Peter Holloway Posts

What’s in a design? Been Stumbling through the graphic design recommendations. Why do graphic designers insist on Flash? The point of broadband is to make sites fast, not so that graphic designers can dump even more data down the line to us.

Surely good design is more to do with working within the medium rather than adding to the medium in order to blow us away with wonderful Flash animations. I’m sure Flash and other forms of animation have their place, as do other forms of rich media, but that place is not on the home page of a web site.

If as much thought went into the initial look and feel and working within the medium of html/css to produce a slick smooth good looking design as was put into building a huge Flash file the end users would be happier and visit more often.
Any site that forces me to wait for a download before I can view it is quickly passed over in my web surfing.

Of course, there can be some gotcha’s! SQL Server doesn’t allow for autonumber fields, so there has to be a work around. Let’s see if this does it…
It does! 😉

Sophos1 is now being hosted on the new Datawise Computing dedicated server! This gives complete control over how the web server runs and means that only web sites designed by me are on this space. It should give better performance for those sites that need it, along with the flexibility of installing and running our own copy of SQL Server. So far the migration has gone well. All being well all the sites should be moved over by the end of the week.

Sometimes you spend more time on infrastructure than front end. The Datawise Computing web sites are a case in point. Having identified a requirement for dedicated server hosting has led to all sorts of fun and games.

Now I have been introduced to the joys of DNS servers and look forward to the prospect of manually uploading all the web sites on the new server.

There are some positives. Along with the greater complication comes greater control: the ability to install and run our own SQL Server and install any extra components required for specific web sites. So far only datawisecomputing.com has gone over. Once I am 100% sure of this I will move all the other sites over. We should see better performance as well as greater control.

Just couldn’t resist this photo. The family went to the Knowsley Safari Park a couple of days ago. This is Sandra asking an attendant for the way out!

This cheap immigrant labour is getting way out of hand…