Having already this year taken on our new full time developer, Richard, as well both Ian and Steve in front-end coding and content management roles, we’ve just put out offers to 3 Online Editors. And we’re not done yet! We still have one outstanding vacancy for an Online Editor/Internet Producer, so if you’d like to find out more, take a look here.

So, what’s fueling this growth? Well, 2008 has been a full on year so far. We’ve taken on a number of large projects, all of which have come from new clients. Just at this moment, we can’t really say too much about what we’re up to, but we’re hoping that there will be some news either on this blog or the site soon - as well as some info on our new team members.

As always, we’re available to chat with you at any time about web projects you might be considering - so do feel free to get in touch at any time.

As part of our 2008 expansion, we’re on the look out for Online Editors and Content Managers on a part time and contract basis to provide support on projects for some major UK publishers. if you’re interested in finding out more about these opportunities, check out the latest roles here.

The importance of having search on your site is one of the seven fundamentals for an effective web site which we covered in the last post

As pretty much everyone knows, the internet has always been synonymous with search. In the early days of the web, it was often said that Yahoo! was the internet because search, along with email, was the web’s killer app. These days, to ‘google’ something has become the common parlance, like doing the ‘hoovering’ as opposed to the vacuuming (we don’t all , as yet, do the ‘dysoning’) As the web has grown, so has Google, as our primary need online is to be able find the relevant information we want quickly and effectively. Google fulfills that need.

Search is so much of what people do online that in effect Google has just become the defacto navigation device. Where isn’t there a internet search box? They’re on web pages, built into browsers, toolbars, on mobile phones, on your Windows or Mac desktop. Everywhere. Why browse through a directory or menu when its so easy and effective to search?

So, how does this apply to your own website? Well, if your potential customers are used to navigating the web by searching, then it makes sense to let them navigate your site via search functionality as well.

At miggle.co.uk we take two approaches to providing site search. One is that we build it ourselves, the other is that we use a customisation of Google search. The first approach, the self-build, is useful for sites that have a database of information - classified sites like estate agents or recruitment agencies fall into this bracket. The second approach, the Google customisation, is useful if your site consists of a number of articles, particularly if articles you write on your site are published in two places, such as through your blogging tool and your content management system.

The Google customisation is what we currently use on the miggle.co.uk website. The installation we’ve used is free to use, the trade off being that our search results also display Google Adwords (which can be mapped to our Adsense account so we can earn money from it). However, we could pay Google to remove the Adwords all together. From a display stand point there’s quite a bit of flexibility too and we can also define to some extent how search results are displayed, as well as what we want indexed in our search engine. And like all great current web products, we can invite collaborators to add to our search customisation too. Find out more about Google Custom Search.

We’re currently focusing on our ‘Responsive Websites Solutions‘ approach - looking at building sites for small businesses or sole traders which puts them in control of their online presence. Providing site search to the solution is a key part of this, along with a raft of many other ‘must haves’ for web sites which are focused on ensuring that any online presence we build is always highly usable and highly relevant.

If you’ve got an up and coming web project and would like an informal chat, feel free to get in touch.

Today we are launching our ‘Responsive Websites Solutions‘ approach which focusses on getting the best for your business online. Aimed squarely at small businesses and sole traders, ‘Responsive Websites Solutions’ is all about putting businesses in control of their online presence, alongside support and advice from the miggle.co.uk team. Marketing agencies who are looking for online solutions to offer clients, as well as designers looking for a solution that helps them fulfil the technical parts of online briefs might also find this approach useful.

Responsive Website Solutions provide a number of benefits within a bespoke solution, but its based on the following seven premises:-

1. A functional website is just the starting point in running an effective business online. To run your business well you need to make decisions based on how people use your site and map these to your business objectives.
2. Your Frontpage is the window to your brand online. Its sales pitch and mission statement in one go. It needs to direct traffic to other areas in your site. And it needs to present reasons to want to make your audience return on a regular basis.
3. With a good search engine optimisation strategy, any page on your website could be a potential customers first experience with your brand. So brand and navigational consistency are key. A solid navigational structure will give the user a clear idea of what to do when they have finished with the first page on your site they encountered.
4. Keeping clutter-free is key. Site copy, design, hierarchy, content, promotions and advertising all need to be finely balanced, in line with your overall site and business objectives.
5. Integration with proven tools and networks will help drive relevance and therefore improve audience usage and your site’s ranking with search engines. Incorporating ‘Add to Google/Yahoo!/Live’, ‘Post to del.icio.us/Facebook/reddit’ etc., as well as syndicating your content on other networks with big audiences are all part of this.
6. Site search is fundamental. People use search to navigate the internet. Give them the opportunity to navigate your site like this as well.
7. Every user is different. From their own abilities, level of experience, how they access your site and their level of engagement with it. How your site manages different user needs will determine its success. Also, its important that you let your users know how you will use the data you derive from their visit, as well as what you expect from them. Having a good privacy policy and terms of service is key to this.

If you’ve got an up and coming web project and would like an informal chat, feel free to get in touch.

We’re currently on the look out for our first Web Developer. Recent projects we’ve won mean we need someone to come on board, share the load and help drive our solutions forward. This is, we hope, a great opportunity for someone to come into the team and help shape the way the business moves in terms of what we’re able to offer to current and future customers. Read the job spec and if you’re interested, please, get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!

Today, we launch miggle.co.uk. We hope you like it! If you have any questions, please let us know.

dConstruct 2007 was a great event. It was the first one I had been to and was just a fine example of another one of those things which happens in Brighton that shows what a great community of web professionals we have in the town. The presentations apart, which were all based around User Experience, the best part of the day for me was having the opportunity to get to spend time with a good many of the people I’ve met since setting up down here, as well meet some new faces.

As Yahoo! Developer Network were one of the official sponsors of the conference it was a great opportunity to meet up with some old colleagues.

NixonMcInnes were one of the more local sponsors of the event and they were making a considerable effort to recruit new talent into their team. At this stage, I will unashamedly say that NixonMcInnes is pretty much the business I’d like to build miggle.co.uk into. They do some great work, for some high profile clients and service these really effectively through a team that’s based around a few, what I would call, classic web producers.

The role of a web producer has always been a hard one to define. Its so ubiquitous. To me, a good producer is the person who makes things happen. They’ll likely be multi-skilled and will just do what it takes. This comment from Jenni Lloyd’s profile on the NixonMcInnes site really sums it up. She says:-

Producer is one of those funny job titles that confuses more than it enlightens. As my friend Ali asked me at Christmas - ‘Yes, but what do you actually do?’

I’ve found that question asked of me a lot during my career. What I think it shows though is that if you have a business built from people who can make things happen, then things will happen. So, with a good team of producers, I don’t really see it as any surprise that NixonMcInnes does so well.

Progress I would say could be best described as slow and steady at miggle.co.uk

Projects

I’m now moving into my six month with work for AOL which has largely been provision of content management services with some consultancy thrown in. This has also given me an opportunity to start providing work to a few contractors who are able to help manage the load on this, as well as give me an opportunity to start to build up a network of people I can rely on. This is key for the work with AOL as updates have to be done daily, seven days a week.

Since the last update I’ve also seen my first website for a small business launch. The Farmyard Nursery is a new children’s nursery which will open in Battle East Sussex in the Autumn. Sara and Tom, the proprietors, engaged me on this to both build the site and develop the branding. To deliver this project meant sourcing the best possible designer available within the given budget and timeframe, again giving me an opportunity to look at the talent available in the Brighton area from which to get projects like this up and running.

There’s also been a consultancy undertaken for my first overseas client, La Merie Business Intelligence from Spain.

Behind the Scenes
Behind the scenes, its been a case of slowly establishing all the nuts and bolts of setting up a business. I now have a dedicated office in my back bedroom - and after much experimenting with various networking products to try and deal with the few wifi flat spots in my house have got a workspace I am really happy with. It’s basically big enough to function as a small studio for about 3 people and as such I think will be handy for a number of upcoming projects I want to look at.

I’ve been busy buying a bit of hardware too. I’ve bought a fairly cheap desktop running Vista Home Basic, on which I’ve had to hack the sysreg a bit to make it see my favourite bit of kit, my Mac Mini, which plugged into a big external hard drive and a huge flat screen has become the centre of my digital world. It acts as a webserver, a development box, a PVR and fileserver - as well as owning the master itunes library to which all other machines in the house are willing slaves.

There’s been a few other things I’ve had to focus on as well - how to run my book keeping, VAT reg etc etc but I now feel I’m ready to start to look at my next steps.

For me, the best part about the adventure of setting up miggle.co.uk has been having the opportunity to learn new things and rediscover old skills, as well as to think about how best I can run my business to ensure it enables me to maintain as best as possible a work life balance I’m happy with. At present, these are the key things I’m looking at on which I hope to be able to report progress in the coming months:-

Working Efficiently

I’m fairly tired of Microsoft products. Having finally brought my self a Mac after many years of computing and having to also sort myself out as regards setting up all I need to run my office, I’ve just worked out that my old mainstays (which weren’t always choices of my own making) of using Microsoft solutions and Yahoo! online tools is not really cutting it in terms of either time, cost and functionality. Firefox, Google and OpenOffice are instead the solutions which are cutting my mustard. The tools and add-ons for Firefox are great and I have things set up so that I can share my Firefox settings across any browser I choose to sync with my Google account. I’ve been so impressed with it all that my next step is to look at Thunderbird for my mail client, which really is a must as I continue to find Yahoo!’s version just too temperamental.

As for documents the new rule is to use a combination of OpenOffice and Google Docs. I have vowed only to use Microsoft Office now as a last resort and those instances are few and far between. I cannot get my Vista machine to install my office 2003 upgrade on top of Office 97, which Vista will not allow me to uninstall. I just find this incredible…

Product Development

One thing I do think Yahoo! is making a good job of is its developer network.

Amongst these pages, as I mentioned on my last post, is a section on CSS templates. What I like about these templates is the fact that because they are the same ones Yahoo! use for their own product development they get a fair bit of testing by its huge audience, so in that respect they are more robust than something I could write myself. Also, they’ve been written with ad unit support in mind as well and SEO. My plan is that these templates effectively become the core of my front-end web design. Beyond this its a case of just adding specific styles to the templates as far as offering bespoke page design for clients goes, which will obviously be the role of any designers I engage.

Beneath that its then a case of looking at how these templates work with any back end. For that, I’m going to be exploring a number of solutions over the coming weeks:-

1. My own ‘CMS.’ This is an overly bold claim. I’ve not so much written a CMS, but I have put together a fairly simple articles database and written a few other PHP templates that provide certain functionality such that will suffice for certain small websites. My own website, miggle.co.uk when I finally get it finished will use this approach.
2. Joomla. This I think will provide a basic solution for clients who want a CMS quick and easy. I think it may be tricky to get Joomla working with the CSS templates I mention above, but I do think Joomla is going to be an effective toll to be using at anyrate
3. For where Joomla is too simplistic, I’ll be seeing to what extent I can get greater flexibility by using Drupal and Expression Engine.
4. PHPShop. For e-commerce solutions, this is going to e where I start, with Paypal, Payloadz and Google checkout providing support.
5. Wordpress. Running custom CSS in WP seems fairly straightforward and so I suspect that many sites based around simple, articles, or sites that need a supporting blog will use this as a solution.

Other areas I want to explore are writing a Facebook app, customising a Wiki, building an Ebay and Amazon shop, building a Google custom search engine, writing a Freebase app, doing something with Google Maps and Apps, looking at Yahoo! and Windows Live API’s

My current view is that some research in these areas is going to give me the backbone of a set of solutions which will enable me to develop projects for clients as well as create a framework that can leverage common skills against which I can engage contractors and select teams to deliver on such projects.

So, here it is, my first wordpress blog post. I’ve been blogging for a year or so on Yahoo! 360, mainly documenting the travelling I was on before taking on the challenge of launching my own business. I expect to some level I’ll keep that up, for my personal bits and pieces, but this blog will really cover internet issues and will work in tandem with the website I’m building at miggle.co.uk

And as part of that development on the site, what have I learnt so far? Well, I’ve started to re-learn all the PHP and MySQL which I’d last used in 1999. And I’ve remembered how addictive I find the whole art of coding. Up until I started on my site my gym attendance had been pretty regular, but its subsequently been replaced by many hours sitting in front of the laptop, often not vacating my dressing gown till mid afternoon.

Of course, to build a site in 2007 is to be able to build one which really adheres to standards. I got the following advice from an old colleague of mine in reference to what should I be using these days to build my site with:-

HTML - the markup of the page (the actual content). I’d recommend html
4.01 strict
CSS - include a style sheet at the top to make the content look how you want
JS - javascript to add behavioural elements.
PHP - runs server side and is in the business logic sphere of what your
page is doing
MySQL - stores the data

Use html 4.01 strict. In fact, I’m going to point you here:
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

Yahoo! open source a load of it’s javascript and css stuff. It’s great
place to get started. Check out the Grids section for getting page
layouts done quickly for example. It will also help with the ajax stuff.
It’s a gold mine.

This then is my starting point.

What else have I learnt since then?

As you can see from the look of my blog, customising Wordpress to follow a certain style (one you’ll see on miggle.co.uk soon) is fairly easy to achieve, given a few hours messing around with the default Kubrick template.

I am becoming a Google user by stealth. And that’s not just search. Currently Google Docs and Spreadsheets are proving to be so much better to use than Microsoft Office, particularly on this very slow PC. And of course for sharing its great. I’m experimenting with the custom search engine, learning my webmaster tools. I’m yet to go fully gmail, but I think that time will come very soon.

Microformats are likely to be very useful indeed!

And there are many other things as well, but maybe more on that another time…