Pixelwave Website Design Weblog
Latest News from Pixelwave

Pixelwave Web Design has just secured a contract to build a website for Focus on Forestry First, a training and evaluation centre for forestry workers in Wales.

The FoFF (Focus on Forestry First)  project is a Welsh Assembly Government/EU funded three year project solely for the ‘trees and timber sector’ within Wales, concentrating on forestry businesses first.

Through the project businesses can:

• have training plans drawn up free of charge
• access up to 100% funding for training courses
• maintain and access training records through the secure project database

The first stage of the web aspect of the project is an information site providing project and course details along with news and updates on the project. This will soon be expanded to provide online access to individual training programmes and employee records.

I’ve already been to visit the project offices in Mid Wales to get a feel for the project itself and meet the people behind it. This is invaluable information when it comes to building such a website. It not only lets me get under the skin of the business but also helps develop a good, personal working relationship with the staff there. I know their requirements and how best to work with them and I’m looking forward to getting to work on the project. They seemed to appreciate the time I took to visit them and explain things too:

“Many thanks for coming over and getting the website moving; it is a breath of fresh air to find someone who can deal with this & explain things in such a clear & understandable way!”

The holding page is ready to go so now I can get down to the nitty gritty of coding the real thing.

Focus on Forestry First Holding Page

Pixelwave Web Design is pleased to have started work on a new website for the Internatonal Demining Centre (IDC).

The job came to me by way of a recommendation from a client. I’ve built a couple of websites for this particular client in the past, including his company website Qualissol. Qualissol have ties with IDC as they work in similar fields and the director of Qualissol recommended my services to them. Word of mouth recommendations are by far the best form of advertising for a freelance website designer and the way in which much of my work comes to me.

The new website for IDC is a simple brochure style site and they have even sent me a pdf of what they want it to look like. Hopedully it won’t be too long before the site is up and ready to go live.

Things are going well here at Pixelwave Web Design. The ‘downturn’ in the economy does seem to have had a small effect in the number of new projects I have had to work on, but that seems to be picking up again now and I’m quite busy once again. I have a couple of new projects that I’m working on at the moment, and a few others in the pipeline that will hopefully start soon.

I haven’t been sitting around waiting for work to come my way though – although some time off would have been nice! Instead I’ve been kept busy with maintenance and site updates for existing customers. A quick read through this website will show you that I’m proud of my work and always strive to keep my clients as happy as possible. This means that I usually get small update requests that come in from them done within 24 hours. Obviously if the work is going to take longer then I’ll let them know, but I love getting e-mails about an update and turning it around within an hour just to surprise my clients.

Quite a few of my clients have been requesting updates recently so they’ve been keeping me busy. I’ve also been doing more and more computer help for clients and have been doing quite a bit of freelance website editing and maintenance for a web-based project at Aberystwyth University. The variety is great and it works well as a freelancer as I can keep myself busy but have plenty of different projects each with different challenges to work on.

In addition to the ongoing website updates, maintenance and and support, I’ve built a website for my own ‘Computer Tuition‘ Services, and I’m currently working on two websites for new clients, but will post about those separately.

Following my recent post here about Computer Support in Aberystwyth and Machynlleth and the fact that I quite enjoy doing it, Anna (my wife) said that she is always helping friends and family in the same way too and that we should offer it as a service.

Helping people with their computer problems is always nice, but it is even better if we can educate them at the same time so that they will be able to solve such things themselves in the future. Hopefully we can help people and make their computing experiences more fulfilling. We have set up ‘Computer Tutor Wales‘, offering computer tuition and support in the Aberystwyth and Machynlleth areas.

The idea isn’t to offer hardware support and maintenance but to help you, the computer user, to get the most from your technology. Whether it be the initial decisions over what tech to buy and how to set it up, or how to use certain aspects of it we can help. Give us a call, let us pass on some of our knowledge and before you know it you’ll be astounding your friends and family with your own computer wizardry!

Computer Tuition in Aberystwyth and Machynlleth

Click here for more information on Computer Tuition in Aberystwyth and Machynlleth

As a web developer my clients often turn to me for any computer or ‘tech’ related support. If they are having problems with their computer, can’t get their printer working or their e-mails aren’t being sent they turn to me. More often than not the fix is an easy one and I can diagnose the problem on the phone and provide them with a few simple steps to fix the problem.

Sometimes it isn’t that easy and I make a trip to their house or office to fix the problem on site. Obviously I charge for this and as it seems to be a growing portion of the work I do I’m now offering it as a service alongside my normal website design and development services. It is something I quite enjoy doing as it gets me out and about and meeting people rather than just sat in fron of my computer.

My clients always seem impressed too saying that I’m efficient, helpful and that they feel completely happy trusting me with their precious hardware and data. Best of all are the happy smiles of relief when I get to the bottom of their problems and solve the issues for them. I also enjoy the educational aspect of it too as it gives me a chance to pass on some of my knowledge to my clients, allowing them to get more from their computers and continue to use them is a safe and secure way.

So, if you are in Aberystwyth or Machynlleth area and need help setting up your computer, using certain aspects of it or just need some hand-holding when it comes to matters of ‘tech’, please contact Pixelwave Web Design. I pride myself on my friendly, helpful nature, so let me know what you’re struggling with and I’ll be happy to help.

Pixelwave Web Design is pleased to announce the release of a brand new website for Celtic Spirit Journeys.

Run my Mara Freeman, Celtic Spirit Journeys offers spiritual journeys to sacred celtic sites thoughout the UK. Their original website had become a little dated and due to changes by various people throughout the years had stopped working properly on many browsers. The coding behind it didn’t conform to modern standards and editing the site was becoming difficult.

Mara approached Pixelwave Design asking if I could rebuild the site from scratch to improve these issues, whilst maintaining the overall look and feel of the site. That is exactly what I did and the new website went live yesterday.

Mara seems very pleased with it:

The site looks wonderful!!!!! Thank you very much

As does her partner David:

We are VERY pleased with your work: the site has a really good feel to it now. Mara’s has quite a bit of trouble finding someone who was technically competent AND could follow her specifications and work with her on the design – well done!!

I hope you like their new website too.

Pixelwave Web Design is just about to start work on a project for a new client based in West Wales.

The business offers specialist “journeys of a lifetime discovering the beauty and mystery of ancient sacred sites of the Celtic lands!”.

They already have a website but it has been updated and edited by themselves over the past few years and lots of errors have crept into it. The markup and coding behind the website is also very old-fashioned, not well optimised for search engines and not very accessible. The site itself also has some inconsistencies from page to page and is having display issues on some modern browsers.

Pixelwave Web Design is going to rebuild the site from scratch using modern markup so that it conforms to modern standards and accessibility recommendations. Most of the content and the overall feel of the site will be maintained but the new site should be easier to use, consistent from page to page and easier to update.

I’ll post the results here once it is ready.

Pixelwave Web Design is pleased to announce the release of a brand new website for Vertigo Clinic Wales.

Vertigo Clinic Wales is a comprehensive multi-specialty medical service in mid Wales. It offers dizziness clinics, ear nose and throat emergencies, sports and exercise medicine and rehabilitation and medical legal reporting.
Designed and built by Pixelwave Web Design the website introduces the clinic and the services it offers. It also provides lots of background information on dizziness and sports related injuries.

Pixelwave Web Design was involved in the website planning and implementation from the start. I offered consultation on the information architecture and copy-writing for the website and worked in close collaboration with Vertigo Clinic Wales during the planning stages. The website is an easy to use, accessible, search engine friendly brochure style website. Although there is no complex functionality, it was still important to get the balance between information and promotion right so as to build a website that was useful to its visitors.

I’m pleased with results, as is Vertigo Clinic Wales.

Website Design for Vertigo Clinic Wales

It may be a while off yet, but now is the time to start thinking about getting your website ready for Christmas. For those of you who want to get really festive then a Chistmas Website Template may be just what you need. We have lots to offer and can customise your existing website for the Xmas period.

Adding some Christmas cheer to your website not only puts people in a festive mood, but it shows that you care about your website and therefore care about your customers.

If going completely ‘Christmassy’ with your website is a little too much for you, then maybe just putting up the odd stocking will do. In which case a Christmas Iconset may be just the ticket.

As a freelance website designer I much prefer it if I can meet my clients face-to-face, which can mean quite a bit of travelling. Today I’m driving south to meet a potential client, hopefully the meeting will go well and I’ll soon be working on a new project, but if for some reason we aren’t a ‘good fit’ then it will have been a wasted journey. There isn’t much I can do about this; living miles from anywhere means there aren’t many clients locally so I have to travel – or force them to travel – in order to meet face-to-face.

It isn’t completely necessary to meet face-to-face and I have worked on projects, even large projects, for people I have never met, but if at all possible I like to meet my clients in person.

There are a number of reasons for this. First, a face-to-face meeting is so much more productive than numerous e-mails being sent back and forth. A meeting, even a short one allows me to cover so much more and get a real feeling for the project and the people involved. I really enjoy building websites that my clients love, and getting to know my clients and the intended audience of their website is the first step to achieving this. They can tell me what their requirements and what they want their website to achieve and I can offer various solutions and show them examples. Often my face-to- face conversations with clients go off on tangents and we end up talking about other things of interest outside of work and the web, but it is these insights into the people that really make the difference and allows me to offer a personal service.

Just as important though is the fact that it gives my clients chance to get to know me. Hopefully they find someone that they can easily communicate with and want to have working on their website. I aim to offer a professional service and pride my self on my friendly, helpful nature. However, I may not be for everyone. I’m a freelancer working on my own, not a big expensive agency, so there are times that I can’t offer the services some larger corporate businesses may want. It is much easier to judge these things for both me and my clients at a face-to-face meeting.

Meeting and developing a relationship with my clients is important for me and for them. It makes the whole process of building and maintaining a website so much more enjoyable.

Meeting face-to-face also gives me a chance to have a chat over a coffee and make friends. When you live in the middle of nowhere this is always something to look forward to, although it isn’t always a good thing as it is difficult to charge full-price to friends!