base6 Design

Logo/Branding Update

base6 — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:14:47 +0000

The new 2010 version of the base6 logo has evolved a little since its tentative mention a few weeks ago:

Re-branding base6

base6 — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 10:19:09 +0000

I’ve spent a few hours over the past couple of weeks working on a base6 re-brand. Although I do ‘like‘ the current site and the logo, I no longer ‘love‘ them.

The new logo concept is below:

Obviously I am a few weeks (maybe months) away from implementing this – I had hoped to get it out for this years WordCampUK but ho hum.

If anyone cares to learn more or feedback then drop us a line using the usual approach.

7 Modern and Cool Mobile Phone Logos

base6 — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:55:48 +0000

6 Beautiful Automotive Dashboards

base6 — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:51:26 +0000

The term ‘Dashboard’ has changed in recent years but the original will always be that thing in your car with the buttons and dials.

Here are some examples of modern, beautiful, elegant and modern car dashboard designs:

Making sure FileZilla doesn’t hide your .htaccess file

base6 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:05:19 +0000

If you upgraded to FileZilla v3 and had trouble finding your .htaccess file like I did then you need to follow these steps:

1. Select View > Filename filters…

2. Switch off the “Configuration files” option

3. Bask in the glory of your .htaccess and other hidden files

Note that you may also have to enable the “Force showing hidden files” option (Server menu…).

Announcing 24% Discount in January 2010

base6 — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:06:22 +0000

base6 is offering a juicy 24% discount to anyone who requests a quote between January 1st 2010 and February 1st 2010.

This discount applies to both our fixed price and bespoke proposals so if you are in need of a kick-arse web solution in 2010 we suggest you get a quote before time runs out…

Available Services

Advanced WordPress Solutions
Corporate and Personal Web Design
Design Makeovers
Blog Designs
Usability and Web Standards

eCommerce Website
PSD to XHTML/CSS
Custom Website CMS Solutions
Personal and Corporate Blogs
Forums/Messageboards

You can check the Twitter announcement here: http://twitter.com/base6design/status/7371187615 (follow base6 for future discount news).

Sign up for future base6 promotions and news….

Mascot or Logo?

base6 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:19:12 +0000

I had a brief email conversation with a client recently about designing a mascot for their business. Mascots are a great idea for businesses – especially ones targeting a specific market (children for example).

Unfortunately the idea of designing a mascot posed a problem for me – I’ve stated many times that I am a designer and NOT an artist. My creative character skills stop and start at a very basic level. I had to reluctantly pass this one over.

This did however get me thinking – of all the mascots I’ve seen over the years, which can stand alone without the need for a logo to back them up?

For example, think about Ronald McDonald without the McDonald’s golden arches – even though these branding elements have been kept separate for a while, you know that Ronald is more than just some freaky clown, he has his own identity and purpose.

Below are some examples of this which sprung to my mind – some more recognisable than others. See what you think:

Ask Jeeves

Twitter

SEGA

MailChimp

Freelance Switch

Are My Sites Up?

WooThemes

SliceJobs

So there you have it. A few examples of mascots the brands they help to promote.

Stay on top of WordPress Spam Injection with Automatic Upgrades and SpamCheckr

base6 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:45:14 +0000

I had the unfortunate experience of being spammed a few months ago. Not a huge deal but it did cause both Baconmusic and Engand for Obama to be removed from Google search results for 30 days.

If however it would have been THIS site or one of my client sites I would have been in serious trouble.

What happened

Both of the sites in question were running old versions of WordPress with modified themes that I hadn’t developed from scratch. I’d simply made new CSS/images over an existing framework.

Baconmusic was attacked by link SPAM

Turns out both of these themes had security holes, as did the version of WordPress (2.5) each of the sites were running.

These exploits allowed an evil spam bot to hack in and insert some dodgy code into the WordPress theme header and footer files.

How did I find out

An email arrived in my inbox – the weird thing was initially I thought it was SPAM. The subject was something along the lines of “Your website has been removed from Google..”

Google warning message, courtesy of spamcheckr.jungleg.com/about

“Yeh, sure… whatever…” I thought. Then I read the message and quickly got worried.

After trawling my website code it was obvious something was wrong. Literally 100s of hidden links were embedded into the header and footer of each site. You can imagine the type – viagra, dating, weight loss, money making… all that rubbish.

How I fixed it

First thing I did was fire up SpamCheckr a great service which will use Googles own algorithms to look though your site and report on the problem. Both sites came back with 1000s of issues and a Spam Score which was off the charts (eek!).

The next step was to look into my WordPress theme and find the damage – and after logging in it was obvious where the problem lie: header.php and footer.php where awash with nasty encrypted PHP code.

The easiest way to fix this problem was to re-upload my theme files from a local backup. Therefore overwriting any changes – phew!

After this I upgraded WordPress to the latest version on both blogs. Ran a few security checks and installed a couple of security hardening plugins.

I then gave SpamCheckr another run to make sure everything was clean. My Spam Score was now a truly delightful ZERO

Thankfully my MySQL database was secure. If not the bot could have hacked in and added lines of code to every single post/page/comment in my WordPress database. This happened recently on the CoolSmartPhone website and caused it to go down for a couple of days – nasty stuff!

Immunisation

Upgrading WordPress and checking for weird code in themes is the best measure to ensure this never happens again.

Plugins are also a risk – like themes always download from the official WordPress site or a site you know and trust.

I also run SpamCheckr once a month on every site I manage – just in case – they actually have a service which can do this for you automatically but I have yet to sign up.

IF you’ve never ran this on your site please – do it now.

Rejigging Our Services

base6 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:11:24 +0000

Evolution of a business model is tricky but sometimes things happens to help the processes along, for me it was two things:

The first was an intervention by Iconfactory who had noticed I had inadvertently been using an unlicensed icon pack in my base6 re-design back in May (doh!).

Because of this I was forced to remove around 12 icons from my site. This was no mean feat because I had embedded them so deeply into my new design. In the end I decided it was easier to completely re-work the layout of my site template as well as do some general housekeeping.

The second thing was my attendance at this years WordCamp UK where I realised that my skills as a WordPress developer should no longer be promoted as simply “website design” - My work at base6 has been pretty much 100% WordPress-related since I started the business back in 2005 – I had just never really made that big a deal of it. It was time for this to change.

These two elements alone weren’t enough to ignite my desire to re-work the base6 service structure but together they were hypergolic.

Say Goodbye to Print and Identity services

The Print design industry is saturated with high quality designers working at low cost printing houses. It is almost impossible to effectively compete with their experience and efficiency and recently I have found myself passing over print and identity work to non-web-specific freelancers simply because they have access to tools to get the job done more productively that I ever could.

I also find that sites such as VistaPrint and Printing.com offer adequate online templates and design solutions that are more than enough for most clients on a small budget.

In the works…

Over the next 2 weeks I will slowly re-work the base6 service structure which will result in a homepage overhaul and a couple of new sections being added (as well as a few being removed).

Along the way I will be doing some A/B testing a bit of extra SEO work and some general back-end housekeeping.

Please bear with me and keep a look out for the updates!

If you’d like more information, feel free to contact me using this online form.

Getting my hand slapped for using a freeware icon set

base6 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:34:11 +0000

Anyone who has followed me on twitter over the past 6 months should notice that I love free icon packs. In fact – I consider it a nerdy hobby downloading and collecting as many of them as I can. Last count 1000s of icons on my local hard drive sourced from places like Smashing Magazine, Noupe and Outlaw Design.

Sticky Issue

Last year I fell in love with the mouthwateringly excellent ‘Stricker Icon Pack‘ designed by David Lanham. So much so in fact I used them as the main icon set when re-designing the base6 design website back in May this year. You can clearly see them littering the site on the base6 homepage and in the site footer – I even dirtied up the icons to add to the slight-grunge effect I’d implemented in the new design – this is all detailed on my section ‘About this website‘.

Turns out, by doing this, I’d violated the terms of the icon pack and today I received an email from Iconfactory asking me to remove the icons asap, bummer

From the terms:

They are intended for personal desktop use ONLY. They may not be disassembled, reverse-engineered or otherwise modified, in part or in whole except for personal desktop use.

Lessons learned

As a GPL fanatic I often fall into the trap of assuming that releases such as the Sticker Icon Pack are ‘free’ as in ‘FREE’ to use, re-distribute and modify as long as you quote or at least contact the source designer/developer.

When it comes to icon packs and other ‘free’ graphics that are promoted around the web this is often not the case. Its clear to me now that the bulk of these resources are designed and released for personal use only and should never be used for quasi-commercial purposes.

My advice – check the terms. If you downloaded the icons from one of those popular ’6000 FREE COOL ICONS’ articles as I did then use Google to find the original source and contact the publisher before using them in a live design. Don’t be blinkered by the prospects of a juicy freebie as I have been in this case.

Next step

I’ve never been great at designing high quality icons. I find the process of designing something so small and pixel-dependent a real challange. Its a black art akin to the video game sprite designers of the 70s and 80s which I have always admired.

So my plan is to spend the next few days trawlling through IconDock and Graphic River to find some suitible replacement icons and re-working the base6 site around this.

Finally

I hope this has served as both a warning to my peers and an appology to David Lanham for being so naive. I was blinded by the outstanding quality of the icon pack which was presented to me. Its a shame I can’t use them on this site for much longer, let the time they have served here stand as a tribute to their caliber.