This morning I discovered TheHighlands.com had been hacked to redirect different site. As I’d not kept the site nor Wordpress updated I wasn’t really surprised, but it serves as a valuable lesson to keep applications updated. To plug the gap I’ve replaced the entire site with my gallery of Scottish Mountain Photography.
Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
ScotlandIS – Naturally Cool
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Promotional card for the ScotlandIS ‘Naturally Cool’ campaign using my image of Loch Morlich:
Wordpress E-Commerce
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
Have just launched online booking for Skinny Tyres using the Wordpress E-Commerce plug-in. It comes will a reasonable set of configurable options meaning it can be pressed into a variety of uses. By default it integrates with PayPal and Google Checkout, but for a fee of about $200 it can be tied in with other payment gateways such as Sage Pay. Will be monitoring its usability before unrolling onto other sites.
Ding-Dong, Avon calling…
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Launched this week is Avon’s ‘Win a Mortgage‘ competition site. Project Managed for Maglabs and developed by Fresh Monkey participants with both parts of a prize code can check to see if they have won their mortgage (for a year), a second prizes worth £1000 or a variety of promotional vouchers.
Delivered on time and to budget it has exceeded the client’s expectation and is an illustration of how all projects could be.
Web Trends Map #4
Monday, August 10th, 2009
The state of the web mapped into Tokyo’s metro system by the ever thought provoking Information Architects. This time in a much more engaging ‘zoom’ version, an excellent way to illustrate the complexity of the Internet it would have been even better if the nodes were links:
Wordpress posts from a Blackberry
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Getting to grips with the new Blackberry (Curve 8900) in preparation for the trip. So far very impressed, especially with the addition of a lightweight Wordpress plugin (WPhone) which makes posting very easy.
Not quite so impressed by the photo blogging, the Flickr plugin I’ve tired over compresses images and returns errors when uploading at original full size. Not really an issue as I can email images straight in, but these images don’t carry any GPS positional data so they don’t automatically appear on the Flickr map (which would have been a nice touch).
Recent Sites
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
While I’ve been busy working on 2 major projects (which will be live soon) I’ve also been been providing updates and enhancements for existing clients. Having not posted any updates for a while I thought I’d do a round up of recent activity:
- Shore Croft – integration with Super Control booking and payment system
- Great Base – new apartments and integration with Super Control
- Dunbars Close – bespoke online booking and payment system
- Rultand Bio – conversion to Wordpress for content management
- Ski Paddle Norway – numerous updates and enhancements
- Gintime – monthly updates for the queen of all gin sites
Plus there are also a couple of new sites to announce:
- Skinny Tyres – Wordpress site with a bespoke theme (and photography)
- Alba Outdoors – Wordpress site using a downloaded theme
Digital Production at Napier University
Saturday, March 28th, 2009
Last Thursday I was invited to Edinburgh Napier University to talk to the students on the undergraduate Interactive Media Design course about ‘digital production’. It was a select group of students (5) who turned up to enjoy my take on producing websites.
In preparing for the talk I summarised the main elements to consider when starting a site, I’ll be using these to work up a new version of the project survey I send to clients when they first approach me with a request for a site:
Scope
- Objectives
- Requirements
- Audience
- Resources
- Benchmarks
Planning
- Architecture
- User Journey
- Wireframe
- Creative
- Technology
Production
- Template
- Web Standards
- Technical Development
- Content Creation & Input
- Search Engine Optimisation
Each of these areas deserve careful consideration to ensure the appropriate choices are made against the resources available.
GPS tracking with Spot
Sunday, February 15th, 2009
Since January I’ve been updating James Baxter’s progress as he skis the length of Norway by way of his Spot Device, described as ‘The World’s First Satellite Messenger’.
It’s about the same size as a regular GPS but it has no display, rather a couple of buttons “I’m OK” or “Help”. Hitting either of these triggers message to be sent to selected recipients with his exact location co-ordinates. This is today’s OK message:
This is James Baxter's SPOT Device. I am OK.
ESN:0-7393248
Latitude:61.9987
Longitude:9.8043
Nearest Location:not known
Distance:not known
Time:02/14/2009 12:51:34 (GMT)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=61.9987,9.8043&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1
When a message comes in (via email and text message) I simply click a link and the co-ordinates are added to the Google Map used on the Ski Paddle Norway route map page.
The Spot service also integrates with Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, allowing the information to be ‘brokered’ to other services, including Wordpress, where a widget displays his exact location in the side bar.
I’ve been very impressed with the device and service, astonishing to think that personal tracking using the GPS network of satellites is available for around $200. Might even get one myself, I just hope I never get a “Help” message from James!
htaccess 301 redirect
Friday, February 13th, 2009
Having updated the site and changed the structure slightly some pages which used to get good traffic have moved i.e. Free Wifi In Edinburgh. To ensure these pages maintain their search ranking and inbound links continue to work I’ve added ‘301 redirects’ to the .htaccess file with help from this very handy 301 redirect tutorial. This means anyone visiting the old page will be seamlessly redirected to the new page.
