Web Development
Free Designed Website For Charity
Yes - its that time of the year again where Kiswebs give away a free website to a deserving charity.
Free of charge we will fully design the website, and develop a Content Management System that allows the charity to make changes as and when they wish. We will then train the charity on how to make changes to their new designed website and support them from there on in. Hosting and domain name will also be free - basically everything a charity needs for their new designed website.
Recommend A Charity For a New Designed Website
All we need you to do is recommend a deserving charity and tell us why that charity would benefit from having a new website that they can maintain.
To nominate a deserving charity please go to the Charity page and complete the simple form.
KISS Builder 7 Now Full
Please note that those that have missed out on the initial 10 FREE websites using the new KISS Builder website training program, we have retained your details and will contact you if we decide to allow more DIY websites for FREE. If you are still interested in getting a website for FREE then please continue to contact us via our Contact Us page and we shall get back to you once we have finalised the initail 10 new websites.
Thank you for the exceptional interest you have shown in this newly upgraded product.
Free Website + Free Training Coming Soon
Kiswebs superb small business product KISS Builder and its training will soon be FREE to 10 businesses from the end of August (exact go live date yet to be determined). Previosuly costing £700 for the website solution and the website training we are now giving this away free to 10 small businesses (at the time of this going out 3 places had already been reserved - so only 7 remain).
The only fee each of these businesses will have to pay is the £16 + vat monthly website and email hosting and support fee. There will be no tie in period - so any of these businesses will be able to get a website and if after 1 month or 2 months they decide they no longer want a their website then they simply cancel the standing order when they want to.
Times are challenging for small businesses and we see this a way of helping 10 businesses get a website presence quickly with no upfront costs, hence giving them every opportunity to succeed and attract more business.
If you know of a small business that may be attracted by this limited time and place opportunity then please ask them to contact us via our Contact Us page - leaving details and we shall call them back.
More details will follow on this opportunity.
Alan Neary - Managing Director of Kiswebs
Inserting Video Into Your Blog
How do you insert video into a blog ? It is easy enough to add a link to a video into a blog post on Wordpress but how do you actually embed the video into the page ? I will come back to you soon on this.
below is what happens when you use copy the full video website address and add that intoi the “upload video” functionality within wordpress. The link is from the title you decide to give to the video. But the downside (if this is a downside) is that it opens in a new window instead of getting embedded into the page.
The following is what happens if you chose the “embed” code from youtube into the blog - so definately dont do this. I will come back to you soon with the way of getting the video embedded into your blog page instead of creating a new window opening
<object width=”480″ height=”385″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/UNmgrsOOn9c&hl=en_GB&fs=1&”></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/UNmgrsOOn9c&hl=en_GB&fs=1&” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”480″ height=”385″></embed></object>
Accessibility - Alternative Text
Accessibility in website design is a big issue these days. Kiswebs website designers and developers always aim to design websites that are accessibly for our clients in Glasgow and throughout the UK.
The challenge facing website design and developers in Glasgow though is that technology and opinion often change. One such change in website browsers is the way the newest web browsers handle Alternative text or Alt text as the website design world tend to refer to it.
Alt text in website design is the text that you sometimes see when you hover over a website image. Having said that much depends now on the browser you use to view websites. The standard behaviour of the newest website browsers is for the Alt text NOT to display when you hover over the website image. Firefox and other browsers have not displayed the Alt text for many years but now the latest version of Internet Explorer will not display the Alt text for the website images.
So if you are wondering why your website images now no longer display this text the chances are it is because of the version of website browser you are using.
But why the change?
According to accessibility/HTML rules this text shouldn’t be displayed when rolled over. Essentially the text should only be shown when the image is missing and on text-only browsers or read out when people use text-to-speech software.
There is an alternative though. You can have the text hovering above the image but that requires the use of the title tag but these tags shouldn’t really be the same as they have different purposes.
If you want to find out more about title tags please let the team at Kiswebs know and we will explain more.
Wordpress Blogging Tips
Wordpress is rapidly becoming the industry standard for bloggers on the net and Kiswebs website designers and developers are no diffferent. What we shall be doing through our experiences of using our wordpress blog is highlighting the ways of making the wordpress blog work better for you through various tips and techniques.
Find Out How Search Engines Work
Ok - who wants to find out how search engines work? Getting found through search engines is something most of us want. What we will be doing over the next few months is highlighting areas where you can improve on your website performance as far as search engine optimisation goes. For now though make sure you bookmark this website http://searchenginewatch.com/
On Search Engine Watch you will find much information about website optimisation, how search engines index websites, and generally how to help your website get found.
3 New Websites Launched on same day
Yesterday Kiswebs were proud to announce the launch of 3 new websites for 3 very different businesses / organisations. These website design and development projects where both an education and inspiration to us as we learned much more about a range of issues. From catching a fish and returning it to the water humanely, to more serious and sombre subject matters related to domestic abuse and to the goings on within a local community and how a handful of people can make a big difference.
We shall shed some more light on each of these websites individually over the next few days, but for now please feel free to visit the websites of;
Fastnet Sports http://www.fastnetsports.com/
Glasgow Womens Aid http://www.glasgowwomensaid.org.uk
Stirling Tenants Assembly http://www.stirlingtenantsassembly.co.uk/
Membership
Kiswebs today became a member of the United Kingdom Professional Website Designers Association - UKPWDA. Whilest we have been designing and developing website solutions for over 10 years, making us one of the longest running website development agencies in Glasgow and Scotland, we resisted the temptation to join such organisations. However we now feel the time is right to join UKPWDA. The time is right for people to make the distinction between professional website design companies and those “businesses” that may be good at design but are not necessarily focussed on providing a professional solution that is right for their clients.
The challenge for a business trying to decide who to contact to design or develop their website is a huge one as there are so many designers to chose from. This is down to there not being any barriers to entry into the market place of web design in Glasgow and Scotland and the UK generally. All it takes is someone with some design know how and a computer with some softare and a telephone connection and they can say they are a web design business. This is why the industry has suffered with bad press at times. Too many people have been let down by design companies that are great at design but not great at business. Too many of the “new” web designers in Glasgow are not familiar with how to meet deadlines and how to “encourage” customers to get the information to them as and when they need it.
So we believed that the time was right to have our business representated in an organisation that made reference to our professionalism and quality of design and development work. We belive the United Kingdom Professional Website Designers Association - UKPWDA is the right organisation based on their code of conduct, as it matches with the code of conduct we have followed for over 10 years.
We shall soon add the UKPWDA logo to our website, make refernce toUKPWDA’s code of conduct and as such the benefits of using a web design business that adheres to their ethics and principles.
Current and Recent Developments
It has been a busy end to the year. Websites have been built for Assiso, SaaS Intelligence, Enable Glasgow and a few sites still in the development phase. Some of these sites and more can be seen in our portfolio.
Assiso was primarily a rebuild but with the addition of a 3rd level of links and the removal of some unwanted design elements. The site has also been built to a higher standard with accessibility and usability being the main improvements ( as is with all of our websites). Wordpress was also integrated with the website and the content management system.
SaaS Intelligence was designed as a Web 2.0 style website. The Open ID enhanced login area links in to the SaaS (Software as a Service) services they provide including their Customer Relationship Management System. Wordpress was also integrated with this website.
Enable Glasgow was the winner in our charity competition last year. The site is built using our kCMS content management solution.
Currently we have several sites still in development which we cannot talk about just now but we are excited about one of the sites especially as it is an original concept and has a lot of functionality built into it. Just wait until next month to see what it is!
