18a Productions Limited News

Smartphone city guide is launched by the Mayor of Poole!

lisa — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

After lots of careful planning and hard work, PooleTrail.com has gone live, officially opened by the Mayor of Poole on the 31st January.

We were approached by City-Insights.com to help them realise the technical side of their fantastic new offering to locations around the world. City Insights are a team of content developers, researchers, experience experts and designers who work with a location or tourist destination to bring to life a whole host of information about that place. They gather photos and stories from times gone by and arrange this into fascinating bite size segments that then appear on plaques all around the area.

Where do we come in? Well a plaque can only do so much and the City Insights team also gather video and audio, and more photos than a plaque can hold. So on each plaque, there's a QR code - zap it with your smart phone (or enter the short code if you haven't got a QR reader) and you'll be taken to the smartphone website where you can experience even more. Watch a video of how the exact spot you're stood in would have looked 50 years ago!

And this is exactly what has been done for Poole Museum with the launch of PooleTrail.com.

"I know I said it before but I will say it again: the Poole Trail really, really works. Even when I knew all the audios and films by heart it was a new experience to stand in the place and listen to them in the right context. You have done an amazing job!"

But of course, no custom build web system from 18a is complete without an intuitive, easy to use CMS! So Poole Museum can update their own content as and when they need to, as can the City Insights team.

And the whole system is designed to work well for new clients as they join City Insights - watch this space for more exciting projects around the corner!

We also re-built the main City Insights website whilst we were at it so they now have a marketing tool to tell the world about their unique offering, which they can update themselves with new press material and client testimonials as the reviews roll in!

Happy New Year from 18a!

lisa — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Happy 2012!

It's our first day back in the office today, and we've hit the ground running with 1 new commission confirmed and requests for 3 other estimates!

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year and we wish you all the best for 2012!

18a Christmas 2011 opening hours

lisa — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 03:00:00 +0000

Our offices will be closed from 5.30pm on Friday 23rd December 2011 - 9am on Monday 9th January 2012.

Hosting:

All hosting will continue to be monitored 24/7 and any problems will be addressed throughout the Christmas period. We might be on holiday, but we're still on hosting-watch!

Support:

If you are an existing client with a support query, please visit the support section of our website. Here you will find easy to follow instructions for the majority of common website queries.

Common questions are:

My email has stopped receiving emails.

When people email me it says my mailbox has exceeded it's quota.

A page of my website has broken/is only partly showing after updating it with the CMS.

I can't see my website.

Contact:

Feel free to email us over Christmas as great ideas dawn on you or you get chance to catch up with that website maintenance, and we will reply as soon as we can on our return in January. Alternatively call 01179 680989 and leave a message and we'll get back to you in the New Year. Please note: voice mail messages left will not be checked/picked up until the New Year as we will be out of the office.

In the case of an emergency, please email our emergency email address (it's hidden here to protect it from spam, but if you click the link a box will come up to let you access it).

WordPress 3.3 is released

lisa — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 03:00:00 +0000

If you've got a WordPress blog, then you might want to consider upgrading to the latest version - WordPress 3.3.

Features include the ability to drag and drop a batch of mixed media instead of uploading each file (there's been a multi-file uploader for a while which I found was never very happy, so it will be interesting to see if this new way of going about things works without crashing), changes to the menu layouts and an improvement to how you're notified if someone else from your company is editing a post or page at exactly the same time as you. There's also now a feature to make your WordPress site work with your Tumblr site.

The first thing you'll notice is a big change to the dashboard. Whereas WordPress 3.2 looked like this:

WordPress 3.3 now looks like this:

And the menu changes, along with lots of little notifiers (which might get annoying for veteran users) look a bit like this:

The big news is the drag and drop uploader for multiple files, and if you're curious about what that means, it means you now get 1 icon to click on for all your media (whereas there used to be a little row of picture, audio, video etc.) and you literally drag and drop your files from your computer into WordPress.

And once there, you can see their progress as they upload 1 by 1:

It seems to work pretty well, and as we have a few clients with galleries that always need updating it should really help speed jobs along.

As always, the WordPress team's aim has been to make WordPress even easier to use so we'd love to hear your thoughts!

Watch the video at Wordpress.org

Join us for the first RWW Bristol meet up!

lisa — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 03:00:00 +0000

One of the biggest technology blogs in the world, Read Write Web, are organising a Worldwide meet up on Tuesday 15th November, and encouraging people across the globe to organise meet ups in their area.

So we're organising the Bristol one! Calling all South West geeks! If you're in the web industry and you'd like to chat with like minded individuals about work (and play) then just turn up at The Hatchet, Frogmore Street, any time from 6pm on Tuesday 15th November.

If you're able to attend, let us know on the official RWW Bristol Meetup page.

Keep an eye on us on twitter (#BristolRWW) incase arrangements change or we move on during the evening.

Hope to see you there!

Paypal now keep their fee when you refund a customer

lisa — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:00:00 +0000

We're just setting up the Paypal API for a new client, and have found a change since we last did it just a few weeks ago!

It seems that in September 2011, the UK terms for Paypal updated to say that Paypal now keep the fixed part of their fee when you refund a customer.

Paypal charges UK business account holders from 3.4% (depending on your level of transactions) and 20p per purchase.

It's always been the case that if you then need to refund the customer for any reason, they'll give you everything back, so you're no worse off than if the transaction had never happened (financially - time wise it might have taken some faffing and customer service!). However now, they'll keep the fixed part of their fee - the 20p.

So OK, if you sell lots of big things and you make a good living, then what's 20p for the odd occasion a customer changes their mind? Well, yeah, it's not too much if it happens once in a blue moon but it does still mean than a refund is actually costing your business money.

It also means anyone who has to issue lots of refunds should consider why they are - are they misrepresnting their goods online so people aren't happy when they receive them? Are they marketing to the wrong audience? If this change of Paypal's terms is a big problem for you then you need to ask why it is, and maybe tweak something your end so that it doesn't occur so often.

The reason we came across it was for testing. Paypal has a sandbox development option, but there are times when you just want to do actual thorough live testing, or you're retracing a customer's steps because they reported an issue. And in those instances our client has always been able to refund us anything we've paid them in a test transaction and no one has been out of pocket. But now it will cost our client 20p each time we, or they, do a test.

So just beware - if you've been used to Paypal refunds not costing you anything, remember that they do now!

The Dead Circus has come alive!

jo — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 03:00:00 +0000

One of our latest website is now live! It is The Dead Circus.

This site was made to promote a one off Halloween party. It is set to be a great event and it's now fully booked.

The site had an in-built ticket booking system, which let customers buy not only a ticket to the event but also book transportation to and from the event too!

This will be a night to remember. I just hope you booked your ticket in time!

Image of the site taken from on an iPad.

If you are thinking of having a website made, or getting an old one updated please feel free to contact us!

Fancy a stake in Half Baked Brand?

lisa — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 03:00:00 +0000

We made Half Baked Brand's website for them last year so they could begin selling their cycling apparel online.

It's been an exciting year for the new company, with shop premises all but open and great features in leading national cycling magazines.

And now it's set to get all the more exciting as their listing goes live on crowdcube!

If you're not familiar with the platform, it lets businesses pitch their ideas and collect investment - from small £10 donations to large thousands-of-pounds investments. In return the company gives away equity of it's business, along with rewards such as vouchers and offers.

So if you fancy a share in an up and coming cycling brand, head over to the site now!

Have you got customer reviews on your Facebook page?

lisa — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 03:00:00 +0000

If you've got customer reviews on your Facebook page, which are no where else, then copy and paste them and save them quick!

Facebook have announced that as of the 31st October 2011 they're removing the reviews tab from Facebook Pages, so as to encourage people to use the wall instead. They've also removed the Discussions tab. Because, lets face it, most discussion and comment has always been on the wall anyway so discussions and reviews were probably very underused.

They claim they've got something exciting up their sleeve to improve how we can then organise wall content in the future, so we'll have to wait and see what that is!

Meanwhile, if you've got any reviews on your Facebook page, make sure you've got a copy of them before the end of the month or ask the person who left them to leave a comment on your wall instead. (If you leave them on your wall instead, be sure to cite the original author so as you can't be accused of leaving a review about yourself - which would be naughty!)

Meanwhile if you haven't liked 18a Productions on Facebook yet - what are you waiting for?!

How to get different shipping rates on your OpenCart shop.

jo — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 03:00:00 +0000

If you ship your products globally you may find you need to provide different prices for different countries. A common set up in the UK is; a flat rate shipping fee to when shipping to addresses in the UK and then a higher rate for Europe and then an even higher price for the rest of the world – international shipping.

There isn’t a quick way of doing this on OpenCart but it can be done.

Firstly log in to the admin area of your site, go to System (found on the dashboard) > Localisation > Geo Zones. Then insert the name of the one you want, for example Europe and then hit save.

Then we need to go back to the dashboard. From here go to Extensions > Shipping. Install and Edit the bottom option which is Weight-Based Shipping.

In the column down the left hand side, select the Europe shipping (– or whatever you just previously inserted in Zones). In the Rates box put in a very heavy weight (high number) against the price of European shipping for example 1000000:2.50 (2.50 indicating the £2.50 you want to charge for shipping). Then enable it and click save.

Next, go to Systems > Localisation > Geo Zones. Edit European shipping and then you have to manually input all the European countries that you ship to. Then, make sure you save it.

Now when someone buys one of your products, OpenCart will automatically calculate the right price for shipping to that country that they want the product shipped to.

If you know of an easier way to add multiple countries please let us know by leaving a comment below.