Blog

Advantages of working in teams

Posted 27th September 2010 | Category: Web Development |

At Bluelinemedia we make sure every project is worked on by a team rather than just one person in the company. We feel this greatly benefits the projects we work on and the clients we deal with.

Our project teams will always include a Client Manager, Project Manager and developers. A major benefit of having this amount of people involved in a project is so that when a member of the team is absent for example, there are other people in the team who know just as much about the project. This means work and client communication can continue uninterrupted whilst this team member is absent. Many 'one man bands' do not have this luxury and therefore projects they are working on have serious issues when they are absent.

Working in a team allows us to have improved testing when compared with projects with just one person. The developers test their work throughout the development of a project and when they are happy they pass the work to the Project Manager. The Project Manager will then fully test the work submitted and if there are any errors this will be passed back down to the developers otherwise the project testing will be passed onto the Client Manager. The Client Manager will complete high level testing on the project. This method of having different people testing the project before delivering it to the client leads to fewer errors in the client delivery. Often by having different people looking at the project errors are more easily spotted. Read more...

Intellectual property (IP) and website code

Posted 23rd September 2010 | Category: Web Design |

If you decide to use our web design services, we'll ask you to sign our terms and conditions. This often leads to questions about intellectual property, who owns what, and how this affects you. Other suppliers may handle this in different ways, but I just wanted to explain how our agreement works.

Who owns the intellectual property?

In terms of the site code, we remain the author and owner of intellectual property. This is not the same as owning your website, and we don't take any ownership of any design, content or ideas that you provide.

What we own is the specific lines of code that we've written to apply your requirements, and any designs we've produced. There is a simple reason for this. When we develop a new website, we'll probably use small elements of code that we've used in previous projects. For example, if we've already developed a contact form or some similar small feature, we're going to use and adapt that code rather than starting from scratch. It saves our time and your money. If we give you ownership of our code, we can't do this. Read more...

Our boomerang attempts

Posted 17th September 2010 | Category: Company |

As part of a marketing campaign, we've ordered some branded mini boomerangs for customers and potential new customers. And yes, they do really come back. We thought it was only right to try them out ourselves and let you know how it's done, so we made a video of our efforts at the local park (spot the cheating).

We're giving away boomerangs to clients whenever we see them, and if you'd like one of your own just get in touch. Read more...

Why do we use PHP?

Posted 10th September 2010 | Category: Web Design |

PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and is a server-side programming language.

There are many reasons to use PHP for server side programming, firstly it is a free language with no licensing fees so the cost of using it is minimal.

A good benefit of using PHP is that it can interact with many different database languages including MySQL. We work with MySQL at Bluelinemedia since this is also a free language so it makes sense to use PHP. Both PHP and MySQL are compatible with an Apache server which is also free to license. PHP can also run on Windows, Linux and Unix servers. Read more...

Should I pay more than £500 for a website?

Posted 6th September 2010 | Category: Web Development |

If you're comparing quotes, we won't be the cheapest (or the most expensive). We charge around £2000 for a typical brochure site, while some companies charge £500 or less. We believe we give that extra value in the quality and service we provide, but we understand it's not easy for you to make a judgement from the outside. The price of a website isn't about the number of pages you need, but the service and quality you get.

The real cost

In our experience most websites will run for 3-5 years, so consider the cost over this whole period. If you've bought a simple website, what happens when you want to add extra pages or content in the future? If you run a new marketing campaign, how much will it cost to add individual landing pages or update the search engine content of your website? If you want to change web designers in the future, how much will it cost to start again?

We build a long-term solution and develop your content management in parallel with your website, not as a bolt-on. This means you can always edit your content and even add new pages yourself at no cost. We code in a way that makes it easy for us and other companies to update your website in the future, and we don't tie you to us or our hosting. Aside from hosting and domain renewal, we don't charge any ongoing costs. Read more...

Integrating Google Maps

Posted 3rd September 2010 | Category: Web Design |

Google maps can be a very handy addition to any website, especially on contact pages. I have seen many website with an image of a Google map or a link to the Google maps website but did you know it's very easy to actually embed a live Google map into one of your pages?

Google maps API

An application programming interface (API) is an interface implemented by a software program to enable interaction with other software. Luckily Google's API is very simple to use and Google provide plenty of documentation and examples.

Next we need some JavaScript to create the map and place it where we want it. Its good practise to place this JavaScript in a separate file and reference it in your page header. Read more...

Post web content to Twitter and Facebook

Posted 3rd September 2010 | Category: Web Design |

Now we have a blog on our new website we wanted to automatically update our Twitter feed with the latest items. Upon researching this we found a simple solution provided at the following address - http://www.twitterfeed.com. Twitter feed allows you to update your Twitter and Facebook accounts from an RSS feed generated from your web site content, such as news items or blog entries.

Firstly you need to generate an RSS feed from the content of your site. As an example this might be inlcude a news title and full story. Once you have this file set up correctly you need to register for an account with Twitter Feed.

Within Twitter Feed you can create a new feed specifying a description and the URL of your RSS feed. You also have a number of advanced options such as update frequency, post content (e.g. title & description), sort order etc. The second stage of the process is where you enter your account details for Twitter or Facebook in order for these accounts to be updated automatically, whether it be a status update or a new tweet. Read more...