The Challenge

Spark came to us looking for branding and a website to manage and advertise their educational events in Dubai. Having looked around at existing pre-built systems to manage their events they decided none of these performed every function required and so approached us for a solution.

The Solution

We were more than happy to help and got to work straight away working out the best way to provide Spark with a solution. Having read the specs and requirements provided by Spark we decided the best way to approach these unique requirements was to build a bespoke system from the ground up. Doing things this way would enable us to provide everything Spark required with no compromise.

To begin the project we first set about creating a clean and professional yet light and fun looking brand for Spark. After Martin created a few logo design concepts for Spark we approached them with our ideas and they settled on the their current logo.

Now that we had a logo and a colour scheme nailed down we were ready to begin the concept stage for the designs of the website. At this point Tom and Martin sat down together to plan out exactly what information the website would need to capture and what information it needed to present to enable the users to effectively manage their own events and attendance. After Tom and Martin were happy with the plans, they set about wire-framing the pages and planning the flow of the website to make it as easy and comfortable as possible for the users whilst still capturing all the necessary data.

After they were happy with the plans, Martin began designing the concepts of what the homepage of the website could look like. Martin then approached Spark with these ideas and after a few tweaks a homepage design was settled on. Following on from this approved homepage design the rest of the site was designed and presented to the Spark. After these designs were signed off it was over to Tom to set about developing the website.

Tom first set about designing a custom database structure to hold all the content. Tom then began developing a responsive front end to the website using the latest web technologies. The next step was connecting the responsive front end of the website to the bespoke database structure created earlier, this was achieved using PHP and SQL. After this was finished a bespoke admin for the site was created to enable Spark to effectively and efficiently manage the site.

After the development of the website was completed it was ready to be moved over too testing. The guys set about set about testing (and trying to break) the website using the multiple devices we own in house and a myriad of browsers. After a few bugs were well and truly squished the initial build of the website was complete and it was sent over to Dubai for the clients to review.

The clients were delighted with the end result and very impressed. Seeing their idea come to life filled them with inspiration and they sent over their review and ideas for a little further development of the website including using the website as a means of acquiring more sponsorship. We took their ideas and worked them into the existing website and after a little more testing we had a completed project. We then sent this over to the client for final sign off and then proceeded to put the website live.

Check it out here https://www.sparkevent.me/

The Result

The website has been live for a few months now and is effectively handling all the management duties that Spark were previously having to do manually. We are now looking forward to beginning the second stage of additions to the system to enable it to perform even more bespoke facilities to further aid Spark.

Here at Full Phat Design we love a challenge so if you have a website that you think is a little outside of the normal, or not we do just as well with regular old websites too. Don’t hesitate to get in touch by calling 01623 631900 or emailing us at info@fullphatdesign.co.uk and we can discuss a solution that would be right for you.

The post Spark – A case study appeared first on Full Phat Design.

We’ve had our eyes on the Code Club web site for quite a while and it’s something we’ve wanted to do but up until now we’ve just not had chance to get everything in place to do this. It’s great coming in to the studio and doing client work but it’s lovely to give something back to the local community when it’s possible.

Back in January I finally got my act together and signed up to start a club in Mansfield. After a meeting at the school we arranged our start date and the journey began to try and become some form of Scratch expert (if you’re wondering what Scratch is all about this is the software the first two terms of Code club are based upon and this allows the children to program various games, stories and animations), if you have children or just fancy having a play yourself, you can grab Scratch for free here.

Our first lesson was this Tuesday, I’m not going to lie I think both myself and Andrew hadn’t maybe planned as much as we should have with being busy with project deadlines and the Easter bank holiday rush. We were both excited though at getting stuck in to some code and teaching the kids the first lesson.

We arrived at the school ten minutes prior to the lesson starting as arranged and fired up our MacBook’s and plugged in the Makey Makey ready for our first demonstration. The children came in to the classroom and immediately gave off the excited vibes we were hoping for asking questions and enjoying designing their name badges.

A potato controller?

The first thing we did was to question the children if they thought we could involve a potato and a Cinnamon whirl to be the controller to a small game we had created! We then let the children press the potato and bun to controll certain movements from the character on screen, slightly random but they loved it!

Let the cat see the mouse

The first lesson we went through involved the children coding a small game where a cat called Felix (this soon changed to various names) chased after a mouse called Herbert, when Felix managed to catch the mouse he turned into a ghost and then mouse could be controlled used the mouse. The children loved this whole process though and seeing the game come to life, changing the characters, the names and the background of the stage the whole game sat upon.

The most pleasing thing was all the children asking if they could take their worksheets home to carry on coding in their own time, and to pick up more of what Scratch could do. We can’t wait for next week!

You can find out about Code Club by visting the web site here.

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So you’ve just had a shiny new website designed and built and now you’ve got the herculean task of getting people you have never met to look at it and hopefully buy your products. You ask around for tips and everyone is throwing buzz words at you like SEO and Social Media Marketing, you just agree with them because they sound familiar but you have no real idea what they mean. Well have no fear this blog post will hopefully explain some of these terms and how they effect what you should be doing.

Anatomy of a Search Result

First let’s go back to basics and look at a search result.

This is what you or the person searching for your services will see, let’s just break it down a bit and explain what you will need to do to get the best out of each section.

Title – The SEO Title of Your Page

• Title’s should contain key words that people will be using to search for your products but they must also be relevant to the page it’s linking to’s content
• Each page should have a unique title, this separates out pages and better describes what people will find on that particular page.
• Google will trim out most of your title so try and make it as short and relevant as possible, while still making it readable to a human as they still need to click on your link over others.

Text Snippet – The SEO Description of Your Page

• SEO descriptions help tell search engines and the users what they will find on that page.
• The set SEO description is not always used, if google finds a chunk of text on that page that is more relevant to the users search i.e. more key words match, it will use that instead. Google will use the predefined description if nothing matches so make it relevant.
• The description should be short and punchy, accurately explaining to the user what they will find on this page and why this is the page they are looking for. The idea is to make a user click on your link over other peoples.
• As with the SEO title the SEO description should be unique to each page, this way if your site did come up twice in someone’s search results they will know exactly which page is the one they are looking for and therefore shortening the process of the customer actually buying your product.

The Google Plus Profile Image

This is your profile image on the google plus account that you linked to that article or page. This shows up when someone searches google and your site is exactly what they need. Then your little face will pop up next to your post, saying that you are the author of the page.

By adding a human element to an otherwise boring listing, the post stands out; it shows that it’s been written by someone, it’s got context. Coupled with the fact that your listing is now colourful and has a large element breaking up the flow of the page, you will get more clicks on your link for it.

To link your posts up to your profile, you need to hyperlink your Google+ account on the page you want it to show. Then in your Google+ dashboard, you can view what sites you contribute to.

The Highlighted Bold Text

Words that match the key words the user has searched for will be highlighted automatically by Google. This helps the user to see why this result is being shown to them and the more highlighted words the better, this stands out especially if a string of highlighted words are together matching exactly what the user searched for e.g. Mansfield Web Design. The general rule is the more words that are highlighted the more the user will think that this is the webpage they were looking for.

URL’s

Your URL’s should ideally contain keywords and key-phrases as these will also be highlighted where relevant, it also helps users read and share your url and understand that this is what they are looking for.

It’s also been noted that including a hyphen in your URL can affect your ranking on google! [read]

Content is King

A clichéd term but for good reason, while all these fancy techniques will help you appear higher in google there is no point in doing all this if a user gets to your page doesn’t understand what’s going on and leaves. This is where good content is really important, not only should your content contain key words and phrases for google to pick up it should also read well, be compelling and interesting and ultimately make people want to share it.

This sharing idea brings us to another point social engagement.

Social Engagement

Social engagement is the process of trying to get people to share your content on their social network of choice and in return in front of hundreds of other people who may share the same interests. You can encourage them to do this by having social share buttons on your content and by making the content informative, relevant and interesting. Social sites are often a highly overlooked avenue but if used correctly can be just as valuable as SEO after all the whole point of SEO is trying to get your content in front of the right people and social engagement gets other people to do this for you.

Images in Content

Images are always an easy way to make your content look pretty but if used right can also contribute to your SEO efforts. Images should always contain a relevant alt tag explaining what the image is of and the naming of the image file should be relevant too this as well. This will not only help people who for some reason cannot see your image e.g. using a screen reader, but it will also help you when it comes to people using the google image search.

Links in Your Content

Links in a website should be descriptive of the page it is being linked too, this is specifically important for internal links.

All links to other websites should be no follow links, this makes sure that your site is not saying “this page knows more about this than me”

Links also contribute to you reputation in Google especially web pages linking to your page as they are technically passing your page some of their reputation. Links can be a powerful tool if used correctly but for now all you need to know is that a rel=”nofollow” on any external link is important.

Other ways to get noticed is to promote your site through Google’s local business centre, or though offline media such as flyers etc.

Conclusion

Hopefully this article has helped you see some of the ways you can get your site noticed on the WWW and explained some of the terms that may be a bit foreign to you, and always remember if you would like any help with any of this Full Phat Design provides a range of services to help you achieve more exposure.

The post Getting Noticed on the World Wide Web appeared first on Full Phat Design.

Exactly that. And why not is a good example of a bar done right in Mansfield. In the day, it’s a place where great food is served and decent drinks can be drunk. At night, it holds an array of events and live music.

The Food:

Honestly, it’s fantastic. They offer quite a wide range, from morning to evening, the menu changes throughout the day. In fact, they’ve just recently launched their New Lunch Menu, which is pretty much a lighter version of the main meals with added extras for around half the price. It’s a place where you can go for lunch and not feel guilty.

The Atmosphere:

It’s great, the whole place had a refurb not too long ago, in which they stripped back everything and restyled the place to have nice sofas and booths, which I should add, really help when you’ve got a group of you. The tables are large enough to fit around and not have to worry about seats.

Overall, You can consider And Why Not the Central Perk of Mansfield.

And of course, Tom was miserable.

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When you’re in Mansfield, you’ll notice that most places are either a cafe stuck in the 80’s or it’s not quite aimed at your demographic, those seem to be the rules around here.

However, rules are meant to be broken, and there has been one place that has succeeded in breaking that rule; Lucy’s café in Mansfield Town Centre. A small independent café that serves local food and artisan coffees which is located just off the Market Square. If you haven’t paid this place a visit yet, you need to treat yourself this week.

The food

Lucy’s has a menu on each table full of great food, but I always find the large specials boards have such a variance of delights, I can’t help but chose from there.. With a nice selection of dishes ranging from Moroccan Spices Lamb Burgers to Thai Cod & Prawn Fishcakes, it’s not hard to find something that’ll make your mouth water, and for a meal and a drink coming in just under £10, it’s a fantastic place for lunch with friends.

The Atmosphere

With the kind of music you’d imagine playing in a french cafe and a vintage feel to the place, you lose track of time in here quite easily (unless you notice the clocks hanging on walls). Perfect for in depth conversations and business lunches. There is a gramophone in the corner that I wish played out, though changing a record every 12 minutes could be an issue, especially as the place is often quite busy. I’m hoping that they’ll have live music at some point, a small jazz trio would go down a treat, especially for an evening meal.

A place like Lucy’s feels like something you’d get in a larger city like Nottingham, which is fantastic, because Mansfield needs more and more places in a similar vein to this: More independent businesses, more locally sourced produce, and better quality products.

And of course, it wouldn’t be an outing without a picture of Tom, who despite his series of images, loves going to Lucy’s and getting himself the Lamb Burger!

Why not pay them a visit the next time you’re in town?

The post Lucy’s Café, A local café in Mansfield appeared first on Full Phat Design.

We wanted to take this opportunity to wish all our clients and blog readers a massive Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thank you for all your support in 2013 and here’s to an awesome 2014!

Christmas Opening Times

We will continue to monitor e-mails as often as possible over the Christmas break but our studio will be closed on the following dates…

Wednesday 25th December
Thursday 26th December
Friday 29th December
Wednesday 1st January

If you do have any critical issues such as loss of service our emergency e-mail will be active throughout the festive period (all clients have access to this).

The post Merry Christmas! appeared first on Full Phat Design.

We decided after moving in to our new Mansfield town centre studio, we would like to start uncovering our finds whilst out and about at lunch and on client meetings.

This week we heard about the Teapigs free tea day and being the tea connoisseurs we are, we couldn’t turn down the offer of a free brew. After taking a look on the Teapigs site for our local outlet we read up about a tearoom nestled above it’s adjoining home and gift shop, Beau-ti-ful, which spills upstairs to provide a great setting for a spot of lunch and a lovely selection of teas.

We turned up expecting to just have a cup of tea but after seeing the food on offer, we went all out and jumped in head first to the menu brimming with sandwiches, scones, quiches and cakes. The prices made this more than reasonable for the quality of food on offer, all hand cooked to order, and we left fuelled up ready for the remainder of Friday afternoon’s work.

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Full Phat Design craft high quality web sites for a selection of clients across the UK. We require someone that is as passionate about web design and the work they do as we are.

We are looking for a front end web designer to join our team. The successful applicant would work from our brand spanking new studio in the centre of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire creating stunning web sites both visually and technically.

The lucky candidate will need the following…

• A solid design eye with the ability to create beautiful user interfaces within Photoshop
• A solid understanding of HTML5, CSS3 and responsive web design
• A desire to learn and carry on learning
• Experience of Git version control would be an advantage but not essential
• A great taste in Music & The ability to drink copious amounts of tea (not essential but preferred!)

We would be looking for the applicant to start work on web sites as soon as possible so experience is key. Locally based freelances who can work in house would also be considered.
In return we will provide you with…

• A shiny Adobe CC loaded Mac to work from
• A competitive salary
• The opportunity to work from a lively and fun studio on a variety of web projects
• 25 days paid holiday a year

How to apply

To apply please e-mail info@fullphatdesign.co.uk and include your CV and portfolio of work, it’s probably also worth telling us why we should hire you. Please note: no recruitment agencies.

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I thought I’d post a quick update on my latest charity based adventure, two weeks back I took part in the Oxfam Trailtrekker event in the Yorkshire Dales along with three other fools who thought it would be clever to try and walk 100km without sleep.

After five and a bit months of training in the worst weather conditions this country could throw at us and in some of the most remote locations the day finally came for us to tackle the beast. We eventually finished the course in 31 hours with two members of the team having to drop out with feet like bubble wrap and injured legs.

Check out the web site we produced to see the images from throughout the training and more information on the task, Trailtrekker is such an awesome event though and i would recommend anyone who fancies a challenge to give it a go, I think a Full Phat Design team may have to be compiled for 2014!

All in all the Lets Get Ready To Ramble team raised just over £2000 in online and offline donations which will go to a great cause, Oxfam. A huge Thank you must go to Tineke Floral Designs and Lick That Bowl who kindly donated prizes for our charity beer festival which made a massive contribution to our total along with everyone who sponsored and supported us along the way.

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Recently, we’ve had an influx of clients by new Windows 8 computers and needing to set up their emails. Windows 8 dropped support for POP3 Accounts, but this doesn’t mean you can’t still use your email.

So, we’ve decided it would be better to put this step by step guide together to help you set up your emails.

1) Ok, Step 1 is quite simple, once you’ve started Windows 8, just select the Mail tile, which is by default, the very first time at the top left, It’s blue with an envelope on it!

2) If this is a new computer, sign up for a Microsoft Account , if you set up a Microsoft  Account when you first started Windows 8, all you’ll need to do here is sign in.

When you’re going through the sign up process, if it’s easier for you, you can set up your account name to be your email address and password, rather than having an Outlook or Microsoft based email.

3) Once you’ve signed into your account, you’ll be presented with 3 options:

• Exchange
• IMAP
• POP

Kind of deceptive here, because POP isn’t supported, so when you select pop, it just tells you it can’t do it and leads you to a dead end.

SO Select IMAP from the options and click Connect.

IMAP syncs your mailbox to your computer, so if you delete an email on an IMAP email, you’ll delete it from every device that is set up with your email. This comes in useful when you’re getting 50 emails a day and have a mobile, a tablet, a work computer and a personal one.

NOTE: If this box doesn’t show up, for example, if you own a personal hotmail account or have signed up before and you can only see your personal emails, all you have to do from here is go to the bottom right corner of your screen to make the CHARMS display.

Once they show, you can select SETTINGS

5) A blue section will slide onto the screen, and you just have to select ACCOUNTS

You’ll then see a list of your accounts, if you’ve already added your personal email, you’ll see it here. You’ll want to select Add an Account to literally add a new account.

6) You’re getting close now, select OTHER ACCOUNT ( A side note: This is where you could add another personal account you’ve got, ie: gmail, but we’ll leave that for now )

7) You’ll see two input boxes & an option to SHOW MORE DETAILS which you need to select to be able to see all the information you’re going to need.

Once you’ve got it to show a longer list of options, you can start filling it out with the matching details we’ve provided you. Here’s a gorgeous list of example data:

• Email address: info@domain.co.uk
• Username: info@domain.co.uk (Your email address again)
• Password: •••••••••• (This was provided to you)
• Incoming (IMAP) email server: mail.domain.co.uk
• Port: 143
• Incoming Server Required: NO (Untick this box)
• Outgoing (IMAP) email server: mail.domain.co.uk
• Port: 25
• Outgoing Server Required: NO (Untick this box)
• Outgoing Server requires authentication: YES! Leave this box selected
• User the same username and password to send and receive email: YES! Leave this box selected

Once you’ve entered all this information, simply click CONNECT and prepare yourself to be amazed!

Congratulations!

You’ve now got access to your emails through the Mail tile on Windows 8!

The post Setting up your email with windows 8 appeared first on Full Phat Design.

ITV unveiled their new logo last week, and it’s drastic change to their current branding to say the least. The re-branding had been worked on for around a year, but do the results really show that? A cursive font that ‘resembles’ handwriting in off-primary colours, the letters over lapping & causing an overprint effect: Personally, I don’t mind the green pink yellow, but the black? It just seems out of place.

Hopefully it’ll have motion when on screen and it’ll all make more sense.

The spokesperson said:

“In an ever more crowed market place, both domestically and internationally, the need for a modern, flexible brand identity that connects with our viewers and customers has never been more important. We are really excited to soon be unveiling a new identity that is as up-to-date, and relevant as our content. Big, bold and creatively ambitious, it will be true to our DNA as a brand at the heart of popular culture.”

The current ITV logo isn’t anything spectacular, and I think the pressure from other channels has forced ITV to respond: Channel 4 has always pushed it’s branding in new and different ways, something I’ve always admired about the channel and it’s sister stations (More4, 4seven, film4, E4 etc).

However, if we’ve learned anything from the London 2012 Olympics logo, it’s that at first, this logo may seem ugly and ridiculous, but over time we’ll learn to accept it.

Probably.

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When you want a website built, you don’t want to be hit with a huge cost at the end of the project because you didn’t know what you needed to start with, this is where web design packages are that little white light at the end of the tunnel for small and medium sized businesses.

Bespoke vs Package

Now, in comparison, Bespoke specifications are created based upon your needs: You tell us what you want and we’ll create that for you. If you miss things off of the specification, but would like to introduce them half way through the build, then the original quote needs to be amended to reflect the additional functionality, and this can sometimes mean you’ll be going over your budget.

The idea behind our web design packages, is that we want to remove the uncertainty from the project, give you the ability to have a website for an affordable price while knowing exactly what you’re getting before we start building it. This way, you can start building a plan of action for the website immediately so when we finally deploy the site, you know your site in and out.

Nothing compromised

We understand that the word ‘package’ might indicate that it’s something we just install and give it to you, but it’s far from that! We’ve become fantastic at creating websites for small to medium sized businesses and they normally require similar features. So we’ve put all these features that are normally requested into our packages, so you can safely pick the right package to suit your business, whether it be a business start up package,  complete e-commerce package or the popular 5 Page Website.

Simply put, it’s a fixed price but without compromise.

If you’ve got any questions, feel free to write them in the comments below or contact us!

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