It was a brilliantly sunny day and the smell of the pines on the warm breeze was absolutely gorgeous as we made our way around the course, climbing up things and zipping down wires.

I’m the sensible one in the team (Ok, so I’m really just scared of heights!) so I kept my feet firmly on the ground This gave me the perfect opportunity to take lots of pictures and video’s, head on over to our YouTube page to check out some of the best videos from the day http://www.youtube.com/user/impactwebsolutions or check out some of the best photo’s from the day below.

Gareth stops to admire the view

Giles taking a picture of me taking a picture of him taking a picture of me…..

A picture of me doing my best smile

The team having the safety briefing.

Gareth showing the rest of the team how it’s done.

David makes his way across the tightrope

The team get ready to launch themselves on the web!

SEO Engineer David climbs the web!

Dani
Client Services Officer
Studio 2 Online – Web Design Leicester

It is almost pointless trying to optimise a website that is predominantly built using Dynamic URLs. URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) are the individual addresses for each web page of your website. Dynamic URLs have all sorts of symbols included in the address, for example: &, ? , / , $ and the like. These can appear due to the way your content management system generates webpages or by sloppy coding of your website.

Using these extra symbols in your website URLs is like telling search engines “DONT BOTHER VISITING ME” !!! This is because search engines don’t like to crawl websites with too many of these characters in their URLs. The crawling is much slower compared to a Static URL and therefore reduces the chances of a Dynamic URL getting indexed, resulting in poor ranking within a search engine.

Thankfully if your website currently suffers from this problem it is fairly simple to replace Dynamic URLs with neat Static URLs that can also contain keywords. Adding keywords to Static URLs is a very effective way of creating search engine friendly websites that make it easy for the search engine spiders to index a website. In addition, using keywords makes it easier for a website visitor to understand what the webpage is about, which in turn improves website usability significantly. To further boost the effectiveness of a Static URL, the keywords can be separated using hyphens. This makes a search engine like Google see the key phrase as 2 separate words and is better than using an underscore that makes it appear to the search engine as just one word, hence losing its full effectiveness.

There are several free online tools that are available to rewrite URLs. An example of a URL rewrite from Dynamic to Static would be:

http://www.website.com/$design/dab.bl&id=4&view=mills

to

http://www.website.com/design/mills

To conclude, rewriting URLs improves indexing by search engines significantly and increases the usability of a website, making it both search engine as well as user friendly.

Have a look at a few websites created by us here at Studio 2 Online that our web designers have designed and built that focus on both the users and the search engines. We provide web designing services around the regions of Leicester, Loughborough, Birmingham and all over the Midlands. Feel free to give us a ring on 0845 6187342 and chat about our web services to find out more.

Harpreet Seehra
Studio 2 Online – Website Designers Leicester

It was a gloriously sunny Saturday at the outdoor track and everyone had great fun speeding round the track, getting very competitive in a bid to make it to the final race!

With some very shady driving, Giles managed to record the fastest lap of the day but in the final showdown it was Gareth that came in first place, followed by Giles and then Andy K. After receiving their champagne and posing on the podium for some photo’s, everyone made their way in to the Mill for some food and chilling time.

These are some of the best photo’s from the day.

After the Go Karting, it was back to Giles’ house for a barbeque and a game of football – two of Sacha’s favourite things!!

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Web Design Leicester

All of the team at Studio 2 Online worked tirelessly to make sure the office was looking great – they did everything from wiring to sanding floorboards and laying carpets!
I remember my first visit to the new office – there were big holes in all the floors and I was quite scared to see Kieran with a power tool!! Now I cant pretend that I helped all that much with the DIY (I am a little bit clumsy so my contribution was to bring pizza and coffee!) but I have to say I was really impressed with the team work and they made the office look great!

On the night of the open evening, our guests were treated to a wine tasting session with Ravi of Ravi’s Wines – he gave us all lots of information as well as allowing us to sample all the different wines he had brought along with him!
Everyone had a brilliant night and we had the opportunity to meet lots of new people as well as some of our favourite clients. These are our photo’s of the night.

In the year since we moved to The Crescent there have been lots of changes at Studio 2 Online. We have been sorry to see some members of our team leave for new challenges but have also been excited to welcome some very talented new people to the Studio 2 family! Our team has almost doubled in size over the past year and this growth has meant we have been able to offer great new products with more to come soon!

As Studio 2 Online moves forward into 2009 – its 10th year, you can be sure we will be continuing to work hard to bring even more products and services. Watch this space for events, offers and product launches as they happen.

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Web Design Leicester

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Web Design Leicester

‘Tis the season for school nativity plays. And doing the big Christmas Shop. And getting the guestroom ready for the in-laws. And buying gifts for people you haven’t seen since last year. And office parties. And writing Christmas cards. And untangling the Christmas lights. And pantomimes. And picking up parcels because you’re never in when the postman calls. And catching up with friends. Oh and work – that’s still got to fit in somewhere. And the blog.

Damn, I knew there was something I’d forgotten. So that’s why this week it’s happy Thursday. Still could be worse, might have forgotten to send a card to my Mum. That really would have been a disaster.

Feeling a little stressed by the festivities, I’m unwinding with Family Guy. I can’t recommend it enough. A recent episode brought particular cheer. Lois (the long-suffering wife and mother) had, after huge effort and running around as described above, prepared the perfect Christmas for the family. Feeling quite pleased with herself, she finally relaxes. Then things start to go wrong …

Her idiot husband mistakenly gives ALL of the family gifts to charity along with the donations she’d prepared. Lois manages to forgive this and even congratulate said imbecile on his generosity. Taking the entire family to the mall to buy replacement gifts on Chrismas Eve, she leaves the dog to look after the turkey (if you haven’t seen Family Guy, just go with me on this).

A series of further mishaps ensues, which climaxes with the dog forgetting to turn off the oven, the turkey catching fire, the fire spreading to Christmas decorations and the dog filling the house with foam in his attempts to extinguish the flames.

Lois refuses to be defeated. She is determined to maintain the Christmas spirit in the face of all adversity. So she asks her teenage daughter to fetch the kitchen towels so they can all pitch in with clearing up the mess. But daughter returns empty-handed. Mom, we’re out of kitchen towels.”

This, I believe, is what might be referred to as the straw which broke the camel’s back. Or which finally popped Mom’s indominatable festive cheer. Lois goes postal, with me cheering her every atrosity. After running rampage through the town’s festivities, she is finally brought down with a police tranquiliser dart. And spends the rest of Christmas quietly drooling in a corner of the sofa. Which is where you’ll find me next Thursday afternoon.

Because, thanks to lots of research on Google, those Frugal Friday emails I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, e-commerce, e-cards and social networking, this year I think I’m on top of things. And if it all does go wrong, a family get together in front of Christmas tv with a box of Quality Street always seems to make for a Happy Christmas in the end.

One week to go … keep smiling.