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Archive for January, 2010

Website Conventions

Friday, January 29th, 2010

As visitors to websites we begin to expect certain elements on a web page to be in a particular place, which is why web designers will tend to stick to general website conventions. Some form of consistency is paramount in keeping the visitor on a website making sure they’re not given a reason to leave. A few examples include:

- Positioning of the website logo or name; typically this can be found in the top left hand corner.
- A business phone number; typically found in the top right hand corner.
- Navigation near the top of the page
- The underlining of links, making sure not to underline text which is not a link

Of course website conventions will depend of the style of website being produced, if you’re trying to push boundaries then look at your target audience. Different styles of sites will work better for different age ranges, or the level of computer and Internet literacy. These are aspects that your web designer will need to know before starting a project in order to provide you with the best possible solution.

At WebCatch for example, we ask our clients to fill out a creative brief which gives our designers the information they need to design a website that meets our clients requirements. We’ll then apply the website conventions that count.

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Posted in Web Design | 2 Comments »

How to hide your Joomla! admin url

Friday, January 15th, 2010

One of the features we missed most when adopting Joomla! as our CMS was the possibility to change the admin url from the standard http://yoursite.com/administrator to something more secret. Yes, we now that secuirty by obscutiy is not really effective, but we believe that it can’t hurt and will at least keep some of your nosy visitors from trying to guess your passwords.

As this functionality is not inbuilt, we had to look for a plugin that takes care of hiding the backend’s url. After a moment of googling we found the jSecure Authentication plugin (download link). As you can see on the plugin’s site in Joomla! Extensions Directory, it has excellent user ratings and is quite popular among the Joomla! community. That’s a really important aspect, because it means that it is highly compatible with different Joomla! installations and is thoroughly tested. Once you have downloaded the plugin’s zip package, here’s what you need to do to apply it to your Joomla! site:

  1. Login to your Joomla! backend and go to Extensions->Install/Uninstall. Upload the downloaded package and install it.
  2. Go to Extensions->Plugin Manager and filter your results by ‘jsecure’ to find your newly installed plugin.
  3. Before enabling the plugin remember to set it up. You can do this by clicking on the plugin in the Plugin Manager.
  4. In the plugin configuration you will notice a Parameters box on the right side of the page. There you can set the Key, which will be your secret phrase that needs to be added to your admin url in order to access the backend. For the purpose of this post, let’s assume that we set it to ’secretword’.
  5. You can also configure what will happen when someone tries to access the standard yoursite.com/administrator url. It is controlled by the ‘Redirect Options’ parameter. You  can either redirect the user to your homepage, or display a custom page. You could, for example, prepare a website saying something like: “My site is not that easily hackable” and teach the wrongdoer a lesson ;)

After all the configuration is done and the plugin is enabled you will no longer be able to access your backend by going to yoursite.com/administrator. You will need to use yoursite.com/administrator/?secretword, substituting the secretword with whatever you have set in the plugin’s configuration.

UPDATE: The jSecure extension went commercial and you now have to pay for it. In a followup post we present a free alternative with even more functions…

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Posted in Joomla!, Web Development | 1 Comment »

Help choosing a domain name for a Business Website

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Choosing a domain name is not something that should be rushed in to, it will be your web address and therefore the address you’ll be shouting about to get visitors and potential customers. You need to think clearly about what people should ascertain from your domain name, whether you’re an established business or just starting out.

Here are our top 5 tips:

1. .co.uk and .com

For a business website it is advised to get a domain where you can order both the .co.uk and .com. This is to make sure that others don’t come in at a later stage and capitalise on all your hard work.

2. Easy to remember and read

Consider the length of your domain name as it needs to be memorable. Avoid really long domain names and too many hyphens, after all if your domain name is mis-read or mis-heard you may be sending your visitors to your competitors.

3. Use Keywords

If you have a brand name use this for your domain name, but if you’re just starting out and haven’t decided on a business name yet think about using a few keywords that best describe your business.

4. Keep your contact details up to date

That way, when your domain name is up for renewal you’ll be sent a reminder so you don’t miss out. Of course if WebCatch is purchasing a domain name on your behalf we’ll be sure to renew it on time.

5. Avoid Copyright Infringement

This includes brand names and trademarks. Google is king for filing complaints against companies about domain names, and to this date has only had 2 out of 65 rejected.

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Posted in Marketing, Web Design | No Comments »


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