Cubedroute website blog

The Internet of things

Interesting video

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Pivoting with the times: a web development story

The last 12 months have been quite eventful for us at Cubedroute and in the excitement we've neglected our much loved website. It's ok, there's a good reason for it, I promise. When we first setup Cubedroute our vision was to create an agency that stayed small and never moved into the area of factory-style production.

We wanted to create beautiful detailed custom design and development solutions. However the web is a fast moving place, and as people expected to get more and more for their money, we realised that things were going to change. As the economy started to take a turn in 2009 our clients, many of whom are non-profits, simply didn't have the budgets to be investing in high-end design which left us wondering how we could stay true to our vision and keep Cubedroute moving forward.

At the same time, we stumbled across an excellent presentation by Hiten Shah, the CEO of KissMetrics. His team was building a analytics solution for websites. As they were building the product they realised that their initial idea wasn't really what people needed, so decided to pivot and move in a different direction, even if it meant loosing months of development work. This concept really hit home with us. We realised that sometimes there are emotional attachments to ideas and ways of doing things and if we wanted to keep our business going we needed to Pivot direction.

So, with that in mind and in this economic climate, the only way to do that was to become more that just a design agency. We spent the last year using all our skills and resources to create a set of exciting products that we can offer across the various sectors we have experience in.

We developed a cutting edge and highly specialised reservation and management system for student accommodation called Sabe, which we're in the progress of launching. Student accommodation is something we have a good deal of experience with, and is still a growing (albeit slightly slower), young market. We've put a lot of love and attention to detail into Sabe and are excited to be putting it out into the market.

Alongside that we've pivoted our web design business into a platform we've called Brick. Brick provides high-end, high-quality pre-designed websites that can standalone, or integrate with Sabe. Of course Brick doesn't just provide professionally designed websites off the shelf, that would be far too easy! It's a complete online business and comes with an arsenal of features like an integrated customer database, email marketing, build-in ready to go e-commerce shop, and of course it's all controlled by a super easy to use Content Management System.

At time of writing we're right in the middle of cutting up the CSS for the new 1.0 version of the Sabe website and will be officially launching the Brick site by the end of April.

Ok, I didn't want this to be a complete plug for us (!), but since you've read this far I should also mention that our sister company UPR is servicing the non-profit sector with two excellent products - which just happended to have been built by us too. uMeet, a real-time online support product and uGive, a crowdfunding fundraising application. In fact we're delighted to say Aware (aware.ie) has recently launched its online support service using uMeet.

So yes, we've been very busy bees. Hope this explains somewhat the abense of blog updates. We're sorry, it won't happen again..maybe!

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Manage multiple email accounts with Gmail

When we're developing websites for clients quite often there is a change in where their website is hosted and sometimes their email hosting too. When that happens a common question is; how am I going to access my emails? A lot of people don't actually use desktop email clients. Some people, because they need to travel or occasionally work from home, also use their email provider’s online email software. This is why using Gmail to get email from other accounts can be so useful. Instead of having multiple email interfaces to get used to you just have one really good one.

I've been using Gmail since it launched in 2004 as a beta service. In that time it's gone from a great service to an even better one. In comparison to the other webmail giants like Yahoo mail and Hotmail; who incidentally still have more users signed up, it's a much faster, more user friendly service. There's a few reasons for this, not least because Yahoo and Hotmail have a much longer legacy behind them, with a particular way of doing things; whereas Gmail jumped into the market freshly developed, providing a service geared towards current user's needs. Straight away one of the big differences was Gmail's user interface had been implemented using AJAX. Without getting into the technicalities of what AJAX is; it basically meant the users screen didn't have to reload after common tasks like moving messages into 'Labels' (Gmail's version of folders), or attaching files to emails, or even navigating from one screen to another. This made Gmail a far faster experience.

There's quite a few other differences contributing to a better user experience, such as; Google's version of intelliSense - allowing names, email address and search queries to auto-complete as you start to type them; how it stores contacts; and integrated IM chat. But the absolute can't-live-without killer features have got to be its anti-spam and search functionalities. For them alone I use it almost exclusively, rather than sending and receiving mail through my desktop thunderbird client.

My main email addresses are exposed in quite a few places on the web, resulting in a lot of daily spam and junk mail. It's pretty tiresome having to continually weed them out, or try and get yet another desktop spam filter to 'learn' that "Ralph Virgata" is not my distant relative and the chances are that the 2.5 million he's offering to put directly into my bank account will be a slight disappointment once I hand over the details..

Gmail on the other hand, with access to vast resources, seems a veritable psychic; rarely making a mistake when flagging spam and moving it out of your way. Genuine emails are a vital part of most organisations' communication, so organising, storing and finding them again is essential. But even the best filing system is going to need continual maintenance; which takes time. The internal search functionality available with Gmail is just fantastic and removes the need to be overly conscious of filling everything away. Its Google in your inbox.

So here's how to get email from other accounts into Gmail. The only point to bear in mind is the email account you're trying to 'fetch' must support POP access. Most of them do, but you can check with your webmail provider.

First, obviously, you need a Gmail account. So if you don't have one, set one up. When you've got that sorted login and:

Click on settings link (top right hand corner of Gmail page) -> then click on the Accounts tab.
In the "Check mail using POP3" section, click on the "Add POP3 email account" link.
Enter the full email address of your other email account (yourname@yourdomain.com) then click next.
It'll then ask you for settings so:
- Enter your other email account's username and password
- Enter your POP server details. This is normally something like mail.yourdomain.com. If it's not, have a look on your webmail provider's website or ask them. Sometimes it can be something weird.
- Tick "leave a copy of message on the server" if you want to be able to view your other emails from another email client as well, otherwise Gmail will take all emails off your other email account when it retrieves them.
- Tick "Label incoming messages" - this is like creating a folder for all your other emails to go into. So you can have a Label called "Cubedroute Emails" and just click on that when you want to view all those emails from within Gmail.
- If you don't want your inbox clogged up with other account emails then click on "Archive incoming messages". This way to view your external emails you can either click on the label you gave them or goto the All Mail link in Gmail.

And thats it! You can have up to five accounts being fetched into Gmail like this. Excellent. Oh one more thing, and yes this blog is getting long but we're nearly there. If you want to SEND emails as yourname@yourdomain.com from within Gmail then follow these steps:

Click Settings and select the Accounts and Import tab.
Under the Send Mail as, click on the "Send mail from another address". A pop up window will appear and just put your yourname@yourdomain.com email address in.
Gmail will send that email account a link which you verify. Once you verify the link you'll be able to choose what email address to reply from in Gmail.

Simple. Now we're done.

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Branding for non-profits and why its so important

With so many non-profits and charities competing with each other for attention and contributions, understanding what branding is and how to effectively use it is absolutely crucial for every non-profit organisation.

Alongside the barrage of junk mail through my front door every day I get a lot of solicitations from various charities. And the reality is that more often than not I don’t have the time or energy to distinguish between the junk mail and an important message unless it stands out.

Unfortunately a lot of the time branding is viewed by non-profits as a luxury or something big companies do, rather than absolutely critical to their mission. They don’t have the budgets or time. What money and resources they do have need to be spent in other areas; helping their service users, fundraising, or any number of other jobs screaming for their attention. But the irony is that without a strong and consistent brand all these tasks become much harder.

But we already have a logo

A common misconception is that branding is simply having a logo and colours defined. Frequently doing some basic brand identity will be given to a volunteer or staff member, or done by a third party pro-bono. With no real guidelines and working on their own the result is invariably disjointed and unprofessional.

While a logo can often be the key element in a branding program, the reality is brand goes beyond tangible design elements. Branding creates expectations and makes promises to your audiences. Promises about who you are, what you’re doing, what your goals are, how you behave in different situations, what you would do if given the trust of your intended audience.

A successful brand strategy delivers on these promises in a clear, understandable way that creates brand loyalty. The key word here is ‘understandable’. Too many times non-profits lament apathy in their messages, a decline in their supporters and drops in fundraising. More often than not these problems stem two things; a lack of clarity in what the organisation is doing and inconsistency in the organisation's image or message.

Branding focuses on developing a clear identity for the messenger, as opposed to marketing which focuses on the message.

Where do I start?

Invest time in understanding your brand.

If you’re working for a while within a charity organisation you’ll probably know off the top of your head your organisation’s stance on relevant issues, what its policies are, what you would or would not say in a magazine, to a service user, on radio, etc. Build up a picture of your organisation as a person and try and slip into the role of being that person. Like a good actor understand the background of your character, understand its motivations for action, its likes and dislikes, how it dresses and behaves in public. And most importantly how does it want the world to see it?

Get the essence of your brand into all your communications.

People need to be continually reminded of what your organisation stands for. Look for ways to interact with your audience in ways that reinforce this. Develop your advertising or marketing campaigns with this in mind and the underlying essence of who you are will shine through.

Be consistent.

It’s vitally important to remain consistent in the approach you’ve taken. The perception of integrity is formed over time, if you’re not constant then you’re hard to identity and even harder to trust. Your messages must feel like they come from the same messenger. For example the tone of your print campaigns needs to be translated into online campaigns. It’s not enough to have beautifully designed print material which is just uploaded as a pdf or image to your website. Time needs to be spent ensuring the tone and theme of the print campaign is properly translated to the online medium. Same is true of tv campaigns and ads placed in the newspaper. The presentation of your campaigns may differ from medium to medium but the overall experience should be the same.

Understand the value of design.

Design is how the world experiences your message. Non-profits need to understand design, because good design establishes structure and meaning to the organisation. Whereas mediocre and inconsistent design leaves the viewer feeling detached and uninspired. It’s important to work with professional designers you trust, who understand your brand, and can develop your ideas into a finished package.

With ever increasing pressures on non-profits to make themselves heard its vitally important to realise the importance of branding. Although its no substitution for professional help, theres a lot you can do yourself. Try and read up as much as possible, check out this great book for starters, and get inspiration from other strong brand campaigns that have worked well.

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Grid structures in Web design

Problem:

a chaotic world in which parameters are always changing;
a need for control without being controlled;
a desire to find beauty and truth;
vast quantities of words and images that need to be placed on a page.....
The designer and the grid. by Lucienne Roberts, Julia Thrift

For anyone interested in learning about grids in design, this book is a fascinating read and nice introduction. It doesn't really teach you how to use a grid, but rather gives background to the history and psychology of the grid. A more practical, "how to" book, is Grid Systems by Kimberly Elam.

My own journey with design and the grid began at an early age (though I didn't realise until recent years). Back in my school days my copybooks were littered with sketches and doodles of all sorts. I'd always had an interest in art but never really taken it seriously. At the age of about 15 my father, a typesetter by trade, asked me to sketch a component for a logo he was working on. Given a blank piece of paper and pen, I was lost. Without the grid lines and boundaries of my school copy book I was stumped.

My solution in the end was to go back to my gridded school paper, sketch up what I had in my head and then copy it onto normal notepaper. I don't know whether this was just because I'd always used gridded notepaper for sketching and I was used to it or because it provided a structure within which my ideas could take shape. Whatever it was, it stuck in my head and I still use gridded notepaper at the start of every project today.

Here at Cubedroute, our approach to web design is simple. We're firm believers that content is king. At the beginning of a project for a client, we gather together as much of their information as possible, content, brand materials, etc. After carefully studying the content along with our client's target audience, we try to come up with the best way to present this information in a way that tells our client's story.

First we prioritize the information, then we begin to design a grid that will help us best display this information. Out of this our wireframes are born, which eventually lead to our finished polished designs. The idea of using grid structures to contain and unite all the information works for us. Having said all this its just as important not to be confined by the grid; it's easy to get locked in. We try to design a grid that works and then break out of it in certain areas to create impact. Let your eye be the deciding factor whether something is right and not the grid.

Over the years there have been some brilliant articles written in relation to web design and the grid. Below are just a few of our favourite reads over the years.

Five simple steps to designing grid systems — Part 1 (Mark Boulton 2005)
Grid Computing… and Design (Khoi Vinh from way back in 2004)
Grids Are Good ( Vinh and Boulton, PDF presentation)
65 Resources for Grid-Based Design (loads of juicy stuff here)

We'll be coming back to the grid in detail over the coming months.

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Is Social Media a Fad?

People have been calling social media a fad for years now. So it's interesting to actually go back and look at the definition of 'Fad':

A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze

An intense but short-lived fashion

A personal whim

Keywords like "brief", "intense" and "Short-Lived" immediately jump out of those definitions, which doesn't seem to tie very well with the fact that Social Media technology in its current form has been widely used for over seven years.

Friendster was founded in 2002 and has over 90 million users today. MySpace followed soon after in 2004 and rapidly grew to the number one social network until Facebook, currently with 250 million active users recently outgrew it. In my mind it's hard to argue that such hugely popular technology, available for the last 7 plus years and continually developing is only a fad.

There is certainly an element of confusion when people talk about Social Media and what it is, what it isn't, and if it's here to stay. This can be largely due to discussions on the subject getting blinkered into talking about the various networks or services rather than the underlying shift in how people want to communicate online.

The Twitter service is an interesting one. It's ranked as the third most used social network and gets around 55 million visits a month. Yet it's a very different network from the likes of Facebook or MySpace. Personally Twitter drove me mad for ages. I felt it was saturating the internet with meaningless mundane chatter.

Certainly that aspect of the service is still there, but its real value as a global, user generated news and communication service has since become apparent. And as a publicity tool for any business, particularly ones with little or no advertising budget, its importance can't be underestimated.

You could fill a football stadium full of everything that's been written, good and bad, about social media over the past few years. But I think it's safe to say at this stage that whatever Social Media is, it's definitely not a fad.

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Associate value with functionality

Whether you are creating a new website or revitalising an existing one, one of the most important decisions you will make is choosing the functionality that will be most beneficial to your organisation. If it doesn't benefit your organisation, then it is of no value. None! Leave it out!!

With the myriad of continually emerging gadgets and wizardry, you may find yourself overwhelmed by buzz words such as "widgets" and "feeds". To stave off premature ageing, side-step the jargon and focus on the key deliverables of your site.

In an ideal world you might want your new site to boast all of the coolest technologies available. However, you are more than likely working within the constraints of a very real budget. So, how do you choose between desired features and those which will be the really beneficial ones. Firstly, ensure the visual design and SEO haven been allocated adequate attention as they are the foundation stones which will ensure your site reaches as wide an audience as possible and endures the test of time. Functionality aside, these are of particular value to your organisation. Then, highlight the features which you think your organisation will most benefit from. These are the features of most value. Depending on the nature of your business these may be a customer newsletter, an e-commerce gateway or a website blog etc. No matter what you have chosen, by associating value with functionality, you will achieve the best value for your website expenditure.

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We just launched our website. How will people find it?

So, you’ve spent the last few months, diligently writing content, liaising with designers & developers and finally your website is ready for the outside world to see. You decide to go live, but what happens next?

Answer: Not much unless you’ve planned for it.

This is where your web strategy comes into play. A web strategy (simply put) is like a business plan for your activities around your web presence. A good web strategy should include the following:

1. How do you get people to visit the website?
- Search Engine Optimisation.
- Pay Per Click campaign (PPC campaign, like Google Adwords)
- Newsletter Marketing (mailing lists)
- Advertising & Marketing (offline as well online)
- Blogging (as well as your own blog, get others to blog about you)
- Interacting with your customers through social media (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit)
- Word of mouth (Have a launch party and tell people)
- Make the most out of offline opportunities to promote your website. Display your URL on everything you can from your stationary to your car.
- Virals
2. What do you do with people when they get to the website?
- Lead the visitor on a journey through your business and make sure your story is being told.
- Try to ensure the visitors are seeing the most important information.
- Build a relationship with the visitors and let them interact with you.
- If you are selling a product make it easy for the visitor to purchase it
- Get them to sign up to your e-newsletter
- Give them a reason to re-visit your site. (through newsletters, promotions etc.)
3. How do you measure if your site is being successful
- Analytics (Google Analytics, examine how long people are staying on your site, are visitors returning etc.)
- Conduct A/B testing and examine the results.
4. Manage your online reputation
- Monitor what people are saying about you with tools like Google Alerts and Twitter (monitor keywords)
- Participate in online communities and engage with your audience

Web strategy is part common sense, part technical know how; part trial and error, part rigorous planning; and a good dose of experience. Theres a lot you can do yourself; and certainly you're going to need to commit to producing content, but if you're serious about getting found on the web you need to bring in the experts.

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Guide to planning a web site project

Planning a website project can be a daunting task, especially if it's your first time. Thankfully, the key to a successful project isn't that complicated. By planning ahead, considering your audience and goals you'll greatly increase your chances of success. Here's a simple guide to help you through the planning phase of your project. Every project is unique, but if you stick to these phases you'll have most of the bases covered.

Whether you’re putting together a request for tender or a quote, this should help.

Phase 1. Information Architecture
Project Discovery	High-level discovery meeting between the web company and the client. We use our project planner to discuss business objectives, content, target audience, and define functional requirements.
Site Map Generation.	A useable sitemap is created that contains a page by page index of the content information structure. To accompany this, a flow chart is created, which shows the relationship between different sections of the site.
Quality Assurances & Checks	Client review and progress report.
Content Inventory, Aggregation and Triage.	Gather together as much of the core content as possible. This includes any new content as well as old content from an existing site.

Phase 2. Design
Creative Discovery	Discuss the site audience, user needs and brand guidelines.
Quality Assurances & Checks	Client review and progress report.
Wireframing	List of all design elements that are to be displayed on the home page. With this list, several different wireframe layouts are designed. We find this the easiest way to ensure the mockups are on target. It's easier to change a wireframe than a polished mockup.
Generate Initial Mockups.	Based on the wireframes, an initial set of mockups are created. We usually create 2 initial mockups, get feedback and progress to secondary mockups.
Secondary Mockups.	Based on the initial mockups a set of secondary mockups are created to cater for pages other than the home page.
Production ready designs.	Production ready Photoshop or Fireworks files are created, ready for the development phase.

Phase 3. Development
Technical Discovery	Review the project to date and validate the technology requirements (& assumptions).
Technical Collaboration / Client Review Session	Client review and progress report.
SEO/SEM Review Session	Plan the URL's, page titles, meta data, etc. Search engine optimisation shouln't be an afterthought.
Template Development	Based on the production ready designs, html templates are developed.
Content Management System	Integration of templates into a CMS. Create custom functionality as required. We use Django for the majority of our projects but have also used Wordpress for simple sites, and expression engine for others. The CMS of choice should reflect the client needs.
Browser Testing & Client Review	Test all functionality and review site in all major browser/platform combinations.
Launch	Final testing and launch.

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Welcome to the new cubedroute

Cubedroute started off many years ago, as just a few guys working in a large big blue chip with a vision of a better life. The dream of coding away, with laptops on a beach seemed too good to miss out. The reality was a little different. There's an incredible learning curve in running your own business. Things that you skimmed over back in college suddenly become daily tasks and critical to your survival as a business.

I have to say, it hasn't been an easy road but glad to say that after nearly 5 years of hard work, we're still here and happy we made the move. Hope you like the new website.

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Cubedroute website blog

The Internet of things

Pivoting with the times: a web development story

Manage multiple email accounts with Gmail

Branding for non-profits and why its so important

But we already have a logo

Where do I start?

Grid structures in Web design

Is Social Media a Fad?

Associate value with functionality

We just launched our website. How will people find it?

1. How do you get people to visit the website?

2. What do you do with people when they get to the website?

3. How do you measure if your site is being successful

4. Manage your online reputation

Guide to planning a web site project

Welcome to the new cubedroute