Design House wishes to advise that Ben May is no longer involved with our business.
Applying the principles of Best Practice, we wish to stress that we are doing everything possible to secure your confidential information.
Please note over the next week there may be some unavoidable delays or minor hick-ups while our security systems are modified and upgraded.
Our new IT Designers and Developers will also be making themselves familiar with your accounts and website / email requirements.
We ask that you please notify Design House immediately if you are contacted by Ben May (attempting to solicit work) as this will be a breach of contract and may result in legal action against Ben.
Design House is excited about our new direction and will continue to offer our clients the highest professional standard of design and service that you deserve!
Have a Merry Christmas!
Posted in General News, Technology / Photography, Web Design Clients / Reviews ~ No Comments
I’ve been discussing this topic with a number of Website Designers and Developers online and it’s interesting to see what other people think, and the discussions that evolve.
When websites first came out, this whole “Search Engine” thing was not to be heard of, really the internet was quite boring, but by the year 2000, people had started to find websites by typing in key words into Search Engines like Google, that would direct them to pages that it could find on the entire internet.
For the last 3 – 5 years, a whole new industry has evolved from the web design sector, and that’s the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) industry. Some companies will pay a fortune for SEO experts to get their website to the top of all the Google searches for the terms they want. Well, that’s great isn’t it? People are now coming to your website after looking for something you must clearly provide. What interested me at the Web Directions South Conference in Sydney a few weeks back, was seminar that got me thinking “are they (people finding your website via Google etc) the right people you want on your website” ?
Sure some of them are going to be hot leads and then customers and that will be great, but there was a large percentage that were only on your site to look for cheap quotes and prices, in other words, time wasters or cold leads. The change in mindset from most businesses has been from “I Need a website” to ” I Need a website and I need it to be at the top of Google!”. While this is still very important to have your website at the top of Google and other search engines, it’s becoming more apparent that your advertising needs to more actively push consumers who are using traditional media, such as radio, paper, magazine and signage to your website and get them there that way.
Simply relying on SEO entirely to find your website is a bad move, you need to actively tell people about your website, and get them there that way as well.
At Design House – all our websites are built with your SEO at mind, we include a very good SEO pack with every website to help get it online quickly and efficiently, creating the desired result for our clients.
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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.
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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, General News, Technology / Photography ~ No Comments
There is no secret – we use one of the best hosting companies in Australia, Aussie HQ. I’ve personally been a user from before 2003 when I started some of my first websites.
Where your website is hosted is one of the most important things that can determine the effectiveness of your online presence.
As the old saying goes, “You get what you pay for”, and with your website hosting, ain’t that the truth. I tell my clients on many occasions that we are not the cheapest hosting provider. You get what you pay for. If you go to a budget hosting company and pay $60 a year – then you wont get the same service as someone paying $229 for premium website and email hosting. At Design House we invest every year in a dedicated server that delivers the quality and performance we want to sell to our clients.
Investing in a cheaper hosting provider will get you a slow website, that can go down and not work for periods of time. This normally happens because the hosting company puts so many websites on the one server it crashes, which can be a terrible experience for anyone!
You can read what was printed in the Feb. edition of NetGuide Magazine.
Whenever there is a problem there is always someone there to help resolve my issue! Never have I had service this great! All the staff are polite, friendly, and willing to help at any opportunity. I choose AussieHQ for their reliable hardware, and impressive features. I can sleep at night, trusting AussieHQ to host my valuable clients websites, and email.
Ben May
Source: Netguide Advert
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Did you know that Design House programs database driven websites as well as all our other web design services in Hervey Bay.
What is a customised database driven website application?
It’s basically something that we create from scratch to do a specific task, the way you want it to work!
For example, I have created website applications that store clients and allow staff members to delete, edit, update and do all kinds of things to that data.
Design House has a system like this in-house, where we track all our clients, record our quotes, invoices and other statistical data.
Your Local Garage Sales – which will launch soon has a customised database driven section where the listings are automatic, tracked and easy to run. This system was designed from the ground up for our client – as no third party application could do exactly what they required.
Another large customised application I’ve been working on for about 6 months now, is the Baywide Security portal. The Security portal allows Baywide Security’s clients to login and manage aspects of their account with Baywide.
We developed (and continuely fine tune) internal systems for staff to enter large amounts of data daily. This data can be approved at higher levels of the company and clients with appropriate access are able to login and review their details.
The Portal also integrates with a number of security devices including CCTV, Alarm Pads and DVRs. Allowing Baywide’s clients to have all their security data at their fingertips.
Why Web Based, over a computer program?
A Web based application is far more useful than a computer based program as it allows for users to access them ANYWHERE, no need to install software. You’re not relying on a computer to do it, ie, it doesn’t matter if the computer runs on XP, Linux or Mac, it will work! It also allows for clients to have access to the data in ways you want.
Posted in Technology / Photography ~ Comments Off
We all know of Google and it’s domination of the online searching market. There are billions of theories on how to get your website to the top of the list. Some spend hours on hours every day reading SEO Blogs, some pay other people hundreds on thousands of dollars for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO is one of the most important element of a websites existence, the greatest website unread, is useless.
There are some very simple things you can do to increase your position in Google, such as links from other websites, relevant content, well built code, a high Page Rank etc.
What is the Google Pagerank system? It’s one of Googles very mysterious factors that is used in positioning of websites in Searches.
From Google
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.
Or From WikiPedia
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.
Just lately I’ve noticed that the Design House website has jumped from an average 2 out of 10, which it had sat whilst we developed and launched our current website, to a much more respected 5 out of 10. This shows that the Design House website is getting it’s feet in deep into Google, for one of a better term.
Who is the leading SEO & Web Design business in Hervey Bay and the Fraser Coast? – you can be the judge of that. Google key phrases like, “web design hervey bay” or “graphic design hervey bay” – Currently Design House sits number one at the top for both these searches, without paying a cent be there!
Don’t spend extra on Google Adsense or other excessive monthly charges to get your website to #1 – contact us and get honest advise on how your website can reach the top!
Posted in General Tips, Technology / Photography ~ No Comments
On my usual wondering around the internet, I was reading up on the new fit-PC, by CompuLab. The fit-PC has been developed with 2 things in mind. a) the Size and b) the Power Consumption. The fit-PC draws only 3.5W of power whilst in full operation, running Linux or Windows, this is less than what a regular desktop consumes whilst on Stand By!
This definitely an innovative piece of technology, and something we as consumers are going to see more and more.
fit-PC is a tiny, noiseless, extremely power efficient PC – designed by CompuLab – one of the leading vendors in embedded computing.
fit-PC is designed to fit where a standard PC is too bulky, noisy and power hungry.
To learn if it fits you see fit-PC benefits, take the fit-PC product tour or review fit-PC specifications.
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Today we all have high spec. digital cameras that take huge photos. Quality digital photos are becoming easier and easier to take. Even a novice such as myself can easily take a good photograph with a good camera. The only problem with taking such high quality photographs is the transportation of the pictures.
Say you take 30 great shots and wish to send them to friends and relatives worldwide, this would take hours and hours to send and most likely not even work as the there is a limit of a few megabytes that you can send in an email.To send 30 photos straight off your camera is looking at about 60megabytes at the minimum.
You’re not going to send 30 different emails, each with an image attached. Professional software can resize your images down to a standard size, simply for viewing, say 800×600 or 1024×768. However, most people don’t have professional photography software on their computers. Even with the software, resizing images is not that simple.
The Microsoft PowerToys for Windows is a collection of simple tools that have been created by Microsoft for simplistic tasks. The entire collection of PowerToys can be found by following this link. One of the most handy tools is the image resizer, this is a tool I use almost on a daily basis.
PowerToys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience. What are they? PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released.
Note: Microsoft take great care to ensure that PowerToys work as they should, but they are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys. PowerToys are for Windows XP only and will not work with Windows Vista.
Microsoft PowerToys Website
If you are running Windows XP and need a way to resize images easily, then head on over to the PowerToys website and download the image resizer on the right hand site of the site. (Direct Link Setup Installer)
Once you’ve installed the software, it’s as simple as right clicking on an image, and then selecting re-size!
Choose the appropriate size, for what you need. Generally, Medium or Large will do. You can also specify advanced options if you need to.
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