AlexsDesign

Ahoy!
 
I've been in my home office on and off for 13 years and understand the gripe of always being 'in'. I did an office share for a year or two which was ok but unfortunately I was stuck with a manic depressive who was always full of negative thoughts and the other used to eat and talk at once, man I got sprayed with various food groups which made me feel violated.
 
With an office share the plus side is you do get out and the mindset of 'going to work' often helps too; separating home life from work life by a few miles. As for rates £200 a month IMO is a good rate, especially since I see they offer 'free beer' with the permanent package ... they obviously don't know how much a designer can drink lol.
 
For me i'm staying at my home studio unless I can find an office share with like-minded people, well at least someone who doesn't spit sandwich
 
Maybe you could interview the other office 'room mates' first?
 

 
 

Either give it an ID like this...
 
<h3 id="h3header">Forget you guys. I'm about to be red!</h3>  
And then select it in the CSS like this...
 
h3#h3header { color: red; }  
OR it may be better to just select like this (this is the method that I think they are asking for although not necessarily the best in real practice as it can be confusing).
 
body div div div h3 { color: red; }  
This way you won't have to change any of your HTML.

Hi, is there a good reason why you cant have the javascript file on your server
 
or try this you can work around it
 

<?php $file = file_get_contents('http://www.example.com/js/required-file.js'); echo $file; ?>
 
 
I think this will still give you a problem with SSL

I have just tried it on a site with an SSL and it is working with file_get_contents

The most I've ever seen anyone use is a router with integrated 3G backup connection.
 
Makes sense financially if you can guarantee that the lost business in any given month would be more than the cost of the 3G.

I'd keep it extremely basic.
 
Notepad and the browser. Not even Notepad++.
 
Very basic markup, start with the minimum markup for a page, so your html, head and body tags. But literally just the tags, none of the extra stuff.
 
Then start playing around with headers, text and images.
 
Once they've got comfortable adding text images and headers you can look at introducing them to CSS.
 
Again, keep it really basic, so literally all you'd start off with in the CSS file is changing the text color (p {color:red}.

I'm just gonna put a link at the bottom that says...
 

Even though you have a genuine reason, bad English is always going to put off potential clients. It's just a harsh fact of life.
 
My suggestion is that whenever you have any sort of contact with a potential client, you get a friend or family member good with English to run through your emails and any correspondence and get it all nice and dandy.
 
Also, yeah, put together a portfolio. If you haven't got any possibilities for work yet, just make up websites for pretend businesses. Design them, code them, put them in your portfolio, but obviously making clear they were practice pieces.
 
You could also approach charities and small (by small I mean Uncle Bob the hairdresser) businesses. With the former, offer your work for free. With the latter, offer your work in exchange for beer/pizza/cash.
 
This way you can get some experience that could get you a position working in this industry.

And MikeChipShop... I was thinking of including a virtual option too
 
Was thinking of setting up a video chat channel or something which can run on a laptop so people can join in from other locations via a chat window

Simply UL and LI items wrapped within a div...
 

<div id="navbar"> <ul class="navigationbar"> <li class="navigationitem"> <a href="xxx" class="itemlink">Text here<br/>Second line here</a> </li> <li class="navigationitem"> <a href="xxx" class="itemlink">Text here<br/>Second line here</a> </li> <li class="navigationitem"> <a href="xxx" class="itemlink">Text here<br/>Second line here</a> </li> </ul> </div>
 
I would then use CSS to style each element.
With regards to custom fonts, check out google fonts or other similar websites.
 
Background imagery is simple to reproduce within either the DIV or the UL.
Personally, I would apply a background image to the UL... meaning the DIV can then be repositioned, resized, padded...etc.. without major worries.
 
That would be my chosen method... however recently, more and more I've seen websites using image based nav bars with "link mapping" over the images! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr

I got around this issue using the following Media Queries...
 
@media only screen and (min-device-width: 481px) and (max-device-width: 1024px) and (orientation:portrait)
 
and
 
@media only screen and (min-device-width: 481px) and (max-device-width: 1024px) and (orientation:landscape)
 
Hope this helps.

Right then, now we're talking!
 
Here's a list of the things I would do to better improve the SEO on your website:
 
(Basic guide)
 
On-page SEO
Firstly, you need to decide what keywords you want to aim for which will yield the highest amount of searches for the lowest amount of competition which means you'll rank much easily for those keywords. Use https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal where you can enter keywords and it gives you a rough idea of how many searches those keywords are and low the competition is. Useful tool.
 
Now, compile a list of about 10/12 keywords that you want to rank for, with the best keyword placed at the top of that list. Use the top two keywords on that list and place them in the title tag in a format similar to this: 'Keyword one - Keyword two | Website name'.
 
Then, use the h1 tag. Place two keywords in this tag, usually pick the first and second keyword from that list you made. Don't just have the keyworsd though, give it a little text like "Home of 'keyword one', providing you the finest 'keyword two"
 
You have to utilize the 'h2' and 'h3' tags now, using a selection of keywords from that list, but avoid using the two that you have used for h1 and title tags.
 
Once you have done that, you need to right some keyword-rich content that doesn't look spammy and is written for the user. This is where you can use the other keywords on that list, place them sparingly in the content so that it flows. Also, link to your other pages in the content, using keyword anchor text.
 
 
Add the following meta tag on all site pages to avoid Google pulling content from DMOZ or the Yahoo directory to populate the meta description it shows in the natural listings:
 
<meta name="robots" content="noodp,noydir">
 
 
Have an XML sitemap available at http://www.virtuemarttemplates.org/sitemap.xml
 
Upload a robots.txt file (plain text file) containing the following:
 
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Sitemap: http://www.virtuemarttemplates.org//sitemap.xml
 
Make sure that every one of your domains has a 301 re-direct in place from the non-www (http://virtuemarttemplates.org/) to the www (hhttp://www.virtuemarttemplates.org/)
 
Make the titles, keywords and descriptions of all pages stand out as unique, and try to avoid any repetition of phrases. Don't give Google the opportunity to make up its own mind about which page should be authoritative for a given phrase.
 
Off-page SEO
 
Backlinks. Backlinks and more backlinks. as the anchor text, use the keywords you want to rank for, comment on blogs (DON'T SPAM! USEFUL COMMENTS ONLY), get on review websites, use forums (like this one, but again DON'T SPAM!), use facebook and twitter and make it interesting for people. Run competitions and give away a template every month, or when ever you got X amount of followers. Directory submissions too
 
 
 
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Hope this helps? It's a very basic guide that I'd use, but to really perform, you need to read up on this forum and ask questions. It's a difficult process

I didn't even know you could +1... so the first one wasn't me!
But the second one was :D

Ok, make a backup of the .htaccess file...
 
Then delete:
 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
 
and replace with:

RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^hostsphere.co.uk$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hostsphere.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]
 
I think this should work, if not, you have a backup...