Web Design Gorey ::Blog - General Discussion

Why go bespoke?

WordPress is a very powerful platform for creating and managing websites. When clients come to us looking for help in setting up a website, for 90% of cases WordPress fits the bill (business website with contact forms, blog, online shop etc.). The remainder are in scope for a bespoke solution – their requirements can’t be satisfied with an off the shelf solution like WordPress.

Most web designers can’t facilitate this group as they don’t have the web development skills. See our article here on the differences between web designers and developers. We are both designers and developers which means that we can create something beautiful but has bespoke functionality around your requirements.

Would you like fries with that? The dangers of online website builders

This post is mostly cantered about why I don’t like online website builders. Am I biased? Of course I am! Is a part of me jealous of these companies? Sure. Is the technology impressive? Absolutely. Am I a website snob? Maybe ….

That said, I genuinely don’t believe these solutions are good for most businesses for a number of reasons that I’ll outline here. But first we must go back in time to 2006.

I established ClearSoft in 2006 and had visions of developing a product that would provide an affordable set of tools for non-technical people to create a website from nothing. This system would be web based and while it would work for sports clubs, community organisations and personal sites – it was specifically aimed at small business. Sound familiar?

Going Native… the differences between native apps and web apps

Since the launch of the first smartphones in 2007 the term ‘app’ has taken off in a huge way and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the term was invented at this time. Apps or applications have been around since the dawn of computing and are essentially programs or software that run and execute functionality. We have been creating applications here in ClearSoft before smartphones saw the light of day.

So when we receive enquiries about app development, the client will normally mean a mobile phone app. Very often we find that they are not aware of web apps and we will talk them through the differences. In this article we will describe native and web apps under the headings below :-

Cost
Speed
Functionality
Maintenance / Upgrades
Distribution
Look and feel

Your Website – How many miles do you get to the gallon?

One of the key decisions when shopping for a website is value for money. You can pay from as little as a couple of hundred euros to tens of thousands of euros. One thing to be careful of is understanding that the terms ‘value for money’ and ‘cheap’ are very different things.

All websites are not equal in the same way that all cars are not equal. If you were in the market for a reliable & safe family car, you wouldn’t open up a search engine and type in ‘Cheap cars for sale’. I think most people would have a fair idea on what makes and models they had in mind and this would shape their budget. So if you want a brand new German jeep, you’ll have different expectations and search parameters than if you wanted a second hand family saloon. You’ll see the difference between both – shapes, colours, comfort, technical features, power etc.

The same tells aren’t necessarily visible in a website. So when it comes to a website (and let’s stay with the car theme here), you may be in the market for nice new Mondeo but if you don’t ask the right questions, you could easily buy a 15 year old Fiesta that has 4 bald tires, a rusting engine and no NCT!

What is the difference between web design and web development?

From time to time you may see the terms web design and web development intermingled and while they may be related, they are very different concepts.

Web design is the process of laying out web pages. Where to put the text, the images, the logo, the buttons – which fonts to use etc. A good web designer will have the skills to make the page attractive, intuitive and provide an overall good user experience.

Take Online Bookings & Payments with Bookeroo

Today we launch Bookeroo – our brand new event management system. If you’re busy running a successful event, Bookeroo frees you up to concentrate on running that event by taking the bookings headache away. Bookeroo allows you to create events, schedules, define venues and event capacity. More importantly it allows your customers complete the entire booking process online – leading to less stress for you and eliminating needless errors.

You can check out the bookeroo page on ClearSoft.ie here and it’s own website here.

SSL / TLS– Do I need it?

First of all let’s briefly examine what SSL / TLS means. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and was developed in the mid 90’s to serve as a security mechanism in the infancy of the internet. The main benefit SSL gave was to protect from ‘man in the middle’ attacks whereby somebody eavesdropping on a network connection could gather sensitive information (usernames, passwords, credit card details etc.) and also manipulate network traffic to trick clients into thinking they were talking to an authentic server and vice versa. SSL underwent a number of version updates over the years and in 2015 was replaced with TLS (Transport Layer Security). SSL & TLS are effectively the same concept, TLS is just a newer and more secure version of SSL – however SSL remains the most commonly used term for historical reasons.

So do you need an SSL / TLS certificate on your website? If you’re running an e-commerce website where customers can log in and pay for items on your site – you absolutely need a valid certificate. If you are the victim of a ‘man in the middle’ attack and you don’t have this protection, your customers sensitive information will be visible to the attackers – and that is very bad news for you and if you’re found to be negligent, will have serious legal consequences.

Why go bespoke?

Would you like fries with that? The dangers of online website builders

Going Native… the differences between native apps and web apps

Your Website – How many miles do you get to the gallon?

What is the difference between web design and web development?

Take Online Bookings & Payments with Bookeroo

SSL / TLS– Do I need it?

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