I would hate to be called cheap; as I am sure anyone reading this blog would too.

‘Good Value’, now that’s a different story

There is a HUGE difference between being ‘cheap’ and being ‘good value’. This was highlighted perfectly by a phone call I had with a new client only yesterday.

The client in question did what everyone does when they are searching for a service or product they require, she fired up her laptop, opened Google and typed in exactly what she was looking for. In this instance it was ‘Wed Designers in Surrey’, and she was of course met with a whole host of websites.

She then went about contacting each of her preferred websites (ours being one of them – which we are very proud of… but i will save that conversation for a different blog…) to gather pricing.

After speaking with 3 or 4 and quoting according to her brief, we were lucky enough to win the contract. Along with loving our website she also gave our pricing as a good reason for choosing us… to which I replied ‘we’re we the cheapest?’

The answer sort of surprised me:

‘No, but some were so cheap it made me wonder if I would get good value for money’

I would like to add that we were also not the most expensive, but that was very refreshing to hear and an answer I took great pride in hearing.

So I guess the moral of the story is, being cheap comes at a cost, whether you are buying or selling services the most important question to ask is not ‘who’s is the cheapest?’, but ‘where am I going to get the best value for my money?’, and in turn, the best return on my investment?

I would of course say from a rather biased viewpoint; if it is web design, graphic design, branding or marketing services you are looking for then it will be us!

So why not give us a call and arrange a time to pop in for a cup of tea and discuss how Pelling can add value to your business!

So with the custom apps only available through jailbreaking, and the easy availability of pirated apps, the surge in users jailbreaking their devices is easily explainable, especially since jailbreaking generally overcomes some of the annoying restrictions that Apple have on their software. Within the first 24 hours of the Absinthe jailbreak being released it was downloaded over one million times.

So now that you know why people have been jailbreaking their devices, perhaps you would like to know how to actually do it….?

For those users on iPhone 4S & iPad 2

• Download Absinthe from Here for Windows
• Download Absinthe from Here for Mac

1. Extract the Software from its Archive
2. Open the Absinthe Program
3. Ensure that your device does not have a passcode lock in use, or the jailbreak will fail!
4. Click the button at the bottom right that says Jailbreak
5. Do not touch your device until instructed to do so on screen
6. Once instructed to, unlock your device, wait for the phone to become useable, and open the cydia app…
7. Cydia will initialise your file system, rendering the device jailbroken! You can now start installing apps, tweaks & tools through cydia.

I hope that this post has been useful to you, and keep your eyes peeled for a new blog listing the Top Ten App Store Apps, and the Top Ten Cydia Apps…

We feel we have a unique advantage over the other agencies that ‘specialise’ in design for schools, with our vast experience in all facets of graphic design, web design and marketing, with all sorts of different companies thus giving us a considerable edge.

Schools should not treat design differently to any other company, and therefore should not have to accept anything but the best in return for their investment. A school has to operate and look like a business to run well, especially when engaging with the local community and their branding, website, signage and literature should reflect this.

Working closely with the local community is all the more important in these tough financial times and financial gains that can be had through various schemes can prove invaluable. Good design can help your school, or business, engage with its surrounding community.

We have provided all sorts of design services for schools, ranging from signage and marketing collateral through to websites, literature and branding, so why not get in touch and see how Pelling can elevate your school’s brand awareness.

This is part of the “Speed up your website” series. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out how minimising the number of HTTP requests can help you decrease website load times.

What’s a CDN and why should I use it?

Content Delivery Networks are a system of computers that are placed at various nodes of a network. They contain copies of data which allows the deployment of content across multiple geographically dispersed servers. This is great for the end-user, as it means they can download the required content from a server best suited to them to cut down on load times.

Using the Google Library API is one simple way you can start making use of Content Delivery Networks, without having to go through the daunting task of making your website compatible with a distributed architecture. For example if we want to include jQuery from the Google Library API all you need to do is use the following code:

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Performance Comparison

Below you’ll see a comparison chart of how long it took for jQuery to load off 3 different sources; 2 from servers located in single geographic locations, and another from the Google Library CDN. The difference is quite astounding:

Another great thing about loading popular libraries like jQuery from the Google Libraries API is the fact that the visitor may already have it in their browser cache, even if it’s their first time on your website. This happens if they previously visited a website that uses the same CDN-hosted jQuery file.

Lastly using CDNs can speed up your website by increasing parallelism, i.e. allowing the browser to download more content by establishing a higher number of simultaneous connections. This is due to the fact browsers have a limit of how many simultaneous connections per hostname.

Utilising Content Delivery Networks is an essential part of large scale websites. However even if you have a small website, it is well worth considering using the Google Library API.

So if Content Managed websites are so great, just why do they need optimising….? Here some steps that if followed correctly will keep your CMS ticking over like clockwork.

Page Caching

When running a site that gets a large volume of hits on a day to day basis, it is firstly imperative to optimise your database queries. However even once your queries have been stripped out and are running as fast as the database will allow, the sheer volume of users querying the database will increase the strain on bandwidth & ultimately cost more. However there is a technique that can be used to combat the strain of constant server queries called page caching.

Alternative PHP Cache is a free and open opcode cache for PHP. Its goal is to provide a free, open, and robust framework for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code. It’s a PECL extension which shares the packaging and distribution system with its sister, PEAR. Provided that you have PEAR package installed on your system, the procedure is as simple as typing: “pecl install apc“
For more information about APC including tutorials follow & get optimise your site for free! http://uk3.php.net/apc

Well Thought Out Coding Techniques

When building a website using a content management system there are many options available to edit sections of the website page, when initially building the website it can be very easy to use the CMS to fill in footer information, static sidebars and such, however since the information in the footer is unlikely to ever change, it seems pointless calling the database for this information every time a page is loaded. If you analyse a front end page from your CMS I would not be surprised to learn that 20 or more queries are being executed each time the page is loaded.

If you are able to hard code the text in your footer into your files rather than calling the database for it you will find a reduction in page loading times and a reduced strain on the server just because you have cut down the quantity of queries hitting your database.

Database Optimisation

Keeping your database running is easy, most of the time your CMS will take care of it for you. However keeping your database operating at full potential is not quite so simple; especially if you like to dabble with plugins for your system.

Each time that you update your system or install an add-on or a plugin, you will be adding more tables and rows to your database, ultimately increasing the quantity of records held, so with the installation of a couple of plugins, maybe an anti-spam plugin & a WYSIWYG editor, you could potentially increase the number of records held from 10,000 to 20,000… It doesn’t take a genius to realise that when querying the database, just having to search through an extra 10,000 records will take some time! So get rid of unnecessary plugins, and if you can; code it yourself!

Broken Links

If a file goes missing or gets deleted from the server it can cause issues, for instance if a users’ browser is attempting to load a page but cannot find a certain JavaScript or CSS file, or an image that may have been deleted the browser will try for a certain amount of time to load the elements. Re-trying to find the missing files will cause both increased load on the server, for requesting the missing files over and over again & will thus increase loading times quite considerably.
The best way to combat broken links and missing files is to really get to know the code that makes your website work.

If you get to know your code properly, and you regularly check it, you will be unlikely to encounter broken links, however if you are not a coder or simply can’t be bothered to trawl through tedious amount of code you can use various online tools to check the structural integrity of your website. Google is as always your friend; however a good place to start would be Pingdom Tools http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ . Using Pingdom Tools you will be able to monitor how long your site takes to load, whilst at the same time you will be able to identify which files are missing, or unable to be loaded. Highly useful in the pursuit of a fast loading website.

Hopefully the advice given in this article should highlight some obvious & some not so obvious techniques for optimisation of content management systems. Look out for a more detailed tutorial coming soon!

SOPA; an acronym for Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill introduced to the US which if successfully introduced as a law will expand the ability of US law enforcement & copyright holders to fight against trafficking & distribution of counterfeit goods, and in other words greatly impact internet piracy of music, video & software.

Ultimately under the new legislation you can receive up to five years behind bars for “Unauthorised Streaming of Copyrighted Material” obviously it is unlikely that anyone would receive the full extent of the law for merely streaming a video, however potentially having the means to prosecute an individual for such an offense seems far too excessive to me. Although I do download, maybe sometimes illegally, I understand the pressure to do something since piracy is rife throughout the internet. However the bill is quite rightly opposed by many influential companies throughout the internet. Wikipedia & WordPress have both blocked the content off of their websites in protest to the legislations. Other websites have shown their support, however have not blocked their content. EBay, Facebook, Google & Twitter are all also in protest against the proposed laws, the list is growing too with many gaming websites showing their anger about the proposed law.

The overall aims of the laws are to prevent the channels that provide users with pirate material & prevent the users from handing money to the pirates for said material. The opposition to this law states that it will add unnecessary overheads in cost to prevent the piracy, whilst also limiting the amount of legitimate information available to us, ultimately considerably constricting the freedom & soul of the internet.

If you cut out all of the internet hype that has arisen from the proposed legislation, you are left with a bill that would be effective against piracy, but would also partially censor the internet, potentially blocking a whole website on a permanent basis without the ability to appeal just because one page contains a link to pirated, or copyright-infringed material. The bills do not just stop there; they also grant powers to ISPs to use a technique called DNS blocking, which effectively could make a website disappear from the internet, this technique actually goes against the infrastructure on which the internet has been built. So ultimately what seems to be the case is that the bill has been written from a collation of ideas from people who do not understand how the internet works on a technical basis, or how the internet has given so much freedom of speech, so many shared ideas & so much inspiration…

To sign the petition against the SOPA bill follow This Link

Wikipedia is an invaluable resource to many. For example we were having a discussion about “Australasia” yesterday in the office, and the first thing many of us did was visit Wikipedia for some insight. It’s a great website that really bring the community together for the better good.

As you may already know, Wikipedia is blacking out the English version of the website for 24 hours in protest against “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and “Protect IP Act” (PIPA). In short they believe these two bills will severely inhibit people’s access to online information. If you want to read more about that then take a look at this article.

First of all, I personally support what Wikipedia is doing and I believe many of my colleagues feel the same way. If you feel the same way please take a moment to express your support; I’ve left the links in the image above working for ease of use, else you can just visit any Wikipedia page.

Bypassing the Blackout

What Wikipedia is doing is for a good cause; however here’s a few ways of bypassing their blackout for those of you who really need to access their pages.

The blackout is implemented using JavaScript and therefore there’s 2 different approaches to take. The first is to just temporarily disable JavaScript, the other is to revert back what the JavaScript code they ran. The first is much simpler than the latter, so let’s take a look at that first.

Disabling JavaScript

Alan Wood has written a nice little article on how to enable/disable JavaScript in browsers. Just follow his instructions prior to going to Wikipedia (or refresh the page after doing so) and you will no longer see the blackout screen.

If you have the Web Developer Toolbar installed then you can do this even quicker by clicking on “Disable » Disable JavaScript » All JavaScript”.

Please remember to re-enable JavaScript after you’re done; otherwise you won’t be able to use the advanced functionality of many websites.

Revert the Changes

For those of you who prefer not to disable JavaScript, even temporarily, the other option is to use the JavaScript console. This is a little more advanced and is more for developers, rather than everyday internet users.

I personally work on a IMac using Google Chrome, in which the console can be accessed by pressing “alt + cmd + j”. For those of you using FireBug just bring it up and click on “Console”.

You then just need to copy & paste the following code and run it:

$('body *').css('display', '');$('#mw-sopaOverlay').remove();$('#mw-page-base, #mw-head-base, #content, #mw-head, #mw-panel, #footer').show();

This pretty much reverts back all the changes Wikipedia blackout code. The downside of this is that it needs to be done on a page by page basis, which can be a little bit of a hassle.

I hope this has been of some use to you, if so please help us spread the word by sharing it using the button below. Also don’t forget to checkout the Wikipedia website and give them support!

Adverts have actually been a part of Facebook since around August 2006, in a deal between Microsoft & Facebook allowing Microsoft the placement of banner ads through some pages on the site. Since then however their approach has always considered that users don’t want to see adverts that are not relevant to their own interests and lifestyles, this attentive attitude has meant that instead of seeing a page full of weight loss adverts, hair growth, Groupon deals and a mashup of other ads I’m not interested in; I will either see a page full of content with no adverts, or I will see a page with minimal adverts which are at least slightly relevant. I still won’t click on any of them; however they are at least relevant to my lifestyle, which is obviously appreciated when you see so many websites that instead of targeting you with relevant adverts will effectively make you click on their loud annoying adverts just so they can make small revenue from your click.

Use these two images as a suitable comparison between the different styles of advertising, the first image is a file-sharing website, and the second is a profile from Facebook.

1.

2.

Notice how the file-sharing website image is plagued by annoying adverts that make no real sense most of the adverts are just fake download buttons placed there in an attempt to make the user click on them. Whilst in contrast the adverts on Facebook are placed with specific target audiences in mind, which will ultimately improve users attitudes towards adverts & since they will actually have an interest in the product or service being advertised; the advert will get clicked!

Ultimately you, the users; are Facebook’s product and companies who need to advertise have a massive audience of which they can target specific users who will at least be interested in the product or service being shown. From an advertising perspective Facebook is a brilliant tool, however some users complain about the quantity of adverts and the relevancy of some, so whether Facebook has quite achieved what it set out to is another matter…