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Welcome...
...to the March issue of the Mr Site newsletter! This month we’re going to find out all about mobile broadband and how our friends at O2 can help you work on your website on the move. Along with all the usual news and updates, we’ve also got a brand new ‘Good Design Guide’ from Mr Sites’s very own Senior Designer, Craig Collie – this will give you lots of handy tips on how to use the Global Fonts tool. We hope you have a great month!
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March Expert
Colin Brown
March’s expert is Colin Brown, from the Business Development team at O2. You may be surprised to learn that that O2 does more business with small businesses than any other mobile phone network. O2 is working with Mr Site to ensure customers have access to their websites no matter where they are. If you’re not set up to work remotely; then read on, you could be missing a trick….
“Now you’ve made your move onto the World Wide Web, you’ll already be experiencing the benefits of reaching 15 million households online, in the UK. But there are some drawbacks of being online. Perception is everything. Your online reputation is dependent on your content and loyalty goes hand in hand with happy customers. Users expect websites to be easy to navigate, up-to-date and functional all of the time.
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It’s a full on job maintaining a website and you’ll need high speed access wherever you are.
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High speed O2 Mobile Broadband uses the mobile phone 3G network or Wi-Fi which gives you access to fixed line broadband even when you’re not at home or in the office. You can upload and download large files at high speed, surf the web and respond to your email.
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Work on the move With O2 Mobile broadband you’re not restricted to where and when you use the internet. You can be online at cafes, airports, railway stations, virtually anywhere. Allowing you to process orders or respond quickly to customers wherever you are.
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Over 6500 Wi-Fi hotspots The advantage of Wi-Fi this is that you can access the internet without eating into your monthly mobile broadband allowance. O2 has partnerships with The Cloud and BT Openzone giving you access to over 6500 hotspots across the UK.
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Easy to set-up We’ll provide you with a dongle that plugs into the USB port of your laptop. The connection manager software opens up automatically and searches for a network (3G or Wi-Fi).
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Control your costs A selection of tariffs at a price to suit you. For £15 a month you can opt for unlimited* data or for the lighter users choose 1GB for £6.38
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According to a recent survey of more than 11,000 Which? online panel members with broadband, around 9% have a mobile broadband service, either as their main broadband service or in additional to a fixed line. A further 9% of members plan to or are considering getting mobile broadband at some point in the future. Make sure you move with the curve and stay ahead of the game.
If you’d like more information about O2 Mobile Broadband or what O2 can do for your business, email Colin.Brown@o2.com.
Mr Site is also working O2 to offer you broadband that goes with you – free for 3 months. Visit www.mrsite.co.uk/O2offer for more information.
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You may have noticed that the Mr Site community forum has been temporarily moved offline – this is while we restructure and redesign it, and put in place a new moderation policy that ensures all forum members have a fair and honest voice. In the meantime, we will continue to post important notices, announcements and updates on the forum for your information.
We appreciate your patience on this - should you have any technical difficulties in the meantime, please contact the support team by emailing support@mrsite.co.uk
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Creative tips
Craig Collie
Our very own Mr Site developer and designer, Craig Collie, wants to share his top tips for the ‘Global Fonts’ tool (‘Extras’, then ‘Personalise’) to get your website looking at its very best!
"You may have used the ‘Global Fonts’ tool in the past, but not really understood how important it is to good website design. It bases itself on relative sizes and font style inheritance – ok, ok…so in plain English that means that by using the ‘Global Fonts’ tool you can set font sizes for headers and body text, line-heights and other styles that will all be proportionate to each other and apply across the whole of your website. This is vital for achieving a consistent and professional look. A lot of people only use the font settings in ‘Change Content’ to format their websites, but this really is worth having a go at. If you use the ‘Global Fonts’ tool…you should never have to do any formatting in ‘Change Content’ ever again!
Go into the ‘Global Fonts’ tool and play around with fonts in the ‘Font styles’ tab and do the same with colours in the ‘Font colours’ tab – there’s some advice on colours below. The final tab, ‘Font style advanced’, is where the magic happens! This allows you to create really great styles for all the content on your website; just use the preview panel to check how everything looks:
- Font size: The default size for this is 12px – this applies to the size of your body text and hyperlinks, and is the standard size for any website. The headers will then correctly proportion themselves based on this; you won’t need to worry about setting these.
- Line height: The more you increase the ‘Font size’, the more line height you will need. If you plan on sticking with a 12px font throughout your website, then use the 15px line height. But if you plan on going a little larger with your base fonts, go up to 18px for line height (or perhaps more) to avoid your text overlapping…this is where a lot of people tend to go wrong.
- Word and letter spacing: These can be a little volatile. Using -10pt for your word spacing or -0.5pt for your letter spacing can cause some strange textual behaviour, so use them wisely and with caution!
Firstly, you should select your ‘Paragraph colour’ wisely – remember it will apply to virtually every element on the page, apart from your headers, links and menus. Your colours can have a drastic effect on how visitors portray your website, especially on first viewing. Having bright text on an even brighter background will almost certainly turn visitors away. There are a lot of great resources online, like www.colourlovers.com, which can give you some insight on colour schemes for your website.
One of the great things about the ‘Global Fonts’ tool is that you can also insert a HEX colour (this looks like #399382), so it’s a like picking a paint colour when decorating your flat or house. Perhaps give your ‘Large header’ a lighter grey colour than your ‘Small header’ and your body text a nice dark grey to accentuate it – the possibilities are endless. Parts of your chosen template will also respond to the colours that you choose in the ‘Global Fonts’ tool. For example, all of your widget titles will display the same colour that you choose for the 'Small header' colour. However, font size and some of the more advanced settings won't apply to this purely because changing the settings could adversely affect the look and feel of your template.
Remember, by setting these styles up should really never need to use formatting tools in ‘Change Content…but if you want to apply header formatting to any of your text in ‘Change Content’ all your need to do is select ‘Heading 1’ or ‘Heading 2’ from the drop down list in the last row on icons. You’ll need to be in ‘Creative’ mode to do this. If you want to change the colour of little bits of text, it’s also possible to do this in ‘Change Content’.
Ideally, the ‘Global Fonts’ tool should be used as a starting point with a fresh website; but it is possible to apply to an already created web page with caution!
When you modify font colours and sizes in 'Change Content', the editor applies something called ‘HTML tags’ directly to the text…yes, that is the techy bit over but it’s just how websites work. These tags will normally override any styles set in ‘Global Fonts’ and can create a few ‘code nasties’ for when you try to start applying styles; meaning it might not always look how you planned. Luckily, there's an easy fix for this. If you have a page with already created and formatted content then you can use the ‘Remove Format’ button in ‘Change Content’ – it looks like an eraser and is in top row of icons – it’ll clean out your old formatting and take away all the old HTML code. Then you’re all good to start using the ‘Global Fonts’ tool…have fun!”
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Congratulations to Sam Dunford of www.samsart.co.uk …she submitted her website on the Mr Site forum and we’re pleased to announce her as our Website of the Month!
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This website combines Sam’s artistic flair with some amazing Mr Siting – a really fantastic website so well done Sam:
“My website www.samsart.co.uk is a showcase for my beautiful landscape oil paintings. It offers prints for sale, which are handmade by myself and also information about commissioning your own painting. Both my prints and commissions are extremely affordable and high quality. I strongly believe that art should be made available to everyone and that my Mr Site website has let me achieve this.”
As the forum is temporarily offline, if you'd like to be the next Website of Month all you need to do is submit your story by emailing us here. Tell us why you deserve the award!
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Whats in this issue?
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Yes it’s nearly that time again! The Mr Site team will be attending the next Business Startup Show at London’s ExCel – 20 and 21 May 2010. Lot’s more information to follow in the next newsletter…but if you’re a UK customer and already keen to come along, you can register your free ticket by clicking here
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