ALL HAIL SVG

ALL HAIL SVG

Support for SVG images on the web has been sketchy, until now.

With all browsers now supporting svg, you can now have perfect vector images with no pixelation.

What does this mean for you? Well almost any vector based image on your marketing materials, like your website, could be converted to SVG to reduce pixelation and support at any size.

For a start, your logo, any icons, any shapes or web elements that are PNG, JPG or GIF could be converted.

But what would that look like? Well, here’s an example, your twitter icon, this is the same image as an SVG and PNG, when doubled or halved in size:

If you want to create SVGs yourself, and don’t want to shell out for Adobe Illustrator, I recommend the amazing Gravit design tool, free from app stores.

Or give me a shout and I’ll help you out!

What your email address says about you…

Have you ever had a terrible email address? Do you still have a terrible email address? Do you know what your email address is subliminally saying about you and your company?

I’ve had an email address since I was ten years old. I don’t remember what it was, but I’ve always been sensible. Probably more out of luck than judgement.

However, if you’d like to email my partner circa 2001 drop her a line at arewealoneinfeelingssolostanddisillusioned@hotmail.com (ironically, she forgot her password years go but still remembers the email address)

When it comes to professional email addresses, it always bugs me seeing “mikesplumbingservices@gmail.com”. It looks unprofessional, but also it’s missing a great chance to tell people you have a website…

This, however, is digital perfection:

What does the conventional email address say about your company?

Firstname@business.com – Small company

Firstname.lastname@business.com – larger company

nickname@business.co – edgy company

firstinitial.lastname@business.com – stuffy old school company stuck in the dark ages

Hello@business.com – friendly, informal company

info@business.com – emails to this will never be read by anyone

company@freeemailprovider.com – this company will probably take your money and run for the hills

What’s the best email address you’ve ever seen?

So, you need a domain?

So, you want to grab some of that internet for yourself…

To start, you’ll need a domain, but there’s literally LOADS of domain companies, so which do you pick?

Here’s my opinion, based on my experience, not taking into consideration what anyone else has said and I’m not being paid to promote anyone…

I’ll start by saying I use https://www.1and1.co.uk for my hosting, from my experience they have really good hosting packages but that’s a totally different topic which I’ll cover later.
I tend to buy my own personal domains from 1AND1 (even though they’re slightly more expensive) simply because it’s easier to have my domains and hosting packages in one place, so I’ll start with my review of them:

1AND1

Pros
Usually has an introductory offer
Good for hosting, normally bundle everything you need so you don’t get
Don’t charge extras for things like email, subdomains, databases, (but they d charge for SSL certs)
Easy to use CPanel
Cons
Not the cheapest
Customer service can be a tad lacking
Cost
.com domains usually around £12 per year without offers

123Reg

My preferred option for simply picking up no-frills domains.
Pros
The biggest domain name provider in the UK
Usually has an introductory offer
Compared to others the C-Panel quite easy to use
Never needed to use their customer service but I’ve heard it’s decent
Cons
Not the best for hosting, tend to charge for everything as an extra
Cost
.com domains usually around £16 per year without offers

Siteground

A new one to me, I’ve recently had the pleasure of using
They’re much more focused on hosting but have competitive prices for domains too
Pros
Excellent customer service
Easy to use CPanel
Don’t charge extra for services, even SSLs
Cons
Great full service, but no cheap initial offers for domains
Cost
.com domains usually around £14 per year without offers

Ones to avoid

Godaddy

Like the Ryanair of domains, starts off cheap but if you need to do anything you better believe there’s a cost for that!
Cpanel can sometimes can be a bit complicated
Cost
.com domains usually around £13 per year without offers

Fasthosts

Used to be decent until they were bought out
Horrific customer service and quite expensive in comparison
CPanel is a nightmare to navigate
Cost
.com domains usually around £25 per year without offers

Once you have your domain, you’ll either need to point it to a website or buy yourself some hosting. More on that coming soon.

I got 99 tabs and I can’t find the right one

If you’re like me and have at least 99 tabs open at any one time you’ve probably had that feeling where you know you have a tab open for something but you can’t remember where, so you open it again in another new tab.

Or even worse, there’s music coming from somewhere and you don’t know where so you have to close the entire browser to make it stop.

Well, the tab life changed for me recently, when I started discovered Workona.

It was advertised to me on facebook, or linkedin, or maybe twitter, I forget which, but it looked pretty sleek so I figured I’d try it out.

Oh, and it was free. That’s usually a gamechanger.

After installing the chrome plugin and signing in with my google account, which took about 30 seconds (nice) I was set up.

I created a workspace for the project I was working on and started opening tabs left right and centre as usual.

Then I got a whatsapp from someone else I’d been working with “can you just do this real quick?” – “yeah give me 10 minutes”

I created a new workspace and opened a dozen more tabs and 3 minutes later i’d completed what he’d asked me to do and closed the workspace.

I was right back where I was before he’s called, back in the workspace I was in before with all the tabs untouched.

It was bliss.

No more scrambling around trying to remember which tabs were which and closing the wrong ones.

Oh, and it saves them there when you turn your computer off.

Lovely.

Disclaimer, this is not an advert, I don’t work for workona, I’ve never met anyone that works for workona and I wasn’t asked to write this article. I just liked so decided to write this so you could read it.