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If you run a web development company or are a self employed web developer, there may come a time when you have too much work on to manage yourself and need to look for help. You may not want to employ anyone on a permanent basis, but might look in to out sourcing the work to a competent freelance web programmer.

Finding a reliable programmer can be tricky and if they have their own projects that they are working on, you will need to ensure that they have the time to work on yours too. When speaking to a freelancer you need to be able to give them clear instructions of what you want and be sure to agree a price with them so you know if it fits within your budget. There is no point in outsourcing work if it is going to end up costing you more than you are charging the customer.

Be sure to keep in contact with them as to how the project is going and to ensure that you are on track to meet the deadline you have agreed.

Once you have a website up and running it is essential to analyse its performance on a regular basis and make changes / updates as required. In order to analyse your website you need to know what you are looking out for and how to check your performance. The first thing to check is that you have a good stats package linked up to your site so you can see the number of visitors that are coming to the website. Most stats packages will also be able to give you a lot more vital information such as pages landed on, pages left and time spent on the site. You may even be able to track visitors progress through the site. This can help you find out which pages are not performing as well as they should and may be costing you sales. If for example you find that many people leave at the check out process, you need to confirm that the process is working as it should and that it is easy to complete. If you have to create an account to buy a small value item for example, many people may leave because they simply haven’t got the time or do not want to do this.

Social media can be a fantastic marketing tool and many businesses are incorporating it in to their marketing strategy. If you do not have the time to manage your social media accounts of feel that you do not know what you are doing then you can chose to outsource it to a company that specialises in social media marketing. Many companies are choosing to do this now as they realise the potential social media marketing has and how it can grow their business with often very little money needed.

Knowing what to write on the social media sites and how often to post can be tricky and therefore it is advised to speak to someone in the know. They can tell you what is likely to get you follower’s comments or even sales.

Most online marketing companies offer a range of packages to suit the individual client’s needs. These are usually based on the size of the business, how much money you want to invest in social media, the competition for your products and service and the geographical reach. They are usually based on a number of hours that will need to be spent on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

In my work as a PC Repair Engineer, I come across a lot of different problems.
But one recurring issue is the fact that people are not taught the basics of how to use Windows!

To help remedy this, I have produced a series of Blog Articles showing a step-by-step introduction to Files and Folders.

Starting from the very basics, it gives the novice vital information on how their files are stored, and instructions on how to navigate the Folder system.

Organising the plethora of files that build up in one’s computer can be a daunting task, but with the tips provided here, I hope to make it a little more manageable, teaching you how to Cut and Copy multiple files/Folders at once and navigate quickly between different Folders.

The Summary Page provides a simple Glossary of terms and recaps the lessons we have learned, as well as providing a guide to identify the different types of Files.

Although aimed at complete novices, even more, advanced users may find some useful information here, whether on the use of the Ribbon, right-click sub-menus or Control Keys.

Remember, if you need any help with your PC or laptop, call the PC Wizard for a fix in the comfort of your home.

CMS stands for Content Management Systems and basically is the backend system that is attached to your website. This backend system will often allow you to make certain changes to the front end of the website such as adding / amending pages and products. There is a wide variety of Content Management Systems on the market, some that can be purchased “off the shelf” and others that are bespoke. There are pros and cons to both types of content management systems and deciding the one to choose depends entirely on the website development company and the functionality you require. Some off the shelf content management systems simply do not give you the ability to change everything you need to and therefore you will need to get a bespoke system created. If your website is quite complex and you want to be able to add in quite a lot of additional functionality (especially if it is specific to your business) then you may find that a bespoke CMS is the best one for you. Most bespoke systems can also be added to at a later date if you want to add further functionality in to it. The developer will be able to amend the content management system and add in the elements you require.

If you want to market your business in more than one location then you may find that you struggle to do this with just a three or four page website. You can of course have a page where you list all the areas you cover, but this alone is not usually enough to get you ranked highly for all these areas on Google.  Ideally you need to create mini sites as such for each location you wish to target to give you the best opportunity to do so, but this is not always possible and can be expensive.

Many companies have now started to create location based pages within their current site to improve the rankings in these areas. This means creating a page for each area that has different content on it, For example if you wanted to target Shropshire and Birmingham then you would create two pages each with different content and a range of keywords relevant to that area. To make sure the page is SEO friendly you would need to have unique meta data relevant to the content on the page and make sure that the URL is friendly e.g /Shropshire.

When targeting areas you need to make sure that you have enough content on each page to target that area on the search engine. Some smaller areas may be easy to market, but for larger areas you may need more than just one page as competition is higher.

Many of us use a PC or laptop for personal use and for work use. It is amazing how much information we store on our computers and that often we forget that as with any technology, they can fail and we risk losing everything. With this in mind, it is vital to back up your data as often as possible to avoid disruption and upset. In our personal lives, many of us store photos and videos on laptops or PC’s and often we don’t even have them printed out. These can be downloaded from cameras or from mobile phones, and often once we have downloaded them to the computer, we delete the originals.

There are many ways in which to back up the documents and photos and possibly even settings on your computer. You can do it manually by coping all the files you need and pasting them on an external hard drive or on some sort of cloud software such as ICloud or Dropbox, or you can get a server linked to your computer to run a backup every night or week automatically.

Many work computers are set up to back up to servers either externally or within the building but it is also important that these servers are backed up so you have the data stored on at least two other devices.

If you are a web programmer that designs website for clients then your client may require access to the back end system of the site to allow them to upload additional content, change or add products etc. Some programmers use an off the shelf content management system such as WordPress or Drupal and others use their own. If you are using your own content management system then you need to carefully consider how user friendly it is. As a programmer, you will be familiar with HTML etc., but there is a good chance that your client won’t be. Once you have built the back end system, why not get a friend (who has no developer experience) to log in and see if they find it easy to do the tasks that your customers will be required to do. IF they struggle, then you may need to rethink the process.

If you are using an off the shelf system, then these are usually developed in a fairly straight forward way, but if you have made changes to the templates or themes etc. then you may need to check everything still works as it should. You may need to install extra plugins to get the pages and content to work how you need them to.

If you are a computer or website programmer that works from home, you will probably be all too aware of how lonely it can get. There are many advantages of working for yourself and particularly working at home and you may find that you hear comments such as “you are so lucky to be able to work from home”. In some ways this is true but it can also be very lonely and hard to stay on task when surrounded by distractions. Ideally you need to have quiet but this only adds to the loneliness.

Many programmers are turning to the shared office space for a new way of working. There are many buildings all over the country that are now offering self employed professionals the opportunity to come in to an office and essentially rent a desk. You will usually pay a daily, weekly or monthly amount for the space and often this includes the use of the internet, phone and sometimes even a meeting room.

Working in this way is proving to be extremely popular as it gives the programmer a quiet place to work but within an office environment. When looking in to one of these schemes be sure to check if you are going to be tied in to any lengthy contract and what is included in the price you pay.

Many of us use a computer in or daily life, either for personal use, part of a job or both. Time is often money or if using it for personal use, you may be limited on the time you have therefore you need your computer to be as fast as possible.

There are many reasons why your computer may be running slow and there are often simple checks you can do yourself before taking it to a specialist who will charge you to carry out these checks and changes.

Firstly you should ensure that your computer is free from viruses. You should already have a quality anti-virus on your computer but make sure that it is set to run a scan on all your hard drives as well as any portable devices. Viruses are one of the biggest causes of a machine running slow.

Secondly check how much memory your computer has, this is called RAM. If the computer has little RAM then it will use the hard disk drive of the computer to run applications. Increasing the memory in your computer can help improve speeds overall.

Also check to see what programmers are running when you first start up your machine, by going into the control panel. Often lots of unnecessary applications are starting up when you turn your computer on.