Web Hosting Blog From Pixel Internet » Doug

The Anatomy Of A Perfect Website [INFOGRAPHIC]

Doug — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:36:52 +0000

Even for the most talented amongst us, web design can be a tricky business at the best of times. It’s not just a case of being able to create something that’s pleasing to the eye, you have to consider usability, navigation, social media integration, validated mark-up, search engine optimisation, conversion optimisation and a whole host of other elements in order to put the together the perfect modern website.

So to help you put together a fantastic site, ROI Media has produced the following infographic, entitled ‘The Anatomy Of A Perfect Website’:

If you enjoyed this infographic, please consider sharing it using our social media sharing buttons. Feel free to repost this infographic on your own site, just please link back to ROI Media or Pixel Internet if you do.

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Mozilla Continues With Google Search Partnership

Doug — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:51:27 +0000

Anyone who’s familiar with the Mozilla Firefox browser will have seen that Google has been the browser’s default search engine for some time, allowing users to make Google searches directly from the taskbar. This relationship has been hugely positive for both Google (helping to ensure their market dominance by featuring so prominently on one of the most popular western browsers) and Mozilla (adding user functionality, improving brand awareness and making them a considerable sum of money), so news of the pair continuing their relationship at first doesn’t seem too surprising.

However, with the current deal between the two major brands expiring in November, plus Mozilla’s recently released ‘Firefox with Bing’, many people had begun to speculate that the deal between Mozilla and Google could be coming to an end (with many suggesting an imminent switch to Bing as the primary search provider). Considering the growing rivalry between Firefox and Google’s own Chrome web browser, this didn’t sound completely outside the realms of possibility.

According to an announcement from Mozilla, the new deal between the company and Google will run for a minimum of three more years, with Google continuing as the Firefox default browser.

Although the monetary elements of the new deal weren’t disclosed, one can expect it to be extremely lucrative for Mozilla, with their relationship with Google accounting for more than 80% of their revenue in 2010.

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How The Panda Update Has Changed SEO [INFOGRAPHIC]

Doug — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:00:05 +0000

SEO can be a difficult business at the best of times, but with Google’s recent Panda updates, many people have seen significant drops in their search engine rankings and subsequent website traffic. As a result, many people are looking to improve their online marketing techniques in order to stay on the right side of Google’s algorithm.

So how has the Panda algorithm update changed SEO? How can you alter your SEO campaigns in order to ensure you not only avoid ranking drops, but improve your overall search visibility?

Well now you can find out exactly how to do just that, with a recent infographic published by Custard Media:

5 Brand New One-Click Installs Available From Pixel Internet

Doug — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:27:54 +0000

We try and incorporate as many one-click installs into our hosting control panel as possible – allowing our customers to easily integrate the most popular platforms, content management systems and website elements into their site without any prior knowledge of coding or web development.

After hearing some of your suggestions for future one-click installs, we’ve added five brand new integrated platforms into our web hosting control panel. Here’s the complete list:

1. Pixelpost
Pixelpost is a fantastic new website platform aimed at photographers or anyone who wants an online photo gallery. With simple navigation and customisation, lots of free templates and our one-click install, you can have an online gallery up and running in no time at all.

2. Mantis
A great tool for those who need to keep an eye on bugs and glitches in their internal systems, website or software, Mantis offers users high-functionality bug-tracking with a variety of features and a simple, clear user dashboard.

3. PHP MyFAQ
PHP MyFAQ is a excellent integration tool, allowing users to quickly and easily add a FAQ or knowledge base to their website. This scalable open source FAQ software also allows complete customisation, allowing for simple website integration without any knowledge of coding.

4. Text Pattern
Text Pattern is a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system with an extremely active support community. Whilst the majority of people stick to WordPress and other high profile CMS’s, many others are taking advantage of the intuitive dashboard and high level functionality of the growing Text Pattern CMS.

5. PHProjekt
PHProjekt is a high-level project management system designed for creative agencies and freelancers with numerous clients and campaigns to keep track of. Particularly useful if you’ve got a large creative staff who need to collaborate on client projects.

Best Retro Inspired Fonts of 2011

Doug — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:25:19 +0000

As designers we all love fonts, and some more so than others. They can easily be the making or breaking of great graphics, and matter a lot more than you might think. From legibility, display and compatibility on various devices to the style of the font, there is a lot to consider. With the huge proliferation of designers and material available on the internet today, there is a more baffling choice today then ever before. We’ve picked through and tested a lot of fonts this year, and here are just some of our favourites:

- Weston
From the excellent ‘League Of Movable Type’ collective (who have some other great offerings like Chunk 5 and Ostrich Sans) comes Weston. It’s retro, yet futuristic somehow, which is the perfect combination for me at the moment. A really lovely font.

- Pompadour
Although these are only numbers, I really love this set. The beautiful slab serifs are inspired by retro imagery from the 1950s, but look fantastic in all kinds of modern layouts. They’re really stylish and very versatile as well.

- Ranger
From the stunning collection of the Lost Type co-op comes Ranger, a beautiful bold italic font with subtle little points. It’s apparently inspired by old Colorado sign writing, and designed by Colorado native Evan Huwa.

- Highlands
Again from the Lost Type co-op, Highlands is another font inspired by retro posters; this time from National parks in America. The bold slab serif is very versatile and works really for headlines and posters.

- Bebas Neue
The fantastic Dharma Type are the creators of the final entry here, and again have lots of other really great retro fonts, many inspired by advertising and posters of the 40s and 50s. Bebas is a very simple narrow slab serif that echoes woodcut type of the past, and works in a huge range of situations.

- Duke
Finally, something quite similar to Bebas above, but with some lovely subtle shading to give it a 3D effect. It works just as well in the same situations, and makes really great looking titles and bold headers.

The Current State Of Cloud Computing [INFOGRAPHIC]

Doug — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:26:21 +0000

When it comes to online storage and data hosting, cloud computing has become a major industry as more and more businesses (as well as the public) look to take advantage of secure storage and virtualised applications.

So what is the current state of cloud computing in the UK and further afield? Well, you can now find out with the following infographic, commissioned by the team at GuruOnline.

The Current State Of Cloud Computing:

Facebook Upgrades To Keep In Line With Google+

Doug — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:15:18 +0000

Social networks are big business today, as we all know from the well documented story of Facebook co-creator and 14^th richest person in the world, Mark Zuckerberg. With the launch of Facebook’s main competitor, Google+, in July this year, some updates to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ were surely close behind.

So low and behold, people were greeted with a revised and updated Facebook layout last week, but with such sweeping changes will people be put off? Some of the main differences and new introductions were:

Changes to the news feed mean that you now see ‘top stories’ above the most recent ones, with a button on the top right of the feed to change to most recent instead.
Facebook now features a ‘subscribe’ button in addition to the ‘friend’ option. It’s very similar to the way Twitter works, and ‘circles’ within Google+. It allows you to follow someone and see their public posts without them returning the favour.
Currently in testing is a ‘smart list’ feature, that groups your friends into categories, much like the ‘circles’ in Google+. It’s not clear how they are going to make this work, but it will enable you to see all posts within a certain category like ‘work’ or ‘school friends’.
A separate feed in the top right of the homepage has been added that lists all comments, pics, status updates and other information from all of your friends, and constantly ticks over with new information, much like the stream on Twitter.

We have also been given a glimpse of future layout changes by Digg founder Kevin Rose, who seems to have pre-release access to the new profile. He was kind enough to post a picture of it on his page, so this is what the future profile will look like:

With all updates like this there is a certain backlash, but it usually dies down after a week or two as people settle in to the changes. However, with the privacy issues they faced earlier in the year where your details were displayed to others automatically, combined with other problems and these new changes, could it signal a move away from Facebook?

When the last round of changes was made several years back, there was little alternative for users who didn’t like them. Myspace was on the way out and other networks had so few members as not to be worth it, but Google+ certainly represents a good alternative. Despite the best efforts of the Facebook team to compete with Google+, you have to ask, will the changes ultimately end up pushing more people towards it?

Apple Launches Beta Version Of iCloud

Doug — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:33:35 +0000

Apple’s iCloud has been much anticipated for some time now, with speculative reports surrounding its’ official release date growing in frequency over the last few weeks. Good news for all those eager to try out the new cloud-based service then, as Apple have finally released the Beta version of iCloud – available to all customers with an official Apple ID.

The Beta version features online versions of the iWork suite (Numbers, Pages and Keynote), as well as the ‘Find My iPhone’ app, Mail, Contacts and Calender. To take advantage of iCloud Beta, you’ll need to visit iCloud.com from iOS 5, which is currently only available to those registered as an Apple developer. Apple has suggested that you can also access the service via Mac OS X Lion, although reports are already surfacing of people having trouble accessing iCloud via the Lion OS X.

As you would probably expect, the service is already drawing comparisons with Amazon’s Cloud Drive, particularly as Apple have released their official pricing structure for the online service.

Whereas Amazon’s cloud service offers unlimited music storage completely free of charge, as well as an additional 20GB of space for $20 (around £12), Apple’s iCloud will not include their cloud music services and will offer 5GB of space for free. Additional space on the iCloud service is available in increments of 10, 20 and 40GB, costing $20, $40 and $100 respectively.

Whether or not the iCloud suite will be as popular as the Apple’s other recent offerings remains to be seen, as as yet the Beta version of iCloud appears to be little more than a tweaked version of the MobileMe suite, which has been available to users for some time.

There’s no doubt that a big element of the future of the way we use computers and access our data lies in cloud computing, but which company will become the dominant providers of such services remains a mystery. Whatever happens, it will certainly be interesting to follow the cloud-based developments over the next few months.

Adding The Google +1 Button To Your WordPress Website

Doug — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:35:26 +0000

If you’ve been following the activities of Google in recent months (or you’re an SEO engineer), you’ll have undoubtedly come across the +1 concept recently introduced by the search giant.

Initially an experiment in utilising user-based recommendations to inform search results, Google has rolled out the +1 button more comprehensively by allowing the integration of a +1 button into your blogs and websites.

There will undoubtedly be numerous WordPress plugins in the coming months featuring simple +1 button integration, but in the meantime here’s a simple guide to adding the Google +1 button to your WordPress-based blogs and websites yourself in two simple steps:

1. Editing your WordPress theme files

You will need to add a line of Javascript to your WP theme files, but this isn’t as difficult as it may sound to some people. Simply login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Appearances > Editor.

On the next screen, locate and select ‘Footer.php’, which should reveal the coding for your website’s footer. You’ll need to locate the closing body tag, which will look like this:

Then simply paste in the following line of Javascript immediately before the closing body tag:

To help you out, here’s a screenshot of what you’ll need to do:

Once you’ve placed the code in the right place, simply hit ‘update’ and you’re ready to move on to the next step.

2. Adding the +1 button to your website

Once the javascript is added to your Footer.php file, you’ll be able to add the +1 button with a simple shortcode:

This can be added to individual posts and pages easily, by simply adding the shortcode into the body of the post or page. However, you might find it a better option to add the button into the sidebar of your blog, post, page, etc. To do this, simply navigate to Appearances > Widgets in your WordPress dashboard.

From here, you can simply select a widget market ‘Text’, drag it into the appropriate sidebar section and add the +1 shortcode. This will give you a permanent +1 button in the corresponding sidebar, allowing users to recommend your site via the new Google button.

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If you have any questions at all on installing the +1 button on your own WordPress website, simply leave us a comment with the issues you’re having and we’ll do our best to help.

Web Design Trends To Watch Out For In 2011

Doug — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 10:30:43 +0000

There were numerous popular web design trends in 2010, and many of those (as well as a few new ones) are expected to continue enjoying a high level of popularity in 2011.

So, to help those web designers looking to stay ahead of the game this year, here are what we think will be popular web design trends in 2011:

1. HTML 5

Almost guaranteed to be a big trend this year, HTML 5 has seen a huge amount of publicity recently (and was just granted its very own logo by the W3C) and will see a continued rise in usage throughout the year as more and more web designers learn the benefits of the language.

2. Minimal Websites

A trend that grew in popularity last year; minimal, un-cluttered websites are becoming more and more common. They’re easy to navigate, very focused and direct and from what many people have been saying, tend to convert at a higher level. We’d expect this trend to continue throughout 2011, so keep your eyes peeled for increasing numbers of minimal, striking websites.

3. Typography

Typography has always been an important and popular element of design in general, but last year saw the relationship between website design and selected typography become more pertinent, as the top web designers demonstrated how well it could be done. 2011 will be no different, and we reckon you’ll see a far wider selection of custom fonts, particularly in relation to website design.

Also worth keeping your eye out for in 2011 would be social media integration (which saw a huge boom last year) and a continued improvement in mobile browsing and mobile versions of websites, which we think will become far more innovative.