Need a web designer

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 13:26

Anyone know of any small companies / freelancers who do web design? I have a small site which needs some work but I'm rubbish at this so will pay someone to do it. The site is running and working fine, but needs lots of optimization according to Google Pagespeed, and it does feel slow so I'd like to get that done.

Any ideas?

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 17:01

Cheers guys, the url is http://forevergaming.co.uk

I've tried some things myself but last time I did any coding it was in Turbo Pascal 6

If anyone wants to give me any ideas or pointers, I'd appreciate it, otherwise I'll have to find someone who is a wizz with these things as according to Feedthebot I'm in for one hell of a ride...

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 17:39

Yessir. No idea how to enable compression though

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 17:42

Ok, got it. Trying that now.

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 17:42

anticonscience said:
Just let me know if you want to look at it.

Do you have a copy of all the files/the site you could send?

No sir, but I can get them if it helps. I can also share my FTP details if it makes life easier?

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 17:54

Crikey, I added that compression code and although the site *feels* snappier (probably a placebo) Google's results are now showing a point less.

This confuzzles me.

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 18:04

Great, thanks.

I'm getting frustrated already, I'd rather just pay someone who knows about this. Give me a broken car any day of the week

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 18:10

Ok, I don't understand this at all. I inserted the code according to Feedthebot and it seems to have had no effect at all. Where does HTAccess belong, in HTDocs, right?

This is my HTAccess file:

## EXPIRES CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/html "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year"
ExpiresDefault "access 1 month"
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]
</IfModule>

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 18:18

That's exactly what I added, made no difference. I've sent Anticonscience my server details, hopefully he can help out, otherwise I might have to employ Rashnid from India

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 20:00

Just spoke to Fasthosts and unless I go for a virtual box, they can't support Gzip.

Bloody great! :rolleyes:

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 20:06

Well I spoke to technical support and they told me that I don't have apache at all, I'm running on Linux with PHP 5.2. Is there a way I can check?

I'm definitely moving hosts, these guys are awful.

To spend? Well, it's all relative really. As much as is needed, within reason of course.

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 20:16

Not much, it's only a small community driven forum atm but I'm hoping to expand it a bit, hence why I would like it running smoothly first.

I dunno. I'll continue bashing my head against this wall tomorrow, something must click eventually.

Thanks for the help

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 20:18

No, just domain hosting. It's only about £9 a month, but if I have to pay a bit more for a better host, then I'm game. I can't be bothered with this lot any more, they're tragically useless.

Now to find out how to do Gzip on Nginx....

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 20:22

Cool, will do.

How hard is it to transfer everything over? Doable in a day?

Mynight > everything through them.

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 20:29

I won't, thanks for the heads up

I'll call Vida in the morning, see how this all pans out. I paid separately for the domain name so I can't see that being an issue.

The only thing is, if I'm running Nginx now and move to Apache, won't there be conflicts?

Sorry for all the questions, just want to make sure I've got all my ducks in a row before I make a mess of things!

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 21:17

Cheers mynight, I'll get on to that this weekend, hopefully it all goes smoothly

Diddums · 2 Oct 2014 at 21:35

Never knew that, thanks!

I'll add it to my list of things to do / get done, no idea how I'd go about adding space but I'm sure it can't be that hard.

Mystical creature, Adsense. Still, it covers the hosting bill so I can't complain

Diddums · 5 Oct 2014 at 16:20

Ok just to update this.

First off thanks for all your help and advice, I couldn't have done it without you (seriously, I couldn't have)!

I got rid of Fasthosts and am now with Vidahosts as recommended here. I'd just like to say that their service is beyond excellent. A chap named bruce Taylor has been helping me sort things out as the site went terribly wonky during the move and he has been nothing short of brilliant.

I feel a bit bad for asking so much of these guys but they seemed glad to help so will be getting my recommendation all the time from now on. This level of service for less than a fiver a month is astonishing.

Well done Vidahosts, you guys are exellent!

Diddums · 5 Oct 2014 at 17:48

Yeah, that's if I don't bork it again

on a completely unrelated note, I've been with Fasthosts for... I dunno, 2-3 years. Did all my hosting with them, numerous sites, email, the lot. I've complained time and time again that their tech support know nothing (dealing with their tech support was like calling a foreign country in the 80s with that dreadful delay, and the people on the other end of the phone were in India so had a thick accent and didn't actually know anything, just asked questions which were on their screen and put my answer in).

I got told time and time again that they were moving to British support centres fairly soon and that it was nothing to worry about. As I only rang them maybe 3-4 times a year, I never really bothered with it.

I just spoke to them a few minutes ago, "hello fasthosts, this is jumal speaking".

"Hi, I'd like to cancel my account please"

"Ok, let me transfer you"

"Hello, James Dhoherty speaking" (fictional name btw).

So as long as you're on the chain, they give you rubbish support based in India but as soon as you want to quit, they suddenly have a UK based call center.

*****s. Good riddance!

Diddums · 25 Oct 2014 at 22:02

Hello,

Me again!

I've got an interesting one today. I've added some custom profile fields to my users' profile pages but I can't get the logos to show.

They show up fine in the admin control panel, but I'd also like them to show up on their actual forum profile, like the ones do on this OcUK forum (think ICQ, MSN, etc etc).

I'm proud of myself that I found images, resized them, uploaded them and got them to show in the admin panel but I can't get them to show under the avatars.

Any idea how to do this?