New Domain Names

Taking inspiration from a recent SitePoint newsletter (Tips & Tricks - Find Juicy Domain Names), I used the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to establish which of the more popular keywords (associated with my site) could be put together to form an available .com or .co.uk domain.

As the article on SitePoint says, "a lot of people type in the keyword they're searching for and simply add .com on the end - as many as 14%" and they point out that Google's tool provides "a simple way to find domain names that should have a good number of visitors from day one".

Using this technique, I then purchased the following domains...

• searchengineservices.info
• prowebdevelopment.co.uk
• webdesignswindon.com
• swindonseo.co.uk
• swindonwebdesigner.co.uk
• swindonwebsitedesign.co.uk

... and configured each one to point to http://www.jah-dev.co.uk/.

Whether these new domains will drive many more visitors to my website remains to be seen, but rest assured I will report back with some statistics in a month or two.

If you would like to check the availability of new domains for yourself, please use my own availability checker on the JAH Web Development website.

Until next time...

The Daniel Gooch Practice Website

JAH Web Development is proud to announce that The Daniel Gooch Practice website was officially launched this morning at around 09:40am. The Daniel Gooch Practice is a doctors surgery located in the centre of Swindon (Wiltshire, UK) that provides medical care to the residents of SN1 and now serves over 3500 patients.

The website provides patients with up-to-date information about the practice and their policies and offers the convenience of ordering repeat prescriptions online. It also uses the Google Maps API on the 'How to Find Us' page to help people locate the surgery more easily.

The staff all seem very pleased with their new website (hopefully I'll be adding a new testimonial from them shortly) and I expect to be maintaining/updating the site on a regular basis in the future.

In the meantime, I have just added their site to the top of my portfolio. Thanks for reading!

Graduation

I recently received confirmation of my final year exam results through the post and am proud to announce that I have graduated with first class honours from my degree in Multimedia Computing at the University of the West of England, Bristol (UWE). I have just updated the about page on my website to reflect this.

In other news, I am quite busy with web development work at the moment, and I am very pleased with the direction in which my career as a freelancer is heading. I have a total of eight projects on the go at present, one of which is almost ready to go live. You can expect to see another update here very shortly...

New Favourite Icon

Admittedly, this isn't the most exciting update, but I've just created a brand new favourite icon for the JAH Web Development website! You should see the new icon in your address bar at the top of the screen.

I'm quite pleased with the end result I have to say - I didn't think my logo would be recognisable at just 16 pixels wide but it isn't bad at all. If, however, you can think of a way to improve it, please do let me know.

Also, if you can't see the new icon or you are still seeing the old 'sunset' icon, please let me know - I would like to troubleshoot this situation. Thanks!

Pricing Information

A common theme in the feedback I was getting regarding the new JAH Web Development website was that I should include more information on pricing. A lot of people were telling me that they wouldn't have a clue how much it would cost to have a website built professionally, and that they would want to see a 'ballpark' figure before they would even consider contacting me.

In response to this, I've just added a new pricing page to the website. It basically puts the majority of my portfolio sites into two pricing categories, so potential customers can get an idea of what their new website is likely to cost. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions regarding this new page, or indeed the site in its entirety. Thanks for reading!

On The Horizon

I realise I have neglected this blog for the past year or so, but that really just reflects how busy I've been finishing my degree at UWE, Bristol. I put a lot of effort into my final year project (I really hope it pays off) and preparing for my final batch of exams was certainly hard work.

Now that's all out of the way, I've reached an incredibly exciting point in my life. Not only am I finally in a position to work as a freelance web developer, but come this November, thanks to my wonderful wife Annie, there will be a new addition to the family (our first child together).

This first week has gone incredibly well. I have quite a few projects on the go already, and the marketing efforts I have initiated so far are all looking fairly promising. I've certainly kept busy - I've ended up working far more hours than I intended to (but then I really do need to give this venture 100% if I'm going to be able to support my expanding family!).

As each new website goes live, I intend to post an update here (and may also add it to my portfolio) and although I won't be posting updates on unfinished sites that I'm working on for clients, I can certainly keep you informed of personal projects (like FilmCritique.co.uk). My latest work-in-progress is BestFreeGaming.com which will be built upon an SQL-based Content Management System (CMS) (as opposed to the XML approach taken with FilmCritique.co.uk). In terms of content, it will be a directory of my favourite games that can be played for free over the Internet. Watch this space for further updates.

FilmCritique.co.uk

As previously mentioned, I have a number of projects on the go and am working on them in the small amount of spare time I have at the moment. Recently however, FilmCritique.co.uk has been occupying most of that time and I am very pleased with its progress.

It is essentially a database of information about films designed to help people find films they will enjoy watching. But it isn't a database in the traditional sense at all - it is simply a collection of XML files, queried and processed through PHP's SimpleXML functions. In order to make the database searchable, I have created a single XML index file which contains only crucial information about each film and therefore keeps the file size down to a minimum.

I have just finished adding genres to the database so you will soon be able to browse films by genre. Otherwise, the main area I intend to focus on next is adding to the amount of original content available on the site. I am therefore looking for people interested in writing editorial film reviews for the site. I have a few on board already but it is definitely a case of the more the merrier. If you are interested then please get in touch using my contact form.

Happy Easter!