Your website can benefit from progressive enhancement

Have you heard of the term ‘progressive enhancement’ in relation to web design? If you haven’t, or lack thorough knowledge of the definition of the term as it relates to web design, then you – and, more crucially, your website – could likely benefit from your educating yourself on this particular web design procedure. Furthermore, Rake Mark can provide web design Stafford services which can greatly assist you in using high quality progressive enhancement as part of your website. This, in turn, can – as this blog post should make clear – greatly enhance the website’s accessibility and, thus, popularity.

A straightforward definition of progressive enhancement

The Internet is commonly accessed through a huge variety of computers and other devices. Such computers and devices vary hugely in their power and speed; hence, many people can struggle to use their computers and devices to load a website as quickly as many other people can do so using their computers and devices. It is for this reason that progressive enhancement has become an increasingly useful web design procedure. Progressive enhancement basically involves developing a website in layers to ensure that the website can be accessed just as easily through a big variety of computers and devices.

How Rake Mark can assist in creating effective progressive enhancement

We offer a great variety of web design Stafford services which can greatly assist you in developing a similarly great variety of layers for your website and, thus, create effective progressive enhancement for your website. It is straightforward to use the Rake Mark website to learn more about this great variety of web design Stafford services – and, of course, if you have any unanswered questions about our web design Stafford services, don’t hesitate to drop us a line using any of the relevant contact details on our website. We eagerly anticipate helping you!

An introduction to skeoumorphic web design packages

‘Skeoumorphic’ – now that’s a word that you probably shouldn’t attempt to utter ten times fast. At least not in public, anyway – you’d just look silly. However, what does ‘skeoumorphic’ – we just love repeating that word – actually mean? Or Perhaps a much worthier question is: What are skeoumorphic web design packages? That’s the question that we are going to answer in this blog post – but you might not be surprised to hear that high quality skeoumorphic web design packages can be courtesy of Rake Mark.

So, what does ‘skeoumorphic’ mean?

To get an idea of what ‘skeoumorphic’ means, first, look at your wardrobe. Do you have clothes with fake decorative pockets? These are skeoumorphic pockets, as they are intended to look like, but not serve the same purpose as, real pockets. Then, think of those flame-shaped light bulbs that, when switched on, look like lit candles. Those, too, are skeoumorphic. So, basically, anything skeoumorphic is something that has been designed to look almost entirely like an object or objects from real life.

What, then, is skeoumorphic web design?

Basically, skeoumorphic web design involves giving a website an element with a strong visual similarity to a real life object. A website with a background that looks like the top of a table, for example, has a skeoumorphic web design. Similarly, a website with links in graphics that look like chocolate buttons has a skeoumorphic web design. We at Rake Mark can provide many businesses with web design packages that can greatly enable them to benefit from skeoumorphic web designs. These web design packages include our 5 page starter package, which is especially ideal for businesses inexperienced with the web, and our CMS package, which enables businesses to stay on top of their website content 24 hours a day without having to pay any update charges.

Upcoming devices that our web design Staffordshire services can take account of

The smartphone and tablet markets are ever-changing beasts, with more and more new devices regularly being launched into these markets and more and more companies regularly making their first forays into these markets. All of this can have many implications for how websites should be designed in order to remain effective, but Rake Mark’s web design Staffordshire services can take account of these implications. Here are just some of the smartphones and tablets that could soon be going on sale.

New Nexus devices

Many Google Nexus devices have proved popular and currently rumoured future Nexus devices include the Nexus 5 smartphone, which is rumoured to succeed the Nexus 4 smartphone and have an expansive 5.2-inch display, and a new generation Nexus 7 tablet, which is rumoured to have a 1,920×1,200 pixel screen compared to the 1,280×800 pixel screen of the currently available Nexus 7 tablet and a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera.

Smaller Windows 8 tablets

There have recently been many indications that smaller Windows 8 tablets will be going on sale before the end of the year. Here at Rake Mark, we should be able to take account of this especially easily with our web design Staffordshire services, as by the time such tablets will arrive, the people responsible for delivering our web design Staffordshire services will be thoroughly familiar with the operating system, which is already running on many desktop and laptop computers and even some tablets.

New Apple smartphones and tablets?

Apple have shown few signs of resting on their laurels as competing companies attempt to trump them in the smartphone and tablet markets. Currently heavily rumoured are the iPhone 5S, iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2; could all three be unveiled by Apple at a press conference held this autumn? We think that many signs heavily suggest so.

Innovating Effectively with Rake Mark Web Design Stafford

When designing websites, attempting to innovate can be a true double-edged sword. Done effectively, innovating could lead your website not only to be easy and enjoyable to use, but also to become a big trendsetter among other websites. All of this, in turn, can help to attract more visitors to your website as word of its great design spreads. Done ineffectively, however, innovating can leave your website’s visitors feeling needlessly frustrated. Here are some tips for how to innovate in the right way when you use web design Stafford services courtesy of Rake Mark.

Avoid just using technology for the sake of it

Though it can be easy to be wowed by a recently-introduced technology, you should resist using it for your website if it fails to add any true functional or aesthetic value to it. Innovation does involve taking risks and exploiting promising opportunities, but not using a new technology just because you can.

Keep things simple

As a general rule of thumb, if your website is so innovative in its design that you have to educate your visitors about how to use the website, you have probably innovated a little too much. The problem with making a website design too complex is that it can deter people from staying with your website to see what of substance it offers.

Avoid a tendency to show off

Some website designers can be tempted to add many bells and whistles to a website simply to show off their web design expertise. But what is the point of this if it sees the website sacrificed in both its functionality and appearance? Consider how your website’s design can convenience your website’s visitors, rather than satisfy your ego as a website designer. You can do this with help from Rake Mark’s web design Stafford services

WordPress CMS websites targeted by hackers

The well-known and well used WordPress CMS System has been the latest victim of the hackers.

According to an article written by W3Techs “Usage statistics and market share of Word Press “ the well-established CMS is used by 17% of website across the globe.

A botnet attacked ‘Tens of Thousands’ of individual computers last week, according to server hosting providers Cloudflare and Hostgator.

This attack is brute force attacking the admin portals within the url (myaddress.com/wp-admin). By using the default username ‘admin’ and guessing (on mass levels) the password.

Chief Executive and co-founder of Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, commented on his blog “One of the concerns of an attack like this is that the attacker is using a relatively weak botnet of home PCs in order to build a much larger botnet of beefy servers in preparation for a future attack. These larger machines can cause much more damage in DDoS attacks because the servers have large network connections and are capable of generating significant amounts of traffic.”

Sarah Brassington MD of Rake Mark Solutions said “Media Hype and fears of future attacks are obviously doing the rounds but please stay calm. We advise that all our clients’ double check that passwords are kept strong and to try and include characters within the password”.

She continues with “if any of our clients have any issues at all, please feel free to contact us. A email will be going out to all our clients using the word press platform later today”

Rake Marks Home Town Stafford

The West Midlands town of Stafford is not generally considered huge, the town’s population numbering a relatively modest 55,700 – according to the 2011 census – and the wider borough estimated in 2011 to have a population of about 130,900. However, the town makes up for its relatively small size with the beauty of its many historical buildings, including the Elizabethan Ancient High House, Stafford Castle and St Chad’s Church. Such buildings can, perhaps surprisingly, hint at the merits of the web design Stafford services provided by Rake Mark.

Beautiful buildings in more ways than one

Of course, though, all of the aforementioned attractions have more than just their beauty to recommend them. The Elizabethan Ancient High House, for example, is a museum with regularly changing exhibitions, while Stafford Castle has a visitor centre with audio-visual displays and hands-on items. St Chad’s Church, meanwhile, hosts “Timewalk”, a computer generated display which relates the journey of history and mystery within the church. Crucially, however, many people would be unlikely to look inside these attractions if it weren’t for their exterior aesthetic appeal. Now, here is where we begin to explain the relevance of all of this for Rake Mark’s web design Stafford services…

Attract more customers for your business with a well-designed website

Your business could offer many amazing things to many people; however, if few people are even tempted to learn about your business to learn about such amazing things, such things could be – at least to some extent – pointless. This begins to explain why your company could benefit hugely from Rake Mark’s web design Stafford services. If your company has a well-designed website courtesy of our web design Stafford services, more people who could benefit from your company are likely to stay with and peruse that website to learn about your company.

Mixed feelings on Google’s Newest Feature – Data after Death

Google will allow users to configure what happens to data stored within their Google associated account after death (or after a period of inactive time on-line)

The feature will apply to email, social network Google Plus and other Google products you may use within your Google account.

For many years concerns have been raised about how much privacy we actually have when surfing the web, how much is stored, what is stored and the impact this has n our privacy.

On the Official Google Blog, Andreas Tuerk (Product Manager) posts that “making plans for what happens after you’re gone is really important for the people you leave behind.”

The new feature can be found under the Google accounts settings page and while Google themselves don’t seem overly “wow’ed” by their choice of name the ‘Inactive Account Manager’ section will allow you to configure your data management options e.g. Delete my data after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity.

The launch of this feature on Thursday April 11 2013 has churned up many feelings as you would expect. This is certainly a topic that many people have an option on. What’s yours?

#MusicalTwitter or just a #rumour

Twitter, our friendly micro-blogging website has caused quite a stir of excitement after buying the music discovery site ‘We Are Hunted’. Twitter are rumoured to be launching a new music service and with #Music displayed on the newly-launched (late Thursday) sub domain music.twitter.com we can see where all the excitement is coming from.

‘We Are Hunted’ announced on http://wearehunted.com/ that yes it is true the “We Are Hunted” Team are joining Twitter and while they are staying quite tight lipped “We wish we could say but we’re not yet ready to talk about it. You’ll hear more from us when we are.” the worlds media is putting 2 and 2 together.

Reports, Rumours and the media Hype (along with a few celebrity tweets) suggests that the plans of this new service will be personalised recommendations on music through its own dedicated app.

An announcement for the new app could be made as soon as the end of the week … but we’ll all just have to wait and see.

Happy Birthday Twitter

Twitter celebrates its seventh birthday today and while some still (yes even now) don’t fully see the benefit of 140 character micro-blogging, twitter is used by 200 million users worldwide and is thought to tweet about 400 million messages every single day.

Back in 2006 it was something that @jack, @ev and @biz had ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’, ‘in their wildest dreams’ thought possible but today it is a reality.

Over the years it has become a platform for business, hobbies, ideas, judgement and jokes. Twitter is used by all walks of life, from the teenager on the beach telling the world how good the ‘surf’ is, to members of parliament giving us a sneak look and what to expect in the budget.

Some may love you and some may hate you …. but either way …. Happy Birthday Twitter!

Concerns over possible libel fines for bloggers under new press regulation

The Government’s recently announced intentions to replace the current voluntary self-regulation of the press through the Press Complaints Commission with a new independent press watchdog for England and Wales has been well received by many. However, the plans have led to concerns that bloggers could face hefty libel fines due to rules to be imposed by the watchdog, which will be backed by legislation.

Political blogger expresses his concerns

Political blogger Iain Dale has declared that he would “certainly” be covered by the regulations of the new watchdog, which would be established by royal charter, adding that the situation “stinks”. After reading the royal charter, he despaired that “If I don’t sign up and I am successfully sued, a judge would award exemplary damages against me,” adding that “This is madness. All that will do is encourage people with a grudge to make a complaint in the full knowledge that they will never be held responsible for what they are doing”.

The Government attempts to refute these concerns

However, the Culture Secretary Maria Miller has insisted that the criteria which determines the liability of a publisher to the new regulations protects “a single blogger”. She has explained that this is because, to be affected by the new regulations, a “publisher would have to meet the three tests of whether the publication is publishing news-related material in the course of a business, whether their material is written by a range of authors … and whether that material is subject to editorial control”.

The history leading up to the formation of the new watchdog

The new press watchdog has been set up following the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into press ethics. The inquiry was held in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal and examined the ethics and practices which allowed journalists to hack thousands of phones. The inquiry ultimately recommended the formation of a new independent press watchdog which would be backed by legislation to ensure that it was doing its job properly. However, many of the implications of the new watchdog could be yet to be widely realised.