Archive for December, 2009

Are you in control of your domain?

I am always amazed at the number of people who fail to keep their domain records safely.  Big companies and small have all been guilty of this.  Many business owners seem to believe that this information is for their IT support or website design agency – well it’s not – it’s a very important piece of data about a valuable asset in your business. It may sound technical but without it you could loose your domain and emails!

When a domain is purchased it is registered with a Registrar (i.e the company who is selling it) and the owner (i.e. you) is noted.  You are usually provided with a username/password for the registrants control panel that allows you to login and make changes (Note – this is not always the same control panel as you may have for your website hosting). 

It’s really important that this information is stored safely by you. 

  1. You might want to change registrants in the future.
  2. Your domain includes a number of records which tell “the internet” who is hosting the website and who is hosting the email (and some other stuff too).  If you ever want to swap hosting suppliers you will need access.
  3. The control panel will include a section for your contact details which must be kept up to date.  If you start to use a new email, for example, it can often be hard to prove that you are the rightful owner.
  4. The domain will need to be renewed every year or two and if you miss the notification emails (see 3 above) and/or cannot login then you could end up losing it altogether.

What if my website design agency have registered the domain on my behalf?  If you have asked your website design agency to register a domain for you they would usually be happy to provide you with access should you require. However this is not always the case. Recently a client was caught out when they realised that the domain that came with their “all in one” web package was never owned by them and ownership remains with the original website designer.  Sometimes it’s just not possible for your website design agency to provide a control panel for the domain, due to the registrants set up. 

If you are in doubt with whom your website is registered and also want to check that you are the rightful owner then please check www.who.is .  If you don’t have your domain details to hand then try and get them in order for 2010!

Website Design | 23.12.2009 21:13 | No Comments

Building a single page website

New website

We don’t often advocate building a single page website.  Larger websites have a number of advantages: not least the amount of information you can display and the fact that more pages are better for Google. However for our client, Brickbuild UK Ltd, neither of these things were important. The company specialises in large building projects from £5million upwards. They wanted a single page site, not to win new customers, but just to provide a quick look up for existing clients.  Almost an online business card.

There are little cost advantages in creating a single page site.  The amount of time taken to create this single page is comparable to that of a 5 page website.  In fact it was quite a challenge to get this page right.  Our first mock up was thrown away as we felt it was a bit fussy.  We’d included a large page banner that went across the screen with a very subtle brick effect.  We were looking for plain and simple -  harder than you might think!  We only had a tiny amount of content and it was therefore important that we provided a strong layout with plenty of whitespace and we gave the fonts a little extra tlc.

We are pleased with the final result.  Our task for this client is to rework the logo – watch this space!

Website Examples | 23.12.2009 12:20 | No Comments