Dare to Think | Web Design, Blog Development, Hosting and Print and Print made Simple

Launch of Adaxial Website

alan — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:57:52 +0000

Today saw the launch of the www.adaxial.co.uk. We were recommended to Adaxial’s Denzil Lee by one of our current clients. I know I always say it but it really is great to get a call from a potential client that have heard of Dare to Think through websites that we’ve developed. It just goes to show that if your work is good, your prices are right and you have a good working relationship with your clients that they will be more than happy to refer you.

Adaxial specialises in improving the operational and financial performance of client companies.

Launch of t7F London Website

alan — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:00:08 +0000

t7F London had seen the work we were involved in developing and keeping up to date the interestment.co.uk website. They required a website, with blog built-in, to showcase their work and have a place where they communicate with the world through their blog.

The site is very creative minded and features a full screen homepage scroller that incorporate their main case studies. Although the blog is a part of the main site they wanted this to look different but still with keeping with the feel of the site. Take a look at the site now.

Root Path and Configuration of your Website using php

alan — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:43:17 +0000

There’s times when you need to know the root path of a website as well as all of the configuration details of that server. This is actually very simple, we’ll explain how…

Root path of your site

Open a plain text editor and enter the following:

Then save this with a .php extension i.e. root-path.php and upload to the root of your site via FTP. Then type in the url to that file and you’ll see the root path of your home directory.

Configuration details of your site

Find out if your server runs php and all of the configuration details of the server by opening a plain text editor and type the following

Save the file with a .php extension i.e. config-details.php and upload to the root of your site. Type in the url in your web browser and all of the server config details are there to see.

If you’ve found this useful please leave a comment below.

Show and hide text in a form field using onclick and onblur

alan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:17:44 +0000

A great way to reduce the need for a field heading/title is to include the informative text within the text field. This is most commonly used in search fields, where there’s often no further available room to include a heading alongside or above.So from having a black search field like this:

You can have one with some explanatory text contained. This will disappear as the user clicks in the box and should they not enter any text will reappear again when they click elsewhere on the page.

To recreate this version use the following code:

You can then style your form field by using background images, removing the field border, adding an image instead of the standard submit button and make your very own lovely search field.

Should you remove the border on clicked links

alan — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:33:35 +0000

Firstly, dotted borders on clicked links are there for a reason – For accessibility and usability. They may not look pretty on your newly designed website but some folk rely on them to get around the web. Therefore only remove if strictly necessary.

Here what they look like:

The selector and declaration you need to insert in your stylesheet is:

*:focus {

outline: 0;

}

*:focus {outline: 0;}

A better way to do is to only use this on certain elements. For example Safari adds an ugly blue box on form text field elements to highlight that you’re in a certain field.

Great on the majority of forms and you should probably think about keeping them but for fields such as your search box then you can add text to this, which will highlight when tabbed on.

So you can remove it from this. To do this include the following in your text field style.:

outline: 0;

Have a go for yourself – first, tab your way around your website and notice how easy it is to know what link you’re currently on. Now, add the focus selector to your stylesheet and try to navigate around your site now… Almost impossible, right? As with anything, web-wise, you have to know when you can and can’t do something and when it will affect your site users.

Testing websites in IE6, IE7 and IE8 on a Mac

alan — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:35:42 +0000

When designing and developing websites it’s important to test in all of the most popular browsers. Those are currently Firefox, IE6, IE7, IE8, Google Chrome and Safari. For some reason PC users don’t seem to update their version of Internet Explorer so as each new version arrives on the scene we then have to develop for those very old browsers. Anyway, here’s how to do it…

1. Firstly purchase and install Parallels Desktop which will enable you to run Windows on your Mac (you will also need to purchase a copy of Windows XP).

2. Windows XP has Internet Explorer 6 included so what you’ll now need to do is create a clone of your virtual machine so you can then run IE7 and IE8.

3. Open the new virtual machine and then upgrade IE6 to IE8. From there you’ll then be able to view sites as they appear in IE7 by clicking the little broken page icon next to the address bar.

4. On your newly cloned machine then download Firefox and Google Chrome so you can then test your sites in those browsers too.

5. Yes, you will still have to open up your old virtual machine to view websites in IE6 but this is a far better representation of your sites and more stable solution than using IE6 emulators which are a bit hit-and-miss.

Keep checking the latest browser stats to see when that dreaded IE6 will die a painful death!

IE6 Div Height Problem

alan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:03:35 +0000

We all know IE6 is the web developers nightmare and today that continued when I was unable to make a 5px high div appear that height in IE6. Wow, the amount of time I spend on IE6 when developing sites is quite astonishing and I can’t wait for the day when we see the death of IE6. Anyhow back to the problem: IE6 kept wanting to show the 5px high div as 20px! After a bit of playing and hunting around the web here’s how I overcame the problem.

For example you have:

#small-div {
width: 100px;
height: 5px
background-color: red;
}

#offers-bt {

width: 378px;

float: left;

font-size: 0px;

}

So this will appear in most browsers as a 5px div. But in IE6 it appears higher. So to overcome that issue simply add a zero font size to the CSS e.g:

#small-div {
width: 100px;
height: 5px
background-color: red;
font-size: 0px;
}

Now, if you have text in that div, you obviously don’t want to set the font size as zero so you can also try setting the overflow:hidden element which can also do the trick.

10 Tips to Clean, Optimize and Speed up your Wordpress Site

alan — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:30:43 +0000

If you find your Wordpress Site is struggling speed-wise or you’ve been given your marching orders from your web hosts (due to high CPU usage) then read on and hopefully these few tips will help sort out and speed up your Wordpress Blog.

Before doing any of the following it’ll be a good idea to back up your database. You can do this via phpMyAdmin (if you know what your’re doing) or there’s a handy little plugin called WP-DBManager which will do it for you and lots lots more. Whilst we’re on that note, please remember to back up your database every now and again, just in case!

1. Remove any plugins that you simply don’t use

Visit your Wordpress Admin site and click on Plugins > Inactive to find out which will be safe to remove. You should also take a look at your Active plugins as there might be some in there to delete as well (be careful though as they may be used somewhere on your site.

2. Update Wordpress to the latest version

You should see a warning at the top of Wordpress Admin page if you need to upgrade to the latest version. It’s a wise idea for security reasons to keep up to date. Here’s a handy guide to upgrading Wordpress.

3. Upgrade any out of date plugins

If there’re are newer versions of plugins available then you will see a little number next to “Plugins” in your Wordpress Admin page.

4. Find orphan options in your database

Luckily there’s a plugin for this, as hunting through a MySQL database – if you don’t know what you’re doing – can be a daunting task. So install Clean Options and select “Find Orphaned Options”. You’ll more than likely be presented with a huge list. Now, take your time and look at these carefully. If there’s any that are obvious then select them and delete. There’s also a useful search option where you can search for that option in Google – there you might be able to find out what it is and whether it’s safe to delete. Just because it’s an orphan file it doesn’t mean that it’s not being used by one of your plugins. So, really, just take your time with this.

5. Optimize your database

Download WP-Optimize and remove all post revisions, clean marked spam comments, clean unapproved comments and optimize database tables. A great tool that can save a lot of space in your database. I got one site down from 16mb to 10mb.

6. Cache your pages and posts

Every time somebody views a post on your blog there are numerous scripts that have to be run each and every time. This can be very processor intensive and your web hosts won’t like you for it. So download WP Super Cache and use it. It will then only have to run a load of scripts once – then everybody else will see the cached version of the page. Don’t worry if you update it or somebody adds a new comment – it’s clever enough to then generate a new page.

7. Cache your Wordpress Widgets

Widgets work in a different way and so you’ll need another plugin for this called WP Widget Cache. Now, I was a bit confused as to where the options were for this plugin but they are actually on the Widgets Admin page, above your widget.

8. Reduce the amount of Tags you use

Now, I think and I’m in the process of testing this but, I think that tags are a major problem with CPU usage and so I think you really need to reduce the amount you use. Don’t 20 or 30 tags for every article you publish – stick to a handful.

9. There isn’t really a ninth or tenth tip but 10 Top Tips sounds better than 8!

10. Keep your Wordpress site up to date

Upgade plugins when required, backup your database, backup your files every now and again, clean and optimize your database. If you do these things then everything should run smoothly.

I hope you’ve found this useful if so, then remember to retweet it or share it below. Also, be sure to check out another useful Wordpress post: How to Secure your Wordpress Blog

10 FREE Mac apps you can’t do without

alan — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:55:41 +0000

I won’t list the obvious such as Illustrator, Photoshop, MS Word etc but more those little apps that you’ve probably not even heard of. There’s absolutely loads of them – yes, even for us Mac users – but which ones should you download. I’ve chosen 10 here that I use on a daily basis – I’m sure there’s others out there and I’d be interested to know what little hidden gems you know of that you think other should use… Remember it has to be FREE!

Unread Mail Count

Mail unread menu sits in your menu bar and lets you know, at-a-glance, how many unread emails you have in Apple Mail. You can also configure the app to exclude mailboxes so only notifying you of your important emails.

Search bookmarks from any browser

Allbookmarks sits in your menu bar and acts as a little search tool for all the web browsers you have on your Mac. If you’re anything like me I chop and change between Safari, Firefox and Camino and add bookmarks to each of them. From the menu

Follow up previously sent emails

How many times have you sent an email and then realised you’d forgotten to say something… It happens to me all the time. Mailfollowup adds another button in Apple Mail so when you select your previously sent email you can choose to Follow Up that message which is basically like a Reply function but sends to the recipient and not you. One of my used little apps

Force empty your trashcan (that’s a bin to us British folk!)

Every now and again there’s something in your trash that you can’t delete – don’t ask me why it can’t be deleted! Anyway, by running Force Empty Trash your trashcan will be all clean and empty once more.

Alternative Music and Video Player

iTunes and Quicktime player are great but there’s times when you have a folder full of music that you want to play without having to add it to iTunes and I do find that some DivX movies play a lot better in VLC Player with better audio sync and correct aspect ratios. Simply drag anything to it’s window and click Play – it will then play it in the order it appears.

BitTorrent Client

I’ve used pretty much all the torrent apps out there and always come back to Transmission. It only has a small window and really is very basic.

Twitter

It seems the entire universe is into Twitter at the moment and whether it’s just another passing fad or whether it’s here to stay we all need a Twitter client that sits on our desktop informing of us of Stephen Fry’s latest twhirl is a lovely little Twitter app, allowing multiple accounts, notifications of new messages, shorten long urls, and lots of search functionality

Notepad

I don’t like the way Apple have incorporated their Notes app into Mail. I just don’t think it works and because of that I never use it. Instead xPad is a great alternative, allowing you to add new notes within a single window. It’s an incredibly simple app but that’s what actually makes it great.

Video and Voice calls

If you haven’t already got Skype then where have you been? Skype allows you to communicate with other Skype users for free via video and/or voice. It also offers very cheap calls to most countries.

Files and Folder sizes

Ever wonder just what is taking up all that space on your Mac? Well, it can help if you can see everything in one clear and concise window so you can then decide what to move or delete to free up valuable some space. Whatsize does this fantastically well… It’s free for measuring up to 20gb of space or $12.95 to measure anything. Don’t just go and delete stuff willy-nilly as it might be vital for the functionality of your Mac – best to check first before you do.

And finally… One to get that’s not free but you should get

All I want from a task list is something very simple. On most of the task managers you end up taking more time adding tasks than it actually takes to perform them! I never need due dates, times, notifications etc etc etc so if you want something easy, quick and simple then look no further than Taskpaper. It’s actually so simple I’ve started to use it as a notes app as well… You can go ahead and download it before choosing to purchase it but I think you should as you’ll love it’s simplicity.

Launch of point de collection… website

alan — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:14:36 +0000

The English version of point de collection launched today. point de collection… provide an exclusive range of quality wines from France and Spain. They also have the ability, through the CMS, to include French content, which will be added in the next couple of months – we’ll keep you updated with future site developments.

Dare to Think were recommended by La Ferme du Mont, who were recommended by VertuVin. It just goes to show the importance of contacts and creating and maintaining a strong client relationship. Hopefully, we’ll visit the Vineyards soon and celebrate in style!