KP STUDIOS

Qwerty Virtual

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:23:00 +0000

KP Studios were asked of qwerty virtual to design and develop their online and off line presence, KP Studios created a CMS website, Branding as well as E Marketing campaigns.

what is qwerty virtual: Managing Director Petra Mercer says ” qwerty virtual provides a first class and wholly flexible range of PA/secretarial services to small businesses, consultants, entrepreneurs and generally busy people.”

well that sums us up in a nutshell.

Petra Goes on to say ” Thanks to the whole KP Studios team for their help in creating my new business identity, branding and website; it certainly has the WOW factor I wanted it to have! Without hesitation I would recommend their services.”

www.qwertyvirtual.co.uk

Green Line

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:28:59 +0000

Greenline Heating and plumbing is a sub-division of ALDROCK SURVEYORS of Blackburn who specialise in heating, Bathrooms and Fireplaces. Aldrock surveyors asked KP Studios to create them a new brand for their off-shoot company as well as stationary and new content managed website.

Greenline states:

At Greenline Heating and Plumbing we pride ourselves on quality service and understand that we are only as good as our last project. The majority of our work comes through word of mouth and referral from satisfied customers.

Whether you want a boiler, bathroom or a fire we are able to advice over the phone or visit you in the comfort of your own home to discuss the options available. Many of our customers use our finance option to take away that lump sum payment.

Unlike our competitors we consist of qualified plumbers, Building Surveyors and Energy Consultants which enables us to offer a unique service of bespoke project management and free additional advice on how to reduce your bills through free or very cost effective simple steps.

www.gl-hp.co.uk

Paul Adams

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:18:17 +0000

Commercial Photographer Paul Adams asked KP Studios to create him a new website to reflect his slick imagery, with this brief in mind KP Studios created him a uber cool CMS website based around wordpress that allows him to manage the content him self.

Looking at Paul’s work to can see why we didn’t want the design of the website to over shadow his amazing work, subdued navigation and blog with an image led website was the way forward.

See it at www.padams.co.uk

Sick Elektrik Promo Shots

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 08:36:13 +0000

Sick Elektric are a collaboration of music producer Jon Verde and DJ Ben O’Connor, who often appear on the same bill as groove armada, Pete Tong and Annie Mac, KP Studios where asked by Sick Elektrik to take some “high Key” style photography to use in their promotional ventures.

Above are a few shots from the photoshoot, if you want to see larger versions or want to see other examples of our photography, have a look at: northwest-photography.co.uk

Altitude Studio

admin — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:15:09 +0000

Altitude studio provides a total design and interior contract service for commercial and residential interiors, designing and supplying furniture, decoration, lighting, electrics and internal structures to completion…

With this in mind KP Studios created Their new website on Wordpress CMS so they have the capability of updating their portfolio in a flash or blog their thoughts on the move.

Altitude Studio MD Sharon Snape gave a initial brief to KP Studios which was based around updating their ageing website and give it a new lease of life but still maintaining the colour schemes and branding. They also wanted to make use of social networking sites to help promote their work, KP Studios implemented a single location deployment scheme which allows The company to update Twitter, Facebook and Linkd in from one hub, at one time, as well as allow visitors to post their work to the usual social networking website by the click of a button.

We think it’s ace.. so you should too!

www.altitudestudio.co.uk

Why We use WordPress

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:06:06 +0000

We often get asked why we can create Full Content Managed SEO friendly websites for a fraction of what our competitors can, the answer isn’t that we do a bad job nor is it that we dont’ know what we are doing, quite the opposite really, we have used a CMS called WORDPRESS for over 7 years now, from when it first started as a blogging CMS base and watched it grow to an amazing open source CMS that we use on ALL of our websites, the client ALWAYS gets a custom website, always designed to their brief, always designed to fit their budget and always designed from the ground up, but the core engine behind it is a free CMS tested and bug checked by thousands of users and testers over many a year, do you get this from your current design team, i thought not.

Its a tough decision for a design & development to use a Free “open Source” CMS as there is a lot to take into consideration when choosing it for a client, is it future proof, is it stable, is their support, and more important, is it right for the clients project.

The answer on 99% of the projects we undertake is yes, Wordpress is stable, is secure is 99.9% bug free ( trust me that’s 99.9% better then most custom CMS’s i have worked with)

So before we even start to quote for a project, we can usually guarantee that we will be in the right ball park with prices, if not under budget.

Nowadays the level of development of systems like Wordpress is so advanced to allow simple modifications of the system without touching the core of the platform to be adapted under any needs thus keeping lower costs, less time consumption, security levels and better future development of features and extra needs. That’s exactly why high-level clients use it for their wesbites:

The Prime Minister of United Kingdom: http://www.number10.gov.uk/
The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/topnews/blog-index.html
FORD: http://www.thefordstory.com/
Golf Royalty: http://golf-royalty.com/

These and many more examples of Wordpress customization to fit ones needs can be shown. As follows are the reasons why Wordpress is a good system:

1) Wordpress will never outdate.
In fact, Wordpress is a system used by millions around the globe, allowing for the best and largest “bug-checking” team in the world, and once glitches in the system are revealed Wordpress comes up with an immediate upgrade. And even if it is not about bugs, even if it is about making the system better there will always be new updates therefore the system will never outdate.

2) Wordpress helps you save time and money
Instead of spending time on waiting until a good, bugless and expensive custom system is developed, it takes considerably less time and resources for developers to concentrate on creating features needed by the client to be installed into Wordpress and work on the design of the front end. Also, learning to use Wordpress is much easier as there is plenty of documentation available on the Internet, which is much easier than having someone explain “how the new super advanced custom CMS works”.

3) Wordpress is quicker and more optimized
Wordpress is known to be one of the best DB driven systems available at the moment, thus being one of the quickest Open Source platforms on the internet. Moreover it has the ability of optimizing the database so as not to lose data and work faster under heavy traffic.

4) Wordpress is the best for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is a fact, Wordpress driven sites get indexed by Search Engines much faster and better than custom system driven sites do, due to the cleanliness of the code and the features it has.

5) Anyone can use Wordpress
At any point in time should the client decide to update his site with new features, new design etc it will be enough to hire a Wordpress developer and not look for someone to understand someone else’s code.

So what is the conclusion: Pretty simple really, if you NEED A CMS WEBSITE that you have full control over that you can manage and you don’t have any running costs with a design/web company and you dont have 5-10k to spend on a custom content management system they you really should be using WORDPRESS developers like us.

Witton Park

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:19:18 +0000

Witton Park Science, Business and Enterprise College asked KP Studios to give a bit of flair to the college publication, The college decided it was time to step the publication up a gear to reflect the quality of student that the publication is aimed at, created in the style of a moleskin notebook and printed on recycled paper, the school claimed that it was “The best one they have had” and “WOW”, we like it too, so it’s a win win for us both.

Handelsbanken Blackburn

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 07:59:09 +0000

KP Studios where commissioned off our good friends at Altitude Studios (Design and project management service for commercial and residential refurbishment schemes.) to take Photographs of the local ares to hang on the walls of the new Handelsbanken of Blackburn.

Photographs of the m65 corridor and the Ribble Valley area where snapped to show the Handelsbanken commitment to growth in the area.

Links: Altitude Studios : Handlesbanken

END OF IE6!

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:23:12 +0000

It appears the Google company will be phasing out support for the browser shortly. I don’t have Internet Explorer 6 installed on my computer, so I can’t verify this first hand, but illogical it seems not and a simple Twitter search shows multiple people confirming the news. Heck, some are even downright ecstatic over the news.

The online video behemoth is pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome (twice on the same page even, unsurprisingly), Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives.

With the impending move, YouTube follows in the footsteps of that other Web 2.0 poster child, Digg, which recently hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. Digg’s User Experience Architect Mark Trammell at the time wrote that the site is strongly considering removing essential features like digging and commenting for IE6 users. He explained that while IE6 users make up around 5% of site traffic, it only accounts for 1% of diggs, buries, and comments.

YouTube so far hasn’t officially communicated about the desire to drop support for IE6, but it’s conceivable that like Digg it would rather have its developers spend time optimizing the service for newer, better browsers than wasting man hours on the oft-despised Microsoft browser. We recently reported that Internet Explorer is losing market share to FireFox and Safari at a rapid pace.

There is good reason behind this but you also have to take into consideration, I think this is a kind of short-sighted and selfish approach at times and every project has to be treated as a individual case . Sure it’s a royal pain to put in conditional CSS statements and PNG hacks because IE6 doesn’t understand PNG transparency, but do we really think that just leaving out the hacks so that users see the “ugly side of IE6? will convince them to upgrade their browsers? No, it won’t. I’ll tell you what it will do: it will make them head for the back button quicker than you can say “Bill Gates”, and on to a competitor’s site who IS customer/reader focused and who understands that many of these people who are still on IE6 don’t even realize they need to upgrade. They may not even have a choice, as they surf the Internet during their lunch at a company stuck in the dark ages, or they might even know there is a newer version out there, but haven’t the slightest clue as to how to install it.

We did a project with a local council that the department where struggling to see the website in its true format, we checked our code we cross browser check and double checked but to no avail could we replicate what was happening with the screengrabs they where sending us, it was only until we asked them to send a screengrab of the ABOUT box when we discovered they where on IE 5.5 YEP you heard it here IE 5.5, YES A TEN YEAR OLD browser, for a multi million pound council, so who is to blame do we charge the client more because their IT department hadn’t moved on, or do we as a company bite the bullet and do the changes that are needed, yep we bite the bullet, we redesign, we shuffle DIVs into place and we get the job done, cos that’s how we roll, but the lesson learned is ALWAYS FIND OUT WHAT THE CLIENTS BROWSER IS and cost accordingly, or alternatively, pop round to their office and hit the upgrade button when they are not looking!

Essential Link

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:54:35 +0000

Essential Link are our Florida based creative friends who are a Marketing/Design studio similar to us that we collaborate on various projects, Essential links CEO Ryan Vincent knew exactly what he wanted from his website and need to have it built using the very powerful “open Source” Wordpress CMS and asked us to developed the designs into a working model that he can showcase his work on.

We love working with Ryan on his projects, he is a very passionate designer who knows his stuff, and is never frightened about taking design/development advice form his trusted collaborators.