Media
Proliferation of Wordpress sites
Whilst hunting down run down brochure sections to spruce up I've come across a whole swathe of organisations using Wordpress for their company website. The problem I can see with pretty much all of them is the lack of any content prioritisation or static page areas for important sections. It looks as though these companies have had a standard Wordpress install plus a couple of rss, twitter widgets and a standard theme change and been left to their own devices.
If I were a company looking to get an agency to do a site I'd demand Drupal and a proper content experience. Not some pumped up blog platform trying it's best to be a serious web platform. User experience and ease of navigation should always be paramount which is why proper content placement analysis should always be done.
Article Block
iMediastorm Youtube Channel
New HD 720p Twist on our iBrochures
Now you can get full 720p video presentations of our already great iBrochures. These are perfect for running at presentations, in foyers or at the stand of your next expo. They will also transform your brochure section of your website into a unique and engaging area which will certainly set you apart from the competition. The videos come as part of our enhanced iBrochure media bundle which includes a full pdf conversion to an online iBrochure, designed specifiacally to your branding, fully clickable contents page and 720p video bundle for just £195 all in.
Article Block
iMediastorm Youtube Channel
Creating free and easy iOS and Android apps from your website feed
There is a new service in town from Conduit Mobile http://mobile.conduit.com/ that looks to publish your RSS, Twitter and Facebook streams quickly and easily into a fully wrapped mobile App. We've gone through the process with a couple of schools and are waiting for the apps to appear in the relevant marketplaces but it's looking really good so far.
The publishing wizard is an absolute breeze allowing you to add RSS, twitter, facebook, Youtube and other content into a pre-defined tabbed app. The wizard also lets you choose splash images for all platforms as well as the iPad. Beyond the standard feed app there is also an API to create more substantial apps without having to go to the expense of forking out for a mac just to write a simple one off app.
Once we get the apps fully published we'll do an update!
Article Block
iMediastorm Youtube Channel
Host your School Website for FREE
There are many companies out there that will offer to build you a website and host it on their platform, for a fee. What they probably fail to tell you is that their hosting is probably inferior to your LA provided webspace which normally comes free with your broadband provision.
The EMBC and 1C1N broadband providers offer schools free webspace which comes complete with 1GB of free space, access to both MSSQL and MySQL databases along with the latest versions of both PHP and ASP.NET
What that means is that any external provider hosting your site for a fee could put it on your LA space and save the school a couple of hundred quid. So why don't they? and more to the point why don't they offer the information and choice?
We've used the EMBC and 1C1N webhosting extensively and ran good installs of Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress so the next time someone offers to charge you for a service you're already paying for - ask them why!
Article Block
iMediastorm Youtube Channel
Using Dropbox to send large files via email
Even with the recent ramping up of online storage space and internet connection speeds the humble email attachment has hardly been allowed to grow at all. You will still find lots of email platforms limiting file attachments to 10mb which can be a real problem when sending large photos or high quality PDF files.
So what can you about it? Well the obvious choice is to upload the files to a server and then email links out to that file. And with Dropbox the job is stupid easy.
Dropbox is the number one online storage tool and the free account option offers a whopping 2GB of storage with single files of 75mb allowed. It offers both private and public spaces for your files which makes it just as useful to store your work files as it is for storing publicly available files like application forms.
To install head off to dropbox.com and download the client. After you have installed it you will find a folder within the 'My Documents' folder called 'My Dropbox'. Any files that you put in that folder will immediately be available to any other PC or smartphone that you have installed dropbox onto.
To make files publicly available drop them into the public folder of your 'My Dropbox' folder. Then just right click the file, go to Dropbox and choose 'copy public url'. Then simply paste the link into your email.
You're now able to send 75mb files by email!
Article Block
iMediastorm Youtube Channel
Microsoft sharepoint design services now available for schools
After the recent upswing in the rollout of the SIMS learning gateway along with the increased rollout of sharepoint services for school email, web filtering and calendaring services we can now offer sharepoint webdesign services. So whether you need to brand your sharepoint portal for parental access or want to brand your staff access to school services we can help.
We often find the main problem in getting staff to use a school based email and unified communication portal is that the branding isn't school specific, it's branded for the LA. We can take your section of sharepoint and completely change the look and feel for just your school.
Offering a school focussed solution in these areas will help identify your services to parents and staff and bring together your communication channels from the current disarray of hotmail, gmail, school email mish mash you probably have to deal with at the moment. In fact many schools already ban the use of these non work related email systems as they offer insecure data collection and dissemination.
So give your parents one place to get their info, give your staff one system to get their work related email and give yourself a break. Get in touch today.
Article Block
iMediastorm Youtube Channel
50% OFF Education Websites!
Everyone seems to have a January sale so we're going with the flow. We now offer a 50% for school and education websites forever! That means our normal CMS website plus facebook and twitter integration is down from our standard fee of £595 to an education flat rate of £295. The price includes creating your facebook, flickr, twitter and youtube accounts and integrating your site with those services.
Check out our school demo here and use the contact us links to get in touch. Remember we offer a no satisfaction no fee service and offer a two week trial of a fully functional, fully school branded, test site.
We believed this offers the best value in school websites and can offer further advice in regard to tying in your VLE product and MIS data with your site.
Article Block
iMediastorm Youtube Channel
