Category Archives: Web Design

YeppoonCentral.net.au Launches

November 14, 2008 – 8:49 am | Also posted in Daily Life | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

Just yesterday I launched a website for the new Yeppoon Central shopping centre at yeppooncentral.net.au. Just to be clear, I wasn’t hired or paid to build this by the Centre management.

The design is fairly simple, just a two column type using negative margins to line up the sidebar and content sections. Screenshot below:

Yeppoon Central

At the moment the shop pages only have a description of the shop, contact details, and the latest news (taken from the Google News RSS feed). I used the LastRSS PHP class to do the work of pulling in the feed and then I wrote some preg_replace rules to clean it up. I do have some more features planned however, maybe a ratings/comments system on the shop pages.

Hosting was a bit of trouble. I normally use free hosts (paid hosts are just a bit too expensive for me at the moment), and the host which I use for this website, Yeppoon Info and briter:webdesign doesn’t allow the PHP method used to grab the feeds, which I think is fopen. Instead I had to go looking for a free host that supports this method. Eventually I found freehostia.com, which seems to be a very fast host just right for my needs.

Anyway please go over and have a look yourself at the Yeppoon Central website: yeppooncentral.net.au. And yes I am trying to get some nice links for Google :-) .

Skymesh Satellite Broadband Installed!

September 5, 2008 – 10:37 am | Also posted in Daily Life | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

Closeup of the installed satellite dishI’ve always wanted to get a faster, always-on connection and a few days ago on Wednesday 3rd I got my wish: Skymesh satellite broadband was installed.

We chose Skymesh as our service provider, mainly because they have very competitive plans and they don’t charge extra if the data allowance has been used up. Instead they do something called shaping which limits the speed of the connection to 64kpbs, which is about twice as fast as the dialup I’d been using.

Another two very useful features are data blocks, which allows you to buy extra data for the month, and the ability to upgrade to a higher priced plan, whenever you want at no extra cost (except for the difference between the two plan’s prices of course).

My modem and computer
My modem and computer

Probably the only major difference between Skymesh satellite broadband and normal ADSL broadband is something called the ping speed or latency. This occurs because when I request a webpage, the request travels something like this: computer to satellite dish, 36,000 kilometres to the satellite, 36,000 km to a base station, base station requests webpage and transmits 36,000 km to satellite, then another 36,000 back to my computer.

That is about 144,000 km all up, not counting the route the webpage travels from a server to the base station. Add the time taken for the data to be processed properly, and you’ll be looking at over 1sec response rates. This might not seem like much but imagine that you’re playing an online game. Someone’s about to kill you so you defend yourself, but by the time your signal has traveled 72,000 km or so you’re dead.

This wouldn’t happen on normal broadband because there are no nasty 144,000 km stretches for the signal to travel. You can find out more about IPSTAR satellites here (Skymesh uses Ipstar satellites to provide service).

The satellite installer putting the dish up
The satellite installer putting the dish up

New Google Feature?!

August 18, 2008 – 6:29 pm | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Hey I just noticed a Google search feature that I haven’t seen before in the last few minutes. I was doing a search for “yeppoon info,” and just above the information bar which shows how many results there are there was a link to a personalised search explanation:

When I click the more details link I have the option to remove the personalised search results:

This feature is definitely good news for SEOs and web developers who don’t want to have to worry about cookies interfering with web search results. Oh and BTW, don’t go accusing me of lying. Often Google only unveils new features to a small percentage of web users.

No Jylanization (now Yeppoon Blogging) stats since May 5th!

July 15, 2008 – 4:38 pm | Also posted in Daily Life | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

I’ve just come to the awful realization that I haven’t been collecting any visitor statistics from Jylanization (now Yeppoon Blogging) since May 5th, when I updated the Freshy theme that I was using there to Freshy 2. I don’t know why I didn’t find out about this long ago, but the fact remains that I don’t have any statistics from over 2 months of blogging.

The good thing is that I’ve actually been getting more visitors than I thought, and that’s enough to make anyone happy :-) .

Please tell me if you’ve ever done something like this so I’m not alone in my embarrasment!