We have added a new dedicated server case study about FoodBev.com who use a Heart Internet Quad Core Dedicated Server and a Reseller Pro package.
You can read about why FoodBev chose Heart Internet and how they use their dedicated server in the case study (along with a PDF to print) here:http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/dedicated-servers/case-studies.html
We have been busy updating some of the scripts in eXtend, the latest updates are:
phpcpoin V1.5.1 upgraded to 1.6.2
RoundCube V0.2.1 upgraded to 0.2.2
SquirrelMail V1.4.17 upgraded to 1.4.19
Sugarcrm V5.2.0a upgraded to 5.2.0f
Wordpress V2.7.1 upgraded to 2.8
Elgg V1.2 upgraded to 1.5
This means that all the scripts in eXtend are on the latest version with the exception of CubeCart which we are working on at the moment.
We are pleased to announce that the Beta version of our brand new reseller API is now available for you to test.
The API allows deeper integration with our systems for resellers who have the necessary programming knowledge. Most of the frequently-used reseller functionality has been included (see the list below), allowing you to set up hosting packages, register domain names, perform administration tasks such as deactivations or changing a package’s limits and more via a programming interface. For example, you could use the API to integrate with a bespoke shopping cart system, or if you have an in-house administration system, you could use the API to give multiple users access to the functionality we offer.
To become a Beta tester we are going to ask that you have been a Reseller for more than a year so that you understand our systems properly. If you fall in to this category you will find a signup button has been added to the new API page in your control panel. The link is at the end of this post.
If you discover any bugs or you have any suggestions you can send us your feedback via the dedicated reseller API bug report form, again see the link below.
The following actions are supported via the API. Please note, whilst in Beta mode the delete function has been removed to provide a safe guard against any data being deleted which would be unrecoverable:
The API can be operated in test mode and we recommend you do this until you are happy with the way your system interacts with it.
We have carried out extensive in-house testing so we expect to be able to launch the API for general use in the next few weeks. To get started visit the API page in the Reseller Control Centre: https://customer.heartinternet.co.uk/manage/api
There is a lot of discussion amongst the web design and development community about the future of Internet Explorer in general (an area we covered in the post ‘Sticking up for Internet Explorer’) and more specifically whether to continue designing with IE6 users in mind, with campaigns being set up to move people away from IE6 and magazine articles calling for designers to boycott IE6. The browser wars are also hotting up with Microsoft launching IE8, Apple launching Safari 4.0 and Mozilla launching FireFox 3.5 in 2009. In light of all this we thought we would take a more detailed look at which browsers our site’s visitors have been using since the turn of the year and the results are very interesting…
In January Internet Explorer was the most used browser with a 50.41% share of visits and Firefox was second coming in with 10% less traffic at 40.63% of the share. However, every month so far this year we have seen a steady decline in Internet Explorer users and an increase for FireFox, Safari and Chrome. IE nearly lost the number 1 spot in |March, hanging on by 0.4%, but was finally dislodged by FF in April and has not looked like reclaiming this position since.
It is ironic that IE’s decline started at around the same time as IE8 was taken out of Beta and made available for general download and it slipped in to 2nd place the same month the final version was released. If we look at the browser version being used in more detail we can see IE6 usage is on the decline although nowhere near at the rate of IE7 suggesting the majority of IE8 users are upgrading from IE7 rather than IE6 (IE6 users really do like their browser! A note to the person who used IE 4.0 in May, please upgrade to something else, anything!)
From the data in the first graph we can see that IE7 and IE6 users are jumping ship and moving over to one of the alternatives rather than simply upgrading.
To be fair, our site’s visitors and users are inherently more technically minded than the average internet user and more involved in the development of the internet as an entity in itself and I would argue that FireFox is more likely to be used by this group. However, although the global statistics for web browser usage still show Internet Explorer is the most used browser the decline of Internet Explorer is still clear as is the rise of FireFox, Chrome and Safari.
Is your website seeing a similar trend and what are your thoughts on how Microsoft can reclaim their dominance of the market (or even if that is possible now)?
Note: The data used in this post is taken from the top 5 browsers for each month. The percentage figures represent their share of that total and not the total percentage share of the entire site/ all browsers.
Related posts: Sys Admin’s Favourite FireFox add-ons
Web design is big business. With computers and the internet becoming more accessible than ever before, there are a lot of individuals and businesses trying their hand at web design. It is no surprise that there are a lot of powerful, full featured and expensive design applications out there in the market available to amateur and professional designers and programmers.
So 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.
So, without further ado, we bring you a top 5 list of Open Source alternatives to commonly used commercial applications.
Aptana Studio instead of Dreamweaver
http://www.aptana.com/studio
Aptana Studio is a HTML and CSS design suite. It is also used by programmers who write in PHP, Ruby and others. It works very similarly to Dreamweaver in that it has both a design and code view, has syntax highlighting, comes with code snippets, and will also FTP files to your website for you. If you have used Dreamweaver in the past then Aptana would feel very familiar to you, with a few nice surprises (especially for those AJAX lovers out there).
GIMP instead of Photoshop
http://www.gimp.org/
GIMP is almost a ‘clone’ of Photoshop. It works in very similar way with its layers, selections, filters and painting tools. It can even read and write in Photoshop format, making it ultra compatible with your Photoshop using colleagues or clients. The software doesn’t feel quite as polished as Photoshop does, and its text manipulation is a little behind Photoshop’s. But, if you’re like the majority of people who use Photoshop to resize their images, reduce the colours, and maybe add the odd special effect to add a little extra to your websites, then the GIMP is definitely something you should try!
Inkscape instead of Illustrator
http://www.inkscape.org/
Inkscape is a vector drawing programs with features similar to that of Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. It has a very large feature set, including n-sided object creation, text effects, raster images, gradients, layers, opacity and paths. It can read and write in many formats, including XML, SVG and complies with W3C standards. It can also read AI and SVG files exported from Illustrator. A fine and free alternative.
OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office
http://www.openoffice.org/
Open Office.org (or OOo for short) is a direct replacement for Microsoft’s Office suite (excluding Outlook). It is a very mature project and they have very recently released version 3.1.0. You can use replacements for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. OOo can also read and write in any of the native file formats, as well as a few others (like PDF) which older versions of Office can’t. Being a Linux man myself in a predominantly Windows environment, I find OOo a life saver. This one comes highly recommended.
Firefox with the Web Developer Extension
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/
I don’t want to say too much about this one as Rik mentioned this in his article about top Firefox extensions. This one needs mentioning here because it’s a great way to tweak your final design and seeing the changes magically appear in front of your very eyes. Not sure whether you want a 2 or 3 pixel border? Just change the CSS in Web Developer Extension and see your changes as they happen. This one is definitely recommended for those fine-tuners.
What is your favourite Open Source software? Let us know, we are always on the look out!
As you can probably tell with our website and banners, we like the colour green. But we know that not every site suits a green banner so we have created a new batch of banners for our affiliates to choose instead.
A few examples include…
To see the full range and add these banners to your site, log in to your Heart Internet affiliate control panel and navigate to ‘Banners’. From here simply copy the code of the banner you want and paste it on to your web site.
If you are not already signed up to our affiliate program click here to find out more information about the Heart Internet web hosting affiliate program.
If you have any suggestions for future banners let us know and we’ll see what we can do.
Evie Milo is a self employed freelance web designer from her office at home in Kinghorn in Fife, Scotland. Trading under the name of Eskymo New Media Design, (Eskymo for short) Evie showcases her range of services, skills and work from her own little online igloo - namely www.my-igloo.net
We had a chat about how she got started, how she attracts new clients, how she finds inspiration for her design work as well as her favourite sites for getting involved in the web design community.
Could you provide a bit of information about yourself?
About 10 years ago I did a couple of 4 day courses in Dreamweaver and Flash and as I was unemployed at the time, managed to get onto a 6 month New Deal Programme which gave me access to training, a computer, the internet and also the opportunity to try and get a job placement at the end of it all. I worked my socks off learning everything I possibly could and made an animated flash portfolio which landed me a 3 month placement at a big design agency in Edinburgh and led to a full time position. I have since worked for other agencies part time, but eventually decided that I wanted to be my own boss and became a full time freelancer and I’ve not looked back since.
What type of work do you do?
Most of my clients are within the creative sector - artists, designers, photographers and I guess this has come about because of the fact that I have degrees in both photography and art and have always been surrounded by artists and creatives. Other work within my portfolio has come through word of mouth or chance meetings, or through companies finding me on Google - mostly individuals and small to medium businesses. I also do a lot of work for design agencies in Edinburgh and London who like to outsource either the design or the build part of a project and so I get to work on a lot of jobs for really high profile clients. So all in all I have a lot of variety in the work that I do.
The core of my work is web design / build and I work in Fireworks to create visuals and use Dreamweaver to hand code in XHTML, CSS and PHP. I also use Wordpress a lot now, as more and more clients are wanting blogs as well as websites. If a client requests a Content Management System, I get a programmer involved and have a couple of reliable folk I outsource to, but I am also expanding my own skill base on that front and so hope to be able to offer this service myself in the near future.
As well as web design, I also do flash animation and have recently been working with a Fife based illustrator who wanted to bring some of her painted characters to life. Other than exciting projects like that, animation usually takes the form of Christmas E-cards and in October / November I can often be heard to be humming or whistling Christmas carols and songs much to the annoyance of my partner. Christmas always comes early at Eskymo!
What are your most effective methods for attracting new clients?
I attract new clients through the work I’ve done and can honestly say that 95% of new clients come to me because I have been recommended to them. The only cold calling I have ever done is when I initially started out and the thought of it filled me with dread. So I devised a cunning plan and created a short animation entitled ‘Seeking Big Fish’ - you can view it on my website - I placed it in a password protected directory and sent out an illustrated postcard to the companies in Edinburgh I wanted to work with. After checking my website stats to see which of the companies had logged in - each had a different username - I phoned them up to talk business. They all liked my approach and some put my details on file and others became my first ever clients.
What key steps do you tend to follow from start to finish when approaching a new project ?
I have a ‘new client questionnaire’ that I get clients to fill out initially, which covers such things as:
- Whether they have a site already
- What they like / dislike about it
- Who they consider to be their competitors
- Have they got a domain / hosting sorted if they don’t already have a website
- What functionality they need
It gives me a good overview of what is required as well as informing me of their skills and abilities and the level of ‘hand holding’ and ‘jargon free speak’ required - some clients are more technically challenged than others and so you have to take the right approach from the start.
I then formulate from this questionnaire what I believe they need and create site maps, wireframes and ideas/visuals as well as putting together an estimate and suggested time scale for the project. I then have a meeting with the client where we go over every little detail and from that, I can then go back to the office and mock up the final layout for the project. Contracts are signed, design visuals approved, website build commences.
As one of the system administrators here at Heart Internet I find myself using my web browser almost all the time. One of the great things about Firefox is the number of free add-ons available that enhance the browsing experience. All the addons for Firefox can be found at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ - but here are a few of our favourites.
DownThemAll!
http://www.downthemall.net/
If you’re downloading a large file (for example a website backup) it can be very irritating if you get disconnected or your computer crashes. Typically this always seems to happen within the last 10%!
DownThemAll! is a download manager integrated into Firefox which is able to pause and resume downloads. The neat thing about it is that its completely integrated – when you start a download you get an option to download with DownThemAll!.
Xmarks (previously Foxmarks)
http://download.xmarks.com/download/all
Thanks to the recent fashion of “small cheap computers”, it seems everybody has at least 2 computers nowadays. With my home PC, laptop and work computer I can’t live without Xmarks – it’s a bookmark synchroniser which keeps your bookmarks identical across computers. It has some nifty features such as bookmark profiles (so you can vary your bookmark toolbar at work for example), and if you’re on a computer where you can’t install the add-on, you can still see your bookmarks from a web page.
It’s compatible with Firefox on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux – as well as Internet Explorer and Safari.
TwitterFox
http://twitterfox.net/
If you’re a Twitter fanatic like some of my colleagues, you’ll find this simple add-on a blessing. It adds an icon on the status bar which will notify you when someone you’re following tweets on Twitter. You can also quickly tweet or reply to a tweet directly from your browser without loading up Twitter. Don’t forget to follow @heartinternet while you’re there!
Firebug
http://getfirebug.com/
This is one for the web developers out there (and with our new HostPay themes out last week, everyone should be trying their hand!). Firebug lets you inspect and alter the current webpage – allowing you to explore the document tree and CSS styles of a specific element and tweak them instantly in-place. It’s also got a powerful JavaScript debugger/profiler that helps you track down those annoying errors.
VertTabbar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8045
When one of my colleagues mentioned this add-on to me, I was sceptical. But I find myself becoming more and more attached to it. The add-on simply moves the tab bar to a vertical position on the left-right of your browser. This means you can have more tabs open and still see their titles. It works perfectly on a widescreen monitor where horizontal space isn’t at a premium.
Speed Dial
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810
Speed Dial adds a “quick launch” page to Firefox, where you can put your most used websites with thumbnails for each of them. This feature will be familiar to Opera and Chrome users. It can be configured to appear every time a new tab is opened, making it a good “jumping page”. It’s just a shame it can’t be synchronised with Xmarks!
What are your favourite add-ons? Or have you jumped ship to Chrome or IE8? Let us know!
We are pleased to announce the release of four new and stylish web hosting templates for our HostPay customers. We feel the new designs will give you a very clean and professional looking hosting template which can be installed in a matter of clicks! One of our main objectives was to make it easy as possible for our customers to change the look and feel of each template to their liking so as a result everything is controlled via CSS. As the templates are CSS driven you’ll be able to edit the content within the pages much more quickly, as there is now less code and imagery you’ll find the pages load lightning quick, in fact around 400% quicker than our original HostPay template.
You will also find that the HostPay templates are XHTML & fully standards compliant (Yes it passes the W3C test!) and will render nicely in all browsers, Firefox users will also get the added bonus of rounded corners as the templates take advantage of the -moz-border-radius CSS property. You won’t find any < table > tags used within the coding of the design either! 
Check out some of the screen shots below:
HostPay Templates Screenshots:
HostPay Control Panel Screenshot:
HostPay is free to all our Reseller Hosting Customers - to view or install the new themes simply;-
1. Login in to your control panel.
2. Visit https://customer.heartinternet.co.uk/manage/reseller-shop-templates.cgi
3. Select the Theme you wish to have.
4. Click “Save Changes”.
5. Navigate to your HostPay installation to see the new theme.
Please let us know what you think of the new template set.
This post will discuss the effectiveness of direct mail to generate new leads and sales online.
Content
When it comes to the content of the direct mail piece the main point is to maintain focus on the key message supported by easy to digest information. You have to grab their attention, communicate your product/ service/ promotion and illicit a response in an incredibly small amount of time. What are you offering them that means they should act, and act now? The recipient should also know what they need to do next and where they go to do it e.g. “To Claim 50% off go to www.domain.com/offer”
The AIDA principle is a helpful approach to structuring your mail piece, for example:
Attention: “Massive savings on all stationery”
Interest: “Everything you need all under one roof”
Desire: “Order now for 50% off
Action: “Go to www.domain.com/offer to order”
Some quick tips include:
A great example of using colours that stand out, a clear and prominent core message along with supporting reasons why you might want to use it can be found here: http://www.vertouk.com/portfolio_example.asp?example_id=greenline&service=directmail
Mail format
Companies such as www.printing.com offer a wide selection of formats to choose from and the format of your direct mail piece can be as simple as a plain vanilla envelope and simple white letter through to a bright postcard with moving parts and everything else in between. One piece mailers are very popular for keeping costs down without having to sacrifice design.
A non-descript white envelope will ensure a high open rate, but that is not the objective of any direct mail campaign. You want a response so any argument to use a white envelope for any other reason other than cost and target market relevancy are irrelevant. The main considerations are printing and mailing costs, suitability for your target audiences and logistics.
Buying the list
In the same way as no one likes getting spam emails, no one wants to receive junk mail so it is vital your target list is clearly defined, up to date and clean. This will ensure waste is kept to a minimum and the response rate is at a maximum. Suppliers such as www.marketingfile.com allow you to research and purchase your list online as well as define your criteria e.g. location, company size, industry type, length of time at premises, turnover, number of staff etc.
The more targeted the list the more likely you are to see a strong ROI. For example an online stationery company wanting to target a manageable sized list of small businesses that have just moved premises may choose the following:
List: Business contacts
Location: Nottinghamshire; Leicestershire; Derbyshire; Lincolnshire
Number employees: 50 – 500
Time at address: Less than 3 months
Named contact available?: Yes
Mailing
Depending on the size of your contact list and your budget you may decide to buy a lot of stamps and post them yourself or you may need to use a mailing house. For a fee your list will be de-duped and the mail piece franked (postage added) at a discount and then given to the Royal mail to post. If you have more than a couple hundred mailers to send out It often makes sense to use a company that can do both the printing and the mailing under one roof to cut costs.
Monitoring the response rate
Direct marketing is by definition a direct response medium which means you should put in place the necessary mechanisms to record the response rate. Examples include:
