News

On 26th May 2012 all UK websites must offer users opt-in consent tools to allow cookies that pass information about your browsing activities to 3rd parties.

The reality is that the majority of websites will wait and see if anyone gets dragged over the coals and then respond. The problem is if you were to get singled out. I’ve deployed a compliant solution on one of my own websites here which you can try which brings up a pop-up window informing the user of what is going on and asking their permission to store cookies. Once accepted, the visitor won’t see the message again (unless they delete their cookies!)

Although the legislation is completely ridiculous and ill conceived in my view (and almost everyone else’s) however the legislation is here and may be enforced.

There are two options:

1. Ignore the legislation, maintain the volume of your user visits and hopefully fall under the radar without getting fined or sued. 
2. I can install a small plugin to your site which does what I’ve outlined above but will initially substantially reduce your site visitors until they get used to this nonsense.

To existing customers, please let me know if you’d like me to carry out option 2. It’s a relatively minor modification so I’ll factor the costs in to your next website update.

Just as a footnote, online shops simply can’t function without cookies therefore it shouldn’t be required to request consent from shop visitors as this is considered essential for the functionality of a site however using plugins to facebook, twitter, google analytics, newsletter and booking systems will require active user cookie consent..

Deben Inns is one of U2R’s longest established clients, having developed three generations of websites along with the provision of extensive design services from menus to advertising and promotional materials.

Although their previous website also developed by U2R was a great success, there was no provision for content management by the landlords of the individual pubs in the group. Each pub now has the ability to post it’s own news and special offers along with the ability to change or update their food menus, take bookings and send out bulk subscriber mail through an opt-in newsletter subscription system.

Each pub website has it’s own website installation in order to increase security and reduce exposure to malicious attack.

The websites are run from their own managed dedicated server to maximize bandwidth availability. An off-site back-up system is in place which makes sure the sites are easily recoverable from server crashes or malicious attacks.

Each site has the following key features:

• Self managed opt-in mailing list system
• Gravity forms – highly flexible form generation module
• Food menu editor
• Automatic post expiry – Removes news/offers once expired
• Feature slider
• Google map integration
• Paypal gateway

Visit the Deben Inns website

Envirofield was established from the field trials department of Levington Agriculture. The company has 30 years experience in field trials, both in the UK and worldwide. Envirofield specialise in environmental and agricultural field research along with soil analysis down to 1.0 metres in depth. They cover all aspects of field research from conception to completion, generating protocols to reporting yields as well as providing a contract service for any of the processes in between such as contract drilling or combining.

Their previous website was becoming tired and was in desperate need of replacement. The new website represents part of a larger IT solution managed by U2R.

The core website is a standard WordPress installation with a premium theme lightly modified to suit Envirofield’s corporate colours. In addition to this, a client file drop box style system has been implemented, allowing their clients to log in to download and upload files such as reports or images thus keeping them in a safe place should their own computers ‘go down’.

A full off-site backup solution has been put in place to provide an extremely robust two tier backup solution.

In addition, U2R is providing IT support on an as-required basis rather than costly and mostly unnecessary retainer or contract based services.

Long standing customer, Missile Sound, commissioned U2R to produce their annual Dancehall Extravaganza promotional materials package for their ever-popular Reggae event. The logo created for the 2011 event was brought to the fore to put more emphasis on the event than the DJ lineup. With an extremely loyal and more mature following for this particular promotion, the style used was more ‘old school’ than cutting edge although a combination of illustrator, Aurora 3D and classic photoshop was used in the creation process. The package included flyers, posters, several formats of web banners and a bulk mailing.

The Whisstocks Project is a community led project managed by a committee of dedicated volunteers to preserve a derelict commercial waterfront property within the heart of the Woodbridge waterfront for community and light commercial usage such as crafts, boatbuilding, cafe’s etc.

The aim is to raise funding on two fronts, firstly to cover daily admin and lobbying of related organisations and secondly to canvas for larger investment from potential business ‘angels’ to purchase the site outright on a non-profit basis.

To this end, the site was constructed on WordPress to give maximum search engine visibility and to integrate with an interested user base with social networking. A self-hosted opt-in email subscription system has been implemented along with a simple ‘donate’ button linking to paypal. The site utilizes the wordpress user system to provide and intranet for committee members with specific pages access being limited to logged in users.

I am very pleased to launch the new website package for IBS Boat Supplies.

IBS are a well established trade supplier of spare parts and repair materials for Rigid Inflatable Boats (RIB’s) and Inflatable or GRP boats.

The company has realised the necessity to adapt to changes in the marketplace within which it operates. Shop customers who used to shop within a retail store are increasingly using a retail shop as a showroom and then making their purchases with internet retailers. For distributors such as IBS boats, this means smaller stock orders from shops and internet retailers pushing ever harder for discounts. The best way to gain advantage of this trend it to improve workflow and therefore costs, by making stock buying more efficient and easier buy using an online ‘shop’ for the trade showing discount levels immediately whilst also offering retail customers an opportunity to purchase items directly at recommended retail prices.

Prestashop was used as the E-commerce platform which has proven to be the most effective system providing the best balance of features, performance over and above other open source systems such as Magneto or paid for systems such as Actinic. IBS Boats unfortunately suffers with very slow internet connectivity making web-browser based shop updates a slow and tedious process. Magneticone’s Prestashop Store Manager was deployed to manage this issue. The Store manager desktop application effectively feeds a stream of information at the fastest pace available in the background, letting the user get on with editing without waiting for images or content to upload before getting on with the next process. The result is a very fast practical workflow.

The benefit to retail customers are shorter delivery times and the benefit to trade is an easier way to order stock.

In addition to this, a ‘brochure site’ was also created to showcase products, provide practical information, support a bulk emailing system running trade and retail mailing lists and provide enhanced search engine visibility by using WordPress as a CMS which is crawled more frequently by Google as it is considered to be a frequently changing blog.

I wish IBS every success with their venture and look forward to working with Keith and Graham providing ongoing support and advice.

Many years ago, I inherited the first Woodbridge Cuising Club website. Woodbridge Cruising Club is one of the most respected members only yacht clubs on the East Coast, being nearly unique in that it is truly independent and not specifically tied to a marina.

The first ‘replacement site’ created was intended to be reasonably similar to it’s predecessor which couldn’t be easily edited by anyone, requiring the user to make alterations directly to the SQL database – Not very pretty. I built a site using Adobe Dreamweaver and Contribute which provided a near WYSIWYG editing interface which functioned reasonably well for several years.

With WordPress moving from the worlds best blogging tool to the worlds most successful content management system (CMS) the additional functionality offered was something I couldn’t fail to present to the WCC committee as an excellent way to stay technologically up-to-date. They agreed to the update and woodbridgecruisingclub.org MK III was launched.

This website features full CMS using a modified premium theme and provides all the benefits of WordPress such as excellent SEO and also a membership system allowing members to view premium content such as their newsletters whilst still offering the casual visitor a wealth of valuable content. A calender system has also been used which allows a categorised calendar to be shown, allowing the user to see for example only social engagements or bar rotas.

The Woodbridge Tennis Club website has been upgraded to use WordPress as a content management system in line with a series of tennis websites managed by James Yates. The upgrade provides a simpler and more accessible browser based editing platform which replaces Adobe Contribute which required installation of an application running on a local PC, also requiring an expensive license for each installation. All Jame’s sites will be syndicated on a regional tennis news website which integrates the excellent Tribulant Newsletter system which allows opt-in newsletter management with emails being sent via an ‘expendable’ hosting package which can be discarded if the domain/ip were to become blacklisted. Although an opt-in system should prevent blacklisting, if too many users choose to flag a newsletter as spam rather than unsubscribing, there is always a small chance of being blacklisted.

In 2010, U2R rebuilt the Fox’s Marina website with a clean and minimalistic design featuring a homepage slider and basic news functionality.

With fantastic advances in content management systems, it was suggested to make the website much more functional, particularly in the light of staff that were keen to get involved with updating and adding to the content. One particular member of staff has substantial photographic expertise and has provided the vast majority of the high quality images presented on the site. Senior management has also got on board, realising the essential nature of web marketing.

The new site was intended to remain similar in appearance to it’s predecessor but with substantially enhanced news and department news areas. It is fair to say the site is now news and content led rather than being just an online brochure. It also includes a self-hosted opt-in email subscription service with some extremely exciting options.

New portfolio pages now allow the visitor to explore ‘landmark’ projects which deserve special attention which remain highly visible. This site is one to watch and I am particularly keen to see this do well due to the enthusiasm shown by many of those involved.

The ‘Union’ facility within the Southend Campus was in need of some urgent posters to promote their immediate portfolio of promotions and events. The selection shown below made use of stock imagery in several cases and also included some 3d modelling in the case of the Sports Fed.