Kate Watkiss Web design thoughts

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Access All Areas

I’ve been working with Ensemble Cymru since 2015, supporting Peryn and his team to update and look after their website. It has been really great to work with such a creative and enthusiastic organisation. A huge part of Ensemble Cymru’s work is about bringing Welsh communities together to enjoy outstanding music, increase wellbeing and enable positive change… and that commitment extends to our website. We want to make sure that everyone can access our website so we’ve spent the past few months working on a redesigned website that has access at its heart.

Buying all versions of your domain name

Should you buy various versions of your domain name, and if so which ones?

WPML versus qTranslateX – a Clear Winner?

All over the world people use multilingual websites so they can get information they want in the language they prefer. Closer to home, in Wales, a large minority of web users prefer to access content in Welsh. For this reason, many businesses and organizations in Wales provide bilingual websites giving their visitors the choice to read Welsh or English.

Outperform Training & Coaching

Outperform are a sales training company delivering sales courses, bespoke training and business coaching to businesses in North Wales and across the UK. Test...

Plas Maenan Hotel Refresh

We originally created the Plas Maenan website in 2006. The design was influenced by the light and airy Edwardian styled interior. In need of an update, we refreshed the design to convey elegance and luxury consistent with the hotel's growing reputation.

St Tudno Hotel & Restaurant

We were ask to redesign the St Tudno Hotel website to help the business to engage with a wider customer base, improve branding awareness, promote special offers, events, new menus, and advertise the hotel's unique Alice in Wonderland connection.

Batchwood School

Batchwood School is a school for secondary aged pupils with social, emotional and behavioral learning difficulties. The team at Batchwood School had been working internally, developing the teaching and support capacity and working to improve the achievement levels.

Ynys Resources

"Because Efficiency Matters” - Ynys Resources provide consultancy services and support for sustainable resource management. Areas of expertise include: Business Development Markets for Recyclables, Recycling and Waste Infrastructure Development, Training in Resources Management and sustainability, BREEAM Assessor (audit service and bespoke advice from interim design to post construction).

Q Marketing & PR

Jo Quinney is a PR and marketing professional behind QMPR an award winning PR consultancy on Anglesey in North Wales. A talented copy writer, Jo felt that blogging would be the best way to demonstrate her experience and achievements and also her diverse passions from PR & marketing communications to environmental and community issues and all the fun stuff in between.

Accessible xhtml tables 1: scope, id, headers

I hadn’t had much call for creating hard core data table in my web design work. However when asked to re-write some xhtml for an online bookings system I found some of the information generated seemed to lend itself to tabular organisation.

Pobol Peblig website gets accessibility standard

I’m very pleased to announce that the bilingual Pobol Peblig Partnership website has been awarded the RNIB’s (Royal National Institute of the Blind) See It Right standard for web accessibility. For more information on See It Right, other audits and web accessibility visit the RNIB Web Access Centre.

Your domain name: updating DNS settings and domain transfer

If you have your site redesigned or change your web hosting you will want your domain to point to the new site. This should be straightforward if you registered the domain yourself and look after your account. If someone else registered the domain for you, you might come across problems. This article explains what you need to know, gives a bit of background about domain names & the DNS, and how to go about solving any problems you come across.

Georgina Rambton Fine Art Portfolio

The brief was to recreate a virtual space that is pleasant and inspiring to explore, and reflects the energy of the artwork. The simple layout allows the work to speak, providing a backdrop for the paintings, some of which are rich and vibrant, others intricate and delicate.

Royal Oak Hotel in Betws y Coed

The Royal Oak required websites for their 3 businesses: Royal Oak Hotel, Stables Bistro Bar & Stables Lodge. Although the three businesses needed to be marketed separately, as each has its own branding with a different audience and a different focus, the sites were designed with graphic motifs and page layout that defines the company's overall identity.

Time Machine Wales: Medieval History for Kids

Time Machine Wales is a bilingual website which brings alive Denbighshire's medieval history for children and promotes the medieval sites in the area. The design needed to be colourful and fun to appeal to kids and contains animated characters, sounds and interactive stories. Historical characters are associated with medieval sites which are marked on an interactive map.

Pobol Peblig: Community partnership

The Communities First Partnership in Peblig, Caernarfon (AKA Pobol Peblig) is a partnership of residents who run development projects in the community: The members decide what they want, then go ahead and do it. The website needed to reflect this dynamic, helping with communication between volunteers, publicity of events, meetings and activities, sharing resources and ideas, as well as promoting their projects to a wider audience.

Building an Accessible Website: RNIB See it Right

A website I’ve just been working on (Pobol Peblig Partnership) is currently being audited by the RNIB under the RNIB See it Right accessibility standard. This article covers some of the things we learned through the audit process, with background information to help understand how to approach building accessible sites and then gives some practical tips and things to remember.

Gettext: Images and other media

Using the gettext framework to display images and other media in the correct language

A Bilingual blog

Making a blog bilingual is relatively straightforward. There are a variety of plugins available which allow you to provide your blog in two or more languages. Go to the wordpress translation plugin page for more info.

Can Architecture Inform Digital Design?

How could architectural design rules be applied to the digital world? How does architecture effect society and what constitutes good design? Given we spend a significant amount of our time in the digital world, what responsibilities do digital designers share with architects.

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