Matthew Dawkins - minipix.co.uk

As many of you will know, I maintain and develop the Diocese of Chelmsford web site, which is a big (800+ pages) site with lots of content and serves a lot of people.  One of our monthly printed publications, The Month, is also published online for people to download as a PDF.  I have to [...]

Funny isn’t it, how a good idea can so quickly turn into a nightmare?  Right now I’m a situation where I have two reseller accounts with different companies and no clear way of transferring web sites from one to the other.  The old server is running Virtualmin, and the new server is running cPanel, and [...]

I suppose it’s a natural progression for all web designers to feel the need to be offering hosting solutions alongside their web sites.  It makes sense from a practical point of view, and of course it’s an extra source of income.  I’ve actually been offering hosting for my clients for a while now, through a [...]

Despite having been in the web design industry for several years, it’s taken until this week to get myself into a community of like-minded people in that respect.  I’m surprised at myself that it’s taken me this long.  Still, better late than never.
It all stemmed from a problem I was having, and searching the net [...]

Yesterday morning when I turned my PC on it refused to let me into Windows.  It got as far as the logon screen and then rebooted itself.  It took until this morning to figure out what the problem was - the USB wireless dongle had come loose and the dodgy hardware connection was causing Windows [...]

Some background
Some years ago I found myself taking on a large web project, managing a web site with several hundred pages, edited by several people with little (if any) knowledge of HTML, and which needed a serious overhaul.  Initially I tried streamlining the process of dealing with all those static HTML files by creating a [...]

Running your own business means a lot of extra effort, relative to a ‘normal’ job.  True, there are the benefits of being your own boss, working the hours that suit you, taking holidays when you fancy, setting the prices you like.  But in addition to being a Web Designer I also have to handle the [...]

The geniuses (or should that be genii??) behind the Firefox project have come up with a nifty bit of marketing to get everyone to download the latest release of their web browser.  Instead of just releasing it, they’re hyping it up and going for a world record to see how many downloads they can accumulate [...]

Just quick note to say that I have updated my blog template to the new design I’ve been working on.  It’s not quite finished yet, and there are some links that won’t work yet, but I’m out this evening so those things will have to be added tomorrow.  The basic functionality is there though, and [...]

The other day I logged into my old Gmail account and discovered a pleasant surprise - Google has updated their webmail system.  The changes are subtle, but are still significant improvements.  So significant, in fact, that I’m moving all my personal mail to Gmail. (Curiously, it doesn’t appear to be a global upgrade - I [...]