BenSky Blog

Simon Green Website Success

Ben — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:32:07 +0000

Well the recession may be over for the UK but it certainly seems over for Simon Green Motor Engineers! Is this a result of their new website?

The website has was launched on November 5th 2009, since then Simon has received more traffic and more calls though the website than ever before.

In January 2010 the website received 853 unique visitors, 537 of which came from highly relevant search terms on Google, this lead to 191 calls, this roughly equates to one in every 4 and a half visitors calling in – that is a staggering conversion rate!

The website has achieved some very impressive results on Google (UK), bearing in mind its only been live for 3 months!

Car Servicing Leeds – Position 2
BMW Servicing Leeds – Position 8
Citroen Servicing Leeds – Position 9
Ford Servicing Leeds – Position 5
Honda Servicing Leeds – Position 3

(Positions on Google UK taken on 02/02/2010 22:46 GMT)

These should continue to grow throughout the year and will hopefully bring Simon more record breaking months this year.

When it’s done right it gets results, period.

This website and the results it has yielded for the company over the first few months is proof in practice as to why it pays to do it right. The website is a great sales and conversion tool because:

It looks clean fresh and professional
The copy and content is light and flowing
Its built correctly to current accessibility guidelines
The photography is professional, genuine and believable, not cliché stock images
The pages have been optimised for specific keywords to yield the best results

This project I could not have done without the help of Media Spy who provided the copy and the phone number tracking software and also Clear Lens Photography who did an excellent job of the photography.

Can I do the same for your business?

I’ll try my damn best, give me a call on 0800 611 8222 for a chat and I’ll see what I can do for you.

Skypanel Website Coming Soon

Ben — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:38:15 +0000

Skypanel will be launching a new website in the coming months that will showcase the CMS, publish available add-ons and serve as a support hub for customers.

I’m going to be working very hard on a dedicated support area that will be available to customers subscribed to Skypanel support. This section will feature tutorial videos that will demonstrate the basic functions of the CMS.

Watch this space: http://www.skypanelcms.com

Simple PHP Contact Form With HTML Email

Ben — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:48:33 +0000

Setting up contact forms on website can be a bit of a pain, especially if the client wants loads of custom fields, you not only have to set up the form in HTML its self but then write the fields into your sending script. With this script you won’t need to write your sendmail script over and over again. This script will simply loop through the array of posted variables to gather all of your fields, it will then format them nicely in HTML and send the data to an email addres!

Lets start with a simple form:


Name: 

Email: 

Message:

And now for send.php

//Where is it being sent?
$destination = "test@test.com";
//Thats all you need to do!

$message = "

Hello,

You have recieved a submission through the form on your website:


";
//Gather posted variables:
foreach($_POST as $keys => $vars){
$message .= "$keys: $vars
";
}
$message .= "


";

mail($destination,"Form Submission",$message,"From: $email\n".
"Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\n".
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n".
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n");

Let me know how you get on!

Skypanel 3.3 Launch

Ben — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:36:18 +0000

Exciting times are upon us for Skypanel, soon Skypanel is going to be set up as a separate company allowing resellers to introduce Skypanel as their CMS partner. As part of this new model, i’m introducing new pricing structures allowing users to get Skypanel for as little as £200 up front! Full details of pricing structures will be available on the new website (once I’ve done it).

So version 3.3 marks the start of Skypanel as a licensed product. Clients still have the option to buy unlicensed… Heres some of the new features and changes I’ve implemented for this version.

New, more user friendly GUI.
The GUI (Graphical User Interface) has been modified to highlight important elements & make the whole system easier to use.
Backup Functionality.
Now users can create backup points for Skypanel, so if something happens to your content you can restore to a saved point. Clients can also subscribe to additional backup functionality, that automatically backs your website up every night and transfers it to a secure server!
Drag and drop page order in Sitemap plugin.
Users can now sort their website pages easily with a simple drag and drop system.
Page preview function.
You can now preview the content of your pages as it would look on your website.
More intuitive page creation layout.
I’ve added extra functionality to add and edit pages to make the process easier, and more intuitive.
Dedicated support line: 0844 884 9880.
Support is going to be more structured and more readily accessible. Users with a subscription receive this service for free!

If you would like to discuss upgrading or implementing the latest version of Skypanel to your website or to see a demonstration, please call me: 0800 611 8222!

Invisible Captcha Concept – Stop Spam Mail

Ben — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:31:21 +0000

Captcha forms, having to type in obscure numbers and letters into a form to verify you’re a human is almost as annoying as receiving spam its self. I’ve spent some time thinking about an alternative to a captcha form that still detects if the form submission is spam without the need for users to enter an annoying code, here is the solution I’d like to share with you.

The theory is as follows; when a spam bot comes to your website, it does not see your website as regular users, nicely styled with CSS… it sees code, specifically forms, textareas and text inputs, then it fills them out and submits the form.

How do you stop this without a captcha form?

Create a text input field & hide it with CSS.


Please leave blank:

Create a textbox that the bot will presume is just a field it can exploit with rubbish and label it with an indicator to let any viewers without the privileges of CSS know that it is to be left blank.

Disregard submissions with a value for this field.

if($_POST["gotcha"]!=""){
header("Location: {$_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]}");exit;
}

The above example is in PHP, it basically aborts the script if there is a value entered for the field!

I’ve been running this on my website and websites I’ve built for the last year or so and it has cut out all spam, give it a try let me know how you get on!

SkyPanel 3.2 Launch

Ben — Fri, 29 May 2009 23:05:46 +0000

Our latest version of SkyPanel is now available as an upgrade for existing websites running the software and for all new websites that require our bespoke CMS. Here’s what’s new:

Reset password function.
If you’ve forgot your password you can now reset it yourself via email.
More concise and easy to use page content editor.
We’ve done a lot of work on the TinyMCE page content editor, cutting out the confusing features and focused on improving the fundamental functions. We’ve even added a basic help section to guide you through the basics.
File uploader and browser.
Skypanel users will now be able to upload documents and files and add them to pages of their website.
Editable sitemap tree.
Users can build their own website structure with no technical knowledge, add pages with sub-pages and custom widget style elements to each page.
Spell Checking and Auto-save.
Our content editor will now allow users to spell check their page content, SkyPanel will also auto-save your content every 3 minutes, so you’ll never have to worry about loosing your work.

If you would like to discuss upgrading or implementing the latest version of SkyPanel to your website or to see a demonstration, please call us: 0800 611 8222!

Time Management for Freelancers

Ben — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:46:28 +0000

Being a freelance designer, time is money and the time spent designing and developing is essentially the only time you’re getting paid for. Freelance design is a juggling act, not only do we do the creative and technical, we also have to take care of sales, accounts, marketing, client liaison and a host of other mind numbing admin tasks.

Recently I’ve found myself spending more time speaking to clients, attending meetings, answering the phone and sending invoices than actually designing and being creative. It can be increasingly hard to produce creative work and keep creative focus when the phone rings every 15 minutes and mundane tasks start to mount up. This can often make design and creativity feel lengthy, drawn out and time consuming, which is really not good. I can understand in many ways why there are lots of designers that choose the nocturnal route; because nobody bothers you, you can get yourself in the zone and produce some really creative work, this is however not an option for everybody.

The nocturnal route in many cases, including my own is not an option, designers often have to be on hand to offer support to clients and to take sales calls throughout the office hours of the day. So what methods can designers introduce to their work strategy to help save and structure time in order to stay as productive as possible? I’m going to introduce some of the concepts I’ve implimented and thought about to address this situation:

1. The lunch time power hours.

Lunch time is the quietest time of the day, the phone is less likely to ring and you can get down to some serious work. While everyone is having their lunch, you can be taking advantage of this quiet time to get creative. Anyone who calls, leave it to answerphone and ring back after your “lunch”!

2. Invoicing & admin

Doing your invoicing and accounts bit by bit gets annoying and tedious, try doing all your invoices for that week on a Friday afternoon. Doing this will not break you from your creative flow during the day, its also a nice way to finish your week off!

3. Time for creative and time for development

It’s been scientifically proven that your brain is at its most creative between 10am & 12pm if you’re working normal office hours. With that in mind I always try to do my creative in the morning when I’m feeling fresh and inspired, instead of trying to be creative in the afternoon when I’m drained and ready to pack in for the day.

Development is much more structured and mundane, more often than not its a case of just getting your head down and doing the work as opposed to your creative time where you can loose hours if your not producing anything that looks right, so I find development is best saved for the afternoon.

4. Meetings

If you’re not careful meetings and client liaison can rapidly become a full time occupation, clients love to go off on tangents. It’s important from the designers point of view that meeting stays as topical and as productive as possible. Always spend 5 or 10 minutes planning your meeting, make a list of questions you need to ask your client and work through them, if the meeting begins to digress you will have a point of reference to subtly return the conversation to a topical matter. Time is king, keep your meetings short and snappy, once you have everything you need and you’ve made sure the client has no further questions you’re finished, let the client know that they can call you if they have any other queries, give them a timescale for next contact and you’re done.

5. Sales and promotion

Never stop selling and promoting, every freelancer has experienced the ‘highs and lows’ nature of the profession. Maintaining a steady flow of sales and promotion will lead to a more steady work flow. Even when you’re fully booked, similar to invoicing and admin, allocate a portion of a day of the week to focus on spreading the word because otherwise you’ll work through your busy period and realise you’ll have nothing left to do bar sell!

Your time is your money, it is important you manage it and constantly strive to develop new methods of productivity to get the most out of your working hours of the day, this will in turn earn you more money and help you provide a more cost effective service to your clients.

Dreamweaver Colours for GeSHi

Ben — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:54:21 +0000

Some of you may have seen the fancy code highlighting in my other code tutorials, this effect is achieved by using the GeSHi highlighting class.

The GeSHi library contains definitions for many script languages, a full list can be seen on their website. The default colour definitions are however not great, so I have set about customising a few of the language definitions to highlight your code as Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 would do so.

The languages I have done are; PHP, HTML and CSS. These are compatible with GeSHi 1.0.8.3. Simply download the zip file below and replace the existing language definition files with the files in the zip.

You can download these files here:
geshi-dreamweaver-colours.zip (15.6 KB)

Note: Due to the lightweight nature of the CSS language, it was pretty much impossible to get perfect, so there are a couple of things to take note of:

1. When using a line with commas in the string, like:
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
Make sure you add a space after the : otherwise it will assume the string is a pseudo class.

2. When specifying a HEX colour color:#F0F0F0;
Make sure you use the full six characters, no shorthand abbreviations, also ensure all alphabetical characters are uppercase.

3. When using url()
Make sure you wrap the URL string in quote marks like so:
url("images/image.jpg")

Simple PHP Login Script Tutorial

Ben — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:28:38 +0000

On this tutorial i’ll show you how to make a simple login portal using PHP for a client area of your website.

First of all you need to make a basic HTML form with a field for the username and a field for the password, these must be named ‘user’ and ‘pass’ respectively. Have this form point to your password protected page and paste the code below above the starting tag of the page.

The script uses an array to specify valid usernames and passwords, so there is no need to set up a database.
Don’t forget to wrap the script below in and ?>


//Start session
session_start();

//Define the users and passwords.
$users = array(
array("username1","password1"),
array("username2","password2"),
array("username2","password2") //Remember to take the comma off the last entry.
);

//Define the log in page if login failed.
$exitpage = "login.htm";

//Then we retrieve the posted values for user and password.
$user = $_POST['user'];
$pass = $_POST['pass'];

//Loop through our defined users
foreach($users as $values){
if($user == $values[0] &amp;&amp; $pass == $values[1]){
//If user and pass match any of the defined users
$_SESSION['loggedin'] = true;
};
};

//If the session variable is not true, exit to exit page.
if(!$_SESSION['loggedin']){
header("Location: $exitpage");
exit;
};
If you would like to make multiple pages password protected, use the script below at the top of the page above the  tag:
session_start();
if(!$_SESSION['loggedin']){
//Put your log in page url in below
header("Location: loginpage.php");
exit;
};
You can download the source files below to see everything working together: simple-login-script.zip (2.21 KB)





		
			Share this on del.icio.us
		
		
			Digg this!
		
		
			Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
		
		
			Share this on Technorati
		
		
			Share this on Facebook
		
		
			Tweet This!
		
		
			Subscribe to the comments for this post?
		
		
			Post this on Diigo
		
		
			Share this on Reddit
		
		
			Share this on Mixx
		
		
			Add this to Mister Wong



The Future of the Design Agency
Ben — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:25:33 +0000





The traditional design agency, big office, large overheads, a team of directors, designers and account managers, is soon to become a thing of the past.
More and more designers are finding themselves able to join the “freelance table”, and feed on a bountiful resource of businesses large and small that are beginning to realise that large portions of their project budget is being wasted on paying for large overheads.
A good freelance web designer is able to provide work of a standard you would receive from a large agency at a fraction of the cost, you have direct contact with the designer, not the “middle man” account manager you’re paying for with an agency.
Advantages of the Independent Designer

Not all independent designers are bound to 9-5 (I often find myself doing 8-10!!)
Direct contact with the person executing the brief, not an account manager.
Better flexibility on deadlines.
Minimal overheads pushing up the cost of service.
More personal and informed client to designer relationship.

The Design Collective
The Design Collective is the design agency of the future, an alliance and network of independent designers, photographers, developers and other specialists all working in tangent and under the recommendation of each other to give the fully comprehensive package provided by design agencies, without the associated overheads. Each member of the collective works as and represents their own freelance brand which is supported and upheld by the reputation of the collective, the members all vouch for the quality of service that the collective will provide as a whole.
With the rapid progression of communication and networking over the Internet, it is becoming less and less of a necessity to have all members of your team in the immediate vicinity of each other, i strongly believe that the virtual network of designers sharing ideas and creative solutions is the design agency of the future.
Would love to hear the views of other professionals on this topic!





		
			Share this on del.icio.us
		
		
			Digg this!
		
		
			Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
		
		
			Share this on Technorati
		
		
			Share this on Facebook
		
		
			Tweet This!
		
		
			Subscribe to the comments for this post?
		
		
			Post this on Diigo
		
		
			Share this on Reddit
		
		
			Share this on Mixx
		
		
			Add this to Mister Wong