Web Development Articles from York web designers Semlyen IT

Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall

Shandy Hall in Coxwold, North Yorkshire, was the home of 18th Century vicar, novelist and celebrity Laurence Sterne. It is now a public museum, housing a collection of his work. It also incorporates a gift shop, garden, and the beginnings of Asterisk*, which, when fully-fledged, will be a workshop space for artists, writers and technologists.

The website developed by Semlyen IT for the Laurence Sterne Trust features an online shopping cart enabling site visitors to purchase items from the Shandy Hall shop. As well as physical items, they can also buy Shandy Hall membership packages from the website. The site also features alongside the shopping cart, a bespoke events and exhibitions management system.

This site was designed by Bivouac.

EMDR Extra

This is a brochure site for EMDR Extra, an organisation offering training workshops to mental health practitioners working with psychological trauma. EMDR is a technique used to treat conditions resulting from trauma, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The site features an online application and booking form, which includes payment processing by PayPal.

This site was designed by Jamie at Semlyen IT.

McCartney Lettings

York letting agents McCartney Lettings commissioned this new property management site, which integrates a bespoke property details administration system. McCartney Lettings are a new agent and their new website will help attract the attention of more landlords.

Designed by Andy at Semlyen IT.

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Anyone installing a WordPress blog should take note of these plugins. Some of them are essential, some of them are just handy. They have all been tested and found to be compatible with the new release WordPress 3.0. We will be constantly adding plugins and even removing them as they become superseded.

Akismet
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/
This one comes with WordPress ‘out of the box’, but it is well worth activating as it is basically an anti spam tool. It simply requires that you enter an API key, available by registering on the WordPress site or the Akismet site. The API keys are reusable across domains so you need only do it once for all your blogs.

All in one SEO pack
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
Pretty essential for any blog really, this adds meta description and meta keyword tags to your template (which seem to be missing from some themes) as well as canonical URLs. Title, Description and Keywords tags are automatically written, based on the plugin’s settings. All these can be overwritten individually for each post and there are a number of other useful settings, such as excluding pages and adding noindex for archives.

Google Analytics for WordPress
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/
You may choose just to add your Analytics code to the footer in your template, but using this plugin gives you more control over what data is tracked – for example you can exclude admin visits. It also supports AdSense tracking and Urchin.

No 404 Errors
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/no-404-errors/
There is a bug that affects some shared hosting, whereby rather than displaying 404 Errors, raw html is sent to the browser. This clever plugin changes 404 errors to 301 errors and redirects to a custom WordPress page.

TinyMCE Advanced
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinymce-advanced/
This adds buttons to WordPress’s limited TinyMCE setup and also allows you to control what buttons are used with a drag-and-drop interface. It also has the option to import styles from the stylesheet and to stop WordPress’s annoying habit of stripping out <p> and <br> tags, making it easier for users to add spacing in a post.

Breadcrumb Trail
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/breadcrumb-trail/
Some designs require a ‘breadcrumb’ navigation, showing you the route you took from the homepage to the current page. They can be very useful, since it’s easy to get lost when navigating a complex blog. WordPress doesn’t supply this feature out of the box, but this plugin gives you a breadcrumb trail function that you can add anywhere in your theme. It’s simple to customize via the plugins files.

Add Lightbox
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-lightbox/
This automatically adds rel=”lightbox” to all images linked to in your posts and pages, grouped by post ID. You have to add the javascript files manually. The code can easily be modified in order to use your preferred image pop up script, for example, colorbox.

WP-Syntax
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-syntax/
Great for posts of a technical nature, this allows you to highlight code by wrapping it in ‘pre’ tags and specifying a language from the GeSHi library, for example, XML, PHP, CSS.

NextGEN Gallery
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/
Wordpress already has a pretty useful gallery function, whereby each post or page can have a number of pictures associated and displayed in a simple Gallery layout. NextGEN gallery allows you to insert any Gallery, or a selection of Galleries (an Album) into any post or page. It also comes with a number of Javascript slide shows already set up (some of which require  you to install the javascript files manually) and the ability to add watermarks, arrange your pictures and albums, create RSS Feeds, add photos to the sidebar etc. For any blog where images are an essential part of their content, you should be using this. It is a little daunting when you first try to use it but you’ll soon get the hang of it.

WP-Print
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-print/
Adds a button to the bottom of every post and/or page that generates a printable version of your content. You can choose whether to display comments, images and links or not.

Social Bookmarking
There are many social bookmarking plugins and it is an essential feature for blogs and indeed any website these days. There are the well known buttons such as AddThis and ShareThis that you will see all around the web, as well as the specific WordPress plugins. These add a clickable list of social networking icons to the bottom of each post. The ones we tend to use are Social Bookmarks, which you can see on this site, and Sociable, which I feel is the better choice as there are more sites to choose from and the icons are a little nicer, plus the user can manually disable it for individual posts. Another one which I rather like is Sexy Bookmarks, although this isn’t for all sites. At the end of the day there are many to choose from and its up to you to find one you like.

Lock Pages
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lock-pages/
Thanks to Mark for finding this one, “Lock Pages prevents specified pages (or all pages) from having their slug or parent edited, or from being deleted, by non-administrators.” Really handy when using WordPress as a CMS, as we all know what could happen if top level pages start being removed and renamed.

Excerpt and Content Word Limit
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/content-and-excerpt-word-limit/
You can’t always rely on a client making use of either the ‘excerpt’ or the ‘more tag’ and as useful as the excerpt is, it relys on it being set up in the theme. I had played around with word limit plugins before but been unsatisfied, mostly due to the limits of the options. This plugin is great, you can use it anywhere you like, by swapping the usual ‘the_content()’ to ‘content(25)’ in your theme, where 25 is the number of words to limit the post by, this is handy because you can have different word limits in different places and can also limit the excerpt. The only downside of this plugin is that the word limit, is itself limited by 27, i.e. it wont go any higher than that.

Maintenance Mode
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/maintenance-mode/
“Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end.” Says it all really, very useful as without messing with the .htaccess file you can’t just add an index.html page to appear before the .php, and even then i’m not sure that will work. You can of course edit the standard template that comes with the plugin, it is also easy to switch on and off and includes other settings I haven’t needed to play with.

WP-Paginate
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-paginate/
Pagination is a great way to navigate lots of pages of a ‘list’ kind of style, i.e. blog posts. WordPress page navigation out of the box is, in my opinion, a bit naff, simply going from previous to next page. This is easy to install and easy to style. Use this and the breadcrumb nav and you’re sorted.

Thats it for now
Although I will leave you with this: Although most of these plugins have settings to customize the look and functionality they can still be quite restricted. However remember that CSS can do some pretty clever things and in many cases the plugin’s code itself is quite straightforward, so it’s worth having a little play around to get things just as you like.

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Much of our work is in the development of multiple-paged, often complex, dynamic websites, but there are occasions when this kind of site isn’t needed. Some small businesses, such as an aerial installer in York whose site we made recently, simply require an online presence so that their customers can find them on the web. If your business doesn’t need to sell products online, take online bookings or offer a range of different services, your website can be a simple, one-page static site and still be an effective tool in attracting new customers.

In building websites which are, in effect, an online business card or flyer, we can apply some of the same design criteria as we would to an equivalent paper document – prominent contact details and a brief description of what’s on offer so that site visitors get an instant overview.

But simply making an online flyer isn’t the end of it – there are other considerations when marketing on the web, and probably the most important is SEO. If a website isn’t properly optimised for search engine visibility, it almost certainly won’t be bringing in many new customers – and in some cases, may as well not exist at all.

Fortunately, optimising a website for search engines has many parallels with providing information to site visitors. As well as contact details and a quick overview, providing a more detailed description of the services a business offers is beneficial to both human readers and search engines. The more the readers know about what a business does and how it operates, the more likely they are to pick up the phone and get in touch. The more written content on a website, particularly with relevant key phrases, the more valuable it will appear to Google.

A very useful tool for one page sites is a Google map. Google makes it possible to create a marker for any location, and embed the map in a website. The embedded map is more than simply an image of a map – it is interactive, and allows the user to zoom in and out, as well as use navigation controls to display different areas. York car valeting company KleenKar have this tool put to good use on their site:

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York Food and Drink Festival has been an important event in York’s gourmet calendar for years, and is rapidly extending its scope from York to the whole of Yorkshire. We have created a shopping cart system for them.

We have previously used Mal’s cart with several other clients, which is a great solution for small e-commerce websites. In this case, though, we needed some more advanced features. Therefore we have built an entirely bespoke system with the following features that are missing from third party carts like Mal’s.

Customer management Customers can create an account, subscribe to one or more mailing lists and get their purchases associated with their accounts. They may view their order history and print confirmations after logging in, simply by typing in their email address and password.

The customer management system was crucial for York Food Festival as they wished to provide discounted tickets to the supporters, ‘friends’ of the Festival, and at the same time they wanted to enable their customers to become a ‘friend’ by buying a special ticket.

Stock management As with all booking systems we had to make sure that if a customer puts a ticket in their virtual shopping basket they will actually be able to buy it on check out without having to fear that someone might have been quicker. This feature is essential for tickets, however, you might want to take control of your stock even if you are not selling tickets.

As a customer adds an item to their basket the system puts it in ‘hold’ for 30 minutes. For that time no one else can buy it. So effectively the customer has half an hour to complete the payment.

We have also made the system able to handle event limits to make sure we don’t oversell tickets. This can certainly be useful with other kinds of products as well, where you may have a limited amount in stock – as you do in most cases. We have also added the facility to set up a cut-off limit. Over that limit tickets are not available online; they can only be purchased through the Ticket Line.

User experience A rock solid back-end is inevitable for building a reliable shopping cart, however, we have also put a great amount of work in user experience. A fully customized shopping cart can easily win customers’ confidence. Your customers are not transferred to third party carts, they will stay on your website while they are shopping.

Our system allows customers to put the desired item straight into the cart after clicking on ‘Add to basket’ without even having to load a new page. This technology is called AJAX. Your customer can continue shopping without having to click to an “add to cart page”, but can still view their cart at any time with a single click.

Someone who is using an older browser needn’t worry either: it will work in older browsers as well. Technically speaking: it degrades gracefully.

Administration area We have developed an administration system which allows manually entry of orders by the client. This means orders by customers who don’t have an internet connection or prefer to order via telephone, can still be inserted into the system and managed in the same way. The administrator takes orders and payments through telephone and enters the details in the administration system. Their purchases will appear alongside all other orders in one single system.

Further features of the system include the ability to add new, or search existing clients and view their order histories. Administrators are also able to resend email confirmations in case the customer has accidently deleted theirs.

Finally, the best way to measure the success of this website is by its sales, and we are proud that after just a few days from the launch, the website is producing a high volume of sales.

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York estate agents Smiles Property have extended their business to include holiday properties. Their new holiday and short term lets section will provide a range of high quality York holiday apartments and cottages for visitors to the city, and caters both for leisure and for those who are visiting on business and require a short term serviced let. The Smiles site is designed and maintained by Loyalty Matters, but is receiving additional SEO treatment from Semlyen IT.

Also in the property area,  York student accommodation specialists Levi Dale Lettings have a new website profiling their  portfolio of managed student and non-student properties in the York, Selby, Goole, Malton and Whitby areas, which is currently undergoing a thorough SEO treatment.

In yet another area of the property market, high-end York letting agents City Lets have recently commissioned some social media integration in the form of Facebook and Twitter feeds. These will not only include company news and updates, but will also feature an automated property details feed. New properties posted on the City Lets website will be automatically posted in the City Lets Twitter and Facebook streams.

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