Didn’t find what happened to company, other than disappeared. Were reseller for Easyspace who will take the account back for individual domains & can set up new hosting.
We have been providing a solution for some clients ourselves – let us know if that would help you.
Web conventions can be used to improve the user experience of your web pages. The learned behavior of users surfing many websites web-wide has created some web design conventions that we can take advantage of in our page designs, easing the viewers journey with a sense of familiarity.
One of the first things we learn about the Internet is what those blue underlined links do, they don’t have to be blue, but I do believe you must differentiate them by giving them an underline or a background color. C
hanging the color only isn’t a great solution as users with color blindness cannot tell the difference. Visited links should usually change color, most commonly a nice purple, recently I have seen more sites using a strike through which seems to work well.
Users are used to reading in a certain way, magazines and newspapers and now the web, lets take advantage of the nested information structure users are used too. Headings will ease users perception of the information structure allowing them to get a good overview of the information.
The heading could be larger, a different color or have extra space around it to signify its importance. After the main heading the sub headings should also follow a similar semantic order.
Headings should highlight in one or a few words what the following paragraph is about, on the web this ultimately creates scan-ability, something your users will appreciate.
The logo / site ID, should link to homepage of the website – though probably best to have a home link in the nav as well, the user will feel reassured as she knows there is always a way to start all over again. The logo is usually positioned top left side of the web page.
Buttons are going to do something, actionable events, keep buttons for actions. A great element of their design is that they are three dimensional, so its obvious they are click able. I often don’t over style buttons on my designs, leaving the users web browser to style the buttons, this may offer the viewer a little extra familiarity.
I’d recomend keeping your search forms simple, none of these extra tags for accessibility showing like the label, fieldset etc, and no confusing words like “enter keyword” or “quick search”, from a usability perspective the user wants to see the word “search”. If theres any further search criteria they should be straight forward and addiitional.
The main navigation usually sits next tothe logo at the top of the web page and usually maps out the main sections of your website, or I like to say “the main features”. These links should all be internal too.
Secondary navigation is often situated in the top left or right sidebar and more recently found directly underneath the main navigation showing sub page structure, this is usually a list of hyperlinks leading to category or even content pages.
This navigation is usually at the top right of a web page and includes helpful links such as a Sitemap, Search, a link to the Home Page and Contact page, on a ecommerse site this would probably house the Shopping Cart and Checkout links too.
If a photo has some text underneath it this usually means its a caption describing the image, or the photographers name. If you click on the image thumbnail it will show you a larger version of the image.
A link at the bottom of the page to take the user back to the top of the page, I’d reccomned this link be aligned with the pages content and that its clearly displayed, I dislike websites that put this on right, I’d suggest this should be the first link in the footer.
Similar items can be grouped into a list of hyperlinks to show they have a relationship, maybe they are in the same category of service or related products in an ecommerce website. Grouping similar items makes their associations clearer to the user.
Don’t call it basket, or carry bag, I’m English and I say “shopping bag” and not “shopping cart” but its the metaphor and wording that’s used the most across the web, so pick a side and stick with it. The shopping cart icon is also widely recognizable across the web, so you may not need the word “shopping Cart”.
Web conventions shouldn’t get in the way of progress and as a designer you must preserve your artistic license, be creative and progressive, and remember conventions had to start somewhere, its more of a web trend than an ideal of design, but if you want to create the best user experience then designing with conventions in mind will aid your users greatly.
There’s probably a good few web conventions I have missed, feel feel to comment and I’ll add them
As Playing with Fire has pointed out Joomla has a lot of catching up to do on the Usability front, Wordpress makes simple tasks really easy to accomplish with few clicks to get a task done such as adding an image, publishing a page or publishing a news item.
For the website owner running a business website or a blog I haven’t found a CMS that has better usability than Wordpress.
When I train clients on how to manage their websites It usually takes about 40 minutes with Wordpress, often a few hours with Joomla, though Joomla has more powerful features, every day tasks the client wants to learn take much longer to train.
Unfortunately once a client has received training in Joomla they often need tips or hints at how to perform a task again a few weeks later, that scenario hasn’t come up once with Wordpress.
If you have a small to medium size business I believe Wordpress is currently your best open source option to manage and update your website on a daily basis, tasks are very easy to accomplish, everything is well thought out and I find myself saying this to a lot of clients when training “Everything is where you’d expect it to be” .
Wordpress has an amazing community around it and the in depth documentation is second to none, as a designer or a website owner you’ll find everything you’ll need by the very people that make it and then also by enthusiasts such as myself.
My programmer voiced to me that the main pro for using Joomla is it’s power and flexibility, and its true, with me designing and my developer programming we can make Joomla do anything.
The capabilities of Joomla are endless and custom database work is an area where Joomla particularly shines.
Joomla has a complex multiple user privilege system with user registration and layered content privileges. Wordpress does not have a traditional privilege system at all.
When multiple user groups are needed I turn to Joomla, if a business requires multiple users be be able to login and view the website with different content that is user privilege dependent then I believe Joomla is the best open source CMS for the task.
Joomla also has an amazing community based around it, but the official documentation has great depth but is poorly organized, I found the best documentation from external sources.
Joomla was designed from the ground up as a CMS, Wordpress as a publishing platform that has evolved into a CMS, giving each unique strengths and weaknesses.
I think both platforms are fantastic for managing a website, Wordpress for small to medium business and Joomla for a website that requires multiple user privileges or custom database work.
I have just downloaded Apples Safari 4 web browser for PC and have given it a good test run to check out the features. The shiny metallic theme has disappeared in favor of a more traditional Windows theme, which is a real shame as I liked the uncluttered interface on Safari 3.
It’s performance has increased, Apples Safari 4 is amazingly quick, maybe quicker than Google Chrome. Safari 4 has some great new features including clearer tabbed navigation, Show all bookmarks, Show Top Sites and a new Page Zoom feature.
The shiny lights that minimize, maximize and close are probably what attracted me to Safari for the PC initially as well as better security than Internet Explorer. The change of style away from the sexy shiny silver will be missed but is a positive move meaning the Windows user will feel in a more familiar environment, which is just good usability.
If you love Apples iTunes interface as much as I do your going to love the new Show All Bookmarks section, a quick overview of all your recent bookmarks in a iTunes style carousel. You can view all your RSS subscriptions in here too with a nice clean interface.
Another button and another new feature, maybe ripped off of Googles Chrome browser but all very nice anyway. The Top Sites collates your most popular sites you visit and displays them again in a cool iTunes Style carousel, very nice interface indeed.
All the big browsers now have a zoom feature and Safari 4’s is actually quite tidy, I still hate how all these manufacturers hide the zoom functionality away in a menu and believe this functionality should have its own button, I know the shortcuts but every other normal web surfer I know, doesn’t. This may also signal the end of stretchy layouts, I already use fixed layout for my deigns unless the client states otherwise.
Again for me, I don’t care, I don’t want to report a bug and it really should not be in a prime place instead of a zoom feature or something more useful for day to day web surfing.
I think I’ll miss the old interface , but I’ll probably get over this and I do like the new Top Sites feature and with Mozilla’s Firefox having a continious crashing problem for me I have made Safari 4 my default browser, for now. So what you waiting for try Safari 4
I’m often asked which is better: .htm or .html. This (extremely!) short article discusses the differences between the two file types and which is the correct one to use.
So what’s the difference and which is best?
There is none. They are exactly the same.
Both .htm and .html are exactly the same and will work in the same way. The choice is down to personal preference, providing you’re consistent with your file naming you won’t have a problem with either.
Depending on the configuration of the web server, one of the file types will take precedence over the other. This should not be an issue since it’s unlikely that you’ll have both index.htm and index.html sitting in the same folder.
We always use the shorter .htm for our file names since file extensions are typically 3 characters long.
Submít your website to as many search engines and directories as you can. (A search engine is a searchable database of websites collected by a computer program (called a crawler, robot or spider). When you enter a keyword, the search engine looks for keywords in its database, and any relevant records are displayed.)
Currently there are thousands of search engines and directories on the internet. Some of the main ones include Google, Yahoo, MSN. When submittíng your website to the search engines, you can either do it manually by going to the search engine website and adding your URL (website address) or you can employ the services of a Search Engine Submission company, who will do it for you.
Search engines try to rank sites that contain good content higher, so you need keywords and phrases on your pages that best describe your service and products. For example, if you are a florist, use words such as “florist, online florist, virtual florist, wedding florist, florist in Sydney, florist on line, flowers, floral, bouquets, floral arrangements etc.” as many times as possible to ensure high search engine ranking. To find out what keywords your customers may be searching use Google’s Keyword Tool or Wordtracker.
Many extras are possible – blogs, search engine optimisation, email newsletters etc, – but we would want to get the site online as quickly as possible first. We can EVEN make it an e-commerce site within the price, for a limited range of products. If the client wants us to handle regular edits, then we can include that too.
The idea is that we create a site that looks great, quickly, so that they have an opportunity to tweak the content afterwards. Its so much easier to edit someone’s work than to create from scratch, yes?”
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