The scheme brings together a list of many types of business in the Hampshire area which have all been checked for trustworthiness and compliance with consumer protection laws. Hampshire’s Trading Standards Officers visit & vet every applicant and only if they pass stringent checks are they accepted.

One of our clients, Advanced Mortgage Lending (AML), based in Fareham have just been accepted as members of this scheme and we have just done some updates to their website to incorporate all the details and logo etc so they can share this with all their customers and visitors to their site.

I personally would always recommend AML to anyone, their team are very knowledgeable, helpful and friendly and have always found the best solutions for me so I didn’t need HCC Trading Standards reassurance but now I have that as well !
Image credit: 123RF Stock Photo

The “Techy” bit

When you visit a website for  the first time, your browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc.) communicates with the server (where the website is hosted)  which then sends a copy of the page and all its contents to your browser which it then displays for you to read.

Web pages contain a lot of content (e.g. words, images etc), made up of lots of  separate files so each of these needs to be downloaded to your browser individually before it can display the page. This is why sometimes you notice it takes a while to display everything, particularly if you have large images.

This process takes time and bandwidth so it costs time and money to do this every time you re-load a page. Some of this content quite often does not change very often, or is the same on multiple pages (e.g. a logo displayed in the header)  so the browser stores a copy of  all the files locally in what is called its “cache”.

The next time a page is loaded, the browser first checks in its cache to see if it already has a copy of each file and then uses this rather than downloading it again from the server. This is obviously faster and also reduces the amount of bandwidth required as it only needs now to download the files that it does not have.

When you update or change the content on a website and upload the new version to the server, if the file name is the same, the browser would not know that it has changed so it still quite reasonably uses the local version it has stored in its cache so you still see the previous version.

The fix

Simple, all you need to do is to tell the browser to get the latest version of the files from the server by clicking on the refresh button at the top of your browser. The refresh button usually looks like a circular arrow on most browsers. Some examples are included below:

  Firefox, Chrome

Internet Explorer

So now you know.

123RF Stock Photo

One set of videos were for a business strategy consultant’s training course which had restricted access, required a specific player to be utilised and had to operate on some specific mobile platforms as well so the task posed a few challenges but all up and running now.

Other videos were for another of my clients who are a local window blinds company. One was a new promotional video advertising their broad range of products and services and the others were adding more information to their websites relating to the very important “Make it safe” campaign. ”Make it safe” is the British Blind Safety Association (BBSA) child safety campaign for the safe supply, installation and use of window blinds which have a continuous loop cord or chain.

123RF Stock Photo

We have just completed a fairly fast turnaround of a new website for Hayward & Partners who specialise in Training for the Automotive Industry across the UK.

The client came to us with a completed graphic design and after some discussions and minor modifications to make it work better as a marketing tool, we  coded it up into a website for them and it is now live.

Take a look at www.haywardpartners.co.uk

 ”We are extremely pleased with our new website and have received some very positive feedback from our clients. Steve was very easy to communicate with throughout the whole process and understood our requirements.  He was very efficient and reliable and delivered on time and within budget.  Steve has been very patient with us during our many changes and adjustments.  We would have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Scalar Enterprises to anyone.”

 

   Geoff Osborne,  Hayward & Partners

If you have tried lots of different diets to try and lose those extra pounds and failed, this could be the answer for you. HypnoSlimmer Hampshire’s new website is now live so why not pop along and take a look at www.hypnoslimmerhampshire.co.uk

We worked closely with Graham at HypnoSlimmer Hampshire to produce the exact look and functionality that he wanted for his new website.

” Thanks for the work you have done on my new website, it looks great ! ”

Graham Parish

The work they do is absolutely fantastic, turning unused basements into works of art or if you don’t have a basement, they can even add one (or two in one of their recent projects).

The basement kitchen at one of their recently completed projects in Chelsea, London was featured in the Essential Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom magazine and they were also recently chosen as the Wall Street Journal “Europe House of the day”.

The site has just gone live so you can take a look at www.metrobasements.com

Nothing But Mediation are based in Petersfield in Hampshire and provide a range of mediation services in and around the area.

For more information, visit the Nothing But Mediation website

It amazed me to hear at the time that regardless of all the warnings you see, so many people were still using passwords like “123456″ or even “password” which can literally be cracked in a few seconds !

This weekend, I read another article in a trade journal where they had again looked at this topic and low and behold, it seems that the situation has changed very little !

I have heard reports from a number of my clients and other people over the last few months alone that they have had accounts hacked (I believe that they were mostly hotmail accounts) and spam was subsequently sent from them. In each case, the problem was identified quite quickly and rectified so they did not become major problems but at least one resulted in the hotmail account being suspended until it was fixed.

The article I read today mentioned a useful website where you can check how secure your passwords are and it tells you how quickly they can be cracked so it is quite an eye opener. Give it a try at http://howsecureismypassword.net – I’m sure you will be shocked !

Image:123RF Stock Photo

Related articles: “Are your passwords strong enough ?“

One of our clients wanted some fairly specific modifications made to his website recently so we worked closely with him and his team to define the requirements and have just finished developing and implementing the changes.

Thanks also to our local partner, Charles Design Associates for the fantastic graphic design they produced for the design.

Take a closer look at  www.ibtechnology.co.uk

From personal blogs to major sites such as WordPress and Wikipedia, sites all over the web are asking you to help stop this dangerous legislation from being passed. Please watch the video below to learn how this legislation will affect internet freedom.