As I’m currently ranked number one on Google for a search of “Fullerton Web Design”, I didn’t want to break what didn’t need fixing. I’ve therefore kept the one page minimalist design with the same content (a few tweaks to my prose here and there). Fingers crossed that Google doesn’t turn its nose up at me and knock me down, but that shouldn’t happen.

The main change is to the ‘our work’ section that has a new interface that looks rather snazzy. I played and played with jQuery to get it just right. Took me ages, but really pleased how it turned out.

My biggest flash of inspiration came today when I revised the logo. I wanted a simple ‘spot’ to identify with the name, but wasn’t too happy with the way my circles were aliasing when exported from either Fireworks or Illustrator. This could be due to user error, of course. Ahem.

So, while out shopping I suddenly had a flash of inspiration – what about CSS for the circle? Can that be done? Duh. Of course, using CSS3 and the ‘border-radius’ property. Add in a radial gradient to boot and I have my logo with purely CSS3 and HTML5. Sweet. Of course we still have an image as backup for the browsers that don’t do the new CSS3 wizardry (yes Internet Explorer < 9, I mean you.)

Anway, enjoy the new Shiny Spot Web Services and give us a call. We’ll do you a pretty awesome website. Promise.

Jennifer described Glenn as a “wacky Aussie.” He came round with some paperwork regarding the house sale. Him being from the colonies and me from the Mother Country, I felt an affinity for this brave soul making his way in this strange land. Well, we do share a queen I’ll have you know.

I didn’t see Glenn again for a number of years until I’d finally moved out to Fullerton. Jennifer and I went to the Fullerton Market that takes place on Thursday evening. Glenn has a stand there where he promotes his real estate. Since becoming reacquainted, I’ve helped Glenn with his website and we go out for drinkies now and then in Fullerton. We’ve also become friends with his wife Maggie and they even had us around for food and booze during this year’s Super Bowl.

As well as being an all round good guy, Glenn does know his real estate stuff as well – if you need to buy a house in Orange County or Fullerton, then Glenn Ritchie is the realtor of choice!

Contrast that with some of the not-so-well-off areas of Los Angeles where A New Way of Life Reentry Project does so much good work – led by the awesome Susan Burton. Susan has been to the edge and back before getting her life on track and dedicating herself to helping others going through what she has.

Recently, Susan’s hard work has been recognized by CNN who have shortlisted her for this year’s CNN Heroes award. I’m very excited and proud to have helped for such a good cause – go Susan!

Oh, and VOTE FOR SUSAN NOW!

Me: Hello, how may I help you?
Them: Hello?
Me: Hi. What can I do for you today?
Them: Hello?… Is that… “Shiny Spot Web Services”?
Me: Yes, it sure is. What would you like help with?
Them: I work for a website development company. My manager would like to discuss with you the possibility of website development work. Does your business have a website?
Me: Er, yes. I assume you got my telephone number from my business website.
Them: So, would you like a website?
Me: I have a website. I do websites. That’s my business.
Them: Ok, so would you like a website?
…
And so on.

Occasionally I also get spam email from Indian businesses telling me how shit my websites are and how they offer great deals on websites.

Recently I received one from www.mosaic-service.com. I normally just trash them, but this time I thought I’d reply out of curiosity to see how much they charged and to get some examples of their work.

They responded with some pricing, but the most interesting part was a list of their supposed clients. I started looking at each in turn, in particular at the bottom of each site where usually is a link to the site’s developers. Most didn’t have any such identifiers. This started to rouse my suspicion. However, a couple did indicate who had developed them, so I followed the links to see who they were.

One was a company in Lancharshire, UK – www.chamberinternet.co.uk. They looked professional and on the ball. I guessed they didn’t have any need to sub-contract to the sub-continent. I therefore emailed them asking if they dealt with www.mosaic-service.com. I also emailed Mosaic asking why one of the sites they had supposedly developed was linking to an entirely different company.

I got two responses the same day.

Chamber Internet were pretty much “Never heard of Mosaic-Service”.

Mosaic-Service’s response was (and I paraphrase): “Yeah, well we work for like, loads of people and do back-end stuff for them, like, yeah, whatever. We also have SO many clients we can’t even REMEMBER when we did work for them”.

Okaaay. They then had the cheek to send another list of websites that they have developed. Or more likely probably not.

So, what’s my point? The Internet makes it easy to lie and cheat about what you’ve done/do. However, it also allows you to be very quickly found out.

Mosaic-Service: Dumb fucks.

You're Welcome!

Another website launch, this time for my boys at Blue River Consulting.

The clients for this site are the Central PBC Group who are based in Newcastle upon Tyne. The group is like a consortium made up of three GP (family doctor) practices. Although they are independent distinct businesses, they join forces on initiatives that provide improved services for all their patients.

The You’re Welcome website is one such collaborative effort. You’re Welcome is a UK Department of Health award for doctors’ services that show they are down wiv da kidz and responsive to their needs. Historically, younger people have been harder to engage because, well, I suppose they don’t like going to see strangers (albeit trained strangers) about their bits and other personal problems. Can’t say I blame them because I don’t like going to see the doctor and I’m nearly 40 years old.

So, this site is meant to lay it all out for the doctors’ younger population and advises them how to make appointments, what services they can access, along with all the contact details, maps and feedback form.

This was one of the harder sites to design, because quite frankly I’m no longer one of da kidz. I have no idea what the like and what will get their attention. Luckily the boys at Blue River had done some of the donkey work for me and had a session with some youngsters. They’d also supplied me with some examples of site appearances that they like.

You’re Welcome was the result. I’m quite pleased with it and it’s getting mad props from the clients. Who said I wasn’t street?

www.gp4u.info

After writing a few posts I started to feel a bit… well dirty and cheap. I thought I’d sold out because there’s only so much I can say about a site that is of little interest to me e.g. life insurance, golfing vacations or shoe shopping. It doesn’t stop me trying though, and you’ll find posts on all those topics! This leads to the question of whether or not the ‘sponsored posts’ cheapen my site, reduce my credibility or expose me for what I am – a cash whore.

On the other hand, there can be real money made from blogging if you can find the right market and produce the goods. People do want to read well informed, entertaining and useful blog posts, and if done right it can be a career of sorts. Is writing in such a way as I’m now doing a stepping stone into something that could be more rewarding, both financially and, er, bloggerly? Am I already a professional blogger? Ok, I won’t be retiring anytime soon, but I get paid for what I do.

Of course, there’s a real danger that my blog will degenerate into a billboard of inane babble about crap products that I – and probably most people who surf on in – don’t give a toss about.

It seems to work a treat and it’ll be easy for me to add new images as and when. All I have to do is crop them, add a caption and them upload them to a folder on the site. The PHP script does the rest. Marvellous.

Now that I have being playing with WordPress for some time, I am getting more familiar with the hands-on customization of templates, the loop and all the other great funky functions that allow developers to get it ‘just so’.

You see, this blog was the first WordPress install I ever did. I admit I was a little apprehensive at this wondrous beast. The theme was adapted from one by my web host (Dreamhost – sign up now!) and all those PHP functions and ‘if’ statements were a little confusing.

Since that first attempt, I have also been building Drupal hosted sites, and although they are different, the core principles of CMSs helped me progress with WordPress when I came back to it.

I thought it was now time to revisit the O.C. blog and clean up the templates and css files to get a more consistent look across posts, comments, category archives and search results. I still have some further tweaking to do, but overall I’m happier with my blog-baby.

I do wish, however, that I could create a more funky header that sums up the Englishman.

Sullivan Management Group Inc.

I am pleased because it’s another local site for my portfolio. We’re getting there, that’s for sure.

www.sullivanmanagementgroup.com

I suppose it was a bonus that we get on so well, with him also being an immigrant like me. He hails from that fine Antipodean country of Australia so although we’re from opposite sides of the planet we have a lot in common (Y’know, from our dark imperialist past!).

So, if you’re looking to buy or sell real estate in Orange County, give Glenn Ritchie a shout and tell them that I sent you. He’ll sort you out for sure.