JustOliver

As opposed to making it viewable in the browser, so the only way the user can view it is by downloading it I'd guess? It sounds a bit dodgy at first but if a large pdf tried automatically opening on a slow connection it could be pointed out as a usability issue and I believe the user would still have to click a link pointing to the file before anything happened. I don't know much about htaccess at all, I didn't even know this was possible until I read this but I've just tried a quick test now and this works for mp3s: <FilesMatch "\.(?i:mp3)$"> ForceType application/octet-stream Header set Content-Disposition attachment </FilesMatch> So is this any better for your pdf? <FilesMatch "\.(?i:pdf)$"> ForceType application/octet-stream Header set Content-Disposition attachment </FilesMatch> The user would still have to click a link but once they did the file would just download rather than opening in their browser. I think... From here: http://www.thingy-ma-jig.co.uk/blog/06-08-2007/force-a-pdf-to-download and here: http://www.saelboat.com/blog/2012/12/htaccess-guide-force-downloads-of-mp3s-pdfs-and-other-media-files-299

Here's something you could try. Right clicking the Login link and choosing Chrome's Inspect Element or Firebug you can see that particular element has an id with the name menu-item-1079 Now, login to your WordPress dashboard and on the left-hand side choose Appearance > Editor This opens up a style.css file. This is different from accessing the file on the server via an ftp program. Although this method feels a bit clunkier it's the easiest way to add small style tweaks to your blog. This is a screenshot from one of my blogs that I use to practice, it's a bit of a hodge-podge but it does the trick! I always add any extra styles to the bottom so that I know where I've put them in future. Scroll to the bottom and add the appropriate style to make your link float to the right, remembering that you're styling li#menu-item-1079 or li#menu-item-1079 a I'd try either floating it to the right as you've suggested or just increasing the left-margin or left-padding on the li#menu-item-1079 or the li#menu-item-1079 a tag. You could also try increasing the right-margin or right-padding on the Forum link to nudge the Login/Register button along or use #main-nav ul li:last-child a to just select the last a tag in the list. Hope that was reasonably understandable, have fun!!

You can just separate multiple background images with a comma. Either like this, /*could all be on one line*/ background: url('../images/bg-image.png') 50% 50% no-repeat, url('../images/bg-image2.png') 100px 250px repeat-x, url('../images/bg-image3.png') 300px 300px no-repeat; or separate each set of values, like this, background-color : #B4DA55; background-image : url('../images/bg-image.png'), url('../images/bg-image2.png'), url('../images/bg-image3.png'); background-repeat : no-repeat, repeat-x, repeat; background-position : 100% 95%, -10% 100%, 0 0;

If you're using WordPress then from an SEO point of view you can try choosing a username that's also one of your targeted search terms. It's set as admin by default so yourwordpressurl.com/author/admin would point to a page with all your posts. The vast majority of wordpress blogs are setup like that >>> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/author/admin/ You can try choosing a username that will benefit you when it starts appearing in the search engine results page. If your author url was www.personaltuition.co.uk/author/personal-tuiton-location then hopefully, fingers-crossed that page could get a reasonably decent position on the search engine results page when people google 'personal tuition location' as long as the content of your blog posts was reasonably high quality. Have you tried targeting your particular area more? You said you generated hardly any business form the web due to all the competition from similar businesses. Perhaps try gaining improved rankings just for your area. Unless you're in London this could be a decent starting point.

READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!! >>>>>>> The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. It's the perfect length for quick reading (200 pages) and really explains what it is that makes a good layout look good. The book covers the four principles of design (proximity, alignment, contrast and repetition) as well as using colour and type and the different categories of font (old style, modern, slab serif, sans serif, script and decorative) as well as how to choose a good pairing of these for your headlines and text. It's the perfect start for anyone who wants to find out what makes a good website actually look good. There's no code mentioned and a lot of the examples look quite out-dated (flyers and posters with clip-art style logos rather than websites) BUT don't let that stop you, even the cover looks out-dated! If you want the short and sweet answer, just remember: contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. Contrast: There should be some degree of contrast between some elements on your site, it could be colour, size or type style (serif vs sans-serif etc.) Repetition: Repeat elements across your site. Use the same style for headings, links, hover effects, logos etc etc. Alignment: Every element on your site should align with at least one other element. Proximity: Group relevant elements close to each other. Hope that helps - There's hundreds of books out there but I found this one especially helpful. My designs still look crap, I just need a decent photoshop book for that.

Just a few suggestions; personally I'd nudge the logo left slightly so it was aligned with the Home link in the nav bar and push your contact info right a bit so it was aligned with the Contact Us link. The TCCWestYorkshire link doesn't work, perhaps they've changed their domain? A shame as their testimonial in your index slider is pretty good. Maybe try giving the navigation bar <a> tags a white background on hover? The red text against the grey background looks a bit dark in my opinion. Overall though everything you'd look for is there and it's all laid out in a sensible, clean and easy to navigate manner.

Using Notepad++ here too. Multiple tabs and fancy colours makes allllllllll the difference! That and learning a couple of keyboard shortcuts to speed the whole process up. Shift + End to select the whole line from the beggining, Shift + Home to select the whole line from the end. Ctrl + Home to go to top of document, Ctrl + End to go to the bottom. Shift and Arrow Left / Right to select individual letters and Ctrl + Shift + Arrow Left/Right to select individual words. Have fun!

It's going to start sounding like an echo in here but I'd also recommend TSO Host! I only signed up with them less then a month ago but being able to host 6 separate sites for £5 a month is fantastic. I've got a few domains through Daily before and never had any problems with them either. There's an ad in the back of this months Net magazine. If you enter 'MIOUK' at checkout with tsohost you can buy any uk domain and get a years hosting for free. This was what got my attention but in the end I just stumped up the cash for the pro hosting and it's worked a treat

I like it! I get the similarities with a lot of current portfolio sites but it's definitely got a style all of it's own, a lot of modern portfolio take the idea of 'less is more' too far but I think you've got it bang on. Initials in circles are definitely the in thing at the mo! The only suggestion I could make would be that the bottom footer is perhaps a little taller than it needs to be; when I scroll right to the bottom it fills a third of the screen. Unless you're planning on adding something later? I'm really just nitpicking though overall it's pretty faultless and looks very professional.

@SleepAndBeHappy Zzzzzzzzzzz.......

I mostly use notepad++ although I've just downloaded the photoshop trial and the difference it's made to my workflow is already massive! I'm not the artistic type but google 'icon fonts' and you can find all the basic shapes you'd need before using photoshop (or The Gimp for a free alternative) to tweak it however you'd like. You probably want to concentrate on learning html and css then think about moving onto javascript or php if you're still enjoying it! The mozilla developer network is a popular resource for learning the ins and outs of web development. I also like net[dot]tutsplus[dot]com and webdesign[dot]tutsplus[dot]com. The content on their ranges from beginner to advanced so there's always something to read. As for design, the one book I can't recommend enough but don't hear mentioned much is The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. It concentrates on the 4 principles of design; alignment, repetition, contrast and proximity. Have fun!

If you already have 'gamer', 'games' and 'video games' appearing throughout your site then I'd assume 'gaming' would appear somewhere on there to. Unless you're referring specifically to the keywords tag that google no longer supports: [oops, can't post link] Google has already crawled millions of gaming websites so it knows that those words already appear together on the vast majority of sites, therefore it would know they were related even if you didn't make it abundantly obvious on your site. Say you had a news section, I'd say that might be called 'Gaming News' so that's already one occurrence (but yeh, add it to the millions of other occurrences out there) Content is king at the end of the day, if there's plenty of gaming related content then google will know your site's about games and all things related. I don't suppose many people search 'gaming' on it's own but when I do on uk the third link down is the wikipedia page for 'gamers' even though there's also one for 'gaming' but that's nowhere to be seen. It doesn't work solely on an exact match basis even when there is one. Finally, tell your client not to forget Bing!! Yeh it's not as popular but think of alllllll the people using the internet at work and school who have their homepage set to Bing and don't have the admin privileges to change it. Have fun

There is now!

I've noticed a lot of people recommending Sitepoint's Principles of Beautiful Web Design book, it's not one I've read myself but I've certainly seen it mentioned in plenty of places. It seemed to have a few negative reviews but I think that's to be expected when ordering online, you can't have a proper good flick through the book so it's inevitabnle some people won't get what they were expecting. Just last night I ordered myself The Non-Designers Design Book and Logo Design Love. I'm not sure about that last one but I've been looking at the first for a while now, fingers crossed it does the trick. Two other books on the subject that I already own are A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web and Designing for Emotion. Both come highly recommended but if I had to plump for one I'd go for Mark Boulton's Designing for the Web, it's packed full of information (although there's virtually no mention or examples of code whatsoever) and it genuinely feels like a guide to how the professional's do it right from beginning to end. But don't spend all your time stockpiling books and never actually making any websites, that's how you end up like me!!! Hope that helped, cheers.

A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web by Mark Boulton may be just the book you're looking for!! I've got it myself and it's definitely worth a read. There's a fair bit of detail in it and reading through from beginning to end may take a good few days but you'll learn a lot (well, depending how much you already know?) The book covers five sections; Getting started, research, typography, colour and layout and each one goes into a fair bit of detail. For someone who's looking for a designers book more than a coders book I'd definitely recommend this one, it's a great insight to what goes into designing, rather than creating, beautiful websites.