Month: April 2019

Templates & Theme Build vs. Custom Built Websites – Which is Better?

Posted on by jenni

So you’ve decided you want a new website, but the next thing to consider is whether you want a custom build or a template? When it comes to your website, there are a number of factors which can help you decide which is the best choice for you. These range from length of completion, budget, usability or ease of customization. An explanation of each option will help to breakdown the pros and cons of each service.

 

What is a custom build?

A custom build focuses on creating a website that is tailored to your needs to ensure it meets all your requirements. It is built to your exact needs and is completely customisable, meaning you can adapt it along the way to grow with your business. However, this comes at a cost and most custom builds takes significantly longer and are more costly than templates.

Pros

  • Easily customisable
  • Built to your exact requirements
  • SEO friendly

Cons

  • Is more expensive
  • Takes longer to build
  • May not be easy to update/manage yourself

 

Templates

A template is generally cheaper and has a shorter development cycle, as the main structure of the website is already built. The demo content is replaced with the clients images/copy  which makes for a very fast turnaround. Most aspects of a template can be customized but there will be more limitations than that of a custom build.

You need little coding knowledge to be able to update the site yourself, as most templates use a drag-and-drop page builder which can easily be managed. However, some themes may not be regularly updated or supported, leaving you with an outdated website or full of bugs. Therefore choosing a reputable theme provider is important.

Pros

  • Faster build
  • Significantly cheaper
  • Content can be updated by the client via the CMS

Cons

  • Less customisable
  • Can look less personable than a custom build
  • Can be slower as themes can come with a lot of unnecessary files

 

Whichever option you choose is completely dependent on your business and your requirements. If you’d like to learn more about each option or to kick start your web build, please get in touch and we’d be happy to help.

Web Design & UX: Using Colour Effectively in Designs & Websites

Posted on by jenni

 

The significance of colour

Colour is used as a form of communication; evoking meaning, emotions and actions. Specific colours have different associations, that, when used in design, can engage the user and create responses. Users will associate colours with objects in the real world, for example, a set of traffic lights will have three states. In web design, the use of red, orange and green can represent three states of completion, with red indicating incompletion and green indicating that a task is complete. 

Colour is also used to create retention and association, as a brand is often associated with a specific colour. As well as creating a brand, this colour can be used to create consistency and continuity across the website, gaining the users trust and confidence. Users will find it easier to navigate around a well-designed website that uses colour appropriately on elements such as links and buttons. 

 

How colour can influence interaction

Links generally use the same colour across the site, highlighting to the user that this takes them to another page or creates an action. Another colour can be implemented to differentiate between state changes. With apps such as Instagram, the colour red is used to indicate a state change i.e. liking a picture.  

Colour can also call attention to specific parts of the website. A contrasting colour can be used for important images, error messages and call to actions, drawing the attention of the user to those areas.  

High contrast areas are also great for people with colour blindness – a website with a lack of contrast can be harder to read. You might wonder why you would design a site with such a small percentage of users being colour blind, but a lot of colour combinations that are an issue also apply to general users.  

 

Colour and meaning

Different colours are associated with different meanings which you can apply to real-life situations. Green is a commonly used colour to represent health, nature and fitness, as it is a well-balanced colour, inflicting a level of calmness. Blue is another calm colour, commonly used for technology and business sites, as it signifies power and intelligence. 

Red is often associated with danger/urgency, therefore is often found on warning signs or error buttons. However, red can also be associated with love, a sense of urgency and speed, therefore is ideal for websites that need an action from the user, such as charity or donation websites.  

Whatever colour scheme you decide for your website, it is worth taking into consideration the emotional impact it gives. Cool colours such as blue, green and purple evoke a level of calmness, sadness or a neutral opinion. Warmer colours, such as red and orange are used for creating emotion or actions.  

 

How to choose a colour scheme

Using a logo to create your colour scheme, if you already have a logo then that can be the basis of your colour scheme. Be careful about heavy use of strong colours as they can make the eye feel tired. You can desaturate the colours to mute them slightly to make them less strong.  

If you already have a main colour for your website, a great tool to help with accent colours is the adobe colour wheel. This tool can select complementary or analogous colours to help find colours that work together and complement each other.  

 

Tips for Stopping Website Hacks & Hacking: Preventing SQL Injections

Posted on by jenni

 

What is an SQL injection?

Hackers can target a website by adding SQL (Structured Query Language) into an application to make changes to the database. For example, an SQL statement that selects fields from a table could be manipulated by adding ‘DROP TABLE’ after the value. This would then delete the entire table. 

SQL injections can be used to view personal information such as passwords, delete entire tables and gaining access to the database by use of admin credentials.  

 

How to prevent a SQL injection?

Fortunately, an SQL Injection can be prevented by a ‘prepare’ statement. A prepare statement will send the program to the sever first and it will use a placeholder such as ‘?’ in its place.  

For example: $db->prepare(“SELECT * FROM  media where id=?”);  

The data of the placeholder gets sent separately to the query so the any user input is not treated as a SQL statement and therefore is not executed.  

 

When should you use a prepare statement?

Generally, any form of data that is touched by a user or that pulls data from a database, should use a prepared statement.  

This can include:  

  • Usernames 
  • Email addresses 
  • Passwords 
  • Search queries 
  • File uploading 

 

Using a prepare statement

We use a prepare keyword and the placeholder ‘?’ is used as a placeholder where the value will go. 

We then bind the values to the query using ‘bind_param’. This is also attached with the correct data type so in this case it is a string – hence “s”.  

The query is then executed – $stmt->execute(); 

The bind_result() is used to bind the results and then this can be displayed by looping through the results.  

In this example, the user fills out a search field with a city name. This value is stored in the variable $term. This selects all the images that matches the user’s entered location.  

 

<?php  
$term = “$_POST[‘city‘]”; 
$stmt = $conn->prepare(“SELECT image_name FROM media WHERE location LIKE ?“); 
$stmt->bind_param(“s”, $term); 
$stmt->execute(); 
$stmt->bind_result($image_name); 
?> 

 

Displaying the results

 

while($stmt->fetch()) 
{ 
    echo $image_name; 
} 
 

Conclusion

SQL injections are often overlooked and can be a common threat, therefore suitable prevention is essential in keeping your database and it’s data safe. Separating the data and the query will ensure that your program cannot be manipulated.