Pixelwave Website Design Weblog
Latest News from Pixelwave

Pixelwave Web Design is pleased to have recently started work on the design and construction of a website for a local card company Cymric Cards. In fact, Cymric Cards is located just a few houses away from here which means that face-to-face meetings are easy which is always nice.

The website itself will be a fairly simple affair to describe the products and services offered by Cymric Cards and allow the download of catalogues and order forms. From a technical point of view it should be a fairly straight-forward website build, with the added twist of seasonal changes. Again, these seasonal changes should be fairly easy to implement. A number of simple CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), one for each season will be used and some PHP (Hypertext PreProcessing) will determine the season we are in and the stylesheet to use. This should allow the overall look and feel of the site to change automatically with the season. A nice approach to keeping the website interesting and relevant to the time of year. I think I will even suggest a few seasonal content changes to go with the aesthetic changes.

I’m pleased to announce the release of a new promotional brochure style website for Aberleri Seaside Cottages. These luxury cottages in the coast village of Borth offer traditional Welsh farmhouse charm with the comfort and luxury of modern living. They are located just a few minutes walk away from Borth, one of the sandiest award winning beaches on Cardigan Bay.

As these cottages are just a few minutes walk away from the Pixelwave Web Design office I’ve felt connected to this project from the outset. I even managed to sneak the odd photo of myself on the beach into the design! It also meant I have been able to meet with the cottage owners several times and have got to know them. As well as designing and producing their new website for them I have also been helping them with other IT related issues.

I hope their new site brings them plenty of new business and wish them all the best.

Pixelwave Web Design has just completed a rebuild of the website for a Shropshire based lawyer-mediator. Pixelwave Web Design has been managing this website for a few years now and Marc has recently restructured and re-organised the way he works, which meant his entire site had to be restructured too. The overall design and layout has remained unchanged, but all of the content and the information architecture has been changed to better describes the services he currently offers.

I wish Marc all the best for his new direction and hope to continue working on his website for years to come.

Regular readers of the news section here at Pixelwave Web Design could be forgiven for thinking I’ve been taking it easy and doing little work lately. That would be nice (although not for too long), but it is far from the truth. In fact, I seem to have been adopting various websites for people lately and in most cases this has simply involved arranging hosting for them, transferring the sites, setting up e-mails and troubleshooting. All of which means there has actually been very little to show here in the news section.

Many of these sites were built years ago by others so I’m not going to add them to my portfolio. Not only did I not build them, but they were built using what is now out of date coding, are not standards compliant and certainly couldn’t be considered accessible. Of course, now that Pixelwave Web Design has taken over the maintenance of these websites, any updates or additions that are required will be written using modern standards and practices and hopefully in time the entire sites (none of which are huge) will be rebuilt too.

I have of course also been working on some new websites a few of which are almost ready for release and as always there have been plenty of minor updates and help and support to keep me busy. Don’t worry, although there has been little of note for the news section, I’m not spending my time relaxing on the beach here in Wales.

It is always good to have a short break and get away from work for a few days, and I’ve not been back long from a 5 day break in the Isle of Man. However as a freelance website designer catching up after such a break always takes a day or two so I’ve been busy wading through a mountain of e-mails and catching up but I think I’m just about on top of things again… Now I could do with another holiday!

A number of my personal sites (Forces-of-Nature, A Simple Life of Luxury and Aber-Cachers) have been updated to keep up with recent opensource developments and updates. There have as always been some updates made to FairiesWorld and a few small additions have been made to Mannerbourne and Beacons Active.

I been tying up a few loose ends on the Slick Active Wear website which will hopefully launch later this week and various other projects that I am in the middle of are still in the pipeline (Intemerate Developments, Aberleri Cottages, Pigs on Weed, Glide Homes and Timberlane Books). I’ve also been frantically replying to emails, writing tenders and quotes and generally catching up on admin.

It is good to have caught up though as I can now concentrate on a few of the ongoing projects and maybe even find some time to work on a few ideas that I have planned for future projects. Despite the hectic catch up period I now feel refreshed and ready to sink my teeth into website design projects once again.

As anyone who reads the latest news articles here at Pixelwave Web Design will know, despite working for clients from all over the world, I always enjoy working for local businesses and organisations here in Wales. I like being able to meet with the people behind the projects face to face, I like serving the local communities and I find it is good for business as word of mouth recommendations tend to work best in the local area.

I’m therefore pleased to be starting work on a brochure style website for a dental practice in Rhayader. The website will help promote the business and provide information and advice to existing patients. Most of the content and much of the design will be based on existing printed promotional material and the site should go live later this year.

One of the most common enquiries I get is to build dating websites for people. Dating websites are big business and with many niche interest dating sites being created many people have big ideas to set up a dating website for their particular niche interests. Pixelwave Web Design already offer several dating website templates through our website template section. These templates are really just the ’skins’ for a dating website, they don’t contain all of the back-end functionality such as the database to store members profiles and all of the scripts allowing them to interact with the site. In effect the templates are just the aesthetic front-end for a dating site.

The real work behind the scenes is carried out by software designed to provide the functionality required from a dating website. Building such a site would be prohibitively expensive for many people, so I have now added the ability to purchase an off the shelf dating website called PG Dating. There are many advantages other than cost for using a tried and tested package such as this and it saves you having to ‘re-invent the wheel’. The really nice thing about this particular package is that the developer will integrate it with any of the dating website templates, to provide a fully functional and aesthetically pleasing site.

Pixelwave Web Design is hoping to start work on the development of a new website for a local engineering company based in Lampeter, Wales.

RJ Little Engineering specialise in the manufacture of catering trailers and have approached Pixelwave Web Design asking me to build a website that will promote their business and more importantly provide additional information for potential customers.

As yet I know very little about the company or the content of the site but the domain names are registered, hosting account set up and we shall be meeting soon to discuss their exact requirements. I invariably enjoy initial meetings with clients, especially when I can do them face to face. Not only does it get me meeting new people rather than staring at computer screens all the time, but it allows me to get excited and motivated about the new project. It also gives me an opportunity to pass on some of my knowledge and to make suggestions for the website that the client may not already have thought about.

I am looking forward to starting work on this project and already have a few ideas that will hopefully excite my client too.

As always it is good to receive feedback from my clients. In fact, at the end of a project I actively request some feedback by asking my clients “was anything I could have done to improve the website design process or the service I provided” for them.

Most of the time the feedback is positive, as with the email I received recently from Ffos-y-Ffin Corporate Leadership Training:

It has been great to work with you too, and we will be more than happy to recommend you to others!
Nothing needs improving as far as I can see. You go out of your way to be accurate and helpful.

It is reassuring to know that my clients are more than happy with the services I provide and the end results of my labours. I am of course always looking to improve my services which is why I ask these questions, just in case any of my clients have any suggestions for improvement.

Pixelwave Design has just started work on the management and development of a London based online estate agents.

The plan for their website is to allow people to register and then advertise their properties for sale or lease for a one-time fixed fee. This fee will provide the advertiser with a detailing listing of their property until it is sold. there will be no commission fees and no time limit on the advert. The one time fee will also include the provision of a ‘For Sale’ sign for display at the property.

The website will be easy to use allowing anyone to search through the properties using various search criteria such as number of bedrooms, location, type of property etc etc. Listing a property will also be easy, payments will be made online through a secure payment gateway and advertisers will be able to add full details of their properties along with photos and location maps.

Site administrators will be able to manage members subscriptions and listings as well as control numerous parameters concerning the properties. They will also be able to control various aspects of the site functionality and settings from within a secure administration panel.

Pixelwave Design has already started work on this project and is looking forward to making progress over the next few weeks. Watch this space for updates.