Page Elements to make websites manageable

Its been a while since I started writing a plugin for Silverstripe CMS: “Page Elements“.

I felt myself running into the same problems every time when we build websites, no matter which CMS we chose:

  • Multiple columns and content areas on websites are difficult to manage
  • WYSIWYG editors leave little room anything else other than formatted text and images, such as flash elements, forms etc

So what I wanted was:

  • An interface that is fun to use when dealing with complex layouts
  • No more limitation for layouts
  • Straight forward extendability
  • Re-usability of code and components
  • Seamless integration in existing CMS Interface an Workflow.

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April 15th, 2010 / Tech Talk / tim

Starting Out Organized: Website Content Planning The Right Way

We spend a lot of time carefully crafting the visual aspects of websites. This important aesthetic quality helps to shape someone’s first impression when they visit your website. However, as a greater length of time is spent on the site there becomes a blindness to this outer shell, and the content that you have within it is what should shine.

This is often a forgotten or neglected aspect of website creation. In her article “Starting Out Organized” posted on Smashing Magazine, Kirstin Wemmer explains different methods of content planning and organization. These are all important tools to be used (when needed) at particular stages in the website creation process.

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March 20th, 2010 / Tech Talk / Lexi

Books in the age of the iPad

This article by Craig Mod has sparked a very interesting debate amongst his readers – paper ‘vs’ digital. While many people commented about environmental factors (less trees being cut down) or the timeless qualities of print, I didn’t see anything about how through making content digital it allows for speedy duplication and dissemination. For a child in with an OLPC in Mozambique to a iPad in New York, they would all have access to content and stories without being reliant on having to purchase it in paper form.

Read the article: http://craigmod.com/journal/ipad_and_books/

March 18th, 2010 / Tech Talk / Lexi

Micropayments for Bloggers : WordPress Plug-In

March 15th, 2010 / Tech Talk / Lexi

TV ad budgets starting to move online in 2010

Citi Research analyst Mark Mahaney talks about growth areas across the Internet this year

View the full article here.

March 12th, 2010 / Tech Talk / Lexi

It’s fresh from the oven!

The device designed by Poke tells its Twitter followers that something hot and fresh has just popped out of the local bakery’s oven.


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March 8th, 2010 / Creative news, Tech Talk / Lexi

Search Engine Optimisations – Optimising for Launching Global

Search Engine Optimisations

Can you afford not to think about Search Engine Optimisation. Sure as long as you don’t have any competition and if you do, that your competition doesn’t have a website and if it does have a website then prey that they don’t understand Search Engine Optimisation.

Search Engine Optimisation. Important.? Yes simply put, Lets jump back a bit down the evolutionary scale..remember when you first got into business you (or someone you paid) mapped out a S.W.A.T. Analysis. For those who can’t remember this old term:  Strength. Weaknesses. Opportunities. Threats.

This mapping ‘Tool’ hasn’t really changed that much even through the evolution of the Internet and the expansion of New Zealand Businesses onto the world stage.

But Along with the Opportunities – the Opportunity for Small to large New Zealand businesses to expand their core business function and expand into such areas of business growth such as horizontal and vertical diversification , networking and amalgamations and the obvious spread of advertising to markets Globally at a push of a button, and with any and all of these growths and expansions and opportunities comes the luminous ‘Threats’.

For every Opportunity that one wishes to exploit with their business comes the need to understand the nature of the business ‘Threat’.

Which put as simply as one can. Your ‘Threat’ is the element of the Competitor. If you in your business want to start to advertise your product or service on the wider scale to markets in other countries, you immediately have to take into account that the range of competition significantly increases.  So how can you minimise your threats when it comes to opportunities with taking your business to other shores. It comes down to our our First S.W.A.T. tool. Strength’s.

by Strength’s or making it so that your business is, before taking on a larger amount of competitors, should first build itself to a maximum before ‘Launching’ into an offshore market, For the word competitor comes from the word ‘Competition‘ and you wouldn’t want to enter a  competition or bet on your team or player whom wasn’t at their Optimal Peak performance? would you? of course not, You’d be a Bloody Idiot!!

Firstly it would mean a step by step process of Optimising your business and since your business is online this would inevitably mean Optimising your Website.

There are a number of things that one can do to one’s website to start to make it stronger, better, faster, but to make it Optimised in reference to Competitor Advantage, this would directly relate to enhancing its ability and this term is called Search Engine Optimisation.

So what I shall be doing in taking New Zealand Businesses overseas and widening their markets substantially and all of these other opportunities that are knocking at the New Zealand Business door.
Is giving a guide in tactics and factors of Optimising a website, so as, when it comes time to launch into a chosen country or countries, then it shall be at the peak of its technical health, and stand a fighting chance of not just taking grip in a market but absorbing into its new market place and growing in returns of traffic, market spread and ultimately performance in the Worlds Search Engines.

A New Proverb:

“Think about the fact that, every creative person out there has a million ideas.. and out of those million, 10 will make them a million. So how do you drop the 999,990 crap one’s and spend time, effort and money on the 10 good ones.

Firstly. If you haven’t even written one of the ten good one’s down on a piece of paper.. then its still just an idea or what I call a Dream and nothing more. So you will fail. So don’t just be a dreamer.. if you write  it down, its the start of a Plan.

And that’s something I can use.”

(Noah – notes from ‘Ways of surviving the Flood)




March 1st, 2010 / SEO / jonathan

Alpine Choppers – let us show you around!

Work on the new Alpine Choppers site is continuing and so far feedback has been really positive since the site went live. We now have hard data to suggest that the international audience agrees as well.

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February 26th, 2010 / Work / William

SEO start up pack

We are now offering an SEO start up pack to those interested in bringing there site up the rankings in Google and the other search engines.

This service involves performing an initial Health Check on the website that can give us an idea of how a site has been put together. Quite often what you see on the surface is not what Google sees when it crawls the web, so having our expert team look over things can make a big difference.

More often than not sites that are over 6 months old need ongoing work in terms of SEO as trends change and competitors enter the market. We have found that this start up pack can help boost a site that might not have received attention for a while.

This is something we are offering as a one-off service but it can flow into an ongoing management of your SEO requirements if you prefer.

Get in touch with us if you require any information related to this service.

February 26th, 2010 / SEO / William

Kiwi Hunting films target the Texans!

We are working with Stealth Films at the moment on a campaign to sell DVD’s to the Texans. Starting Monday we will be using Google Adwords to geo-target the marketplace in Texas, USA.

Trophy hunting may not be such a common pastime here but for your average Texan it is a dream come true and not better place to do that than in deep Fiorland, New Zealand. Steve Couper of Stealth Films realises that tapping into the US market could be a lucrative move and there is no better way to test that than using Google to test a market share.

February 26th, 2010 / SEO / William