What’s a top level domain I hear you say? Well, a Top Level Domain (TLD) is the final part of your domain name, with the most familiar being “.com”.

The two-character domain names were originally for country specific domains, such as “.uk”  for the United Kingdom (although in this example the second level domain “.co.uk” is more widely used). In addition to the country specific Top Level Domains there are also the generic TLD’s such as .gov, .net. org and .com.

The “.co” TLD is the country code top-level domain for the Republic of Colombia but is now generally available for anyone to register.

.mobi is another relatively new TLD made available in 2006, derived from the adjective ‘mobile’  and is an alternative choice to having a sub-domain on your website – such as “mobile.yoursite.com” – for your mobile optimised website. All .mobi sites must be optimized for viewing on a mobile phone.

Contact a member of our team at whiteinteractive to have your .co and .mobi domain variants registered now – and check out our blog for more information about mobile websites.

This unique online service sources the best prices for materials from a range of trade suppliers, meaning their customers across the UK benefit from highly competitive prices.

So, if you have a building or home DIY project, iimprove simplifies the process by offering three services that meet the needs of any home improvement project.

iquote is a complete quotation service which allows customers to obtain a competitive price for materials by entering the type and quantity required from individual iplumb, ibuild, ikitchen, and idoor departments.

The complementary iproducts catalogue allows customers to purchase top brand products direct from a range of hand picked plumbing supplies including radiators, boilers, taps, complete bathroom suites and showers at similar trade prices.

And iquantify is a specialised service designed to assist anyone requiring an early indication of build costs or with a desire to project manage their own build. For a nominal fee, iimprove’s experienced team of quantity surveyors will use your planning or building regulation drawings to provide a comprehensive breakdown of materials required together with an indication of labour costs.

Finally, the free itrades directory allows users to search for reputable tradespeople within their local area, allowing users to rate and review their work to help other iimprove visitors make an informed decision on who to use.

So saving money has never been easier – visit www.iimprove.co.uk and check it out for yourself.

A website that displays quickly:

- Gets your website users to the information they need quicker
- Means that a visitor is less likely to get frustrated and go somewhere else
- Provides a positive impression of you through a positive online experience
- Gets better rankings in website search engines
- Scores higher when competing against other websites for Pay-Per-Click position on search engines

Reasons your website may be running slowly include:

- The quality of the server and network infrastructure of your Hosting company
- Poorly optimised pictures, images and other media files on your website
- Poorly optimised web code
- Too much data or too many images on a single web page
- Inefficient database query’s
- External data feeds or scripts, for example Third Party Advertising services

In the days before broadband web designers had to be both prudent and clever with their designs to deliver a fast Internet experience for website visitors. As broadband became the standard way to connect to the Internet, and more bandwidth became available, inevitably designers relaxed a little and websites with more media heavy elements took over. The good practices from a decade ago though are still as relevant today as they were back then, paying attention to the things that can impact your website speed will always reap benefits.

At white interactive we understand the importance of having a professional website so have created a solution that will enable start-up and small businesses or those on a tight budget to develop and build their brand online.  Our templated approach offers cost conscious businesses a straightforward yet highly professional solution, which can be tailored with the organisation’s branding and style.

Start-up business Lorus Consulting, a financial recruitment consultancy, have recently benefited from our templated approach. Working closely with the client, we designed a logo and identity which was than incorporated into the design of the website. The website www.lorusconsulting.com, which was also integrated with TriSys recruitment software, delivers an effective and professional web presence.

Dylan Pearson, Director of Lorus Consulting is: ‘incredibly pleased with the outcome. white interactive’s approach was professional and the website was delivered on time and most importantly within budget.’

In something of a surprise move the software company is backing a newer effort at the World Wide Web Consortium to standardize Web-based fonts with technology called the Web Open Font Format (WOFF).

Let’s hope we see this new standard supported by all of the major browser manufacturers in the very near future.

2010 has started off incredibly busy for us here at whiteinteractive and we have just recruited two new staff to help support our growing digital business, offering website design for business’ in Hampshire and the South.

The client requests changes to their website, we carry out the changes and notify the client, the client reports back that the changes have not been done. Of course the changes have been done. the client just cannot see them. So what is going on here?

Welcome to the world of caching. When you view a web page your web browser software downloads that page, and the media on it, and stores it on your computer. This storage is known as the browser cache. This helps to speed up the viewing of the website as the browser doesn’t have to keep downloading the same files again and again. If you leave the site and come back later then, depending on how your browser is configured, you may get your local cached copy loaded instead of having the page freshly downloaded from the website. This is what can lead to the impression that page updates have not been done.

It is useful to be able to forcibly refresh a web page and clear the local cache. For information on how to do this there is a useful wiki page on clearing your cache. A quick way to force the refresh of a single page is simply to go the page and press Ctrl-F5 (PCs only).

Sometimes, even this isn’t enough though to see the page changes. The problem here can be that caching is occuring at your network level or even your Internet Service Provider. If this is the case then you will have to wait until their cache is updated.

So there you have it, an awareness of caching is always useful in understanding what you are looking at and how to ensure you are viewing the most up-to-date information.

A three strong team from White Total Design took part in this years race aiming for personal best times. Despite what the organisers described as a slight incline after 6k – it was more of a mountain! – Lisa, 52.31, Sam, 55.47, Nick 54.49 all managed to finish in their fastest times.

This year the race was once again  organised splendidly by the Rotary Club of Chichester Priory and was fortunate  to have the same two sponsors, Peter Cooper, the local Volkswagen Group and  Brooks Sports the international suppliers of sports clothing. Organisers and  sponsors were pleased with a race where many personal best times were achieved  by elite athletes, club runners and recreational runners alike.

We have transferred the best of our archives over (dates not withstanding !) so we are back up and running again.

The format for linking to a page is very similar to the standard anchor mechanism used for web page links.

Example

http://www.mydomain.com/document.pdf#page=1

To link to a specific article on a pdf page requires a two step approach.
Firstly you need to set up a destination tag within the pdf file:-

1. Manually navigate through the PDF for the desired location, and magnification
2. Go to View > Navigation Panels > Destinations
3. Add a New Destination and give it a name
4. Save the document

The second step is create your link, the format for which is:-

http://www.mydomain.com/document.pdf#nameddest=MYARTICLE

Beware of your pdf ‘initial view’ properties though which may interfere with how the article opens. It is best to set the layout and magnification to ‘default’ (File -> Properties -> Initial View).