Media City Web
A-Z Listings
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Find your local website professionals here
Welcome to Media City Web, the ultimate directory of website professionals in the United Kingdom.
Please use the links below or A-Z on the left to locate your nearest professional or search using the form above for the skills you require.
England
Avon - Bedfordshire - Berkshire - Buckinghamshire - Cambridgeshire - Cheshire - Cornwall - Cumbria - Derbyshire - Devon - Dorset - East Sussex - Essex - Gloucestershire - Greater Manchester - Hampshire - Herefordshire - Hertfordshire - Isle of Man - Kent - Lancashire - Leicestershire - Lincolnshire - London - Merseyside - Milton Keynes - Norfolk - North Yorkshire - Northamptonshire - Northumberland - Nottinghamshire - Oxfordshire - Rotherham - Shropshire - Somerset - South Yorkshire - Staffordshire - Suffolk - Surrey - Warwickshire - West Midlands - West Sussex - West Yorkshire - Wiltshire - Worcestershire
Northern Ireland
County Antrim - County Armagh - County Down - County Tyrone
Scotland
Aberdeenshire - Ayrshire - East Lothian - Roxburghshire - South Lanarkshire - Strathclyde - West Lothian
Wales
Clwyd - Gwent - Mid Glamorgan - West Glamorgan
Types of Websites
Standard HTML
- You need to FTP access to make changes to your website and an HTML editor.
- HTML editors: Amaya, Aptana, BlueGriffon, Codelobster, Komposer, HTML Kit, Netbeans and PSPad
Content Management System (CMS)
Blogs
- Allow you to publish (post) your latest news.
- Great for SEO
- An RSS Feed or Atom Feed allows people to link to your blog with snippets of your posts..
- Examples: Wordpress The most popular blogging tool by far. It is often used as a CMS, but it is not ideal.
- Almost CMS tools have blog components you can drop in.
E-Commerce and Shopping Carts
- Allow you to sell items online.
- Lots of plug ins available for CMS to sell using them as well.
- Examples: OS-Commerce, Magento, ZenCart etc
- You must be PCI DSS Compliant to avoid a potential £20,000 fine
Complex Bespoke Web Applications
- Some of you will want a bespoke application devleoping online to help run your business.
- Most of the above applications are built using the Model View Controller (MVC). The basic idea is this seperates the complicated coding from what you see on screen. The MVC is usually achieved using one of the rapid application development environments listed below:
- Examples: Cake, CodeIgniter, Ruby on Rails, Zend
Open Source
Why choose Open Source applications?
Please note the applications listed above are all Open Source, we have not listed commercial applications since these companies have their own marketing budgets to promote their services elsewhere. Open Source solutions are often better but not always.
- Over half of the worlds databases run MySQL including Amazon, Facebook, Google etc.
- Around 90% of Internet servers run Linux.
- 50 Places Linux is Running That You Might Not Expect
Websites and The Law
This is an area often overlooked, but ignore it at your peril. Like all things it could come back to bite you!
EU Law
UK Law
In addition to the above, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 ensures that what is known as "Accessibility" in the world of computers is a must with your website.
The Data Protection Act also applies:-
This is all very complicated for the average business wanting to put their business online, so we have created a website checklist for you to use to help stay the right side of the law. This is a guide only, but should set you on the right path. There is a link in the left hand nav on all pages.
We will also be scoring the websites of companies listed in this directory against this list, to help raise standards and awareness of these legal requirements.
What You Should Know
Check"Who is"
- registRANT - you or your business - NOT your website developer
- registRAR - your webhost or website developer
NB: The registRANT owns the domain.
It does not matter what your domain ends it, it matters where in the world your hosting is. If your business is solely in the UK choose a Nominet domain, because of the fleixibility and control mentioned below.
.com .org .net Domains
- ICANN manage these domains in the USA
- You cannot change registRAR or registRANT within 60 days of registration or renewal
- The registRAR must unlock the domain and give you an AuthCode to move it within 5 days if you ask. If they do not they are in breach of contract with ICANN> and you can complain.
.co.uk .org.uk Domains
- Nominet manage these domains in the UK
- You can pick up the phone and speak to Nominet - you speak to a real knowledgeable and helpful person who will give you their name and deal with your problem.
- To change webhost you just need to change the IPSTAG, this takes 24-48 hours.
- If your webhost won't do it, you can get Nominet to do it for £10+VAT
Marketing
SEO
- On Page SEO - means optmising each page on your website.
- Off Page SEO - means building relevant and authoratative links to your website.
Online Marketing
- Making your website convert sales or enquiries.
- Analysing data