PragSys Web Design

What is Web Content?

Ian — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:46:30 +0000

Welcome to the first instalment of our “What is” series of blog posts, where will try and demystify some of the acronyms and jargon associated with web design and development. Our first was going to be, “What is a CMS?” or “What is a Content Management System”. Then we thought, well, perhaps it might be better to start by explaining what we mean by Content or Web Content.

So, “What is Web Content?”

Content, in the field of web design and development, is what you’re reading now. Its the choice of words, sentences and paragraphs. Its the choice of font, the colour of the borders, the width of the company logo. Its the images, video and music.

Content is everything you can see and hear on a web page.

There are of course, many more explanations of what Content is, but we’re not here to over complicate things. Its enough to say, content is the stuff you read and see, watch and hear on a web page.

Look our for next weeks, “What is a CMS?”!

NHSOB Website – Launched

Ian — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:25:55 +0000

We’re pleased to announce to launch of the new www.nhsob.com website. A large community based website, www.nhsob.com will allow its news editors and authors to communicate widely and quickly.

We look forward to seeing the website grow and flourish. For more details, see here.

Gladwin Consulting Limited

Ian — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:48:35 +0000

South Wales based Gladwin Consulting Limited required a new website to promote their expertise in remote first aid training, particularly in the outdoor environment. We developed a very simple site, explaining exactly what they do, powered by an easy to use CMS, that has also allows them to edit their site via the web browser.

A picture..or a map…paints a thousand words…

Ian — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:28:02 +0000

Read a very interesting article today at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17682294, about information overload, and how the human brain is ill equipped to deal with everything that gets thrown at it, in the modern world. Overwhelmed and overloaded.

I couldn’t help noticing the mention of Quantum GIS. Quantum GIS is an open source desktop GIS package, designed for spatial data handling and presentation of geographic data. A cut down, open source version of ESRI ArcGIS I like to think of it as. Not as full featured perhaps, but more than enough functionality for most.

Needless to say, if any of you reading out there, we happen to have a lot of experience of both Quantum GIS and ESRI ArcGIS. Why would I use Quantum GIS instead of ArcGIS…to save myself thousands of pounds, in the first instance. Actually, we’re thinking of running Quantum GIS training courses…if anyone is interested, please get in touch…

Project Planning

Ian — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 21:27:53 +0000

We’ve been reviewing multiple online systems to use to assist with project planning and management. We’re coming to the conclusion that none will do absolutely everything you want, some don’t do enough and some do too much.

We’re coming to the conclusion that a paper based system is worth trying. We’ve been reading up about Getting Things Done, a work/life management system. It makes a lot of common sense, so we’re going to give it a go. We’re going to implement it in paper first, and integrate digital tools to enhance or replace certain aspects as we go along.

First action has been done – reduce email inbox’s to zero! Now for the calendar!

Server upgrades, NHSOB, TNA and networking

Ian — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:05:25 +0000

A few things worth noting this week.

1. We’ve upgraded our servers so all clients will benefit from faster response times from their websites

2. www.nhsob.com is complete, we’re just waiting for content updates from club officials

3. Work on a new map interface for www.nationalarchives.gov.uk took a leap forward this week, with approval of a new approach for using map pop-ups to assist with navigating and querying their vast datastores!

4. Off to a networking event at Chepstow Racecourse this week…our first!

MongoDB Spatial Indexing

Ian — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 10:40:02 +0000

Well, we’ve discovered why the index wouldn’t build…we’re creating an index on a centroid document, containing X and Y co-ordinates. One or more of the records has become corrupted and so the index won’t build. Unfortunately, MongoDB doesn’t (or isn’t at the moment) telling which one (or more) is corrupt. We may have to write some code to check all the centroids. Or completely rebuild the collection from scratch, which is probably going to happen anyway with new data on the way. Will definitely write some code to ensure all the centroids are of the correct type.

PragSys takes on new client

Ian — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 09:37:26 +0000

We’re pleased to announce, we ‘re working on a new website for Gladwin Consulting, a Newport based training company, specialising in first aid in remote environments. Along with the website, we’ll be providing marketing assistance, training and support. We view ourselves as partners to all our clients, and anything we can do to help, we will.

Our deadline for this project, is 5th April, 2012.

Building a custom OpenLayers Single Build File

Ian — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:40:41 +0000

I’ll revisit this page, as I build experience with stripping out what I don’t need from the OpenLayers library, for a particular application. I develop on Linux Ubuntu (Lubuntu to be exact). Here’s one to remember for the future:

1. When you download the OpenLayers development version, remember to make the build.py file executable, so you can actually build the custom file.

How to resize a VirtualBox Windows guest on a Linux host

Ian — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:54:24 +0000

Firstly, we need to resize the vdi file, using VBoxManage. In a terminal, navigate to your vdi file and type:

VBoxManage modifyhd YOUR_HARD_DISK.vdi –resize SIZE_IN_MB

Next, start the VM, open a command prompt and run the following:

diskpart

list volume

select volume Your Volume

extend [size=n]

Extends the selected volume by size=n megabytes (MB)

Leave the extend size parameter blank to use all the available space.

Et voila, a bigger VM!