Romany-Granite

As always with our new websites, Romany Granite’s site is optimised for search engines, W3C tested and meets standard government levels for accessibility. And the site is covered by our standard programming guarantee that we offer to all clients. Check it out for yourselves: www.romanygranite.co.uk

GRACE-poster

Click here to see the Yorke Dance Project GRACE leaflet

The programme itself was a much more complicated set up, with a lot of information to be included in as little space as possible to keep print costs down. The final product ran to 10 A4 spreads – printed double sided A4, stapled in the middle. The programme was printed on silk paper that looked and felt stylish and up to date. The company are about to forge ahead with 2010’s rehearsals so look out for a new look to their site.

Download XTH (v2.01) here

By popular demand here it is – version 2.01 of the original XHTML-to-HTML wordpress plugin. Now called XTH (bit catchier, no?), it is a complete rewrite of the original version and aims to fix the Javascript CDATA and RSS feed issues that the original suffered.

Caveats

OK, this version seems to successfully avoid parsing inline Javascripts and external Javascript libraries. This is necessary because the XHTML closing sequence is a valid pattern in javascript regex, and removing it from those places would mess up those libraries.
The downside to that is that it’s then up to you to make sure that any JS you use doesn’t output any XHTML, as XTH no longer ‘fixes’ it for you.
Same goes for any other external libs that you or your plugins load.

Note that XTH doesn’t address javascript URLs of the form <a href=”javascript:foo()”>. This is for efficiency – and also because I haven’t ever seen a regex used in that context, but who knows, someone might try it. I might add this as an option in a future

Don’t forget!

A single XHTML closer anywhere in the output will fail HTML 4.01 validation Resulting in tag soup and defeating the object of the whole exercise.

XTH also avoids RSS feeds.

Problems, bugs and comments below please. This is a complete rewrite of the plugin so we’re back to square one with the list of problems and required tweaks.

Thanks to all those people who gave feedback and whose time and knowledge helped to make this new version possible.

Adding to the list is a new website for David Hughes Dance who are based in Scotland and tour nationally and internationally. DHD hardly had a website before, more or less a single page with a few contact details on it. The new site has videos and lots of images and though it is (so we class it) a simple website, it lets the company publicise their performances and programmes. As well as offering necessary information to venues and the press.

Home Page Screen shot of DavidHughesDance

The Yorke Dance Project is an existing American company, new to the UK. Obviously, after relaunching themselves here, they needed a website and some branding work and came to us via a recommendation (we love those) as a company they could rely on to launch them into the UK dance scene in the right way.

They wanted a flexible, content managed website, a stylish look (who doesn’t want that?) and lively, which would allow for expansion and development as the company grew.

Yorke Dance Project

Starting with a user-focused viewpoint, we mapped out the key areas that needed to be on the site and easily accessible, and then developed the site architecture. Once we had this in place, we started the design cycle, developing  some design choices for the Artistic Director, Yolande Yorke-Edgell, to choose from. We were provided with a wide range of imagery from the dance company’s current and past repertoire, and created a set of ‘identity assets’ (logo, colour scheme, font etc.) for them to use throughout their business.

We included a range of galleries containing video and still images, a subscribers’ mailing list, as well as lots of pages for the productions and biographies. The site currently runs to 47 pages and counting. The front page has a live news feed, making the site look and feel appropriately current. The site uses John Kilroy’s specially developed word press theme called ‘Artsblog’, so that the dance company can manage the site themselves.

The redesign was actually forced due to the MSB’s aquisition of a new pub in Trowbridge called Stallards and would make a good case study about the identity problems that multi-faceted busineses can face (that’s for another day). As it stands now, the slightly rebranded business is in a good place to expand further, and we look forward to working with them on the Stallards website very soon.

The Blog (ok it wasn’t just a ‘Blog’, we made lots of modifications) we created for them, and to which almost all the project participants contributed, was soon a-buzz with the project’s activities and the thoughts of those taking part. The Blog format is almost perfect for a recording/documentation project such as this, particularly one which lots of people or groups want to share and contribute to. The site is currently private, only the participants can use it, but hopefully when the project finishes in May we may be able to tidy up some of the raw edges and let the world take a look at what they’ve been up to. At the moment there are 135 posts, 80 images, 30 audio recordings, 37 videos and several dozen PDF files and word documents – which, given the scale of the project is a pretty comprehensive set of records I think.

Design-wise the site is very simple. It isn’t necessary or, given the objective, to some extent even desirable to go too far with the visual design (an archive doesn’t have to sexy and Villiers didn’t want this anyway). This keeps the costs down and lets us focus our energies on the content and organisational side of things, so the site works to the very limit of it’s capabilities (obviously this is budget dependent).

We would very much like to use this site as a model for further archival, documentation and/or “project process” projects in the future. We believe that, with certain important modifications, the simple Blog format has a lot to offer people working in that area.

Stars in a Story Screen Shot.

A simple idea – selling a million pixels on some specially commissioned drawings by political satirist Steve Bright; and in the process gathering messages from people who want to make a protest to the Labour Government. There’s some shopping to do as well!

Visitors to the site are invited to join the prisoners by purchasing a ‘hypothetical’ pixel and leaving their messages to Labour. Each message can be viewed on the site and form part of the tagclouds (which highlight the most important words from peoples’ messages), eventually to be delivered to No.10 a week before the next general election.

The idea was brought to us by David Barrett, an artist and very disappointed Labour supporter, who wanted an elegant structure and funky-yet-retro design for the website. The brief included an ecommerce element so that the ‘prisoners’ can buy hoodies and T shirts as easily as possible. We hope they reach their targets – so if you’re a disgruntled labour supporter, why not pop on over to Million Prisoners and do something about it!

The entire redesign was a response to a very practical brief: create more new business from the website. To do this we set about a fairly comprehensive web marketing programme that covered search engine placement, link networking, creating really high quality content written by professional writers, special attention to the interface design, and running ongoing promotions and web offers.

The pretty regular emails we get from Alan at London Locksmiths show that he continues to be more than happy with the results. I’m not going to tell you his figures but I will say that his enquiries and new business are significantly up (as is his search engine placement [page one]) and he, along with most of our other web marketing clients, has subsequently and completely stopped his Yellow Pages advertising. For him this was a major step and one he didn’t take lightly; like many businesses targeting domestic customers, Yellow Pages has always been the major source of new business, but today when most people look first to the Internet for suppliers and tradespeople, the old directories are failing to bring in the business and to give good value for money. Everyone seems to know deep down that web marketing is the future for small businesses, as indeed does Yell (Yellow Pages’ online wing) – who hasn’t been called by them recently explaining exactly that fact?

If you need a Locksmith in London why not call London Locksmiths on 0207 978 2233, or visit their website www.londonlocksmiths.com

This little fine cut gem is:

• 100% valid HTML,
• AAA accessible (that’s the maximum),
• it works on mobile phones,
• it has proper print styles,
• it’s thoroughly search optimised,
• it looks identical across IE6, IE7, Safari and Firefox,
• …and looks a beaut!

What more could a boy want?

Take a look at www.londonlocksmiths.com