Web Design and SEO Company Limited

Mum 'took the plunge' and now has her own web design business

They are a roaring success - and even have their very own office Labrador.

A Plymouth mum ‘took the plunge’ to set up her own web design company – which is now one of the best in the city.

Diana Crabtree started the company in 2015 working from her dining room table one day a week and self-taught herself web design and search engine optimization.

A few years later she went full-time with another web developer, who now is a permanent member of the team, and now she owns her own premises at Reynolds Park in Plympton.

The Web Design and SEO Company are a small team of seven "fantastic" web, SEO, and digital marketing employees – and a Labrador – and who are all working towards the same aim to help local, and national businesses grow and make the most out of digital presence.

Diana had been an employee for over twenty-five years before starting up her own business, and she told PlymouthLive she feels "proud" to have won the '3 Best Rated Website Designers' for the third year in the row.

Diana said: "It was a big move because I had a good job, I worked in my dining room part-time for a couple of years and it was a big decision.

"I have always wanted to run my own business, but have always worked for other people all my life."

"I never came up with the idea that would be good commercially, but then I worked with a company in Estover for five and a half years."

"When I got to 50 I thought I can actually do this myself and thought that I could do it really well- so at that point I thought if I don't do it now, I'm never going to do it."

"I just took the plunge and started to build the business by myself, my team is really creative, my area of business is commercial and helping people grow their businesses."

Staff at The Web Design and SEO Company. October 28, 2021

The Web Design and SEO Company award meant they faced a rigorous fifty-point inspection that included everything from checking reviews, ratings, reputation, history, complaints, satisfaction, and trust and cost to the general excellence- that they passed with flying colors.

They now have close to one-hundred clients, some of who have been there since the early days of opening, from Plymouth, Devon, and Cornwall including Moorland Heating, MLT Plumbing and Heating, Plympton Osteopathic Clinic, and Crownhill Conservatories.

They also work with Plymouth University, Nash and Co, Solicitors, and Tamar Caravan Centre and pride themselves on providing "first-class customer service" to their customers.

Diana told PlymouthLive: "We have had clients who have been with us literally since day one, it's all about building long-term relationships with our customers and really being a trusted partner- and they really do trust us.

"One of our clients had a follow-up meeting and the clients said they were 'so pleased' and 'uplifted' by the new website and to hear that, it makes our jobs really worthwhile."

In May 2019, Diana found her Web Design and SEO Company a new home renting out the top floor of an office that was available at the time.

Before long Diana decided to buy the whole premises which included a garage that has been converted into a staff room, with a fully equipped kitchen, and a purpose-built meeting room for staff and clients.

Diana said the reason why she decided not to buy the location straight away was that with the pandemic, she wanted to make sure her business is going to be sustainable in the future.

"We have only been in the office for just over two years, we rented it and then bought it. We have done everything really carefully so we know it will be sustainable for the future," she said.

"Downstairs was literally just a garage and we had it completely ripped out and worked with all local people and tradesmen, including one of our clients, who helped us transform it."

"We also have a lovely staff room and a really nice, big meeting room now that we use not only for internal interviews but for our clients who prefer to meet face to face."

"We had a meeting in here yesterday and it was a website we put live a couple of weeks ago and the husband and wife came in with their little boy."

She added: "It's just a nice place for people to come, we welcome them in and make them a cup of tea- it's just a friendly and welcoming place to be."

https://webdesignandseocompany.co.uk

PHP 8.2 Released!

PHP 8.2 includes a number of new features and improvements. Here are some of the main ones:

1. Improved Type Variance: PHP 8.2 introduces improved type variance for generic types, allowing you to specify whether a generic type is covariant, contravariant, or invariant. This can help to improve type safety and flexibility when working with generic types.
2. Performance Improvements: PHP 8.2 includes various performance improvements, including faster JIT compilation, faster garbage collection, and improved handling of large arrays. These improvements can help to make PHP applications faster and more efficient.
3. Deprecations: Some features have been deprecated in PHP 8.2, including the assert() function when used with a string argument, and the list() construct with a single array element. It's important to be aware of these deprecations if you are upgrading from an earlier version of PHP.

Here are some examples of features that have been deprecated in PHP 8.2:

1. assert() function with string argument: The assert() function can be used to perform runtime checks, but it has been deprecated when used with a string argument. Instead, you should use the assert() function with a boolean argument or an expression.
2. list() construct with a single array element: The list() construct allows you to unpack the elements of an array into separate variables. It has been deprecated when used with a single array element, as this usage was considered confusing and error-prone.
3. create_function(): The create_function() function has been deprecated, as it has been superseded by anonymous functions, which are more flexible and easier to use.
4. mb_ereg_replace_callback(): The mb_ereg_replace_callback() function has been deprecated, as it has been superseded by the preg_replace_callback() function, which provides similar functionality and is more widely used.
5. Callables that are not accepted by the $callable() syntax (but are accepted by call_user_func()) are deprecated.

Go Update to PHP 8.2

Git --distributed-even-if-your-workflow-isn't

Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning-fast performance. It outclasses SCM tools like Subversion, CVS, Perforce, and ClearCase with features like cheap local branching, convenient staging areas, and multiple workflows.

Git development was started by Torvalds in April 2005 when the proprietary source-control management (SCM) system used for Linux kernel development since 2002, BitKeeper, revoked its free license for Linux development. The copyright holder of BitKeeper, Larry McVoy, claimed that Andrew Tridgell had created SourcePuller by reverse engineering the BitKeeper protocols. The same incident also spurred the creation of another version-control system, Mercurial.

Torvalds wanted a distributed system that he could use like BitKeeper, but none of the available free systems met his needs. He cited an example of a source-control management system needing 30 seconds to apply a patch and update all associated metadata and noted that this would not scale to the needs of Linux kernel development, where synchronizing with fellow maintainers could require 250 such actions at once. For his design criterion, he specified that patching should take no more than three seconds, and added three more goals:

• Take the Concurrent Versions System (CVS) as an example of what not to do; if in doubt, make the exact opposite decision.
• Support a distributed, BitKeeper-like workflow.
• Include very strong safeguards against corruption, either accidental or malicious.

Latest source Release: 2.29.2 For Windows

Learn more .....

Free Absurd Illustrations for Landing Pages

Absurd Illustrations that make sense are something completely new when it comes to modern web design. The digital era has its aesthetic standards inspired by perfection and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, Absurd Illustrations provide us with perfect imperfection. They look like something your child will paint or understand. It is simple, yet effective.

The website is absurd. design released a few amazing illustrations that combine absurdity, imagination, and imperfection, and you can use them for free on your landing page or application design.

This playful design offers us the opportunity to enjoy something that is close to us, something less sterile.

Not only do surreal illustrations look beautiful, but they awaken the imagination and are amazing for attracting attention. These illustrations can send the message you would like to share, they can be a metaphor, whatever you, please.

Each illustration offers the possibility of limitless interpretations and uses; everyone can give it meaning. It depends only on one’s creativity and free spirit. They are suitable for various businesses and brands as each can use playfulness to achieve certain goals.

A landing page says a lot about your work; therefore make sure it resonates with humans. They are the ones you need to connect with.

Read more .....

PHP The Right Way

There’s a lot of outdated information on the Web that leads new PHP users astray, propagating bad practices and insecure code. PHP: The Right Way is an easy-to-read, quick reference for PHP popular coding standards, links to authoritative tutorials around the Web, and what the contributors consider to be best practices at the present time.

There is no canonical way to use PHP. This website aims to introduce new PHP developers to some topics which they may not discover until it is too late, and aims to give seasoned pros some fresh ideas on those topics they’ve been doing for years without ever reconsidering. This website will also not tell you which tools to use, but instead offer suggestions for multiple options, when possible explaining the differences in approach and use-case.

Use the Current Stable Version (8.1)

If you are getting started with PHP, start with the current stable release of PHP 8.1. PHP 8.x adds many new features over the older 7.x and 5.x versions. The engine has been largely re-written, and PHP is now even quicker than older versions. PHP 8 is a major update of the language and contains many new features and optimizations.

You should try to upgrade to the latest stable version quickly - PHP 5.6 is already End of Life. Upgrading is easy, as there are not many backwards compatibility breaks. If you are not sure which version a function or feature is in, you can check the PHP documentation on the php.net website.

Built-in web server

With PHP 5.4 or newer, you can start learning PHP without installing and configuring a full-fledged web server. To start the server, run the following command from your terminal in your project’s web root:

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Hand Coding

In computing, hand-coding means editing the underlying representation of a document or a computer program, when tools that allow working on a higher level representation also exist. Typically this means editing the source code, or the textual representation of a document or program, instead of using a WYSIWYG editor that always displays an approximation of the final product. It may also mean translating the whole or parts of the source code into machine language manually instead of using a compiler or an automatic translator.

Most commonly, it refers to directly writing HTML documents for the web (rather than in a specialized editor), or to writing a program or portion of a program in assembly language (more rarely raw machine code) rather than in a higher-level language. It can also include other markup languages, such as wikitext.

Hand code is source code that does not have tools that can edit it at a more abstract level. Hand code must, by definition, be edited and maintained entirely by hand. Some code can be edited either using an editor/IDE or by hand, but hand code is differentiated from derived code in that it requires human involvement to create and maintain it over time. Projects may include both hand code and derivative code.

Read more .....

JavaScript Language

When it comes to programming, getting started is the hardest part. There are too many programming languages to choose from these days and each seems to be suited for a specific kind of work. The best thing you can do is build a foundation using the most popular programming language out there: JavaScript.

If you want to learn JavaScript, but don't want to pay an arm and a leg, enroll in this Comprehensive JavaScript Bundle. It's like a gateway into the great wide world of programming, and it only costs $31.

History:

The first popular web browser with a graphical user interface, Mosaic, was released in 1993. Accessible to non-technical people, it played a prominent role in the rapid growth of the nascent World Wide Web. The lead developers of Mosaic then founded the Netscape corporation, which released a more polished browser, Netscape Navigator, in 1994. This quickly became the most used.

During these formative years of the Web, web pages could only be static, lacking the capability for dynamic behavior after the page was loaded in the browser. There was a desire in the flourishing web development scene to remove this limitation, so in 1995, Netscape decided to add a scripting language to Navigator. They pursued two routes to achieve this: collaborating with Sun Microsystems to embed the Java programming language, while also hiring Brendan Eich to embed the Scheme language.

Netscape management soon decided that the best option was for Eich to devise a new language, with syntax similar to Java and less like Scheme or other extant scripting languages. Although the new language and its interpreter implementation were called LiveScript when first shipped as part of a Navigator beta in September 1995, the name was changed to JavaScript for the official release in December.

The choice of the JavaScript name has caused confusion, implying that it is directly related to Java. At the time, the dot-com boom had begun and Java was the hot new language, so Eich considered the JavaScript name a marketing ploy by Netscape.

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Programming Language For Non-Techs

As a startup, it can be challenging to decide which programming language to use. Considering the plethora of options, it is important that you consider the future scalability and integration of the language you use. You’ll also want to conduct some market research.

The goal is to focus on a language that will allow for growth, based on your potential prospects. Although each project differs in terms of its requirements, it is important to become familiar with Python -- especially if you’re building your own startup.

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Happier HTML5 form validation in Vue

November 09, 2020 (Dave Rupert)

Some time ago, I wrote about the need for simple HTML5 form validation in ~6 lines of JavaScript. Well, I’m back, this time in a Vue 2/Nuxt application. I finally hit the point on this project where I needed some form of validation. Rather than jumping headlong into a whole form builder library dependency, I thought I’d try my simple method again. Here’s a demo of it in action.

There are a few differences compared to the vanilla DOM implementation. The non-framework version relied on querySelectorAll and addEventListener to loop through inputs, which I guess you could do inside a Vue component, but feels a bit like an anti-pattern, so I had to modify the approach a smidge.

The first step is I’m applying a .errors styling class to the parent <form> when one of the inputs invalidates. This is triggered by the component-level this.errors state. Originally the class was put on the, but we can safely put it on the form instead of each individual input’s state.

The second bit is the @invalid bind directive on each required input. This replaces looping through each input and adding a addEventListener but has the same effect of attaching a method to the invalid event. The invalidateForm() method helps us visually invalidate the form and just like before HTML does all the submit event cancellation for us.

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Goodbye to Google Fonts?

I’ve used Google Fonts in prototypes and in 10M+ MAU products. It’s incredibly easy to get started with and provides an amazing font discovery. That’s also why it’s currently still used on over 42M websites!

This convenience has its price: Performance. Many have already pointed out the cost of multiple requests. If you want the remaining speed boost, then you’re best off downloading your used Google Fonts and self-host them.

This is nothing new. In fact, it’s been advocated already for years. Even Google themselves advised others to self-host fonts in their Google I/O ‘18 talk about web performance.

Read more .....