Earlier this week I was looking back at some of our earlier blog posts, and thought it was a shame new readers will never come across some of the useful and interesting content we wrote up to three years ago when it was re-launched. I’ve gone through and picked out 10 posts I think highlight the breadth and depth on topics we have written about over the past few years.

A quick guide to selling web hosting to a niche

From 29/04/2010

The web hosting market, whilst still in the growth stage of the product life cycle, is fast approaching the maturity stage. This begs the question can anyone enter the web hosting or reseller hosting market and hope to make money anymore? The answer is in targeting a niche.

5 great open source graphic and web design alternatives

From 22/06/2009

If you are either just starting out as a money-conscious designer, or you’re a veteran coder, you probably already have a good idea about the commercial software available to you. In this post I would like to draw your attention to the Open Source alternatives in the design industry. Open Source software has larges communities of developers and testers, and Open Source software is some of the best written software in the world.

Making your website fully accessible for the visually impaired

From 23/09/2009

You may be thinking “how does a blind or visually impaired person use the internet?”  Well, with screen reading technology, the ability to increase font size and change the text and background colour to create a suitable contrast, along with a dedication to web accessibility, it can make it possible for this section of society to use the internet perfectly well.  So, if websites are displaying certain information purely via a medium like animation or an image, it’s not difficult to understand how this is excluding a significant percentage of users.

10 great examples of websites using WordPress for much more than just a blog

From 10/02/2010

One of the patterns we have seen has been the increasing use of WordPress as much more than just a blog and even beyond just a simple CMS. The sites are great examples of how WordPress can be used imaginatively to create something new and original.

A step by step guide for setting up a kick ass remarketing campaign in Google AdWords

From 21/12/2010

If you have ever felt a banner is following you around the internet, then there is a good chance it probably is! Thanks to Google, re-marketing is now available to any advertiser and it is proving to be hugely successful. The basic premise is very straight forward; a visitor arrives on your website, you drop a cookie, if they leave without buying from you, your advert is shown to them on other websites based on that cookie. For the purposes of this guide I am going to go through the steps of creating a re-marketing campaign for our domain name products.

Setting up and running your own affiliate program

From 28/01/2010

In this post we will look at successfully launching your own affiliate program without having to spend thousands on setting it up. Affiliate programs are not the preserve of large websites and you could have your own affiliate program up and running for under £100! The affiliate networks require £000’s for set up and monthly fee’s however with your own in-house run program you can be up and running with minimal investment.

17 UK web design websites you should be reading

From 23/02/2011

The UK has one of the most vibrant and active web design communities in the world. Despite this it could be argued most of the large blogs, forums, showcases etc. are based in the USA and a lot of the discussion points are coming from there too. Here are 17 fantastic sites all focusing on web design, and all from the UK! [Edit: We are now up to 18]

6 great ways to ruin your website

From 12/03/2010

Here are a handful of sure fire ways to ruin the user experience for your visitors, increase your bounce rates and make sure you get very few returning visitors.

Why your website will be dead in a month

From 16/12/2009

Recent findings published by SEOmoz have shown clear statistical data for what most webmasters already know or have a feeling for, most websites have a lifespan of months. To quote directly from their post “After just a single month, a full 25% of the URLs are what we call “unverifiable”. By that I mean that the content was either duplicate, included session parameters, or for some reason could not be retrieved (verified) again (404s, 500s, etc.). Six months later, 75% of the tens of billions of URLs we’ve seen are “unverifiable” and a year later, only 20% qualifies for “verified” status.” (https://moz.com/blog/looking-back-at-linkscapes-trillion-urls). That means there is a good chance that the majority of you reading this will not be actively running your current website by the end of summer 2010. To avoid this, here are a few traps for you to avoid.

Moving your visitors along the loyalty chain

From 18/12/2009

There are plenty of articles online about why you should work towards turning your customers in to brand advocates and using customer service to achieve this but practical advice you can apply to actually do this is like finding pixie dust. This post will look at the different steps, from prospect to advocate, and what you can do (beyond “excellent customer service”) to move your visitors/ customers along the chain.