So how do you do it?

In your main Google Docs page click on ‘Upload’. Once on the upload page, check the “Convert text from PDF or image files to Google Docs documents”, upload your scanned images (JPEG, GIF, PNG) or PDFs, and Google Docs will extract text and formatting from the scans. You are then free to edit the converted document and save/share it as you can with any other document.

I know for a fact this is a feature that we will be using here at Moray Web Solutions, and seeing as its available in all versions of Google Apps there will be many others out there that will find it a great addition too!

Okay, so it’s only available if your using Google Chrome browser at the moment, but it does apply to all types of Google Apps account…

You can now simply drag an image you wish to send someone directly on to the email message from your desktop/folder, resize it if required and then send it! Simple!

We are looking at running a few short screen-casts on the new site (almost finished!) geared all around using the Google Apps suite of applications to improve and simplify your business work flow – and get up to speed quickly. Subscribe to our RSS feed to be kept up to date with developments and see any new tips like this one as soon as they are posted.

If you would like to discuss how Google Apps could benefit your business simply call or email us, we would be delighted to discuss the options with you in more detail. Better still drop in for a coffee in our Lossiemouth office for a chat and we might even crack out the biscuits!

Moray Web Solutions are currently working towards gaining the ‘authorised reseller’ status for Google Apps, if you would like to find out more about how easy it is to implement and put to use for your business get in touch today!

So what changes and why?

Well besides a slight freshen up the overall feel of the site will remain the same, we are staying dark I’m afraid! Having added a number for new services and a few more strings to our bow we need to enhance our service offerings page(s), and would like to remodel the portfolio slightly.

The other reason for the redesign happening now is that we are moving the site away from WordPress and on to ExpressionEngine, a fantastic content management solution from EllisLabs, who also produce our PHP framework of choice – CodeIgniter. In fact the new version of ExpressionEngine (version 2.0) has been completely rebuilt on CodeIgniter which was a major factor in selecting the CMS for use on client sites. At the time of writing we have two client sites that are being built on EE and having discovered what a pleasure it is to develop with, it was a natural choice for the new Moray Web Solutions website.

We are not sure how long it will be before any of the new look MWS site will appear due to a rather busy start to the year client wise, but with any luck it shouldn’t be too far away. In the meantime, standby for a post all about ExpressionEngine and why we have shifted to a commercial CMS over open source, and another post filling you in on the sites we are pushing out in the first quarter of 2010.

Finally…

Seen as this is the first post of the year, Moray Web Solutions would like to take the opportunity to thank all our customers to date for their business – and wish everyone a very prosperous 2010!

Christmas Office Hours

Dec 24th – 09:00 > 13:00
Christmas Day – Closed
Boxing Day – Closed
Dec 28th – 09:00 > 17:00
Dec 29th – 09:00 > 17:00
Dec 30th – 09:00 > 17:00
New Years Eve – 09:00 > 13:00
New Years Day – Closed

Support will be available via email 24/7 throughout this period as you would expect. Normal business hours will resume on the 4th of January.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our clients past & present, and our website visitors a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous and Happy New Year!

Graphic Designer

Moray Web Solutions is looking for a talented graphic designer, preferably with experience in website design to assist with a number of upcoming projects, with a view to creating a permanent working relationship or position within the business. We would also be pleased to hear from any students currently studying graphic or web design who would be interested in some regular work. If you would like to find out more get in touch and introduce yourself, all the details are on the contact us page. If you have an online portfolio please include a link so we can be nosey!

Web Developer

In addition to the above we are also keen to find a capable web developer with a solid understanding of XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP/MySQL. Any experience of working with WordPress, Drupal, Magento or similar applications would be beneficial. As the majority of application development is done using CodeIgniter this would also be useful, although not essential if PHP is already a solid skill (you’ll pick it up really quickly!). Again, if you you would like to find out more, or put yourself forward for consideration you can find all out contact details here. Online portfolio links would be appreciated where available.

Don’t Be Shy Folks!

We have got plans to grow Moray Web Solutions status over the coming year, something that cannot be achieved without fresh new talent. If you are still reading this you must be interested, so let us know – even if you don’t think you have everything in your toolkit quite yet. We are looking for the right people with the ability to learn and adapt to an ever changing and face paced industry, so don’t be shy.

Although this kind of work can be done fairly easily at distance we are especially keen to here from interested parties in and around Moray, Aberdeenshire, Nairn, Inverness, the Highlands or Perth. By growing a team in the North of Scotland it allows for easier communication, a better understanding of the local business marketplace and holds more opportunity to get together for a bit of fun – bring on the karting and paintball!

So if you are a graphic/web designer or web developer within the North of Scotland get in touch now, there are projects waiting so we are keen to get people on board as soon as possible…

So where has all the time gone? Well to be honest most of it has been spent in my number one friend of the moment, CodeIgniter! In addition to a few more simple design projects, Moray Web Solutions is currently working on two larger projects both of which are being built from the ground in CodeIgniter. More information on these projects will be forthcoming, one at the end of this year and the other early 2010 but I am bursting to tell all as quick as possible.

As I mentioned in the introduction to this post I have some positive news not just for Moray Web Solutions, but for the small business community in general… things are beginning to move again! There appears to be a slow but steady growth in the requirement for our services and that can surely be taken as a good sign. A result of this is that in order to satisfy the demand we are now looking at ways to bring on board additional staff on a permanent basis. There will shortly be an additional post with more information and to appeal to anyone that may be interested in joining the team.

And finally…

We have moved! Moray Web Solutions has in the last few days taken up residence in a new office where the business will be based and operate from with immediate effect. The new address is on the contact page, the telephone numbers and other contact details remain the same.

If you are brand new to CodeIgniter I would suggest that you first read Ben Haines Everything You Need to Get Started With CodeIgniter article before reading on. The following tips are more about customising the structure and configuration of CI, rather than configuring it for first use.

Tip 1 – Removing ‘index.php’ from the URL

I know this one has been covered in many tutorials already but I thought I would include it anyway so as to keep things together in one place. As you will be aware if you have already downloaded and installed CodeIgniter on your server or localhost, by default CI includes ‘index.php’ in it’s URLs. This is one of the first things I change when setting CI up for a new project, and it’s really simple to do!

There are two stages to this, the first being an edit in the config.php file in the system/applications/config folder. You simply need to change the index_page array (line 26 on a standard install) to a blank string
$config['index_page'] = "";
The second stage is sorting a .htaccess file for the root folder to deal with the required rewrites. Don’t worry if you’re not a mod_rewrite guru, you don’t have to be! I have included an example of a basic htaccess file that should get you up and running, this was taken from the CodeIgniter User Guide.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
And that’s it; you should now be rid of the annoying ‘index.php’!

Tip 2 – Your ‘application’ folder

Many CI developers prefer to move the applications folder outside of the system folder, and I am no exception. I feel it makes the separation of the application code and the core code more obvious, whilst offering opportunities to further tighten security. There is nothing special you need do for this other than physically move the folder.

At this point in the process my project root folder contains the following…

• /application
• /system
• index.php

Now I would like to change the name of the application folder to something more meaningful. I do this partly as I am usually working on a number of projects so it helps me work out where I am! The other reason this may be helpful is if you plan to run multiple applications from one CodeIgniter code base, this is something I may cover in a later tutorial.

First, rename the application folder to whatever you like. Then we need to make a change to the index.php in the root of our site. When you open this file in your editor you are looking for the $application_folder definition on or near line 43. Enter the new name for the application folder.
$application_folder = "NewApplicationFolderName";
It’s worth a quick check at this point that everything is still working okay, so have a quick check in your browser before carrying on.

Tip 3 – Moving the ‘system’ folder

This is where security of the application can be tightened, but it does require suitable access to your server (not a problem on a localhost obviously). What we are going to do is move the system folder up a level so that it’s outside the public area of our site, and out of harm’s way.

I use Wamp as my localhost for development, so the new structure now looks like this: (assuming we followed Tip 2 above!)

• www/system/
• www/projectfolder/newappname/
• www/projectfolder/index.php

We now need to change the $system_folder definition in the index.php file in the site root to reflect this change. You should find it around line 26.
$system_folder = "../system";
Again it’s worth checking that everything is still working okay at this point, before carrying on.

Tip 4 – Using an alternative ‘views’ folder

This was one that I spent quite a while looking for, but was surprised just how easy it was in the end. I like to keep a clean separation of code and interface if at all possible, and having the views folder buried deep inside the application folder doesn’t really achieve that. Wouldn’t it be much nicer if we could drop a themes or templates directory in the root and use that for our view files? Well that’s exactly what we will do!

Create your folder as you normally would, in this case we’ll call it templates and place it in the root of our site, but you can call it whatever you want.

In order for CI to recognise this as the views folder we need to extend one of the core libraries. This is where CI is great as we can use the simple extension system that they have created without hacking the core code. First you need to create a new library inside your application folder (or whatever you called it earlier!), this needs to be named carefully in order for CI to acknowledge it! It MUST be called MY_Loader.php, and contain the following:

Class MY_Loader extends CI_Loader {

	function MY_Loader() {

		parent::CI_Loader();
		$this->_ci_view_path = 'templates/';

	}

}

WAIT!! Don’t hit refresh yet! Remember to move any existing view files into your new folder before you check your app, otherwise you’ll get errors.

Tip 5 – Using an images/assets folder

And finally if you have elements that you would like to use throughout the site such as javascript libraries or stylesheets, wouldn’t it be nice to pop them in a central directory that’s separate from the view files? This is another one that there are many questions about that is in fact, really simple! The following is the way that I achieve this, that’s not to say it’s the only way.

I usually work with an assets folder in the root, with subdirectories for images, javascript, css etc. and this is how I link to them…

// To link to a stylesheet in your view document header
// (Requires the html helper to be loaded)
echo link_tag('assets/css/styles.css')."\n";

// Linking to a javascript file in your view file header
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?=base_url().'assets/js/jquery.js';?>"></script>

// Setting the source of an images file
<img src="<?=base_url().'assets/images/filename.png';?>" alt="alt text" />

Get Developing!

So that’s it your off and running, so get making that nice new app that we are all waiting for! This is by no means a definitive list, or indeed the only way of achieving some of these outcomes it’s just the way that I have found easiest (so far).

So whats been keeping me so busy? A number of things have been taking up my time over the last month or two, for one I have had the pleasure of providing some outsourced services to a couple of fellow designers. I have also been working on  a couple of new project proposals, one of which is due to start in the next week or so. I have also been making some ground up on a couple of web based projects that I am developing in-house, but more on them in a minute.

Over the coming month I will putting some more work into The PlayBarn at Greenfields site, very little has been done visually since it’s launch and there a few things I am keen to improve. Part of this process will see a move to WordPress to simplify some of the administration of the site and quickly add some new and interesting feature – stay tuned for some updates on that one. I will also be starting on the Pipistrelle website this month, if you remember they were the winner of the competition we ran with Scottish Business Forums. After a rather long lead time do to them being a rather busy (and well travelled) business we now have the basis of a requirements document in place, I am looking forward to getting started on that one. If time allows this month I am keen to work on a few tweaks and improvements to the blog layout on the Moray Web Solutions site itself, fingers crossed on that one!

Now the really juicy stuff…

I have always been an ideas man, and over the last few weeks I have been looking into the development of two of those ideas. I am delighted to say that the development of both of these ideas has now begun and we will be publishing some more information on at least one of them in the next week or so. This is when the information and pre-launch registration site will go live.

One last thing, keep an eye on the tutorials section of the blog as I am finally making some progress on a couple of tutorials that should be online soon. The first of these will be looking at some configuration tips for the open source PHP framework CodeIgniter.

Why Not Make Your Own?

This is a really simple question to answer! Is there any point in re-inventing the wheel? Especially when that wheel was jointly designed, tested and developed by a worldwide team of experienced and credible developers?

Part of a web designer/developers responsibility to their client is ensuring that any solution developed is built using a scalable, secure and suitable platform. I have in the past developed custom content management systems for clients who have specific needs that cannot initially be addressed using existing open source software, but to be honest there is little need for the majority of businesses out there. There are a number of valid reasons why a solutions provider such as me would rely on a 3^rd party open source platform.

Security

Due to the way that open source development works there are thousands of developers working away constantly to fine tune and improve the security of the product. Literally every minute of the day a developer somewhere in the world will be contributing to improving something to do with the software. No single web developer or design agency could afford that many hours of continual testing and development and stay afloat. They would never achieve the same results in anywhere near the same timeframe, even if they stopped all client development projects for a few months (which is impossible!).

By using open source solutions where suitable such as WordPress, Drupal and Silverstripe we are in turn providing that constant security testing and development without having to employ a team of dedicated developers full time. This keeps our, and more importantly our customers costs down without compromising on quality.

Updates & Improvements

Much as with security that massive team of developers are constantly making changes and improvements to the software in areas such as feature availability, performance enhancements, search engine optimisation not to mention the constant development and updating of useful plugins to add specific functionality. All of these would take more hours than any design agency could afford to commit to a project and would carry a huge overhead for their business.

With all this going on in the background it affords us the time to create unique, custom solutions to meet our client’s needs whilst keeping the project affordable and reducing overall development time. It also enables us to keep our clients sites updated with a minimum of fuss, and in some cases with no additional cost.

What I Use and Why

I am constantly looking out for new and existing open source projects that will allow me to provide fantastic, scalable and secure solutions for my clients.  To date I have worked with many different applications to test their suitability for various different projects. I do have a ‘preferred’ toolbox that I will look to in the first instance as they address the needs of the majority of businesses/clients that have a need for website or service.

For content management or blogging solutions I look to WordPress, Drupal and Silverstripe. I have selected these as they have a particularly active developer community. This means that not only are there constant core improvements keeping my solutions efficient and secure, but also there is an impressive selection of plugins available that can assist in reducing development time and subsequently client costs. Common sense I am sure you will agree!

For e-commerce solutions I have selected just one solution, and for very good reasons! Magento is one of the fastest growing and most flexible open source e-commerce solutions available. I have been following the development of Magento from a very early stage, always impressed with the rate of development, the range of features and the attitude of the developer community involved. It is now an award winning application that no developer or studio could ever match with a custom built application – not by a long shot!

All of these solutions can be completely customised in look and function, one of the reasons why they were selected in the first place! This customisation involves the same skills and techniques required to build either a static style website, or for that matter a custom CMS solution. For this reason you cannot say that someone is not a web designer because they choose to use an existing CMS product. The truth is in fact the opposite. A high school student could knock together a simple website or CMS although it would lack the security and functionality of any of the above solutions. In many cases it takes a developer with far more experience and technical understanding to fully customise and expand on an open source application in a secure and efficient way!

In Summary

I built the Moray Web Solutions on WordPress as it is well recognised within the worldwide design/development community as being extremely well suited to portfolio style websites – plus I wanted to use a blog as an important part of the site. WordPress fitted the bill perfectly. The theme has been developed from the ground up by myself (and continues to evolve where time permits) and as such it is a unique site that serves the needs of the client (me!).

Ironically I do actually have two custom CMS systems in development as I type this, both of which are being built using the open source PHP framework CodeIgniter. These are for in-house projects that require specialist functionality that cannot be found in the existing open source applications available. Again, as a professional designer/developer I am building a solution on the most suitable platform.

Any web designer or developer worth their salt will recognise the huge benefits of using open source platforms to build client solutions. I have written this in attempt to answer my anonymous commenter’s question, and to explain to the rest of the non-design community the advantages that these applications can bring.

As always I am interested in hearing your opinions on this and any matter discussed here in my blog, so feel free to comment below! It would be nice though if you could leave a real name and email address so that I can at least respond in a personal way…