If you are using a screen reader to access this page and would like to offer feedback on how I could make it a better experience for you please email michael@siblify.com
June 2nd, 2010
Having experimented with several different content management systems, one feature I really value is the ability to dynamically create a navigation menu based on the content of the site. When I started using ExpressionEngine, I liked it’s user interface, flexibility and ease of implementation but I missed the automatic navigation builder’s that are included with some open source packages such as CMS Made Simple. Read more …
April 30th, 2010
In my quest to integrate our birds with our garden I decided it was time that they were confined to two areas of the garden. The problem was that the two areas that they needed access to, the chicken house area and the duck pond area, are on two different levels and separated by a footpath. The obvious solution was a tunnel so I set about digging, unsure as to how well birds cope with tunnels. It turns out they cope really rather well.
April 13th, 2010
Whilst developing siblify.com and msibley.com I was unsure how best to implement my blog which I wanted to be accessible from both sites. I considered having two blogs, one for art and one for web design, but I felt that the two should overlap and I wanted to find a middle ground where both topics could be discussed along with some more random thoughts when I felt like it. I was aware of the fact that duplicating content can cause problems with search engines and I felt that having two blogs with identical content may cause confusion amongst users so it was a bit of a conundrum.
February 19th, 2010
HTML emails are notoriously difficult beasts to tame thanks to patchy/non-existant support for web standards in most of the main email clients. One of the worst offenders and the most widely used of these is Microsoft Outlook and for those of us who try to spend as little time as possible in a Windows environment, it can be tricky to test. In this article I will give an outline of how I test HTML emails using my mac with both local applications and online test suites.
January 25th, 2010
WWW, Cotton stitch, acrylics and ink on canvas, 140cm x 90cm
It took 2 months of stitching, painting, drawing and plastering bleeding fingers to complete and is probably my most ambitious painting to date but it is also one that often gets overlooked as it’s hard to decipher from a small image on the web. The title, WWW (world wide web), is quite a good starting point in explaining this painting which is composed of a interconnected web of cotton threads which weave together to create a sort of global vista from Romania and Switzerland at it’s flanks, to San Francisco at its pinnacle.
December 29th, 2009
Here are 10 Joomla extensions and hacks that I’ve found useful. Some of them are a bit obscure but I have found them all invaluable at different times for making Joomla the flexible content management system I need it to be. I generally wouldn’t use all of these hacks in one website but just knowing what is possible by changing a few lines of code or by installing a free plugin can broaden your scope when designing for Joomla or help you when deciding if Joomla is suitable for a specific project.
November 22nd, 2009
It was an article in smashing magazine entitled 45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires that started me thinking about this. Whilst I think it is a great idea to keep website contact forms as simple as possible for users, I also wanted to offer the ability for potential clients to provide more in-depth information about themselves and the projects they represent.
November 7th, 2009
My 5 tips for ‘making it’ as a professional artist are:
1. Find yourself some galleries: Sift through gallery websites noting down the most suitable ones for your work. Whittle it down to a list of about 5 then send them a really well produced miniature portfolio of your work followed up with a call a couple of weeks later to gauge their opinion.
2. Take part in art fairs: Not just a great way to meet other artists and potential buyers but also a great opportunity to be seen by galleries looking for fresh talent. The Brighton Art Fair is a great place to start.
3. Get yourself online: Either hire a web designer for a really high quality bespoke site or use a package such as iweb or an online service like Carbonmade for a really smart homemade site.
4. Presentation is key. Professional framing and promotional materials can be expensive but they also show the value you place on your work and set you apart from the amateur hobbyist. In my experience the investment has paid of both in increased sales and reduced stress whilst preparing for exhibition.
5. Put up your prices. A strange phenomenon I discovered early on in my life as an artist was the importance of not underselling. By assigning realistic prices to your work that reflect the time, materials and experience that are involved not only reassures your buyers that you are a serious artist but is essential to making life as an artist a viable career path.
Whenever I mention to anyone that I am an artist the reply that I expect to hear is always ‘that’s nice, and do you actually earn a living from that?’ There’s not many jobs where it would be acceptable to question someones earning ability as the first port of call but to be honest, it’s a fair question because it is notoriously difficult to generate a decent wage from selling your artwork.
October 15th, 2009
The various web hosts I am going to review here vary greatly and the right one for you depends on the requirements for your site. None of these hosts are disastrous choices (although Easily has had me close to tears at times). My personal recommendations would be Virtual names for smaller sites where you would benefit from a simple-to-use yet powerful control panel and great customer support and Easyspace for a larger business sites where the price, whilst certainly not the cheapest, is more acceptable and comes coupled with an efficient support system and a more corporate feel.
Here’s a breakdown of the different hosting provider’s basic and professional hosting packages. I have excluded any packages that don’t include php and mysql support as I regard these as essential for modern web development.
| Host name | Package | Storage limit | Bandwidth limit |
Mailboxes | Mysql databases |
Domain name included |
Price p.a. inc. VAT |
| Easily | Beginner | 1GB | Unlimited | Not stated | 1 | NO | £24.99 |
| Rating: 4/10 | Professional | 20GB | Unlimited | Not stated | 5 | NO | £89.99 |
| Names Co. | Starter + | 1GB | 10GB | 15 | 5 | YES | £89.99 |
| Rating: 6/10 | Business + | 4.5GB | 45GB | 10 | 10 | YES | £199.99 |
| Nethost | Student | 500MB | Ulimited | 20 | 3 | NO | £9.99 |
| Rating: 7/10 | Deluxe | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | NO | £129.99 |
| Easyspace | Starter | 3GB | Unlimited | 200 | 1 | YES | £55 |
| Rating: 8/10 | Business | 6GB | Unlimited | 200 | 7 | YES | £110 |
| Virtual Names | Basic | 50MB | 5GB | 10 | Unlimited | NO | £23 |
| Rating: 8/10 | Super Pro | 1GB | 60GB | 100 | Unlimited | NO | £184 |
In the course of my work as a freelance web designer I have been forced to use a multitude of different web hosts and have come to realise that all web hosts are not equal. Here is a list of 5 web hosts that I have used with a brief review of my experiences with them. I have had more experience with some than others so this is by no means a conclusive study but I hope it will help you if you are looking for a web host and don’t know where to begin.
October 7th, 2009
It’s easy to convert your chicken house to be fully automated and the result is a pet that pays for itself with eggs yet takes next to no daily care.
I used the VSB automatic chicken house door system with a 24hr timer and three sliding doors connected by pulleys. One door was for the chickens, one for the ducks and a third closed off a gravity fed feeding chamber.
To provide fresh water for the duck pond and the drinker I used a Hozelock Ac1+ automatic watering module.
I was then able to monitor the entire set up from anywhere in the world via the internet thanks to a Y-cam wireless infrared webcam mounted on a diy swiveling base made from bits I had found lying about.
My decision to try and make our chickens and ducks fully automated came just before we headed off for a three week holiday. We decided that rather than paying someone to come each day we would invest the money in fully automating them with automatic doors, an on-demand feeder, fresh water and a diy swiveling web-cam to keep an eye on it all . Since taking the plunge, the system has operated flawlessly for over a year without even needing the batteries changed so I thought it was worth sharing how I transported our birds to Chicken house Nirvana. Read on to find out how I tackled it.
Read more …
September 24th, 2009
I discovered this scam early enough not to be stung by it but thought it was worth warning people about.
The way the scam works is that someone buys a product or service from you online and pays by cheque. The cheque arrives with a higher value than the product you sold. Once the cheque has cleared (which it can do even if stolen) you are asked to refund the excess payed by the customer and send the goods.
A few weeks down the line the bank gives you a call to say the money is being removed from your account because it was paid from a stolen cheque leaving you without payment for the goods as well as having paid the customer the excess.
Always ask the bank to run a security check on the cheque if you are unsure.
I was subjected to this scam a while ago now but when I heard about a similar case recently I thought it might be something worth highlighting. Although on this occasion the scam was centred around the sale of paintings, it could easily be applied to anyone selling products or services of high value on the web.
September 16th, 2009
I went from no signal in my studio to full signal by doing the following.
1. Repositioned the router to avoid one of the brick walls
2. Made a simple parabolic reflector for the antenna (see video below)
3. Bought a 9bi booster antenna for the router
4. Upgraded to a 802.11n router
5. Bought a Belkin universal range extender
All of these things definitely helped but number 5 probably had the biggest impact.
This article covers how I managed to go from no signal at all to a full strength signal in my studio at the end of my garden with an 802.11g wireless router. In between my router and the studio were two brick walls and about 30 metres of garden but I needed to get a signal in order to work so these are a few of the factors that worked for me.
July 20th, 2009
Painters why not try doing something technical like build yourself a website and see how it influences you artistic practice. I found it gave me a more technical, modular approach which complimented my creativity really well.
Web designers try incorporating some more artistic traits in your coding, take risks with you designs and your execution, be spontaneous and don’t be afraid to fail now and again.
The areas of web design and fine art may initially seem worlds apart but for me the line dividing the two is grey. I have always been interested in art and technology but over the last few years I have tried to devote equal time to both and to allow them to develop in unison. Whilst the end products are quite different, the different working practices and the creative processes involved with each discipline have broadened my skill set for the other and changed the way I work for the better.
