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.

Posted in In the Media / General News ~ No Comments

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!

Posted in Web Design Clients / Reviews ~ No Comments

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 

Posted in Graphic Design Clients / Reviews ~ Comments Off

By Ben May

This afternoon the website for Lewis and McNamara Solicitors went live.

Design House designed and developed the logo and website with the client to establish a professional and modern brand. The solicitors now have a sharp new form of advertising which allows potential clients to research their business, services and to make direct contact.

You can view their website and services by clicking here; lmlaw.com.au

Posted in Web Design Clients / Reviews ~ No Comments