I went through quite a long phase of updating this blog with almost surprising regularity, so anyone that actually reads it may have noticed I’ve been somewhat absent as of late. So where have I been?
Well, the short answer is I’ve just been busy!
Media Wow
Since I started at Media Wow, I’ve been busy there with a few projects. The biggest of which, our first “proper” web site build, is nearing completion and we’re excited to be launching it next Thursday. It’s one we’ve built from the ground up using WordPress, a custom design, some neat integration and we’re going to be hosting it on our in-house hosting platform we’ve set up with VPS.NET.
As soon as that’s done, we’re starting on eight web site builds for our biggest client. Whilst they’re certainly not sexy brands, they’re going to be fun to build, and it’s going to be nice to bring some brand consistency to the group.
Invision Power Services
Outside of that, I’ve also officially joined the Invision Power Services team, to help out on a part time basis. A lot of you will know that I’ve been working with IPS on and off for several years, with everything ranging from support, to skin design, to SEO. I’m very excited to be helping them in a more official role, and have already been pretty busy. Some of what I have been doing includes:
Search Engine Optimisation
I started out a few months ago helping to improve the search-friendliness of the IP.Board product, and we made some huge improvements for version 3.1, which was released last week.
I’m also now helping with optimising the Invision Power Services company web site. We’re aiming initially and primarily to target the term “forum software” (shameless linking, I know) and it is going remarkably well. In less than two months we’ve gone from not ranking at all in the first 150 positions to, as of the time of this post, position fifteen! We’ve even had brief stints in position five. Obviously this is a work in progress, and we’d naturally love to see ourselves hit position one.
Mobile Skin
Rikki did a great job designing the first iteration of the mobile skin for IP.Board 3.1. It was a vast improvement from previous light skins used for this purpose, but we decided that we wanted to target modern smart phones and give them a truly mobile experience. So Josh set to work on a native iPhone application, and I started to build upon Rikki’s mobile skin.
We’ve made it feel like a more native app, by replacing most of the links with touch-friendly buttons, making entire rows clickable instead of just the links within them, adding a loading indicator to give the impression it’s not simply a web page. These simple things have been very well received by regular users, and when coupled with the iPhone application, it looks and feels great.
Affiliate Banners
I noticed some time ago that a lot of the people in the affiliate pilot program are either using text links, or banners they have designed themselves. We’d never offered affiliates an official set of graphics to use on their sites and as a result, I felt we were missing the mark. So, I set out to create some official ones and they seem to have been very well received.
Support
Whilst this is not part of my role, since the release of IP.Board 3.1, I’ve even been helping out with support whenever I can. The sheer number of queries has been phenomenal, but the support team have been doing a truly amazing job at keeping up!
Outside Work
Guess what? My car broke again! This time, however, it needs an entirely new engine. I went through quite a bit of stress with Evans Halshaw trying to arrange for this work to be done on warranty, but thanks once more go to Ian McCandlish at Pendragon PLC for ensuring that the full cost of a new engine (£2,800~) was covered by my warranty, even if that did mean voiding the warranty going forward.
I also bought a red Rover 220 SDI as a temporary replacement car, which lasted me a week before an oil leak brought it to its knees. That car is now stuck at work until I’m brave enough to try and move it home, or I call the RAC to collect it. I’m going to try and sell it for spares or something, otherwise it’ll be a scrap job. It’s a bit of a shame, because the car itself is in good shape, it just seems a bit pointless trying to repair it now.
So, much to Charles Warner’s amusement, I’m spending a huge amount of time on trains back and forth to Durham, Manchester, and today, Denbigh in Wales. I’m almost starting to enjoy it, as it gives me a chance to think about things, write blog posts, make banners, etc.
