NickC4555

You can point a domain to a website by changing the nameservers or the A record. If you change the nameservers, then all of the DNS records (e.g. A, MX, TXT, SPF etc) associated with that domain are then managed in the new site's control panel, if you change the A record they are managed in their original location. If you have changed the nameserver, the A record should automatically then point to the new site when it has been updated; changing it on the GoDaddy control panel will have no effect, because you no longer manage the DNS records from there. If a domain is used for different purposes (in addition to the website) and you are providing the hosting, it is best just to change the A record, then you don't get lumbered with problems that are nothing to do with you, such as why emails are going astray.

Your nameservers are still: ns25.domaincontrol.com ns26.domaincontrol.com This isn't waiting to propagate, they haven't been changed yet. I would steer well clear of GoDaddy, they really aren't much use for anything.

I don't think the design supports the service you are providing particularly well, but it isn't a bad layout as you suggest. It does have a lot of errors that undermine the quality of your business, though. In the copy there are numerous random capitals, spelling and grammar errors; I think you need the services of a website copywriter. You can't expect someone to ask you to create the public face of their business if you are careless with the way you present yours. There are several minor layout issues, e.g. positioning of the get quote button and the form layout on the contact us page. The home page isn't the same as the default page. On the SEO front, your title tags aren't descriptive (except for the default page which is stuffed with every keyword you can think of) and the description tag is the same on every page; if you are offering SEO services, yours needs to be good. It isn't responsive. Having said all that, it could be improved a lot with a relatively small effort.

Whilst "graphic design" relates to the visual elements of a product, it's purpose is no different to design overall, that is to create something that is intended to accomplish goals that are aligned to the strategy of the organisation that commissioned it. It is implicit, therefore, that a graphic designer, must be able to understand an organisation's strategy and translate it into a finished work that supports it. Like many specialisms, I think graphic design is part nature and part nurture. Unless you have that part of the brain that can translate a requirement into a concept and components that meet it, no amount of training will produce the finished article. Unfortunately, I don't, so I am forever in awe of those that do.

It displays in FF for me too. It's a very old logo, though, current ones and brand identity guidelines are available here: https://www.facebookbrand.com/ Also, the page loads incredibly slowly because the thumbnails aren't thumbnails, they are 1417px x 1417px 300dpi images resized in the browser.

It depends what your client uses twitter for. If her twitter feed is relevant to the people she gives the cards to, then definitely. If her last post was 6 months ago and not business focused then definitely not.

Install Firebug on Firefox, or use Inspect Element in Chrome. You'll soon find out what is setting every aspect of your website's design and learn a lot about css in the process.

Also agree, I wouldn't use either, but if you want WYSIWYG and price is a major factor then Expression is free and Dreamweaver will set you back £17.58 a month.

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Change it to "Display Name <name@domain.com>"

Device detection should be used with care, it's a poor user experience to be served a mobile page on a high resolution tablet (e.g. wikipedia). The scripts on http://detectmobilebrowsers.com/ posted by Nillervision make that distinction correctly.

I use display:none, but rather than lose the content (as BlueDreamer says, why was it there in the first place?), display alternative content instead. For example, hide an image slider on the home page, but still display the overlaid text in a device appropriate form. If you are using Bootstrap you don't need to create your own media queries for this, there are classes for displaying and hiding content on desktops, tablets and phones.

Absolutely, it's the majority of my revenue! The only customer I now have that does their own admin and content management is a large public sector organisation with its own team. The rest I manage as a part of a monthly social media/content/SEO/marketing package. The admin is a lot more intuitive than it used to be, and because Joomla has a very good role based ACL that you can apply to the back end as well, it is quite easy to create author roles that only see the articles area. Or they can edit from the front end, but most just don't want to.

Ok, you've reeled me back in again. You are being mischievous by asserting that I don't care about quality. I care about quality passionately and will work tirelessly to make sure it is achieved. What I said was "as to code elegance, that is of absolutely no consequence to me". That is true. Joomla is a black box, a platform on which I build solutions. Just like Zend or Symfony. Although I can access its code, it would be bad practice to change it, that defeats the purpose of using a CMS. Do you insist on Larry or Bill showing you the code of Oracle or SQL Server before you use them? These are solution components where we measure quality by factors such as functionality, stability and performance, at first by taking up third party references and subsequently through our own experience with them. I can create elegant MVC components to deploy in Joomla for any purpose. Just like Zend or Symfony. I am not restricted to those written by other people, as you suggest. And most of those that are bought in have have extensive configuration possibilities, this isn't a "drag and drop" solution, it's a professional development platform. The Joomla Framework, the platform on which the CMS is built stands comparison with any other PHP framework. Prebuilt components are used extensively by Zend developers too, I don't think the two worlds are so far apart. I first heard the expression "buy before you build" about 25 years ago, and it is more valid now than ever. With the endless integration and configuration possibilities that exist today in the software tools and platforms available to us, never has bespoke software been so marginalised. If you can deliver 90% of a customer requirement for 50% (or less) of the cost, it is an obvious win for the customer. The other 10% can be achieved through backlog review when the user stories are better defined in the context of the new system. For the life of the solution they have vendor independence, reduced support costs and regular new releases that provide additional functionality and platform compatibility as new OS and other integrated component versions are released. Most current major requests to tender in the UK are based on requirements for configured packaged, not custom bespoke software.

All I have tried to do on this forum is offer opinions for discussion backed by my own experiences, that I hope people find to be of some interest. For reasons best known to yourself you have chosen to attack my integrity in two topics, undermine my opinions, suggest that I am doing my customers a disservice and interrogate me about my experience. However, to clarify your points. I didn't say that the intranet I provided was a ticketing system. You assumed that, it isn't. It is for the management of unstructured information to support business processes, integrated with the CRM. And it does, indeed, exactly meet the requirement in the client's specification. I've been doing this for a while. As to code elegance, that is of absolutely no consequence to me, I don't touch it any more, I am using a stable, pre-built platform that requires configuration, not customisation. If a system can provide 2000 people with sub-second response running on a single server and never fail, why do I care how prosaic the code is? My exposure to programming? Starting with Z80 assembly language and Basic in 1982, C, C++, C#, PHP. OOP around 20 years, together with associated OO design methods, including use case modelling. Both formal (mainly waterfall) and Agile (SCRUM) methodologies. 20 years providing major public sector solutions including Houses of Parliament, Competition Commission, 40 local authorities, and several utilities. I shall now retire from this debate, it isn't what I joined for.

Do I win?

My job is to create website, intranet and extranet solutions that meet one or more business goals. Using a platform like Joomla, together with a trusted set of third party tools and components, I can use a documentation-light Agile methodology that stays close to the project team and users throughout, working in short production-to-production stages. If I can't meet 85% + of the requirement in a first cut build, with minimal customisation, then it isn't a project for me. Developers (I have been one for 32 years) tend towards the opinion that their own custom code is best every time. I have the opposite view - I believe that most business requirements can be met by configuring platforms such as CMS, CRM and collaboration products. Most customers suffer from terminal uniqueness, but actually they share the majority of processes, problems and goals with everyone else. Once they understand that, they readily buy into a different way of procuring and running their projects that delivers many orders of magnitude of productivity over traditional waterfall (or similar) methodologies. Of course, it's horses for courses. Very large systems need a different approach, but most of mine aren't exactly small. Some examples, all built with Joomla: A 2000+ seat intranet/extranet for the call centre of a large financial institution. AD integrated, single sign on, document management, collaborative processes, corporate directory, user profiles with social features. The entire project was delivered for around £25K. Great user buy in, immediately facilitated new ways of working and satisfied the compliance requirements of their corporate clients. In 2 years there has been no down time and not one single fault. Website for one of the biggest tribute bands in the world. The website and social media are fundamental to building their global market, deepening the relationship with their fan base and maximising ticket sales. A simple Joomla website that gets around 2.5 million page views a year and is ranked number 1 in the world in a very competitive sector. 500 page website for a Fire and Rescue service. Maintained in house at very low cost, I provided a framework website that met their corporate identity requirements, sample page types and all required components for £5,000, they then built the content themselves. I don't use Joomla because it's all I know, I use it because for my business, it's the best tool for the job. Not for everyone, but it is for me. In response to the general criticisms of Joomla's code, most of them seem to be based on experiences that are several years old. The rate of change in our industry is exponential, having an opinion that is just a few years out of date is like saying you don't like Fords because the Model T only comes in black. Joomla is now almost entirely MVC based, and the roadmap is to complete this and continue to make the framework lighter. It has a very well managed release cycle and excellent community support. It isn't the simplest of systems to learn, but then what useful development environment is? I don't think the adverse comments on here relating to its usability are at all justified.

I am.

There is indeed a bum. I can see it too.

As I said in my previous post, I don't think this is the place for this debate, it is disrespectful to the OP to hijack his topic. I'd be happy to continue it here: http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/topic/80196-joomla/ Or in any other topic for the purpose.

I don't think this topic is the place for that debate, I started one about this a few weeks ago that nobody replied to. However, a huge professional community, myself included, run very successful businesses building Joomla websites. Nearly all of the comments about Joomla on this forum are of the "horrible software" variety, without any justification or substantiation whatsoever.

In hindsight I think we are being somewhat harsh on the OP. When I set out to buy something that I don't know the price of, I will have an idea of what I think I want to spend, then let people who know what they are talking about manage my expectations if they aren't realistic. There probably isn't another industry where you can get such a wide price variance for what is seemingly the same thing, and that is confusing for prospective customers. You often don't even know what questions you should be asking until you've learned the hard way a few times. There are many ways to build such a website, the best of which is out of budget. I wouldn't suggest reducing the scope, because you'd end up with a product that couldn't compete. I certainly wouldn't take out cost by skimping on design or testing, that would be false economy. Based on what we know, I would propose a CMS with one of the many proven prebuilt directory, user account and payment gateway components. The required functionality would have to bend to fit off the shelf software, but it would be solid, professional, highly featured, stable and reliable. This demo of Mosets Tree for Joomla looks way better than EasyDirectoryScript to me: http://demo.mosetstree.com/ I still wouldn't do it for £1,000 though!

It would be easier to offer suggestions if you told us what website you are referring to. It is pointless listing generic reasons.

Not since last month. Budget around £5,000, the reference websites were global brands with mega budgets and full time dev teams. One reason I only deal with established businesses or public sector organisations, their expectations are generally tempered with a good dose of reality.

Yell is a huge website, custom built for its purpose. It will have been developed using a formal methodology incorporating business case, scope, functional specification, technical specification, UI design, development, multiple system test, user acceptance test and regression test stages (or an agile methodology equivalent). It is a critical line of business application, so £500,000 probably isn't a bad guess. However, that isn't what you want. A real estate agents directory has a far less complex taxonomy and less data. You are, though, going up against well established competitors such as Zoopla and Rightmove, who not only provide agent directories but rent and to buy house search and a load of other features too. Those are such well established brands that the barrier to entry in this market is high and to compete you need a Rolls-Royce product. Don't expect to be successful with a £1,000 website. A final thought, Yell has an Estate Agents section, why wouldn't people just use that? Or Google?