Please be assured that power failure to the office has no bearing on your website – all of our servers are remote and will not be affected should anything untoward arise here at Ballyhoo HQ.

If you need to get in touch you can always reach us by email or leave a message by phone (both of which we can access remotely through devices such as our mobile phones) and we will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience and fingers-crossed we have no more disruptions!

So if you need to get hold of us, please email or call and leave a message, both of which we are able to retrieve remotely.

Thank you for your patience.

This has been a great year for the business and has seen our range of services, skills and technologies improve and expand to meet our clients’ needs.

We hope that year two will be even better and look forward to working with new and existing customers alike.

Our e-commerce software Ballyhoo Commerce will support the Welsh language as of Version 1.9.7.

Translations have been added for all of the text that is standard with any installation of our e-commerce software.

This means that you will be able to add products and content to your site in Welsh as well as English, giving your users the flexibility to view your website in their preferred language.

Although Welsh is a minority language, we thought it would be a great addition to the system as so many of our customers are based in Wales.

However, the system is not limited to Welsh and is capable of supporting any number of languages – some of which will be added as standard to the system in the future – including French, German and Spanish.

If you are an existing e-commerce customer and want to use this facility on your website you need only pay for the time it takes us to upgrade your site to Version 1.9.7 (when released) – which could be as little as £40 – £80.

New e-commerce customers will enjoy this feature as standard.

For more information or to upgrade your e-commerce website please get in touch.

Upgrades to this e-commerce software will be rolled out among our customers on a first come, first served basis and price depends on your current version. If you are interested in this version we recommend you get in touch soon to schedule an upgrade.

Learn more about this version of our e-commerce system.

Step One

On the iPhone menu select Settings.

Step Two

From the Settings menu select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.

Step Three

Under Mail, Contacts, Calendars select Add Account…

Step Four

Add Account will show you a variety of mail accounts supported by the iPhone. You need to select Other.

Step Five

You now need to select Add Mail Account under Mail on the Other menu.

Step Six

In this window you need to enter your basic account details; your name, email address, password and a description of the account, for example Work or Personal. Click Save.

The address you have entered will be the username requested in the following steps and the password will be the same in all instances.

Step Seven

The next page you see requires you to enter further details about your email account. A number of fields will be pre-populated with information you supplied in the previous step.

You must first ensure POP is selected instead of IMAP.

Then enter the incoming mail server details. The host name will always begin with pop followed by your domain, for example pop.ballyhoodemo.co.uk.

Scroll further down this page to enter the Outgoing Mail Server details. In this instance the host name will always begin with mail, for example mail.ballyhoodemo.co.uk.

Click Save.

Step Eight

Your iPhone will now try to connect to your mail server securely for incoming mail. If you do not have an SSL certificate installed on your website you will see the following message:

Although secure connection has failed be assured that your emails will still be secure as they are sent and received – the connection has simply not been validated by a certificate authority but is equally secure under what is known as a self-certification certificate.

To continue setting up your email account click Continue.

Your iPhone will then try to your mail server securely for outgoing mail. Again, if you do not have an SSL certificate installed on your domain the above message will appear. To ignore it click Continue.

You should now be able to successfully send and receive emails from the email account you have just set up.

If you need further assistance or if you would like to install an SSL certificate on your domain please contact us.

Learn more about SSL Certificates.

What Is Content Management?

Content managed websites can be updated at any time by the owner of the website through a user interface.

The website will have been configured by the web developer to allow the owner to amend content pages and add new pages which can include images, links and any other content you may expect to find on a website.

Should the owner want to update their website all they need to do is log in to the administration area of their website and the changes they make will be instant.

Web developers build content managed websites on a number of content management systems (CMS). You may have heard of Wordpress or Joomla!, both of which are open source (free).

Why Would I Need Content Management?

Many people prefer content management due to the flexibility and control it gives them over their website. The speed with which they can update their content is undeniably quick.

Content management systems particularly suit those businesses that have a high content turnover, i.e. those who update their content weekly or even daily and the extra expense when commissioning a content managed website is usually recouped relatively quickly.

However, we will only recommend content management if you:

• have a high content turnover
• have the technological expertise required to use a CMS
• have the time and resources to maintain your website content

What Are The Costs?

As mentioned before, many CMS are usually open source which means they are free to download. You only need to pay your web developer to configure your chosen content management system -  £240 with Ballyhoo on top of your initial website costs.

Content management systems usually have frequent updates – these can be to improve security, add new features or fix minor bugs in the system. You don’t need to update to every new version of the software but it is wise to update your system regularly to ensure your website runs smoothly and you are making the most of new technology.

You will need to pay your web developer to upgrade your CMS but this is a quick job. At Ballyhoo prices start from £40 to upgrade you to the latest version of your content management software.

Are There Alternatives?

Pay As You Go

If you rarely update your content it may be best to simply send any amendments to your web developer who can either give you a quote to do them or simply charge you for the time it takes to implement your changes. At Ballyhoo we log any updates to your website down to the minute at our hourly rate and invoice any amendments we’ve made at the end of each month.

Support & Maintenance Contracts

If you think you need content management but don’t have the technical knowledge or are too busy to update your website in-house there is an alternative – support and maintenance contracts. These can help you save both time and money.

Under a support and maintenance contract a monthly retainer is paid, usually at a discounted hourly rate, to the web developer who will agree to administer any updates you send in a set period of time. As with the previous option your updates are logged by the minute and a little time goes a long way, one or two hours is more than adequate per month in most situations.

At Ballyhoo we discount our hourly rate by 25%, a support and maintenance contract can therefore cost you as little as £30 per month!

With both alternatives you can be assured that:

• Updates are administered professionally and efficiently
• Content is formatted correctly
• Content is proof-read before going live

Summary

In short, we recommend that you only commission a content managed website if you are going to be updating your website regularly and have the knowledge and resources to do so.

However if you do have these attributes then you will find content management an indispensable tool for your business.

If you would like to more about content management or to organise a support contract, get in touch.

On April 23rd Joomla! released the latest version of their content-management system (CMS), version 1.5.16.

Joomla! is one of our preferred content management systems as it is comprehensive and offers a large degree of flexibility when developing websites.

Some of the websites we have built on this system include:

• devon-cornwall.polfed.org
• burn-hall.co.uk
• create-joinery.co.uk

We encourage our customers to keep up-to-date with software releases to ensure their website runs as smoothly as possible. The major benefit of upgrading to this new release is improved security as well as a number of bug fixes that will ensure the performance of your website is optimum.

Learn more at joomla.org.

What Are The Costs?

This software is open source, meaning it is free to download and there are no fees to use it. All you have to pay for is the time it takes us to upgrade your website to the new version, which could be as little as £40.

Special Offer

If you have your website re-designed we will upgrade your version of Joomla! at no extra cost while implementing your new website design.

To learn more or to schedule an upgrade, please contact us.

Designers use this filler text to demonstrate the typography and structure of your website, especially if we do not yet know what the content of your website will be.

While this text looks like Latin, it is in fact a jumble of words, with no real meaning, that has been modified and added to over the years. It is widely accepted that it’s origins lie in Cicero’s text De finibus bonorum et malorum, written in 45BC, which may have first been adapted in the 1500s by typesetters for the same reason we use it today.

There are a number or Lorem Ipsum generators on the web that you can use to create dummy text for your design projects. These often randomise the text to avoid repetition, for example where the text wraps at the end of paragraphs, and can provide as many paragraphs or words as you require.

Ballyhoo supports Green Office Week. Though we already endeavor to maintain green standards in all that we do, there’s always more that can be done!

Visit greenofficeweek.eu to take part.