Revamped the existing Graduates for Business website which helps place graduates into employment with the opportunity to gain paid work experience placements. The admin system powering the website provides GFB staff with the tools required to process the graduates applications.

SEO is one of the most important aspects of websites if not the most important aspect. There is no point in having a website if it cannot be found by your customers. You could spend a fortune on design and development but if your site can’t be found then whats the point?

Something that I think is worth mentioning and not a lot of people realise is that it is not a good idea to have more than one domain name pointing to the same website. Most companies will buy more than one domain name for their website to avoid competitors buying and using similar domain names. This is perfectly fine however you need to make it clear to search engines that the domain names are pointing to a single website and not multiple websites with the same content. If search engines think this is the case, your search positioning can be adversely affected.

Since I use IIS to host most of my websites, here’s a guide on how to clearly let search engines know that all your domain names for your website are pointing to a single website.

• Make sure your website only has one domain name associated with it.
• Open IIS
• Right click your website and select properties
• Click the Advanced button
• Here you will see all the domain names that you have setup to point to your website. Remove them all, leaving only one preffered domain name for your site.
• The next step is to setup a new website that will contain all your other domain names for your website and will permanently redirect to your website
• Right click websites in IIS and select New - Web Site
• Enter a description for your website, something like Company (Redirect)
• Click next and select the IP address for your site
• Select the path to your site. You need to select this to continue however it will be irrelevant after the next step
• Continue through the steps until your website is created
• On your newly created site, Right click your website and select properties
• Click the Advanced button
• Here you should enter all the domain names you want to point to your website including domains without the www
• Once complete click the Home Directory tab
• Select the ‘Redirection to a URL’ radio button
• Enter the URL you have singled out as your preferred URL in the ‘Redirect to’ textbox
• Select the ‘The exact URL entered above’ checkbox and the ‘A permanent redirection for this resource’

Hey presto. Job Done!

Todays problem involved refreshing an image after uploading using a FileUpload control. The issue was that although the file was changing on the server, the file name was staying the same. This results in the browser displaying the old file as it is being retrieved by the browsers cache. To avoid this problem you need to add a unique querystring parameter to the image url. You can achieve this with the following code:

string lsTimeStamp = DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddhhmmss");
Image1.ImageUrl = lsImageName + "?ts=" + lsTimeStamp;

I came across a problem today with the Google Maps API failing to load in Firefox. All I was getting was a message in the status bar of the browser saying “Waiting for gg.google.com”

After a bit of messing about I discovered that if you have Firebug installed, disabling support for JavaScript debugging solves the problem.

Designed and developed a custom CMS system for managing the newly revamped Highland Spring website. The CMS system gives non technical administrators the ability to easily update the website. The CMS system used was developed using ASP.NET with a SQL Server backend.

The ScotBlood website was taken over by GRP from another agency and I was tasked with developing an interactive session finder to help the public easily find blood donor sessions in Scotland. The Session finder uses the Google Maps API to provide visual and distance information regarding the location of the blood donor sessions.

I have finally got round to sorting out my new website. I have neglected this site for a long time and my aim is to keep this new one up to date. We will see ….

Designed and developed custom CMS system for Festival City Theatres website. Administrators have full CMS control over the shows and content of the website. The website was fully integrated with the theatres box office allowing users to easily book tickets online.The CMS system was developed using ASP.NET with a SQL Server backend. The front end uses a lot of cool coding to deal with dates.

Involved in the development of TalentTracker eRecruiter® TalentTracker® eRecruiter is the recruitment software solution powering B&Q’s external and internal recruitment programmes. I had a great deal of involvement in the development and design of this system while working for Logical Innovations.