This may seem a strange article coming from a web designer, but yes you have read the title correctly, I think that web designers should stop developing sites that will display correctly in Internet Explorer 6.  In this article I will discuss why Internet Explorer sucks and also why I think that developers should stop developing sites for IE6.

Let me start by saying that Internet Explorer is a terrible web browser.  Why you might ask?  Well quite simply it just does not follow the rules that are set out by the W3C in terms of interpreting code into a web page.  What I mean by this is that you can develop a site that looks near on the same in all other browsers (such as Firefox, Safari, Opera and many more) but in IE6 it looks pants.  It just doesn’t handle transparent PNGs at all and floating elements never seem to display correctly at all.  And last but not least its old!

In fact one of the tests that you can run on a browser to test how ‘standards friendly’ it is, is called the acid 3 test.  When running this test on Internet Explorer 6 it scored a pathetic 12/100.  Firefox 3 scored 93/100 and Safari 4 scored 100/100.  Yet another reason why not to use or further support IE6.  Looking at my web stats for this site I  can see that 16% of users are still using IE6 and for the stats for Equal Design that figure drops to just 9%.  Numbers using it are decreasing and I believe that if web developers stop developing for IE6 these numbers will drop off massively.

There are many that argue web designers should still be developing sites that will display in IE6.  Their argument for this is that there are a large proportion of the web population that are still using IE6 – why I don’t know as it is free to upgrade or use a different, more modern browser such as Firefox.  People are not still using Windows 3.1 for goodness sake so why are people still hell bent on using a browser that is getting on for 5 years old.

So why do I think that we should stop developing sites for IE6?  Well the main reason is that the longer people keep their sites looking the same on IE6 then the less likely people are to change or upgrade their browser.  I mean if they see things looking OK all the time then they are less likely to take the time to get a more up to date browser to fix any visual elements that looks poor.  Therefore by making sites compatible with IE6 we are merely prolonging its life.  Lets take a stance to get rid of it once and for all and stop developing sites for IE6.

Content Management Systems have taken off massively in the last 2 – 3 years.  I suppose the reason for this is that more and more stuff is being published on the web, but the number of people that have ability to do this is far smaller than the amount of information or number of people that want to publish stuff.

So why does a content management system help?  Well the idea behind a content management system is that the user need know nothing about publishing on the web, in fact all they need to know is how to type in order to publish their information.  Alright, I agree there are one or two things that they need to know such as creating links, adding images etc. but all this is done far easier in a CMS than when coding from scratch.  The content management system allows anyone to manage content and publish it on the web.

So what software can be used in order to produce a content management system.  There are several systems out their but for me I always use WordPress.  Many people would ask why, since WordPress is traditionally a blogging software, and maybe they are right, but until someone can convince me otherwise I am sticking with WordPress.  I use WordPress because:

Its easy to grasp:  you can really learn the basics of writing pages and posts in a matter of days

• Pages:  WordPress was one of the first ‘blogging’ platforms to use pages which allows you to write pages in a parent, child method
• Include a blog: even though you are using WordPress as a CMS, many sites these days will want a ‘News’ section and therefore why not take advantage of what WordPress was built for – blogging which is what a news section basically is
• Custom Fields:  WordPress’ custom fields enable me to display content in a way that other systems don’t.  By using custom field with both pages and posts I can display information other than what I write or display in the content of a post or page.  They provide real flexibility within WordPress.

I will write more about Custom Fields in an up and coming article, so watch this space.

When using WordPress as a content management system it is best to keep your static content as pages.  By this I mean pages that are written about a particular topic and do not need a data stamp and time that they were written.  The page content itself may well change but the actual page itself stays in the same place all the time.  Also when writing pages think about what structure/navigation you are going to want to use.  You will need to take advantage of WordPress’ parent and child pages in order to get WordPress to automatically add pages that you create to your sites navigation.  For example you may have a page of a site called ‘Services’ if you were a Security firm for example.  Your company may well offer several services and therefore you would write pages that are child pages to the services page that outline all the services that you offer.  With the correct coding in your template files you can allow WordPress to list all the child pages of the Services page when you are viewing the Services page.  This makes navigation for your visitors much easier and it also makes publish pages easier as nothing needs to be added apart from the new page in order to get the page to appear on the site.

In terms of getting a News section on the site I would recommend that you create a ‘Home’ page and then set that to display as your WordPress homepage in the settings section.  Then create News page and set that to display as your blog posts in the settings section of the dashboard.  That way you can still use categories etc when writing news as well as tags.

I hope that has given you a little insight into using WordPress as a content management system and please check back for more posts in the coming weeks.  You can view some of the site that I have created using WordPress as a CMS in the Portfolio of Equal Design.

Last week Equal Design got the opportunity to work with a new website – alldubbedup.co.uk.  In fact we are designing and coding the site including the logo and the look.  This project sounds really exiting and therefore I though that I would tell you all about it.

First of all I suppose that I need to introduce the reason behind the site, which would be a rather old but fantastic VW Beetle named Levi.  Levi is the yellow car below having some running repairs:

It seems as though there are may passionate owners of Beetles and other VW cars out there and therefore the idea is to create a Fan Site which people can join for a small fee.  All the benefits to this are still in negotiations however here are some of the benefits that we already know about:

• Discounts on classic car insurance
• Discounts from local companies in partnership with All Dubbed Up
• View archive of technical ‘how to’ videos on anything and everything VW
• Start pack
• Attend meets with other VW owners
• Sell you VW to other VW owners at no extra cost in the market place

As the site grows these benefits are sure to grow and grow and these are just the beginning.  At the moment the site is in the design stage but the domain name is bought and you can visit it at alldubbedup.co.uk in order to see the holding page!

Look forward to seeing this site grow and grow as I am sure that you will agree it has massive potential.  Lets hope that it is a success.

The other week my brother was renewing his domain name when he came across the domain that he wanted in the first place.  I have always wanted the domain name markwilkinson.co.uk or even markwilkinson.com, but as they are registered by a large furniture group this is not likely to happen.  My point is that this got me thinking about what domain name I should be using.

My blog has always resided on penn4them.com which is what it was always intended to do.  The name comes from the old saying that I used to here, when someone is day-dreaming we used to say “penny for them”, meaning we would give you a penny for your thoughts.  Blogging is a lot about thought and opinions and therefore I thought that appropriate for a blog.

My blog is not up for discussion.  Since I started getting into web design and the Internet back in late 2004 I registered the domain name markdw.co.uk.  This is what I use for email and so on and for a while it was where I shared photographs and videos.  However my blog has taken over all that now.  So all I use this for is hosting my email.

I suppose the question I want to ask is which domain do you think I should be using for my personal domain.  I have a few that are registered and therefore was wondering what other people thought was the best to use.  I you could answer the poll below then that would be great.

[poll id="2"]

Having had my broadband Internet provided by Tiscali now for almost 4 years and on the whole they have been alright.  However I have found that the service has not really moved with the times in recent years although it is still providing a decent service.  It was time therefore to look elsewhere.

Speaking to a number of people at work it seemed that there were two best choices for switching to a different provider – BeThere or O2.  As it happens they are the same company I think.  I could also have gone with Sky Broadband however I have read and heard nothing but bad reports about this as so I decided not to go with it at this time.

Looking on the O2 website their deals seem to be excellent.  They were offering the same broadband package that I was on with Tiscali for a few pounds cheaper or I could more than double the speed to 20 meg (estimated 18 meg for my phone number) for the same price as I was paying now.  Therefore even though there would be some hassle involved I decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

In order to transfer your broadband from one supplier to another you need to obtain what is called a MAC code (Migration Authorisation Code) which allows the new company to transfer the service over to the new provider as you cannot have two companies providing broadband down the same telephone line.  Therefore I got onto Tiscali, my current provider and explained that I wanted to cancel the account and obtain a MAC code.  At this point you get all the questions about why you are wanting to move and are you unhappy with the service etc.  I explained that I could get it cheaper which is when the assistant did what I have hoped and offered me exactly the same service for half the price!  That was 8 mrg unlimited broadband for just £7.99.

Decisions, decisions?  I had previous problems with tiscali broadband when we moved house about a year ago and conversations with colleagues at work had suggested that not only was the O2 service very good but the customer service was good too.  What a dilemma!  Well in the end I decided to stick with Tiscali and take them up on their super cheap, pretty fast service.  After all the terms of the deal had not changed and therefore I was still under no more than a 30 day contract as I was before.  If things got terrible with them I could leave and go with O2 in the new year.

So thats that, I am staying with Tiscali and paying a rather cheap £7.99 for an 8 meg speed (I actually averahe about 6.1 meg) and unlimited downloads.  Pretty good result that I think!

Yesterday we experienced some downtime with our websites (Equal Design) which was probably about 2 hours in the morning.  Therefore it was time to get onto the live chat and see what the problem was.  This char happened in the evening though which I think confused the support representative a little too much.

I have to say that I have been very pleased with the level and competency of the support that we have received whilst using this hosting company, however this conversation last night was rather infuriating.  It was like “Charlie” just was not listening.  We kept going round and round and round.  In fact it was very much like talking to a politician as “Charlie” was determined not to answer the question of why the sites had suffered from some downtime.

info: You are now chatting with ‘Charlie’
Charlie: Hello and Welcome to Live Chat Support.
Charlie: How may I assist you today ?
Mark: My websites experiecned a lot of downtime today. Could you please advise of the problem. Domains effected where penny4them.com, equaldesign.co.uk and cliffbashforth.co.uk to name a few
Charlie: Give me a moment please. I am looking into this.
Mark: thanks
Mark: any idea?
Charlie: I am still working on the issue, Please allow me few minutes
Charlie: I will update you shortly
Charlie: Please check now
Mark: they are live now but were down for most of the day for some people
Charlie: The issue is fixed now
Charlie: You should not face this again
Mark: what was wrong?
Charlie: I have made necessary changes for your account in php.ini
Mark: i am now down to a 99.90% uptime
Mark: you gurantee 99.96%
Mark: this is over a period of 11 months
Charlie: This was not server issue.
Charlie: The issue with your php.ini
Charlie: I have uploaded the php.ini file and made necessary changes.
Charlie: The domains are working fine now
Mark: but it was an issue with you not me
Mark: i havne’t and am pretty sure that I cannot change php.ini
Mark: if it affected my uptime then that must be part of your guarentee
Mark: as the uptime guarentee doesn’t stipulate only server problems
Charlie: I have uploaded php.ini for you.
Charlie: This was not the server issue .I have made necessary changes for you.
Mark: back to my original questions then – WHY did the problem (whatever it was) occur
Charlie: As I said there was issue with your php.ini file under your public_html folder
Mark: and how did this ‘issue’ occur?
Charlie: You did not have php.ini file under your public_html folder
Charlie: I have uploaded this one for you. and made necessary changes
Charlie: you could also make changes with php.ini file under your public_html folder
Charlie: The server was not down
Mark: i have never touched it – which domain are we talking about here were you have uploaded the php.ini file
Charlie: penny4them.com
Mark: think we have wires crossed here
Mark: the outage was this morning between 0615 (or earlier) and 0840 when I first got the site back
Mark: however some other people have said that sites (not just penny4them.com – i am on reseller) were down much of the day
Charlie: Yes, have you checked your all account for php.ini
Mark: but all sites are now working so that couldn’t be the problem
Mark: even if php.ini is not there now
Mark: I haven’t touched the sites all day
Mark: I went to bed at 2300 with all sites working
Mark: woke up at 0615 with NO sites working
Mark: what went wrong as I did not move any files
Mark: especially no php.ini
Mark: *not
Charlie: Okay.
Charlie: The domains are working fine now. If you are still having any issue please mail us at support@eukhost.com
Mark: i am NOT having an issue I just want to know what the issue was when they were down
Mark: i have clients websites on my reseller and they want to know (rightly so) what the problems are
Charlie: Mark, There was not any server wide issue.
Mark: so why were they down then?
Charlie: As I said there was issue with php.ini and it has been resolved.
Mark: sothat was an issue on ALL my domains?
Charlie: I have made changes for those which you have asked
Charlie: penny4them.com, equaldesign.co.uk and cliffbashforth.co.uk
Mark: but they were working before you changed them
Charlie: Mark, You can ask to reseller that the issue has been resolved as it was with the php.ini.
Charlie: If any of your reseller still having issues please ask them to contact us
Mark: so let me get this straight – at some point this morning before 0615 all the php.ini files for all the domains that I have were deleted, but no t by me, my clients or you?
Mark: then half the world could see domains again at 0840 without you touching anything and half couldn’t?
Charlie: We do not make any changes on the server without client permission.
Mark: so who made the changes then?
Charlie: Give me a moment please. I am looking into this.
Mark: i have now just conducted a little experiment. I have renamed the php.ini file that is in the public_html folder of penny4them.com to php1.ini and the site still works – proving that it could not have been a problem with this file that you cause the downtime
Charlie: Allow for few minutes
Mark: k
Mark: any idea?
Charlie: Mark, Still checking on the server Please allow me few minutes
Charlie: Will update you shortly
Charlie: Mark, Please check the logs
//
Mark: Yes that would have been when I was updating my site to WordPress 2.7 so it was down for about 5 minutes
Mark: but that is all at 1910 not this morning at 0615?
Charlie: Mark, Your all domains are working fine now.
Mark: I know
Mark: But you still have not answered my initial question
Mark: My websites experiecned a lot of downtime today. Could you please advise of the problem
Charlie: Mark. There was not any issue with the server.
Charlie: If you will again same issue please contact us immediately at the moment.
Charlie: If you will face*
Mark: so you don’t know then?
Charlie: As I said there was any issue on the server and I am still investigating it for you.
Charlie: Will mail you on your registered mail id once I have done with.
Mark: ok
Charlie: We need more time as the logs get rotated for your previous down time.
Charlie: Mark, Your patience appreciated

As you can see if you have managed to read all that, he just didn’t get it.  What I think is important to say is that this conversation lasted around 2 hours!  I think you are right Charlie – my patience needs to be appreciated!

A wrote a few weeks ago about the security problems with social networking sites such as bebo and myspace. Today I watched a Panorama episode about children fighting and then this being uploaded to the web, in what is being called just another form of cyberbullying.

Once again this highlights the lack of education and parental responsibility of many parents these days. The images that where shown on the program were all too common a hearing in today’s schools. Pupils bragging to each other about what they have watched and uploaded to sites such as YouTube.

We have also heard in the news and media about individuals, often youngsters of teenage years being attacked and filmed using a mobile phone and then this being uploaded to YouTube for the [sick] world to watch. This is wrong and is getting out of hand quickly. Being a teacher you get to hear about more and more stories of this sort of thing happening with pupils. The question remain as to what can be done about it.

Many of the teaching unions have called for these websites to be banned, however I believe that once again this is just treating the symptoms and not the cause. It seems at the moment that unfortunately it is fashionable, cool and trendy for many [and I know not all!] young people to behave as bullies and in a violent and abusive way towards others. One of the ways in which this is done is through sites such as YouTube. Twelve months ago were heard incidents of so called ‘happy slapping” and at the time that wasn’t really dealt with by the law. It was passed off to be a minor problem that would phase itself out. How wrong they were as this minor problem has now grown to all out violent attacks in some cases.

For the situation to change it is time to go back to basics in teaching young people the basics of respect and manners. Unfortunately to many parents think that this is the job of teachers. How wrong can they be. Parents should pass along these qualities to their children so that when they reach school the work is already done. As the title describes, teachers teach what they were trained in, whether it was Geography or Maths or whatever subject, but they are never trained to teacher good manners and respect to kids, as that is the job of the parents.

Another step is the websites themselves. However unlike some of the teaching unions, shutting them down is not the answer. Bullying takes place in schools everyday (and probably in many workplaces) but we don’t shut them down. No, we change things in order to reduce the amount of bullying that happens. Well the same is needed for these websites.

Lets take YouTube as an example. At first you think anything can be posted on YouTube and you would be right. So how is policing of the content done. You may think that these website have a large team of people that check videos for inappropriate content. You would be wrong. The number of people that YouTube have checking the content uploaded to their site is zero. The reason is that they expect the users of the site themselves to police the content. This is done through flagging a video as inappropriate using a link below the video itself. YouTube then check the video (which can take a massive 48 hours) and then either remove it or leave it there is they think that it is OK. It was interesting to see what the Google (who own YouTube) spokes person had to say on the video regarding the policing of their site.

“If it is violent assault and if the police come to us and say they would like to prosecute someone because it was violent assault, we will cooperate with them if they’ve gone through the proper procedures.” (Rachel Whetstone, Google UK)

Surely it would make better sense to have the videos screened before they were uploaded. What Google are saying is that they want the police to do the work for them and therefore effectively they do not want to spend their profits policing their own site, they would rather have the tax payers money do it for them.

If people started putting up offensive posters outside the Google buildings, wherever they are, they would be onto the police to have them removed, they would not wait until a member of the public flagged it up with the police?

The policing of videos on sites like YouTube must change in the future. Videos that are uploaded must be policed in a better way than they are now. As I was suggesting in my last article if you knew who exactly was posting these videos then the content wouldn’t be as much as problem, because anything that is a criminal offence could be traced back to the user to press charges, whereas at the moment this cannot happen as you can post under any name you like. Since identity on these sites is unlikely to change the videos must therefore be screened before they go up on the web. Combine this with proper education and upbringing of children and the number of videos that are showing these graphic violent images would reduce by a lot, and maybe change the culture among many (not all) of today’s youth that this sort of behaviour is funny and acceptable.

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[Video] Panorama – Children’s Fight Club (may expire)
Panorama Transcript – Children’s Fight Club
YouTube – Broadcast Yourself
BBC News – Cyberbullying