WhatwasIthinking.co.uk – relaunched!

New Blog design for whatwasithinking.co.uk is live!Whatwasithinking.co.uk has been around for almost a year, and in time for its first birthday I thought I’d take the opportunity and rethink what I actually want to do with it. So I chose to make two drastic changes:

  • Add SEO as a category – because I am now working a lot more with SEO consultants and do a bit of SEO for clients myself (which is working out really well already) this just needed to happen sooner or later
  • Rethink the design – the previous theme I based on a theme by C.Frazier worked well, but it turned out to be very limiting, especially with WordPress 2.7 having added a lot more commenting functions and a very functional interface

So in the end I chose to go for a theme by Vladimir Prelovac. The theme is very modern, has a wonderful layout and after a bit of hacking it tracks pingbacks and tweetbacks successfully. If you want to know more about the theme or Vladimir then please click here (and if you want to follow him, click here).

Please let me know what you think about the theme 🙂

Firefox extensions for usability, accessibility and SEO experts

FireFox extensions for Usability, Accessibility and SEO expertsMy day to day work consists of a lot of time spending on the internet, looking at web presences of current clients, prospective clients and their (and our) competition. My tool of the trade being FireFox 3 (especially considering that IE seems to have a little problem). I am using a number of addons which really help my work-flow in the fields of usability, accessibility, SEO and occasionally information architecture.

I was asked by a couple of fellow twitter users to divulge my plugin list, and since I keep track of them myself at times I thought this post would come in handy for everyone.

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Upgraded to WordPress 2.7!

I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 via a remote connection successfully!
Good times!

To read more about WordPress 2.7, please check out the changelog, download 2.7 here and read more about upgrading your WordPress installation here.

Information Architecture for Game Publisher websites (part 1)

It has been a couple of weeks since I last wrote about Information Architecture, be it IA and user testing or designing for the mobile web in mind, and I want to talk about a topic today which relates somewhat to a somewhat new-ish step in Information Architecture, namely the integration of user retention and user interaction.

It is not news to anyone that I – like so many – enjoy video games, come on, it is a multi-million pounds industry. Game publishers have sought to expand their marketing influence in a number of new ways, some of them have started using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc to promote their games either via their own channels, or via publicity stunts (Wii Fit girl anyone?). The message is clear – generate interest, generate sales. Since the company I work for has just signed a deal with a UK-based games publisher with Japanese roots and a European charm I have been looking more into the information architecture of this (still rapidly growing) market, which in turn has opened another door or two for additional potential clients.
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Melon Design & Marketing’s new website is live!

I am happy to announce that the new site of Melon Design & Marketing has gone live today!!

screenshot of Melon's new site

Melon Design & Marketing is a creative communication agency based near Milton Keynes, between Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire, specialising in a number of sectors such as branding & corporate identity, graphic design, website design & development, advertising and e-marketing, print management, photography and copywriting.

You can read more about all their services here, and about their in-house CMS Engine on this page.

A small update – it has been a while…

A lot has happened in the world of information architecture, usability and Flash development…and I have been really slow updating the blog with useful information. For that I apologise. I changed jobs in August and am now a Web Services Development Manager at a lovely company called Melon Design & Marketing (our new website will go live soon!). Obviously, a new job requires new challenges, and these have taken a lot of my personal time to get used to the new climate and to effectively make a difference.

So, a quick update on this blog (thought it might be quite interesting, it certainly is for me!):

  • The blog was set up on February 19th 2008
  • Since then it has attracted over 26,000 views
  • The biggest referrers at the moment are Ubisoft’s forum, Gearbox software forum, WebForumz.com a few magazine sites (due to the BiA post) and Facebook
  • The RSS feed has attracted 67 readers (hey, its a start considering I never expected the blog to take off anyway!)
  • Spam Karma has caught 712 spam messages since February (in your face, spammers!!)

Additionally, I have now joined Twitter, why not say “hi”, I would appreciate it 😉

Thanks and best wishes to all my readers, I’ll continue about IA, Usability and Flash Development soon!

Brothers in Arms – Hell’s Highway: biahh.exe has stopped working – here is how to fix it (updated)

Brothers in Arms – Hell’s Highway is a wonderful game, it received an overall 82 score on Metacritic and is generally a wonderful game – if you are one of the lucky ones to get it to run from the word “Go” that is. Like some users I was greeted with the following message after installing it on my Vista machine:

biahh.exe has stopped working

…followed by a lengthy error message indicating a “General protection fault”. Not sure how to fix it? Read more on how to fix the problem… Keep Reading

How to invoice for design work – a quick guide

So you have finally done it, you are a freelancer or have set up your own little design agency and you have your first clients with jobs coming in. And now comes the time that a project comes to the point where money is involved, be it just before the first 1/3 of the project is done or towards the end of the project. But what do you need to look out for? Where to go for resources if anything goes wrong?

Continue reading after the break for some strategies on how to invoice for your web design or web development work… Keep Reading