There is only one employee that can work 24/7, assist unlimited customers at one time, not take sick days, arrive late or cost you a weekly wage.

It’s your website! Your website has the potential to be the most valuable employee at your business.

When planning your website the website team at Design House, we ask what you aim to achieve with your website.

A good way to think of your website is how you can replicate systems and commonly performed tasks at your office.

Programming can be used to build small applications that can save you hundreds and thousands of staff hours, freeing your staff up to do more important things.

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Design House is pleased to anounce that after submitting an application and partaking in the interview process we have been confirmed as a Finalist for:

The Micro-Business Award (for businesses with five or fewer employees):

• Graphic design and print company, Design House Fraser Coast, Hervey Bay;
• Online lingerie and fashion company, HOTTIE.COM.AU, Hamilton;
• Parenting products provider, mumentum, Chermside; and
• Tourism business, River City Cruises, Cleveland.

2008 Media Releases: telstrabusinessawards.telstra.com

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by Ben May

Most of us have more than one computer, and it becomes a pain when want to use your emails on more than one computer. Emails start going here, but not there, and appointments are on this computer, but not the other one. You may be off site with your laptop and need to look up a contact you know you have on your work computer, so you now need to either drive back to the office, or ring up and ask for someone to get it for you - either way, it becomes time consuming.

Recently Apple computer has launched the successful iPhone into the Australian market, with a huge bang. Many people have gone out and purchased one, as it surpasses any other mobile phone with the amount of cool features it has. one of the iPhone’s features, is that it synchronises with Apples new service called MobileMe.

MobileMe is a great new system that you install on as many Apple or PC computers you have, and it keeps all your contacts and calendars the same. It also does this with your iPhone over the phone network, but even without owning an iPhone, it can be very useful.

For only a couple of hundred dollars, the MobileMe system, is really a great sollution for those who want to keep their Outlook contacts and Calendar at work, the same on their other computers or laptops around the office, or even at home.

It also gives you a really nice website you can login to and access all the data, so even if you’re at an internet cafe without your computer and need to look up someones phone number, you can do that!

If you’re in need of a small system like this, give us a call. We can make sure your email is in Sync, and assist with setting up your MobileMe account.

Posted in Technology / Photography ~ No Comments

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By Ben May

For those who blog in Wordpress, you probably write your post up in something like Microsoft Word. I see it on a day to day basis, people copying out of word, into Wordpress. Although it looks like it worked, Word makes a huge mess of the formatting / coding.

However, tinkering around in the latest version of Wordpress 2.5.1 which has got a tonne of great new features. One of which, is a Paste from Word feature. Basically, you copy your text straight out of word, into this box, and it converts it to neat, clean, tidy code.

To access this feature, you need to switch the second tool bar on when typing a new post or page. To swtich on the “Kitchen Sink” as it’s called, either press Alt + Shift + Z or click on the little icon that looks like this;

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by Jeanette Maynes

Design House was contacted by Mercia Stoltz a now Brisbane based Solicitor starting her own Firm to develop the businesses branding. Design House worked in closely with Mercia to create the Firm’s colours, logo, letterheads, with comp slips, business cards and email signature, paying particular attention to keep everything uniform and extremely professional. A domain name www.stoltzlaw.com.au was purchased for email hosting initially and ready for the expansion to a website.

“Working with Design House made the experience of creating a logo an easy and enjoyable one. Jeanette and Ben’s approachability and patience made it easy to ask all the questions and get all the advice which I may otherwise have been to uncomfortable to ask. Their professionalism and their prompt and effective work ethic resulted in branding that I am proud of and that I believe gives me an important edge at this exciting stage of my career.”
Mercia Stoltz

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by Jeanette Maynes

Today I was officially invited to attend the community Cabinet Official Luncheon held in the Fraser Room at the Hervey Bay Boat Club with the Hon Anna Bligh MP Premier of Queensland and the Cabinet.

Finger food and light refreshments were served as the guests mingled with the politicians asking questions of relevance and raising suggestions and issues of concerns within our area.

Anna seemed in high spirits and on the mend from her fall / recent injury. Anna was very articulated and interesting speaking confidently in front of the crowd.

Two local Police officers were presented medals of honour from Judy Spence Minister for Police, Corrective Services and Sport for their long service within the Queensland Police department and the local community.

The Premier presented Fraser Coast Regional Mayor Mr Mick Kruger with a cheque for 4.9 million from the government to go towards the proposed Waterpark. We were able to view the actual plans of the Waterpark that will be located at the end of Main Street next to the seafront oval.

The Mayor was also presented a beautiful photograph of the harbour area in Hervey Bay taken in 1973.

Nancy Bates editor of the Fraser Coast Chronicle was congratulated for her 20 years service to the area. The longest period a woman has been an editor in Australia.

Anna also personally autographed my official invite stating, “You go Girlfriend!”

I also met and shook hands with Mr Kerry Shine the Attorney-General and Justice and caught up with our local politicians Andrew McNamara MP, Chris Foley MP and Fraser Coast Mayor Mick Kruger.

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Today we launched the website for local Discount variety store, Flash Harrys. The Flash Harrys website serves a number of purposes. It details the locations of their three stores, along with phone numbers, trading hours, and maps to find the store.

The Flash Harrys Website includes a online shopping cart, whether you’re after something for around the house, or a gift, the Flash Harrys online store offers a wide range of great items!

Click here to visit Flash Harrys, and check out the online store for some great discounts!

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By Ben May

If you’re reading this, then you’re using a computer and I have a feeling, reading the Design House Blog is not the only thing you do on your computer. We all use our computers every day for all kinds of important tasks.

A couple of days ago I noticed a clunking noise coming from on of the servers. Naturally I wanted to investigate and get ride of the noise. I pulled the side off the server and took a closer look. As it sounded, it was a power supply fan failing. Lucky I invested in commercial grade power supplies, with redundant cooling fans running, so no damage would come of this. Never the less, it was time to swap over the power supplies and get the server back up asap.

Ironically, two months ago I performed maintenance on all three servers, and replaced power supplies in the other two servers, and didn’t think it was required to replace this one.

However, while I was down working on this server, and had the afternoon free, I decided to test out our disaster recovery plan and backup systems. I had other people using the other servers so it wasn’t a full test of our disaster recovery plan, but I still went ahead testing on the secondary mail server, database and web development server.

After restoring from one of the terabyte backup drives, I was fortunate enough to be able to successfully create and repopulate about 200 MySQL databases and load back up about 95 websites, and all of which operated fine.

Hopefully, all of us backup these days, with external Hard drives being so affordable, but how often do you test your backup is working?

You might plug your drive in every day and backup, but is it actually doing that? It may be having errors, partially copying things, all kinds of errors.

You need to be prepared, or have in place sufficient plans for when your computer dies and looses everything.

Posted in Email / Website Hosting, In the Media / General News, Technology / Photography ~ No Comments

by Jeanette Maynes
A professional contact / business card can be successfully created by Design House tailored to your persona and local area.
Here we have captured Ted Sorensen’s professionalism and admired status within our community through the use of a professional portrait photograph, simple & clear details plus a dramatic local photograph. (courtesy of local photographer Judy Calvert)
The combination of these three techniques & mediums creates a sharp and powerful look for our respected former Mayor of Hervey Bay.
To preview other business card ideas please click here 

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