Vu online News Feed | Digital Agency Web Design & Marketing Devon

Yume Martin Silver Jewellery Website Updated

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

We've updated Yume Martin's silver jewellery website with 20 new pieces from her latest collection and a PayPal integration. It is now possible to buy her unique silver jewellery pieces as featured in the September edition of Vogue. Enjoy!

Launch the website

Calegeo site launched

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Calegeo are a dynamic new company in the field of marine geotechnical site investigation. We've been working hard on their branding and their new website which was launched a little earlier in the month.

Find out more about our work with Calegeo

The value of sitemaps

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Sitemaps list the publically abvailable URLs of a website in a format known as XML - although other formats do exist such as plain text, ROR and HTML. They're purpose is to inform search engines about pages, documents and other relevant files on a website that are available for crawling.

For a full definition and much more information it's worthwhile exploring the entry for Sitemaps on Wikipedia.org.

Sitemaps supplement but do not replace existing crawl-based mechanisms that search engines use to discover URLs.
Using this protocol does not guarantee the inclusion of web pages in search indexes. It also does not influence the way that pages are ranked in search results.
Usually, your site will get crawled quicker and more pages will be indexed if you submit an XML sitemap to search engines. As search engines do not search entire sites in one go to lessen the load on the server, giving them the new URL's is a good measure to accelerate the process.

It is possible to put together sitemaps by hand but especially for larger sites and/or regular updates this can become a job to big to maintain by hand. There are many free sitemap generators out there but usually they are limited to a few hundred pages. If your site falls within this category, go for it!

If your page count is in the thousands and your website is updated more frequently (which we hope it is!) you might want to consider a sitemap script that not only creates XML sitemaps for you but does so regularly and in other formats as well.

If you want to attempt this yourself, may we recommend this Unlimited Sitemap Generator here. We use it all the time for our larger sites and where we are responsible for search engine optimisation and web marketing programmes.

You can of course hire us to install this on your site. An installation and relevant tests including setting up a cron job can usually be accomplished in under 2 hours.

To read more about the effects of sitemaps on crawlers you should read this interesting article on SeoMoz.com. (You may have to sign up for a free account to read it.)

web standards and testing

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

You'll now find great (free) services on our resources page which allow you to test and measure such things as uptime, performance, accessibilty, user experience, marketing and technology.

Visit our free web resources here

search engine optimisation

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

With "How to write SEO web content in 10 steps" we've just added another guide to our series Free Mini Guides to Web Success.

Here's the guide to How to write SEO web content in 10 steps:
Download How to write SEO web content in 10 steps

internet marketing

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Visibility is considerably higher for organic search results when compared against paid results, and so is the click rate. However, businesses spend many times more on pay-per-click listings than they do on search engine optimisation (SEO).
There's a disconnect here between the results and the spend the cause of which seems simple: the principles of SEO seem so much harder to grasp - and just about anybody can set up an AdWords account and - yes exactly - spend.
At the end of the day, there's a science to both and they are best employed in tandem rather than as competitors for the online marketing budget. It is of course so tempting to think that we can somehow find our way to the pot of gold at the end of the Google rainbow. Somewhere there is the dream that we can get by without advice, without a strategy and above all else without consultants.
I am not so sure about the first two but I don't blame anyone for thinking the latter. There are many cowboys out there in the web business. How can you make sure you spend your money well?

We've put together two helpful guides to bolster your PPC efforts. In a next news item we'll feature similar for SEO. Perhaps this can go some way to show that we know what we're talking about.

Here's our guide to Setting up a Google AdWords account:
Download Setting up a Google AdWords account

Once you have set up your account and are familiar with the workings of it, here are 45 Search engine pay per click marketing tips
Download Pay per click marketing tips

web development

Wed, 05 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

We are currently debating in the office what to think of the situation regarding Adobe's Flash platform following Steve Jobs' now open criticism. One thing seems clear: whether Steve Jobs' arguments are sound or he and Apple are guilty of hypocrisy, not including Flash on iPod, iPad and iPhone shows us that the battle over web standards is as hottly contested as ever.

Steve Jobs' original onslaught in an open letter.
Read the full Apple.com article

Microsoft too are critical of Adobe's Flash technology.
Read the full The Inquirer article

Responding to Steve Jobs' letter on Flash, Adobe confirms plans to move away from Apple products.
Read the full BBC article

More on HTML5 and some examples.
Check out this forum entry on HTML5

internet marketing

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Andrea Katerina manages our social media services, communicating with customers and customers-to-be. It's complex work and involves combinations of our email newsletter service, Facebook and Twitter management as well as constant online market reserach. This gives her an unequalled sense of the pulse out there on the electronic market place.
Like many of the things we do there's no guaranteed route to success or even an established formula. Rather the skill is in the regular and systematic handling of campaigns, analysing their performance, seeing what works and what doesn't as well as simply engaging with customer queries (and complaint!) to understand how "the beast" works.

hosting and ecommerce

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Keep your visitors and data secure with maximum security for your website. For just £399 per year the Extended Validation Secure Server will give your customers peace of mind with the green bar and your company name visible in their browser helping to increase your conversion rates and revenue. Benefits include: Provided by GeoTrust; Green bar in web browsers; Domain, business and extended checks; 40-bit to 256-bit SSL encryption; GeoTrust® True Site Seal with company name, date/time stamp; $150,000 warranty.

hosting

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

From 1st May we will begin the process of discontinuing support for Microsoft FrontPage Extensions. In June 2006 the Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions for UNIX were deemed to be "End-of-Life" which means modern versions of Apache (the web server we use) cannot run the extensions. By removing FrontPage extensions we can benefit from the enhancements, security and features that are in modern versions of Apache.

business

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

After over a year of successful collaboration on numerous projects the two businesses have formalised their close ties. "It makes perfect business sense," says Richard Wain, co-founder of Link & Co. "Our existing customers as well as other agencies and studios we work with can only benefit from this," adds Marcus Link.

web development (ecommerce)

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

With the release of version 3.7.0 of our shopping cart software VuCommerce (formerly the Link & Co. Ecommerce Engine) in March it is now certified PCA compliant. This means that in addition to our PCI compliant payment gateway integrations our customers are now also ready for future PCA regulations.

Find out more about VuCommerce

web development (cms)

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Growability is really important for any website. It's important to keep a website up to date and to allow for future extensions - for example, you may want to add a blog or news section. Our CMS VuContent allows for such managable and growable websites.

Find out more about our CMS VuContent

FTP lock provides web hosting security

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The solution is to lock FTP when it's not in use, making it extremely difficult for the hackers to infect your site via this route. To unlock FTP, customers will simply log into their control panel and click one button to unlock FTP for a period of time. FTP will then automatically lock again after the time period has expired.

Customers will also be able to nominate an IP address that has permanent FTP access, customers FTPing from that IP address will not have to unlock FTP. You will also not have to unlock FTP if you use the File Manager within the eXtend control panel.

These security measures will ensure that the majority of sites have FTP locked, greatly reducing the risk of having your websites infected.

Read more about Gumblar attacks in this Wikipedia article

40 web design projects in a year

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

2009 was only our second year but with more than 40 website projects completed - for clients from Karen Millen to Willie's Cacao - it was a great year.

See our work section for details