What your Business should look for in a website

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There are several things you should be looking for when getting a website developed for your business.

Below is a list of the top seven considerations that I believe are the most important.

  • It should use a Responsive Theme.  This has been touched on in the content on our Home Page, but it’s worth reiterating it here because I think it’s the Number One consideration.  A Responsive Theme will adjust itself to display well and correctly as the screen size of the device used changes.  So in other words, if you view a website on a 24″ Desktop Monitor, and then a Laptop, and then a Tablet and then a Mobile Phone with a small screen, the website should adapt and be usable on all the different screen sizes and resolutions.  Images should scale themselves down as applicable, and the Navigation structure should adapt as well.  So why is this so important?  Well the use of mobile devices and tablets to access the Internet has skyrocketed in recent times, nowhere more so than in Australia where our population has embraced the use of mobile devices.
  • It should have Cross Browser compatibility.  Not everyone uses the same Internet Browser.  Some people prefer Internet Explorer, or Firefox, or Chrome, and if you are using a Mac or iPad, then it’s most likely to be Safari.  In each case however, your website needs to display correctly.  If your business website does not display as intended, and parts of it are not where they should be or missing, then that will present an unprofessional look for your business and possibly result in a lost sale.
  • It should contain quality and relevant content.  Again, this has been touched on in the content of our Home Page, and what I am referring to is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.  You can have the best looking website in the world, but if the content on the pages is not well written and relevant to your business and you are not targeting key words related to your industry, then you may as well not bother.  Take the time to do some Key Word Research, do a Google Search for some keywords and then check out the competitions websites to see what they are doing to get those top rankings.  You can’t guarantee you will get the same results, but it sure is better than doing nothing.
  • It should be easy to navigate and find things.  There is nothing worse than visiting a website and finding multiple navigation structures.  Some things can be found in the top menu, other things in a side menu and yet further things in the footer.  Now having said that, there are some valid reasons for doing this.  For example, on this website you will find our “Website Terms of Use” and “Privacy Policy” in the Footer and not on the Main Menu.  This is because they are not the sort of thing most visitors would be looking for.  Everything else however, should be accessible from the Main Menu and you shouldn’t have to guess where to look.  You should also have some sort of Search capability.  I use two different types of Search, depending on whether there is eCommerce involved or not.  If eCommerce is involved, then a Predictive Search plug-in is useful.  A Predictive Search will display a list of results as you type, and is handy for visitors looking for a particular product.
  • It should look clean.  Now this one is a hard one to quantify as beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Colours that I would say are garish, have been insisted on when I have designed websites for some customers.  All I can say is that just as you wouldn’t normally paint the walls of your house bright pink, so should you NOT do the same on your website.  Your logo may well incorporate bright orange and yellow, but that doesn’t mean it should permeate through the pages of your website.  It may even detract from the message or products you are trying to highlight.
  • It should allow visitors to engage via Social Media.  Now this one is the thing that most Business Owners struggle with.  The number one thing that I hear when I mention this is, I don’t want anything to do with that S*#!@.  Let me tell you that I hear you.  The fact of the matter though is that more and more people are using Social Media to communicate, shop, find out information, share information, and it can affect your Search results if you do not have a Social Media presence.  As much as we might dislike it, it is now part of online life whether we like it or not.
  • Make sure you own the Website and Domain Name.  I can’t count how many people have come to me after having their website designed by another company, being dissatisfied, and then wanting to transfer the Management of the website to us.  But when you ask for the log-in details for Domain Name Management, FTP log-in credentials, Website Hosting Account log-in credentials, and they don’t have them and the web designer won’t provide them.  Worse still, they have registered the Domain Name and Hosting Account in their name instead of the Business Owner, and setup the website so the Business Owner does not have full Admin control of the website.  This makes it almost impossible to transfer to a different Domain Registrar and Hosting Provider, and at the very least a frustrating and time consuming exercise.  So the lesson here is, make sure you are the owner and point of contact for your Domain Name, Website Hosting and that you have full Admin control of your website.

How to access your Hosting Account

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The interface to your Website Hosting is known as cPanel, and it can be accessed in two ways.

The first way is to type https://www.yourdomain.com.au/cpanel into your Internet Browser’s navigation bar (where “yourdomain.com.au” is substituted with your actual Domain Name).

This will present a screen where you are required to enter your Username and Password.

cPanel Log-in

This information was sent to you via Email when you signed up for Web Hosting.

Should you need this information to be sent again, please email us at info@spottydog.com.au

The other way to access your Website Hosting is by clicking on the link that was in the original email you were sent with the subject heading of “Your Web Hosting is Ready“.

Your Website Hosting is Ready

You will be taken a web page that looks like this:

Web Hosting Login

Either of these methods achieves and does the same thing.

Once you have logged into your Hosting Account, you will see the following screen:

cPanel

From here there are many things you can do, including creating and removing email addresses, changing email passwords, creating Autoresponders etc.

Setting up your Email in Microsoft Outlook 2003

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This “How To” shows you how to set up an email address in Microsoft Outlook 2003.

For “How To’s” on setting up your Email in Microsoft Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook 2007, please see our other “How To” Guides.

To Set Up Your E-mail in Microsoft Outlook 2003

1. In Outlook 2003, click on the Tools menu, then select E-mail Accounts.

Outlook 2003 Email Accounts

2. In the E-mail Accounts wizard window, select Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next.

Outlook 2003 Add New Email Account

3. For your Server Type, select POP3 and then click Next.

Outlook 2003 Server Type

4. In the Internet E-mail Settings (POP3) window, enter your information as follows:

Your Name
Your first and last name.
E-mail Address
Your full Email address.
User Name
Your full Email address, again.
Password
Your Email Account password that was chosen when the email address was setup.
Incoming mail server (POP3)
“mail.your-domain.com.au” (where ‘your-domain.com.au is replaced with your actual Domain Name.
Outgoing mail server (SMTP)
“your-outgoing-mail-server” (where ‘your-outgoing-mail-server is replaced with your specific Internet Provider’s Outgoing Mail Server (eg. “mail.bigpond.com” if Telstra Bigpond is your ISP, “mail.optusnet.com.au” for Optus, “mail.tpg.com.au” for TPG, etc).

Outlook 2003 User Information

7. Click Test Account Settings to verify everything is configured correctly.

8. Click Next and then click Finish.

Removing message copies from the Mail Server

1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.

2. Click View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.

3. Select your account, and then click Change.

4. Click the More Settings button.

5. Click the Advanced tab, and under Delivery, select the Leave a copy of messages on the server check box.

6. Select the Remove from server after and type in a value of however many days you’s like. The example shows 7 days. This will tell the Mail Server to download all Email messages to your computer but only leave a copy of the messages on the server for a certain number of days. This allows people who want to read their messages at work but also download them for permanent storage on their home computer. We recommend that you choose the smallest number of days that suits your needs. The longer you leave messages on your Mail Server, the greater the risk of filling-up your Mail Server and exceeding your mailbox size quota.

7. Click OK, and then click Finish.

Outlook 2007 remove copy from Server

Setting up your Email in Microsoft Outlook 2007

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This “How To” shows you how to set up an email address in Microsoft Outlook 2007.

For “How To’s” on setting up your Email in Microsoft Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook 2003, please see our other “How To” Guides.

To Set Up Your E-mail in Microsoft Outlook 2007

1. In Outlook 2007, from the Tools menu, select Accounts.

Outlook 2007 Account Settings

 

2. On the E-mail tab, click New.

Outlook 2007 New Email

 

3. Select Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP, or HTTP and click Next.

Outlook 2007 Mail Type

 

4. Check Manually configure server settings or additional server types and click Next.

Outlook 2007 Manually Configure

 

5. Select Internet E-mail and click Next.

Outlook 2007 Connection Type

6. Enter the requested information:

Your Name
Your first and last name.
E-mail Address
Your full Email address.
Account Type
POP3
Incoming mail server (POP3)
“mail.your-domain.com.au” (where ‘your-domain.com.au is replaced with your actual Domain Name).
Outgoing mail server (SMTP)
“your-outgoing-mail-server” (where ‘your-outgoing-mail-server is replaced with your specific Internet Provider’s Outgoing Mail Server (eg. “mail.bigpond.com” if Telstra Bigpond is your ISP, “mail.optusnet.com.au” for Optus, “mail.tpg.com.au” for TPG, etc).
User Name
Your full Email address.
Password
Your Email Account password that was chosen when the email address was setup.

Outlook 2007 User Information

 

7. Click Test Account Settings to verify everything is configured correctly.

8. Click Next and then click Finish.

Removing message copies from the Mail Server

1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.

2. Click View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.

3. Select your account, and then click Change.

4. Click the More Settings button.

5. Click the Advanced tab, and under Delivery, select the Leave a copy of messages on the server check box.

6. Select the Remove from server after and type in a value of however many days you’s like. The example shows 7 days. This will tell the Mail Server to download all Email messages to your computer but only leave a copy of the messages on the server for a certain number of days. This allows people who want to read their messages at work but also download them for permanent storage on their home computer. We recommend that you choose the smallest number of days that suits your needs. The longer you leave messages on your Mail Server, the greater the risk of filling-up your Mail Server and exceeding your mailbox size quota.

7. Click OK, and then click Finish.

Outlook 2007 remove copy from Server

How to use Webmail

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From time to time, you may have a need to use your Webmail facility.

This may because you need to access your email whilst using someone else’s computer, or you may be having an issue with your email service and you want to test it to see if it’s working.

Using Webmail is very easy. Simply visit www.yourdomain.com.au/webmail (where “yourdomain.com.au” is substituted with your actual Domain Name).

This will present a screen where you are required to enter your Username and Password.

Webmail Login

Enter your email address as the Username, and whatever Password you chose when you setup your email address, and then click “Log in”.

Once you have done this, you will be presented with the following screen.

Webmail Roundcube

You have three options to choose from. They all do the same thing, but just look different. I personally prefer “RoundCube”, so that’s what we’ll run with.

After clicking on RoundCube, you will see the Webmail interface and the Inbox, with any emails that are waiting.

Webmail Roundcube Inbox

From here, it is pretty much like using any email program, so I won’t go into the nitty gritty’s.

Suffice to say that you can perform all of the same functions as you can with any email program.

Setting up your Email in Microsoft Outlook Express

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This “How To” shows you how to set up an email address in Microsoft Outlook Express.

For “How To’s” on setting up your Email in Microsoft Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Outlook 2007, please see our other “How To” Guides.

To Set Up Your E-mail in Microsoft Outlook Express

1. In Outlook Express, from the Tools menu, select Accounts.

Outlook Express Tools Menu

2. A box will appear. Click Add and select Mail.

Outlook Express add Mail

3. In Display name, enter your name as you would like it to appear on your emails and click Next.

Outlook Express Name

4. In E-mail address, enter your full email address and then click Next.

Outlook Express email address

5. On the E-mail Server Names window, enter your information as follows:

My incoming Mail Server is
POP3
Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server
“mail.your-domain.com.au” (where ‘your-domain.com.au is replaced with your actual Domain Name).
Outgoing mail (SMTP) server
“your-outgoing-mail-server” (where ‘your-outgoing-mail-server is replaced with your specific Internet Provider’s Outgoing Mail Server (eg. “mail.bigpond.com” if Telstra Bigpond is your ISP, “mail.optusnet.com.au” for Optus, “mail.tpg.com.au” for TPG, etc).

Outlook Express Mail Servers

6. Click on Next.

7. In Account name, enter your full Email address, then enter the password that was chosen when the email address was setup.

Outlook Express Log On

Removing message copies from the Mail Server

1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts

2. Click View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.

3. Select your account, and then click Change.

4. Click the More Settings button.

5. Click the Advanced tab, and under the Delivery section, select the Leave a copy of messages on the server check box.

6. Select the Remove from server after and type in a value of however many days you’s like. The example shows 7 days. This will tell the Mail Server to download all Email messages to your computer but only leave a copy of the messages on the server for a certain number of days. This allows people who want to read their messages at work but also download them for permanent storage on their home computer. We recommend that you choose the smallest number of days that suits your needs. The longer you leave messages on your Mail Server, the greater the risk of filling-up your Mail Server and exceeding your mailbox size quota.

7. Click OK, and then click Finish.

Outlook Express remove copy from Server

How to setup an email address in cPanel

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The first step is to log into your Web Hosting account, the interface is known as cPanel.

To log-in, enter http://www.yourdomain.com.au/cpanel into your Internet Browser’s navigation bar (where “yourdomain.com.au” is substituted with your actual Domain Name).

This will present a screen where you are required to enter your Username and Password.

cPanel Log-in

This information was sent to you via Email when you signed up for Web Hosting.

Should you need this information to be sent again, please email us at info@spottydog.com.au

Once inside the cPanel system, click on the ‘Email Accounts’ icon, located near the top of the cPanel page, in the section named “Mail”. This will take you to the Email account screen where you can add/delete/modify email accounts.

cPanel Email

To create a new email account simply fill in the necessary form fields as described below:

Email: Enter the prefix for your email. For example “info” or “admin” etc.

Password: Enter the password that you wish to use for this account. You will need to enter it twice to indicate that you haven’t mistyped it. You can also use the “Password Generator” button next to the Strength Indicator, which will automatically create a password for you. Just remember that the password is randomly generated and although very secure, it can be difficult to remember!

Mailbox Quota: Enter the total amount of megabytes that you want the mail account to have. If you ignore this field, the default value of 250MB will be used. Or you can choose “Unlimited”.

Click “Create Account” to immediately activate the account.

cPanel email

The email account will be active immediately and you can start sending and receiving email with it.

You can do that via webmail by visiting www.yourdomain.com.au/webmail, or by setting up an email client to use the email address.

Using Webmail and setting up an email clients is a different topic of conversation.

New Shop Front Interface

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Website Hosting, Domain Names, Email Hosting, Caboolture MorayfieldOur new Shop Front for the Purchase of Domain Names, Website Hosting, Email Hosting, DNS Hosting, SSL Certificates etc has been completed.

You can view the new Interface at http://domains.spottydog.com.au.

From this page, not only can you purchase the products listed above, but you can search for Domain Name availability, Transfer a Domain Name, View Pricing information, and log in to your Account and Hosting Manager.

Hello Morayfield!

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Welcome to our all new website!

Being a Caboolture Morayfield based Website Design Company, we thought it would be a good idea to setup a website dedicated to locally based website customers and showcase some of the things that can be achieved with a modern website.

On this website we will endeavour to feature new website capabilities, tips and tricks, useful web design information, and publish information generally useful to business websites via our Blog.

As always, your feedback is important and indeed highly sought, so feel free to drop us a line via email, social media, or telephone.

Iain Kennedy is your local Web Designer, and has a diverse range of experience in different Industry Sectors.

Content Management System (CMS)

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Content Management System (CMS)

All of our websites employ the WordPress platform as the basis of your website. WordPress is a free and open source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. It’s features include a plug-in architecture and a template system. As of Aug 2013, WordPress is used by over 18.9% of the top 10 million websites. WordPress is the most popular CMS system being used on the Web today. It was first released on 27th May 2003, by founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. As of April 2013, version 3.5 had been downloaded over 18 million times. It is a Content Management System (CMS) which basically means that you can log-in to the website and make changes yourself instead of relying on the web designer to make changes on your behalf. At your convenience, you will be able to add/remove pages, edit page content, add/edit or remove images, and if it is an e-Commerce website, you can add/remove and edit your products too.