we are all across and in place in our lovely new offices.

We have moved seven doors closer to the station and next to the gym which leaves us with our beautiful wide arched windows onto the Peak District - There are now forty five feet of them!

We now have twice as much space and are less crammed than before with private meeting space and a quiet area for the development team to sit and write their 'code of elegance' undisturbed. So it's a win win situation - Hurrah!

The rumours are... that after several years of 'nearly having a party', a recession and plenty of hard work in between - we will be having a party for all our friends and customers very soon now. We all know we want one!

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We are moving today - It's exciting news we are moving to new premises seven doors down to Units 2 and 3 of the Hathersage Business Park.

Broadband goes - we go !!

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Hammer Design offer three levels of hosting packages

1) A Standard package – A Bronze service – This are our core essential server hosting services:
• Small Business Hosting -
Website Hosting Services.  Provision of disk space, webserver management and maintenance, 24hr external backups, server security and review.
• Complex Business Hosting -
Website Hosting Services. Provision of disk space, webserver management and maintenance, 24hr external backups, server security and review.
• Multi User Business Hosting -
Website Hosting Services. Provision of disk space, webserver management and maintenance, 24hr external backups, server security and review.

2) An Extended package – A Silver service – As above with the addition of extended dBase management, bespoke performance analysis, dB server performance enhancement, dBase query optimisation.

3) A Peak package – A Gold service – As above with the addition of overall site performance management, extendible traffic management, regular optimisation, updates, reviews and reporting.
 

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Excellent website coding and development

Hammer Design, as dedicated and passionate experts write their code by the book and therefore all code is written to minimum standards of compliance and validates.

As a matter of course, all Hammer Design websites conform to the applicable W3C standards, for example XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1

DDA Compliance
"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web.
Currently validating to the 'Strict' document type; individual websites may be written in the 'Transitional' document type if specifically required.

Currently conforming to all priority one checkpoints in WAI; individual websites may have higher conformance.

Hammer Design coding specialisms: (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Javascript, XML, AJAX, Flash.
 

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Hammer Design has designed, developed and built their own software for many years now, since prehistory in fact in internet terms.
Now very well used by thousands of users, these products, all fully integrated with each other, are very stable and easily usable:

CHAMELEON CMS:
A Fully bespoke CMS

OSPREY CMS:
A Budget CMS

YUKON FOX E-COMMERCE:
A fully bespoke E-Commerce integration with Chameleon CMS, Accounts bridging.

CHEETAH EMAIL:
A fully integrated HTML Email sending package
 

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Hammer Design have launched their all new, all singing, all dancing new e-commerce system for long time client Safariquip.

If you want to see how quickly it all works take a peek at  http://www.safariquip.co.uk/

Included in the full list of exciting features are a totally flexible system that allows the website owner to mimic the most sophisticated of online stores.

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Julia Bradbury launches Peak District friends website.

Countryside television presenter Julia Bradbury launched the all new Friends of the Peak District website today.

She is currently and will be staying on as the Friends of the Peak District's president for another year. "Friends of the Peak District does brilliant work protecting the beautiful Peak District countryside, and I'm delighted to support them for another year," she said.

http://www.friendsofthepeak.org.uk

The website features a simple PayPal donation and Subscription payment system as well as extensive use of Hammer Design's own content management system - Chameleon CMS.

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If you've spent any time looking at the results you get back from a Google search, you'll probably have noticed that the domain names of the sites that rank highly almost always have one or more of the search keywords in them. Time to abolish some old practices so you can now do this too!

Buying keyword-rich domains and just redirecting them is so last decade...

Traditionally, boosting search engine rankings for a particular keyword or keyphrase could be done by buying one or more keyword-rich domain names and setting them up as Permanent Redirects (also known as 301 redirects) to the main website. Google and the rest of the search engines have seen through this one and as a technique on its own this method doesn't hold water any more.

If you're a holder of many such domains you'll probably find they're not in Google's main index and thus not doing you a lot of good from a search engine rankings point of view. Google has done this because there's very little real-life benefit to an internet user in clicking through a redirected domain name - the target site is where they end up so as far as the search engines are concerned the keyword-rich domain they went to in the first place is basically useless.

...but dedicated micro-sites can make them useful again

Lets say you have a company with a small number of 'primary areas' for which you are the leader in your market sector. You could place all your information on one website and this is recommended if you're a new company as it'll make website maintenance simpler. If, however, you've been in business a while and can buy some new (or already have some) domain names containing the keywords you'd like to be found for, you can use these to better reflect your primary areas of business on the internet.

Create a micro-site on each domain name, with a small number of pages, entirely dedicated to a given primary area of your company. Link back to your main website for anything unrelated to the primary area you're catering for (general company information; other services; etc.) and keep the user on the micro-site for everything to do with this primary area. Make sure, of course, that anything related to this primary area is moved from the main website to the micro-site and appropriate links are created so users who reach your main site first get to the micro-site easily too.

This is, of course, a bigger maintenance job but the results can be worth it.

If your keyword-rich domain name did end up out of the Google index, file a reconsideration request explaining you've now created an appropriate dedicated micro-site and you'll get back in. As always with optimising search engine rankings, slow but sure is the way and don't expect results overnight!

Ben.

This article is an abridged version of It's a feeding frenzy for keyword-rich domains, from the SEOmoz blog which provides SEO advice for those in the field but can be terse reading for a non-specialist. Hopefully the above overview provides a suitable plain English summary of the key concepts.

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Hammer Design went out on the BBC today. Si Homfray heading the new technical line up for 2010 was talking to Gareth Evans on BBC Radio Sheffield about the Hammer e-Awards.

Si went into some detail on how they are enticing the more pioneering and adventurous businesses to get into the new technologies and how they shouldn't be afraid of asking for what they want. Just about anything is possible nowadays and to a certain extent is affordable. The people are key - but so is a really good idea.

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A big wow - Phil Wickens and Hammer Design launch a new website featuring photography from the Antarctic and the Arctic. Windy tundras, falling ice shelves, Polar Bears and some seriously hard core timber shacks paint an incredible portrait of our Polar heritage.  Phil's work hasn't been seen before and we are incredibly proud to work with this elusive traveller, explorer, mountaineer, photographer... Go have a look - they are incredible. http://www.philwickens.co.uk/

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Rick Weldon of Audio Images launches their new website this afternoon after a smooth debugging. We are proud of this one - not only because of the long standing relationship between the two companies - but as we feel it is a masterful delivery of simple navigation and the triumph of common sense over the unecessarily complicated for technical's sake. Although the website isn't fully loaded with all the proposed content as yet - we are proud to let it go out there - the big dark eternity of infinite webspace. Visit the website www.audio-images.co.uk

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Over on the Google Webmaster Central blog, there's an informative page on Google's attitude to the keywords tag in HTML - its not interested.

Long time web authors will no doubt be aware that when search engines first started becoming prevalent on the internet, the main 'Search Engine Optimisation' technique was to populate the HTML meta 'keywords' tag with a large list of everything you wanted to be found for. This practice of 'keyword stuffing' was frowned upon and Google's answer was to ignore the keywords tag and develop a better search robot and algorithm that didn't need it.

If you write content for the web, or are about to do so, the exercise of coming up with the keywords list is arguably more valuable than the actual keywords tag itself. In any case, be sure to include your keywords for a given page in a meta tag because although Google doesn't pay attention, other search engines do.

Beginning next month - the Hammer Design 6x6 offer for well-optimised search engine friendly websites.

Original Source: Google Webmaster Central blog

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The latest e-Newsletter rolls out today taking advantage of the easy to use NEW hHammer Mail + programme - lets blow our own trumpet :  )
In summary it outlines what has been an extraordinary year so far, to say the least, and we how we have seized the opportunity to build, focus and drive everything forward from strength to strength.

Throughout 2009 we have been continuously honing and toning the latest techniques in web usage, improving navigation around websites, launched new promotion and marketing support packages and increased our commitment to the Hammer mission to build the greatest websites ever.

Promotional Offers: Hammer has launched some exciting 6x6 challenges for 2009 running into 2010 including our most exciting offer to date - the Hammer Design e-Awards.

The future: looks good for Hammer… new faces at work, new clients, new exciting projects that push the boundaries of what has been done before and drive us healthily and happily onwards.
Si Homfray.

Go to the full e-News Sept 2009 >

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Because we wanted to let everyone know just how much we can do to drive your websites along - because we do so much work no one ever knows about - 'white box' work if you like, we thought we should offer a few challenges to new and existing clients.

We thought the number 6 was devilishly appropriate and the fact that this work can take you anywhere made it all seem quite sensible to call it the 6x6 challenges - 6 great website offers.

Basically there are the six challenge offers to offer to anyone looking for web design, development and promotion. The object of the exercise is to work with those companies and organisations who are looking to refresh, rebuild or completely transform their web presence.
So to cover all the bases we are answering those frequently asked questions that customers keep asking for.

Questions, or problems if you like, such as...
'...we need to create a fresh new look for our website'. Which shows off our design and build services.
'...we need to take our website to the next level'.  Which is all about our capacity to develop great website function and systems.
'...we need to increase our online sales'. That shows off our brand new e-commerce systems and development.
'...we need to regularly update our website'. An offer that challenges you to the simplicity of our powerful CMS (content management systems).
'...we need to get found in Google'. A simple facility we can give new customers that shows them step by step the great new search engine optimisation tools and guides we have written and developed.
'...we need to reach more customers'. An offer to take us up on our marketing services, a straight forward methodology, step by step analysis and action stepped approach to generating more customers.

Whether you have any of these 'problems' or not, we hope you get the message that Hammer Design can really 'nail them'.

Si Homfray
Creative Director.

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The Hammer Design e-Award is a unique opportunity for innovators to have their website designed, built and developed with secure matched funding to the value of up to £20,000.

Hammer Design and a local business ‘Dragon’ have got together to offer website design and development awards of up to £20,000 every quarter.

The eAwards are aimed at regional businesses, entrepreneurs, organisations and charities with a great or worthy online idea they are trying to get off the ground or develop.

This is the first award of its kind in the region and digital agency Hammer Design are well placed to make these great enterprises happen.

Great ideas deserve great websites

more about Hammer website design and development e-Awards

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I found this artist whilst crawling through flickr. His name is Lunchbreath. He is a talented creative artist and I would highly recommend checking out his work.

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What is CSS?

CSS is short for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is a language used to separate elements written in a markup language. CSS allows designers to bespoke the look and feel of a website design. Designers have total freedom over font, colours, background images, margins, navigations and general layout of a website.

10 reasons to use CSS

 • To enhance user experience by making a site more aesthetically pleasing.
• Makes small design updates easier
• Keeps the design consistent throughout
• Allows alternative layouts/templates for example. blog or events pages can have different styles.
• Allows designers and Developers to work independently
• Makes the pages render quicker as CSS files are stored in the Cache
• It is very quick to make small alterations for future development
• For our clients with a CMS (content managed systems) it gives them a robust template for consistant content.
• There are Search Engine benefits as the ratio between code and content is in the favour of content.
• Accessibility -  People who experience readability issued caused by the appearance of a page can choose to view it without the style sheet or, if they know what to do, replace it with their own user-defined style sheet.

CSS in various browsers

CSS is handled differently across browsers. There are a number of known bugs in IE (internet explorer) but good CSS can accommodate for these shortcomings.

Ryan

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I thought the best place to start our new website design and marketing blog would be the beginning.

Nice and obvious really.

There seems to be one Golden Rule above all the other Golden Rules of marketing which is...

Treat people as you would wish to be treated yourself.

So here it is; pithy and to the point.

Rule No. 1

I wish to be treated with respect, talked to as I would converse with friends and above all honestly.

I hope you are going to enjoy our blogs - I am sure they are going to be fun to write, but their purpose remains as serious to us, as it is to you, which is a simple guide to save time, so you can concentrate on the more important things in life, like children, the great outdoors and untying the knots of unecessary online complexities.

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Gently, unannounced and quietly the new hammer design website was turned on as the veteran old site was docked in the boatyard of heritage internet vessels.

No champagne was wasted or smashed into her side - just a busy clicking of keyboard strokes and a passionate wave of her founders arms. Quiet smiles all round as her proud fabricators hammered the last rivet in place, moved stat counters, coded pages across and checked links.

She slid into the world wide ocean a hull with no frills and no real imagery just a skeleton ship awaiting the sail makers and carpenters, eager to build her cabin, fill her sails and really feel the wind in her sails…

We all wish her well, and all who wish to sail with her.

Si Homfray

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Creating webpages that load as fast as possible - there's a lot to it and I'll try to cover a few of the major topics here, starting with a brief look at the user experience considerations behind www.google.co.uk from a page loading point of view.

User experience in page loading

The holy grail of website loading is for the user to have the pages instantly available with no delay as soon as a link is clicked (or a page requested, depending on your approach but we're talking about the same thing here). This is a holy grail and can never happen*, because there will always be delays such as limitations of the broadband connection and time taken for the server to get the request and make a webpage out of it before sending it back to the user. When the webpage gets back to the users browser, there's another delay involved in actually translating that from 'computer-speak' (HTML) to 'human-speak' (visible text and images/video/whatever) before the webpage can be used and before the user actually sees anything.

As developers there's very little we can do about the users' broadband connection, but the server-side and user-side renderings are within range for optimising. I'll talk about this more in future postings I'm sure, but for now here's a brief mention on the user-side as this impacts the user experience much more where slideshows/portfolios and other non-text page elements are concerned.

Take a simple webpage like the Google homepage for instance - all browsers render this really fast but there's still several requests sent to the server before its all there. The text is collected first, followed by the images such as the Google logo and then the extras such as the script that makes the 'more' menu appear as a menu rather than a text link. 

Each one of these items is sent as a separate 'request' to the server and the server responds to each one with the appropriate content. The time taken for that request to appear to the user depends what it is - taking the example of an image, it'll take a finite amount of time for the image to download, proportional to the speed of the user's broadband connection but once downloaded the image appears instantly. Its now actually more common to see an image 'progressively' appear, where the browser show you pieces of the image before its downloaded the whole thing. This makes the experience better for the user, because you know something is actually happening.

Requests are generally sent to the server concurrently, so more than one thing downloads at a time and the whole thing is done in a few seconds. Good job too, because when visiting the Google homepage you generally go there when trying to find something and the thing you really want to do is type your search term in the box and get some results with the minimum of fuss. I've used the Google homepage as an example here because every aspect of it has been put through the wringer as far as optimisation is concerned and that's all well and good, but lets be honest there's not a whole lot going on on the Google homepage is there. 

In my next few postings, I'll talk about other aspects of webpage loading, site optimisation and other technical considerations that bring themselves to the fore when webpages get a bit more interactive than a few words and a simple text box.

* Technology advances all the time, browser and broadband speeds increase with every passing year and one day these things will happen so fast as to be imperceptible in the length of the delay, but there must always be a delay even if this is a few microseconds or even less.

Ben.

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Here's a video that never fails to make us laugh: What happens when you mix a flock of sheep, a lot of LEDs and a few farmers with too much time on their hands? This:

There's a High Quality version available on the main YouTube page which looks really good blown up full size on a 24" screen!

Location: YouTube
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Moral is high and laughter resounds in the Hathersage studio. It might possibly be due to the weather being glorious, but one might hope that we are all just in a good mood!

While making a few CSS amendments to our new site for IE6 I received an email from Si titled "Time Breakdown for a Web Designer"

I will let the image speak for itself in this case...

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At the weekend the Hammer Design Team went on an excursion to the Ogwen Valley. The weekend was jammed full of rugby, whiskey and lots of climbing.

Location: Ogwen Valley Wales
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