Case Study – ToolCheck

Technologies Used

  • MVC .NET
  • MS SQL Server
  • AJAX
  • CSS3
  • Javascript
  • jQuery
  • Image Manipulation
  • PayPal Payments
  • Online Eventing & Alerting

Description

Toolcheck.ie is the brainchild of a Wicklow carpenter who has been the victim of tool theft in the past. He had a very simple but powerful idea for how best to combat this. The site is aimed at tradespeople who own valuable tools that are at risk of being stolen.

The central concept behind ToolCheck is to build up a comprehensive database of tools that people in the second hand market can query before purchasing. For example, let’s say Joe Soap is a carpenter and has a toolbox full of valuable tools – he can register on the site, sign up to a monthly subscription plan and then create his online toolbox by uploading serial numbers and images of his tools. Let’s say Joe’s tools are stolen after this point.

Meanwhile John Doe is in the market for a second hand drill and comes across a bargain at a local market. He can query the ToolCheck database (for free) before he buys and if the tool is found on the database – this will raise a flag. In our example, if John finds a match on Joe’s tool – Joe will be alerted and if John chooses to – he can initiate an email conversation with him. Police can also use the database to identify suspicious tools.

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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.

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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?

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Case Study – Wexlow.com

Technologies Used

  • ASP.NET
  • MSSQL Server
  • HTML
  • Bootstrap
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • JQuery
  • SSL/TLS

Description

Wexford Low Energy Homes is a family run company based in the south east of Ireland. They specialise in the construction of low energy housing developments and in 2017 we worked with them to create websites for 2 of their latest developments – gleannanghairdin.com and arduisce.com.

They then asked us to create a website for their own company which can be seen at wexlow.com. As part of this project we designed and built some custom functionality and portals for their contractors and home owners to log in to.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Wexlow.com Website & Online Portal For Contractors Goes Live

This week, www.wexlow.com went live which is a project we’ve been working on over the last while for Wexford Low Energy Homes Ltd. The site is comprised of a modern & clear front-end and more importantly a powerful bespoke back-end that serves as a portal for their contractors to login to download and submit forms.

Visit the site at www.wexlow.com. If you’d like to see how we can transform your business, get in touch.

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