Edward Lloyd Trust

(This was posted 8 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, 2 hours, 59 minutes's ago.)

The Edward Lloyd Trust are a charity based in Newcastle that supports people with learning disabilities.

Since 1988 they have been committed to providing lifelong care for people with learning disabilities through individual support and independent supported living houses throughout the North East of England.

Thinking Virtually was asked to create a website that would present the Trust as they are, professional, caring and supportive. We worked with Baseline Creative to develop the overall design and then refined the design so that it best fit the needs of the trust.

The site is built on ExpressionEngine and benefits from a simple zoom feature as well as full short-key support.

The site was built to be WCAG/DDA/W3C compliant as well as easy to use by the team.

We build a great number of websites but I have to be honest and say that this is one of my personal favorites. The team at Edward Lloyd Trust are really nice and the support and services they provide are great.

Take a look at their website and see if there is any way you too can get involved.

A Great Weekend

(This was posted 8 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, 5 hours, 59 minutes's ago.)

In spite of the ridiculous cold weather the weekend was great fun.

Sunday dinner at the mother in laws saw an all out Nerf battle between the forces of good and evil (me and my son Jamie and my brother in law and his girlfriend).

Saturday was a little calmer, helping Jamie to beat me at chess (not going to live that down for a time...).

And knowing that I am just about ready for Christmas.

This week is going to be interesting as we are about to rebuild a long standing clients website using our CMS (ExpressionEngine) as well as play with another clients site. We have a business networking website to build and a storage solutions website to build – so going to be busy, busy, busy!

Thinking Virtually on the iPhone

(This was posted 8 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours, 53 minutes's ago.)

Just because we had some time and I’m a geek we have developed a limited version of our site that is optimised for the iPhone. 

Thinking Virtually iPhone means that you will soon be able to see our lovely site on your iPhone without having to zoom in and out! 

Is it a gimic.... yes. Was it universally accepted/wanted in the office.... no. Most importantly though is what does your website look like to mobile browsers?

Automatic Twitter and Facebook Updates

(This was posted 8 months, 4 weeks, 3 hours, 36 minutes's ago.)

Automatic Twitter and Facebook updates are here!

We have been working on a way of getting our blog to update the entries on the social networking sites that we are members of without having to do x, y, z and a combination of other things.

Well thanks to a combination of a new module for ExpressionEngine, Ping.fm and our bloody minded approach to development we are there!

This is a technical thing so I won’t bore you with it but the long and short is that we can now send anything entered into our preferred CMS to an email recipient or a social networking site.

If you can’t do this or if you have to go through x, y, z, and so on give us a call so we can show you a simpler approach.

Google Sidewiki - good or baaaaaab?

(This was posted 8 months, 4 weeks, 1 day, 18 hours, 30 minutes's ago.)

Clearly I’m not one to moan about the wonderful Google but I have to say that I find the latest Google gadget to be a little annoying...

Google Sidewiki...

In Googles words ‘Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page’.

I think that in reality is another way of adding a popup to my screen when I load a new website or page.

I have to think about the idea that this will at some point be used for advertising, something along the lines of associated website adds being shown based on comments or content!

Then there is people abusing the system, what if I was to go onto my #1 competitors site and comment that they are not worth a light – will that comment be shown when browsers to their site visit? Now I’m not a nasty man but what if my competitors are? Could they leave messages for my visitors to see? 

At the heart of it I think the idea is a good one, my problem is thinking about how it is going to be abused by Google and other web users.