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Local electrician gains web presence
Possibly the smallest TXP-powered site devised, weighing in at a massive 2 articles, this is more of an electronic business card I did for a friend yesterday to channel folk to his phone numbers/inbox. A front page, the ubiquitous contact form and a silly 404 page is about all there is. Next stop is to get it listed on the business pages/search engine sites and get some inbound links…
The usual plugin crew were graciously employed to perform the ‘magic’ — bearing in mind the site has no frills, no tricks, and no cleverness. In reverse alphabetic order:
- zem_contact_reborn (+pap_contact_cleaner)
- upm_image
- smd_gallery (+jQuery cycle plugin and shadowbox)
- sed_copyright
- rvm_maintenance
- rvm_css
- rss_admin_db_manager
Tested in the latest FF, Opera, Chrome (I think) and IE6/7. Any wibbles in other browsers, yell.
Last edited by Bloke (2008-09-28 18:41:01)
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
zero wrote:
Nice one, Stef. Nice concept about the 404 page but perhaps just a bit too hard to read?
Ta.
You may well be right. It looked ok on my monitor at home but on this LCD at work it’s a bit dim. I might brighten up the font a tad from its current #444. It is meant to be dark :-p but I can probably find a better colour that conveys the impression, while also being readable. Thanks for the heads up.
I was expecting comments on my crud choice of typography or letter spacing or lack of layout pizazz, but judging from the number of visitors who have not commented, I guess it’s unremarkable or everyone’s too polite to tell me it’s crap! Would be nice to know if anyone who stumbled upon the site and needed an electrician would consider giving him a call, or if the general unprofessionalism of the site might put you off? And if the latter, what you would do to improve it? It’s the only way I’ll learn…
(btw, I thought it was better than his rival’s site that Mark sent me as an example of the wording he wanted to use)
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
I don’t see any typography, layout or spacing problems. It does the job, imho. Definitely better than his rival’s site! I would be tempted to phone him no doubt, whereas the rival is very off putting. To seal it for me though, I’d like to see some testimonials from happy customers because every sparky or builder is the bees knees if you believe what they say about themselves, but it’s much more believable if it comes from a happy customer, preferably one who can be contacted.
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
Thank you, sir.
zero wrote:
To seal it for me though, I’d like to see some testimonials from happy customers
Good idea. When he has some customers, I’ll ask him to get some quotes, or let me have some of the feedback from his contact form! Then I’ll add a page, or a random rotating quote or three. Nice one.
Know what you mean about contractors. They’re all better than the other guy, and I swear they all go on a course to learn to suck in breath and mutter “cowboys” under their breath in reference to whoever did the last lot of work :-)
Last edited by Bloke (2008-09-29 11:38:08)
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
I saw it the other day when you posted it and I really liked it (sorry for the feedback delay).
And now that zero made me notice the 404 (zero is in the details) I like it even more. Very original 404.
And it’s a great job considering the volume of content you had to deal with. It isn’t an easy task to do a website when there is minimal content.
Customers quotes are a good idea to add some positive content to this business-card type website.
Also, your friend may consider about having a FAQ section (a little one at least, because it may grow then), with common questions about electricity or about his services, etc.
When there is not too much content, FAQs are a good and easy way to make your client (your friend) generate some useful (and keyword rich) content from his potential clients.
FAQs also will raise up his credibility, and are a SEO booster.
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
Very nice Stef! I prefer the 404 page to the main page!
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
maniqui wrote:
It isn’t an easy task to do a website when there is minimal content.
Tell me about it! I agonised for hours over an approach until I thought “what the hell, it’s small, it’s compact, it’s like a business card, so umm…”
Also, your friend may consider about having a FAQ section… with common questions about electricity or about his services, etc.
Good idea, thanks. I’ll pass it on and see what he thinks might be appropriate content. As you say, the more relevant content the better, especially given the myriad aggregator sites offering electricians in this area that take the top spots in Google.
jstubbs
Ta ;-)
Last edited by Bloke (2008-09-29 18:58:38)
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
Great stuff all around, but you’ve certainly raised the bar and standard for all future 404 pages I create.
Only little thing I see is on the 3 blue icons, there’s a bit of blow-out blurriness on the bottom and right edges of the circles. A bit trivial, but it’s there.
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
Thanks for the props.
Destry wrote:
Only little thing I see is on the 3 blue icons, there’s a bit of blow-out blurriness on the bottom and right edges of the circles.
Yeah, annoying isn’t it. Couldn’t get rid of it. I made them a lovely PNG-24 originally and it looked poifick until I remembered that IE6 drew dirty grey squares around them due to its lack of PNG transparency support. So I re-saved them as PNG-8s and no matter what dithering/interpolation option I picked in photoshop, that smudging occurred to some degree or other. Bah! I just chose the least offensive version I could.
What I might do is revert to the PNG-24s by default for all proper browsers and just use the PNG-8s (or GIFs) in the ie6hack.css file with an !IMPORTANT by it ;-)
Thanks for noticing. I’d forgotten about having to revisit that bit.
Last edited by Bloke (2008-10-04 17:40:04)
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
Man-machine,
do you know this trick? PNG8: the clear winner
That not-so-well-known method will create a transparent PNG8 that will look perfectly in browsers that support PNG transparencies. In IE6, it will have transparency too, although it could look a little pixelated. So, for IE6, expect not-so-beautiful results on complex transparent PNG images, but maybe, for those circle icons, it could work OK.
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#12 2008-10-04 17:25:29
- els
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Re: Local electrician gains web presence
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