• 3rd May 2018

A tough few days, but good challenges too

A tough few days, but good challenges too

A tough few days, but good challenges too 1024 526 79DESIGN Ltd

Once in a while we go through tough days of stress.  We all do, don’t we.  When it comes to stress over technology, it’s quite different.  It’s how you rise above it and go beyond it that makes the difference though.  You do learn from it too – a cliche but true.

SEO – the ecommerce global side

One of our clients has an ecommerce site that is frankly, global.  They have sites in America, Ireland, and other parts of Europe too.  We had some challenges in the last few months over ranking, and certain page issues.  We used some fancy plugins to get content at the top of pages, with buttons and blogs, but it cause more harm than good.  It was done on advice from an external SEO company.

On many of our websites we have built in Error Monitors.  These are designed to show us errors that happen within the site, so we can work to fix them.  A few weeks after we used this category tool, we saw a sharp increase.  So after some investigations, we found this tool to be the cause.  We removed it and decided to go “back to basics”.  No fancy stuff at the top, just content about the products with links.

This worked so well.  We made various other changes within this WordPress ecommerce website, and within a few days the site went from having thousands of notices and warnings, to none!  It was amazing to see a clean website.  Very few indeed can say they are ‘clean’.

Once this was clear, we then started to roll out these changes on multiple of their websites, to great success.  It’s been a stressful, but busy time for that.

lincolnshire seo

New website with GoDaddy access shambles

One of the key problems we face with new clients’ websites, are when their domains are controlled by someone else.  This is when a designer company has bought it for them, and it’s not within the client’s control.  Bad move.

As a side point: we always strongly suggest a new client buys the domain themselves.  It’s theirs – not ours!

So we setup this client’s website within a matter of days.  Lots of toing and froing with the client to get content and pictures just right.  It was a perfect partnership.  Still is!  But the domain issue was not good at all.  It was bought by someone else, on someone else account; not even in the client’s company  name.  So our solid work with Nominet, and directly with the client, it’s taken about a week to get it right.  Far more work than we thought it would be, but we held our guns and got the job done.  As of today, the site is now in our client’s ownership, registered to them, and web hosted by us.  We are chuffed to bits, and the result is a fabulous website.

godaddy logo

Always check the label….

We also built a website recently for a local engineering company, and their emails were the issue here. The domain was elsewhere, but that wasn’t too bad to move.  The problem was their emails were being hosted by the company in a fair unusual, inhospitable way.  Imagine it – you can only access your emails through a system like Roundcube (a fancy Webmail service).  Not through Outlook or a phone app.  Not clever really.

So we built the website, all ready and updated the name servers (to point it all to us).
Bad move – They had no backup of their websites.  Oh drat.  Big drat!  So for them to get their emails back we had to think on our toes…. plan b … the name servers were changed from ‘default’ to ours.  We switch it back to default and it worked.  They had access.

roundcube webmail logo

Luckily a lady in the office with some IT sense could back them all up, as well as contacts, and now, we are good to go.

So again, by morning we should be hosting their website, and their emails to which they can access them via Outlook, iPhone, webmail, even Roundcube… you name it.

So you see, it has been a tough ole week.  But we have had some lovely chats with new folks coming to see us.  Great relationships afoot.  2018 is looking good.

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