We’ve been developing websites since 1999. Whether you are looking for a basic web presence or a complex database-driven site, we can help.
Putting great importance on ease of access, simple navigation around the site and clear presentation of information, we can develop sites to meet W3C standards and accessibility guidelines.
Most of the sites we develop use the WordPress content management system (CMS), with additional capability provided by the Genesis Framework.
We can fully customise the look of the site, the functionality and the administration system to meet your specific requirements.
And we can also take care of domain name registration and web hosting for you too.
WordPress
Most of our sites use the WordPress content management system (cms). Over the last few years, WordPress has grown to be by far the most popular cms.
In deciding to use WordPress we assessed the strengths and weaknesses of a range of cms software. While some systems provide a better framework for some complex functionality, WordPress can meet most requirements and in our opinion provides an significantly easier admin system for end users than other systems.
Responsive design
All our sites are now developed with a fluid layout so they display well at all modern screen sizes from smartphone to desktop. It’s an essential part of web development these days, both to give a good user experience for the growing number of people using mobile devices to access the web and because it’s now a factor in Google ranking.
Security
As WordPress is the most widely used content management system, WordPress sites are subject to regular attacks, often from botnets of computers making brute force attacks. The aim usually being to steal the site’s hosting resources and the domain’s good name for spamming.
Keeping WordPress and any plugins up to date is the most important thing in keeping your site secure, which we can take care of for you with our WordPress Managed Hosting. But it is sensible to take additional steps for added security.
We therefore add additional measures as standard:
- a security plugin to scan your site for malicious code and guard against brute force login attempts and other hacking;
- other hardening measures to make WordPress more secure.
Theme
Most sites we develop use our base theme shown at http://lynxwebdevelopment.co.uk/lgd/ – this demo version runs on the ‘nightly builds’ of WordPress so it is being tested for any possible conflicts with upcoming releases of WordPress – this is rare but can happen, even with WordPress’s own themes.
The theme can be customised to reposition or remove items, change fonts, change theme colours to one of 6 presets or any custom colours required.
In some cases it is more appropriate to use a different theme or an entirely bespoke theme.
We are also happy to assist in customising a third party theme. However, third party themes (free or paid for) can often be more difficult to customise than might be expected. And adding your content to an off-the-peg theme can show up design weaknesses not apparent on the theme’s demo pages. Opting for an off-the-peg theme because it’s fairly close to what you are looking for can be a false economy.
Fonts
The constraints on font use in websites is far less than it used to be. You are no longer limited to fonts installed on the viewers computer or complex workarounds.
Fonts can be downloaded along with other elements in a page like photos and scripts.
The easiest way to do this is with Google fonts, which offers a large choice of fonts and a simple way to include fonts in your website.
However, the quality of the fonts included by Google is variable, and some fonts do not display well. This is not always apparent from a small sample of text. The most common problem is with spacing between specific letters: professional fonts will have defined spacing for hundreds or thousands of letter pairs, free fonts may only cover a few of the most obvious ones like AV. Google allows you to look through fonts with your own choice of sample text, and this can be useful for things like your company name, but it is advisable to test a font further before making a final choice.
In selecting a font, you might also want to consider your font use in printed material. Many print fonts are not available as web fonts, or only at fairly high cost; so if you already have print branding, you may need to settle for using a near match on your website.
Quirky fonts can be quite eye-catching, but using them across a website, eg, for all headlines doesn’t always look good. It’s often better to choose fonts that are not too unusual or limit the use to a few places.
Site guides
We include a general guide to WordPress and a site specific guide to help you edit and update your website.
WordPress Managed Hosting
As part of our hosting services, we can provide regular updating of WordPress, plugins, themes and other basic maintenance measures for a very modest annual cost. We know of companies charging monthly fees the same as our annual fees for a similar service.
Daily:
- monitoring for suspicious activity such as brute force login attempts
Frequently:
- monitor your site through regular scans to check for any security issues (every 3 days or daily for an upgraded service)
Monthly:
- offline back-up of your site
- update WordPress and all plugins as required
- other basic measures that may be required as a result of the updates
Given our low fees, there are limits to what is covered in our maintenance work. If any additional work is required, eg, sourcing and installing a replacement for a broken or deprecated plugin, we will contact you and agree on a course of action and cost.