BlogGalaxy

Change should be good - some Facebook users beg to differ!

2008-09-20T23:21:00.004+01:00

Over the last month I've seen far too many complaints from users of Facebook - currently the world's largest social networking site. The complaints have been sparked by Facebook's development team launching a new design which, apparently, is a usability nightmare.

Personally I don't see any issues - in fact once you get used to it I find it much more appealing and a lot faster to load, especially when viewing profiles. But one thing which concerned me a little was the discovery of a group on Facebook telling users how they can get the "old Facebook" back.

It relies on the user downloading Firefox 3 if they don't already have it (you should do this anyway if you don't use it - it's a fantastic browser!) Once downloaded, they must embark on a full-scale challenge installing programs and changing settings on their computer. The instructions provided mentioned emulating Internet Explorer 5.5, which can only spell trouble. Microsoft's IE5.5 was released back in 2000 and there is clearly something in this browser stopping the new design from working.

While following the instructions is all well and good, it means the potential for many of today's websites to stop working is very high due to technologies developed since IE5.5 was released.

My advice? Take some time and get used to the new Facebook design. The Internet is an ever-changing world and nothing can stay the same forever.

The Planet explodes into darkness

2008-06-01T23:57:00.004+01:00

The Register today reported that one of The Planet's 6 data centres has plunged into darkness, taking 9000 servers and 7500 customers down in a massive outage caused by, they say, a transformer exploding and causing a fire in their electrical equipment room.

Fire crews disallowed the hosting company's Houston-based centre from activating their backup generator plan, so whilst they have established their network and server equipment has suffered no damage, their customers are left unable to access websites, email and other facilities.

The Planet are posting hourly updates to the situation on their forum, so if you are a customer affected by their H1 data centre outage, please get the latest information here.

RedGalaxy UK offers website hosting at fantastic rates, offering quality service from friendly and helpful staff. If you'd like to find out more about what we can do for you, please contact us today!

Google blacklist recovery - long time no see for GoCompare

2008-04-22T17:29:00.003+01:00

Last week I received an email from Robin Goad at Hitwise, updating me on the car insurance aggregator website GoCompare.com I wrote about here. GoCompare tried to cheat the search engines by buying links on other websites, a "black-hat" method of search engine optimisation. Unfortunately for them, Google picked up on this and gave them a ranking penalty, dropping them over 60 positions for the search term "car insurance", and even blacklisting them for their own brand name!

Robin talks about the recovery process for GoCompare and graphs the paid and organic traffic comparisons before and after the penalty was imposed; not surprisingly GoCompare catered for their loss in organic search traffic by increasing their PPC (pay per click) campaign bids - something which will seriously impact their marketing budget.

Some people commented on Robin's post, suggesting they took 6 months to recover from similar penalties, which certainly suggests GoCompare have a long drive ahead of them!

If you have a website and need to improve your chance of ranking higher on the search engines, don't incur penalties - contact our SEO specialists and see what we can do for you.

Pakistan imposes YouTube ban - the wrong way!

2008-02-27T20:46:00.003Z

There are ways of blocking content found on the Internet. Child safety software, filtering built into routers and firewall equipment. Even good ol' Internet Explorer has the capability to some end. While these are all viable ways of stopping users of a particular machine or Internet connection accessing content, it clearly doesn't work in favour of government bans.

Unfortunately, Pakistan went about it the wrong way on Sunday when they caused a 2 hour near global blackout on popular video-sharing website YouTube. The ban was ordered by Pakistan's government in response to the posting of a forthcoming Dutch movie trailer portraying Islam negatively; to enforce the ban it's alleged that Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the Internet address of YouTube's web server. What effectively happens is you can route traffic to a completely different address, display a different website and disable access to the intended website.

The details of the "hijack" were leaked onto the Internet by PCCW, a Hong-Kong Internet provider, and as a result many other ISPs worldwide blocked access to YouTube.

YouTube's owner Google has since confirmed that Pakistan has lifted the country-wide ban and full service has been restored.

GoCompare gets knocked by Google penalty

2008-02-17T11:36:00.003Z

Penalties are issued by Google for numerous reasons - link spamming, buying and selling, "black hat SEO" (or "spamdexing"), duplicate content, keyword spamming - they're all violations of Google's terms of service and can result in a pagerank penalty, listing drop, or even complete removal of your listings from the engine's database.

GoCompare found out recently that it also hurts to openly buy blog posts and reviews on other websites. Having held the #1 spot on Google for "car insurance", they dropped down below position 60 after Google issued a penalty on them for, seemingly, sponsored posts. To indicate the severity of the penalty, Hitwise seems to think GoCompare received an 87% drop in search term traffic after being banned for the term "car insurance". Obviously other companies will benefit from such a penalty; while an 87% drop in traffic from the term wasn't enough for the comparison site to comprehend, Hitwise also states in the same blog post that Compare.com, one of the comparison site competitors, found that traffic from the same search term increased by 77%.

What Google are doing is proving a point. It's in the best interests of website owners to think before they buy themselves into the top spots. In GoCompare's case, it might have been better for them to request a guest spot, or contributed articles to websites.

Going tableless in 2008

2007-12-20T17:22:00.000Z

CSS, tableless website design and XHTML are three terms which will probably mean nothing to the average web user, but if you run a website, are in the website design business or have approached a website design company recently you may have heard of them.

XHTML is becoming the de-facto standard when it comes to developing websites for cross-browser compatibility, and while CSS has been around for quite some time, up until this year many designers stayed with the tables and spacer images previously needed to develop a complex website layout. Now, thanks to browser developers becoming more genned-up on CSS standards, more and more designers are starting to drop tables and go DIV.

So what's the difference, and why bother?

Take below the HTML code for an average table:

<table style="border-collapse: collapse;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr>
  <td valign="top" width="100%">
   Place your content here.
  </td>
</tr>
</table>

This might not seem like much, but when you take a complex layout or design, you can soon get tangled in line after line of table code. And that's without any colours, fonts, images...

<div>
Place your content here.
</div>

Who would have imagined that the three lines above do the same as the code before? Well, it doesn't until you add CSS code. But still, why?

Better for search engines
This can be somewhat debatable. The argument for tableless design is that there is far less styling code for the search engines to crawl through, meaning it's easier for search crawlers to pick out relevant content. On the other hand, the larger search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN's Live Search should be able to cope amicably whether a site uses tables or not.
Reduced bandwidth usage
This is certainly a bonus point. If you have a limit on the amount of bandwidth your hosting account allows, then using tableless design will help. The less your browser has to download from the server, the less bandwidth each pageview uses.
Easier to manage
Table layouts can be set up to do many things if you're experienced enough. What happens when you want to move your navigation from the right side of the page to the left? CSS tableless coding allows you to define "elements" which allows you to move them as if you were moving paper, depending on the styling code used and the position of the "element" in the HTML.

There are other reasons as to the benefits, and the three mentioned above should certainly appeal to most. When designing for our customers, we are now using tableless design as standard. Our own website is also being converted from tables to tableless as we speak, and should be completed sometime in January!

At RedGalaxy UK, our focus is always on how we can provide a high quality service. Whether you need website design, website maintenance or low-cost web hosting, give us a quick e-mail and see what we can do for you!

I've seen that Festival Too!

2007-10-27T23:32:00.000+01:00

For 22 years, Festival Too! has been bringing free entertainment to West Norfolk, a sponsorship-driven event held on the Tuesday Market Place in King's Lynn. 2007's event saw artists such as Heather Small, from 90s group M People, taking to the stage.

Over 10,000 people attend every year enjoying various events spread over a three-week period, and this year saw an overhaul of the website, quickly thrown together with just three weeks' notice.

Following negotiations with major sponsor Adrian Flux Insurance, and Festival Too! charman Alan Taylor, RedGalaxy UK are delighted to become a Festival Too! sponsor, providing website updates and maintenance for the event. A new, sleek and up-to-date design is planned for 2008, and with it, the ability for people to interact and discuss the events with others on the web site.

You can see the 2007 site, including a video from line-up artist Birkenhed, by visiting www.festivaltoo.co.uk

Speak up boys and girls, we're back!

2007-09-09T10:19:00.000+01:00

It's been a long time coming and we certainly haven't been sleeping on the job! Our lack of blog posting recently is due to some advancements in the Company! Yes, that's right!

Our mailing supply sales soared over the last few months, so much so that we're researching more product lines to add to our eBay store! We're introducing 2008 diaries for those of you who wants to get theirs early, we've recently teamed up with both Netsparkz and Multimedia Projects in business deals for web development, and we've reviewed several policies - aimed at making our business more customer-friendly!

0870? Try again!
We've recently changed our main telephone number from an 0870 number to 0845. This means you can call us at any time for your telephone provider's standard lo-cal rate, helping you save money and still receiving our high quality service! Call us on 08456 529 829.
Online order tracking
At the moment, all of our orders - including eBay orders - go through an email notification process. You receive an email when you place the order, and when it's been dispatched. A number of our customers have asked if we can provide a tracking option on our website to tell them exactly what stage their order is at. The good news is this is currently being tested and should be available to customers by the end of October. The better news? It even tells you the expected dispatch date!
Returns
Our returns policy states you must email us within 7 days of your order to obtain an RMA code. We are currently testing an online RMA request system for our customers. We believe that this feature will benefit any customer wishing to return their product for any reason.
Paying online
We have recently changed our secure website to take payments straight away. Previously we used a system where the payment would be processed sometimes hours after payment was taken, and a message saying the payment had gone through would be displayed to the customer. We now use instant payment methods to ensure you know when there is a problem.

We hope to be improving our services for all over the coming months and would like to thank those of you who provided feedback to us.

Another way to pay for RedGalaxy customers

2007-05-11T07:28:00.000+01:00

RedGalaxy UK have today launched yet another method of payment for all of its UK-based customers, making it easier than ever to pay their invoices.

Already available methods PayPal, bank transfer, cheque and postal order aren't ideal for everybody, and while PayPal allow customers to pay via credit or debit card without using a PayPal account - what if you didn't want to use your PayPal account but pay with a card on your account?

Simple answer is you can't, but we've set up a secure (256 bit SSL) payment form on our web site where you can pay for anything, from an outstanding invoice, to an instalment on your current balance with us. Akin to taking credit card details over the phone, this method allows you to pay even when we're not available!

No more waiting. Wayhey!

To make a payment now, go to https://secure.redgalaxyuk.com

Bag it up, Sir

2007-03-17T09:52:00.001Z

RedGalaxy UK is pleased to announce its launch of postal supplies available. We will be expanding our product range over the coming weeks, but you can start buying now!

Simply move along to our eBay Store, where you can pick up 50 tough-cookie postage bags for just £3.99!

Our address is changing!

2007-02-08T19:25:00.000Z

With effect from Monday 12th February 2007, our postal addresses are changing as a reflection of the growth of the business in the last 12 months, and also to aid us with projected growth in 2007.

UK customers please use:
RedGalaxy UK
PO Box 1169
King's Lynn
PE30 9BP

International customers please use:
RedGalaxy International
PO Box 1169
King's Lynn
PE30 9BP
United Kingdom

Installing Vista - The Best Way

2007-02-05T23:21:00.001Z

If you've avoided the warnings and shelled out your hard-earned cash on a copy of the latest version of Windows, why not consider this helpful guide to installing Windows Vista?

Personally, I'd save my money...

Bored? Squids away!

2007-02-04T22:35:00.000Z

If you're bored and looking for something to do this month, but don't fancy shelling out for the new Windows Vista (trust me it's not worth it - lots of hidden "not so extras" and it's pretty much Windows XP with a new look), why not take a look at our site on Squidoo, named Computers...Internet...yes!

Featuring all things techno on eBay, keeping you up to date on our Blog here and also the BBC News technology section is there as well. Why not take a look and let us know if you feel anything should be added!

Proof that Windows 98 never dies

2007-02-03T17:25:00.001Z

Well, it did on this occasion...

Vista not released on bail

2007-02-01T18:19:00.000Z

Microsoft released its first version of the Windows operating system since Windows XP in 2001 on Tuesday and I'm far from surprised to read the first wave of problems with Windows Vista. BBC's website has reported a growing number of stories, including how hackers could use the advanced speech recognition tool to delete files, folders, empty the recycle bin. Predictably Microsoft say there's nothing to worry about. Isn't that what they always say?

There's the issue of "versions". Seriously, how many different versions do they need to create? Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional was good - and even then, consumers were confused as to what the benefits were. There are more versions of Windows Vista than I can count on one hand, and the pricing isn't exactly reassuring. Price differences between the EU and the States have been blamed on the currency fluctuation.

They must be struggling, must know that this is their last chance? Two months ago their own web site said they would be supporting Windows XP until October 2008. Funny - they've now extended that until 2011.

Sign of confidence? I think not...

ZoneEdit: The Response

2007-01-22T08:04:00.000Z

Well, it's official. I received an email 5 minutes ago from ZoneEdit's customer support. Bit late...but never mind (the site came back on about 36 hours ago?)

Unfortunately, we experienced a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, which caused a loss of service to these two nameservers. All our nameserves are operational but ns14.zoneedit.com. We expect it to be operational in a few hours. Your domain should be resolving now.

Well, there's confirmation that for the second month in a row, they have had some kind of attack. Who would want to attack them, I don't know. This though, might make people reconsider using their service - for the piece of mind of my customers I've already started moving!

Sorry ZoneEdit...

ZoneEdit.com: Attacked (again?)

2007-01-21T08:11:00.000Z

The last couple of days have been extremely worrying for me; I woke up yesterday morning and checked my email, and was confused when I found a mahoosive total of...well, none. Upon checking redgalaxyuk.com was still working, I found that our main nameservers had gone down. What followed was a barrage of changes, frantically trying to get our web site and email working. Did any of them work? Well no, obviously.

In my efforts to try and restore some sanity, I had a look on Google to see if anyone had posted anything, and what I found wasn't very reassuring - ZoneEdit.com had been hit with a Denial Of Service Attack, exactly a month before this. You can even read about it here. Strange, eh?

Quite amazing really, as I've been using ZoneEdit's services for a good four years with no problems; I even used up my free credits and moved onto paid ones! You can bet your life I won't now...

Music? Not quite...

2007-01-11T07:46:00.000Z

A few months ago I posted a blog about the future launch of a web site called EmeraldTunes. As development rolls ahead, a large number of artists have given us their interest, and we're entering into a beta test period, in which some are agreeing to put their tunes online for all to hear...

If you're a listener, don't despair. People have been showing interest as listeners too! In fact, many of my friends are actually spreading the word - perhaps the headline for the press: "Tunes so soon?" - discussing how so much interest was generated before launch, we might as well have launched now!

On a serious note, though, we expect to launch EmeraldTunes by the end of February, and so if you're interested, I urge you to get your skates on!

www.emeraldtunes.com - simply fill in your name and e-mail address, we'll send you an e-mail when we launch with more information!

Artists interested in getting on EmeraldTunes have the opportunity to do so now, allowing us to test the system so far. Such artists will be given 6 months' free premium service when the premium service launches, as a thanks for their support. Purchase of the premium service after the 6 months is not required, and they can opt to return to the free service at any time. More information coming soon.

2006-12-05T11:20:00.000Z

How much is it costing, or going to cost you to run your website? Did you know, you can reduce your running costs by switching hosting provider?

RedGalaxy UK/RedGalaxy International is introducing the top-quality hosting services people long for... at a price you wouldn't expect!

We offer several unique packages, each one fully featured-up. Just imagine being able to host a website with 250GB of webspace, and a MASSIVE 500GB data transfer in a month. You'd be lucky to find that for less than £50 a month (that's roughly $100 USD), we're offering that, and MORE for just £8.99 a month (just short of $20 USD a month). Our lowest cost hosting package flies in at an astonishing 99p a month (about $2 USD a month).

If you're still reading, that's great. It means we've caught your attention, and you could be well on your way to saving a huge sum from your bills. The next step is simple, and fast!

Browse along to http://hosting.redgalaxyuk.com to see just what we can offer you. With instant hosting activation and a 14-day money-back guarantee, what do you have to lose?!

Product availability is worldwide. Contact us for more information.

Can't get Broadband?

2006-11-14T18:01:00.000Z

BT are notorious in the UK for slow rollout of their ADSL broadband platform, which allows normal residential customers to get on the Internet many times faster than just a few years ago, where you had to dial up and you'd hear the horrid "beeeeeeeeeeep brrrrrrrrrrrr schhhhhhhhhhhh" noises coming from your computer.

The only problem is that BT still haven't managed to provide broadband availability to the whole of the country. There are still people hearing those... blasted... beeeeeeeep.

With this comes the speed issue. How many of you have been teased by your mates because they can surf the Internet over 40 times faster than you can? Out of the teased, how many have also been teased about the fact they're paying around the same as you, to get that speed?

As broadband prices are being pushed lower, dial up prices aren't following the inevitable price drop pattern. This is causing concern for the dial up users still in the country who cannot physically receive broadband.

To combat this, we've launched a new service for anybody in the UK to receive dial up access for free. Anybody can use it, anywhere, anytime. Up to 56kbps speeds are available, and all you pay is for the time you spend online. This will appear on your phone bill, normally classified by BT as simply "Internet". No monthly bills!

With no need to register, you can be enjoying this service within minutes. Benefits include:

Fast, free and reliable dial up Internet access
Pay As You Go. No subscription fees or contract
0845 lo-call rates paid via your phone bill
Up to 56kbps modem speeds
Easy to set up
Free for home users, businesses, students... anyone!

Interested? Pop over to our Free Internet Access product page to get started. We even provide a free outgoing e-mail server for sending e-mails!

Musical controversy - again!

2006-11-11T19:12:00.001Z

ITV's TV programme The X Factor is well-known throughout the UK as a music talent contest. Now broadcasting its 3rd series, there has been plenty of controversial content printed in the media and on the Internet.

Tonight's show saw Sharon Osbourne tell the nation the MacDonald brothers should win the competition, just to see Simon Cowell pay out £1 million for their recording contract.

Surely the idea of a talent contest is to find talent that will survive in the music industry because they can deliver. Who would want to win a contest based on controversy?

Singer success Kelly Clarkson managed it with Cowell's American Idol. Perhaps it's time to axe Sharon and Louis?

Alternatively, find more success with up and coming EmeraldTunes, blogged about here.

Don't Tie Yourself Up

2006-11-01T09:34:00.000Z

That's exactly the message we're giving out this week, with the launch of our new service aimed at anybody with a wired computer network. I'm just one of many people who constantly end up wrapped in cable!

We decided it would be a good opportunity to show that you can use the stuff without ending up trying to become the next Houdini! If you have more than one computer in your home or office, there's a very good chance they may be "networked". For home users, you'll mainly find Internet providers advertising wireless broadband. For an office, you're more likely to have a cable running from a phone-like socket on the wall.

Whichever method you might have, it's still a computer network, and if you have wires connecting your computers together, you might benefit from our custom network cable service. The idea is simple enough - you can buy cable in 0.5 metre, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7.5, 10, 15, 20 metre lengths, and all you need to do is plug in and go. What if you wanted a 6.3 metre cable? You'd have to buy a 7.5 metre cable and trip over the spare 1.2 metres. Not any more!

Our unique service allows you to tell us how long you want your cable and how many you want! We'll then cut and manufacture the cable to your requirements, then test it to ensure you won't be disappointed when it drops on your doormat. Bulk buyers are also welcomed with a discounted pricing scheme. We're also giving away £20 discount vouchers for our web design services for every £50 spent on cables. Cool, eh?

So just to go over the important points (what? You might have forgotten!):

Tell us how long you want your cables
We'll manufacture and test them for you
Bulk buyers welcome - don't forget your £20 discount vouchers!
Are you still tripping up on cable?

If you answered Yes to the last point, then surely you should be looking at our PDF price list by now, and then ordering your cables!

Music to my, I mean your, ears

2006-10-21T14:45:00.000+01:00

How many times have you been to a music store, be it down town or online, or listened to the charts on the radio, to discover that you're confronted with the same selection of music as last time? I'm not talking about artists, but the type of music available.

Steve McGinley has noticed this spiraling trend, and being the music enthusiast he is, decided that he would do something about it.

"About 2 years ago I founded a company called Lime Music Online, which never got off the ground due to time limitations. Not much works there mind," Steve commented. "Now, 2 years on, I've enlisted the help of several promoters, and agencies, as well as Software Developers to recreate the idea."

So how will this help the music industry?

"Basically, we plan to offer bands and musicians alike the chance to get noticed, promoted, and have their music heard in public. Obviously we're targeting unsigned artists with this. They'll get their own channel within the site named EmeraldTunes, and there will be a good range of excellent facilities for free - we will allow artists to sell their tracks online, for example. To show our support to the artists, we'll be giving them 80% of revenue generated from any sales.

We already have links with a few University unions in the UK, but with time I'm hoping that grows considerably. Overall, the aim is to produce enough coverage for unsigned artists, and bring new material to the music industry."

Steve aquired the interest of RedGalaxy UK, who are now working closely with him to build the technical side of the project.

He stressed, "we're not just another wannabe; we're spending serious money to build a site where users will have a safe, lively and hopefully successful community experience."

EmeraldTunes is due to be launched in early 2007, and there is an area on the website where you can enter your e-mail address and get notified when it launches.

Welcome!

2006-10-21T14:01:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the RedGalaxy UK blog, where you'll find news, information, hints and tips about anything red.

No. Really.

With the company now entering its fourth and most exciting year of trading so far, and more clients trusting us every week than I've eaten hot dinners, we thought we owed our visitors and clients nothing less than the friendly atmosphere of a corporate blog.

With the gradual launch of our social networking site, TheStormBox.com, I'm finding myself entering 100 hour working weeks and having a ball of a time seeing my company go from ground to sky in a matter of months.

So for now, I'd like to thank you for reading, and if you have any questions, comments or feedback, about this blog or RedGalaxy UK, please leave a comment. I'll read them, and reply! :)