Hardlight's blog
Musings & ramblings from the world of technology & the web
Welcome to the blog of Hardlight Media Ltd. This blog centers around world of technology, the internet and living and working in the South West. We'll also aim to provide reviews and tutorials from time to time on some of the technologies Hardlight use and share some of our "wisdom". Good blogging however is a two way system and without any feedback from you the user, is as pointless as a broken pencil (sorry). So don't let our posts go without comment!
Free charity website
Posted by: Tim | 
Posted on: 11 July 2009 - 12:57 PM | Thread: Hardlight
Getting any new enterprise off the ground isn’t easy, and we know that from experience. For non-profit organisations we understand you’re faced with a whole host of extra issues and Hardlight Media would be proud to support you in your efforts. As such we are offering to develop one totally free charity website every month. All design, development, and update costs will be absorbed by us, but we will have to ask for a small contribution towards the hosting costs.
If you're interested you can find out more on our charity website page, or you can send an email to charities@hardlightmedia.co.uk or give us a call on 01626 337712.
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Small business web design
Posted by: Tim | Posted on: 10 July 2009 - 04:13 PM | Thread: Hardlight
Your company website may well be the first point of contact with your clients, as such it’s important your site presents the values and personality of your company in an appropriate and engaging manner. First impressions count for a lot on the net, people are particularly impatient when it comes to assessing a websites worthiness and sites that lack intuitive navigation and clarity of information can be disregarded in a matter of seconds. Remember the quality of your website will be the perceived quality of your company, and a high production-value look might come cheaper than you think. Don’t settle for second best!
Next comes the task of getting found in the first place, which is no mean feat as the web is saturated with sites of every type. To get around this problem you need a structured and ongoing search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign. How highly your site is ranked within search engines such as Google and Yahoo will depend on its content, architecture, and many other factors. At Hardlight Media we have an arsenal of tried and tested techniques developing and marketing your site for maximum exposure to the search engines, and copywriters who specialise in web copy that will attract users as well as search engines.
You will also need to think about the accessibility of your website. Accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, interact with, & contribute to the web (W3C Web accessability initiative (WAI) http://www.w3.org/WAI). There are standards set out by the W3C that you must adhere to, or face possible prosecution.
Take a look at our Business web design page to find out how Hardlight Media Ltd can help your "small business" get a "big business" website.
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1000 miles to Monaco
Posted by: Tim | Posted on: 08 July 2009 - 10:14 AM | Thread: Hardlight
On 31st August Andrew Miller will be cycling 1000 miles to Monaco with his friend Jon to raise lots of money for a local charity 'B.I.R.D.' (Brain Injury Rehabilitation & Development).
They’re just launched their official website http://www.londonmonaco.org
From the site, you'll be able to track their progress live (via GPS), check our daily blog updates and, most importantly, donate a few pounds securely and easily... it takes just seconds!
If you can spare a minute to take a quick look, bookmark it, or scribble down the address, they'd be most grateful. If you can sponsor them now, even better! :D
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Hardlight’s world tour of Devon
Posted by: Tim | Posted on: 09 July 2009 - 10:01 AM | Thread: Hardlight
As part of our initial marketing drive Hardlight have developed some fantastic summer offers such as FREE HOSTING on brochure sites, FREE DOMAINS, FREE TRAINING and much more!
To let you know about this we’ve decide to go forth into the business community to meet you guys where you work and maybe have a quick chat, or just drop off a flyer explaining our offers. Nothing pushy; if you’re not interested we’ll be out of your hair, it’s just to let you know that we’re here if you need us.
We’ll be visiting Newton Abbot, Plymouth, Exeter and Torquay. So if you’re an independent business trading in those areas, we may well meet next week!
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Connecting ColdFusion 8 to SQL Server 2008 / 2005
Posted by: Tim | Posted on: 26 June 2009 - 03:10 PM | Thread: Coldfusion
If like me you've just installed SQL Server 2008 Express and are frantically wondering why ColdFusion 8 is refusing to connect to your data sources, believe me we're not alone. It seems like this problem is par for the course, and there's a fair bit of info out there and quite a few tutorials. The reason I'm posting this tutorial is that firstly all the posts are concerned with Server 2005 and although they got me most of the way, the final fix wasn't mentioned anywhere. Also to get the final fix I found I was piecing together bits from different posts, comments and colleagues so the plan here is to get all the info into one cohesive idiot proof tutorial. Much of my initial insight into this problem came from this great post by Matt Woodward.
Here's the error I had:
java.sql.SQLException: [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver] [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver]The requested instance is either invalid or not running.
If yours is slightly different it may still be resolved by completing the following steps.
So you've installed SQL Sever 2008 and set-up your database...
Step 1 - Enable TCP/IP
TCP/IP is not enabled by default so the first task is to open up "SQL Server Configuration Manager" > Expand "SQL Server Network Configuration" on the left hand menu > Click on “Protocols for SQL Express” > in the right hand window right click TCP/IP and select enable. You'll need to restart the server for this to take effect but we'll be getting to that in a moment.
Step 2 - Get the right Port
By default SQL Server 2008 Express will not run on port 1433, in fact from what I've read it seems to be different for each machine (but don't quote me on that). To find the correct port right click TCP/IP > select properties > click the IP Addresses tab > scroll down to IPAII > now make a note of the number in TCP Dynamic Ports, this is what we'll use in the ColdFusion administrator when we're setting up the data source.
Step 3 - Restart the server
Now for all this to take effect we have to restart the server so click on "SQL Server services" in the left hand window > right click the "SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS)" in the right hand window > select restart.
Step 4 - Windows Firewall
If you have windows firewall enabled you'll have to add SQL Server as an exception to the firewall rules. To do this go to "Control Panel" > "Security Centre" > "Windows Firewall" > click on the Exceptions tab > click on Add Program, then Browse, and locate the SQL Server executable, which on my machine was under C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.10.EXRESS\MSSQL\Binn\sqlservr.exe.
Step 5 - Server security
By default the server will be set to "Windows Authentication Mode" we want to make sure that we can access it using "SQL Authentication" also. Open "SQL Server management Studio" > right click your sever and select "Properties" > from the left hand list select "Security" > tick the "SQL Server and Windows Authentication Mode" and then OK.
Step 6 - Check login enabled
Whilst in "SQL Server management Studio" open the "Security" folder in the left hand window > open the "Logins" folder > select the login you're going to use (in the ColdFusion administrator later on) > right click and select "Properties" > from the left hand list select "Status" > check that "Login" is set to enabled > and then OK.
Step 7 - Restart the server (again)
Just to make sure all changes have taken effect lets restart the server again as we did in step 3
Step 8 - Connecting the datasource
Right we're on the final stretch! Firstly boot up your ColdFusion administrator > select "data sources" from the left hand menu > enter the name you wish to give your data source > select "Microsoft SQL Server" from the drop down > click Add > Enter your username, password and the name of your database > in the port box enter the port number we got in step 2 > enter 127.0.0.1 into the server box > click Submit. I tried entering the instance name of the server but for the life of me couldn't get it to work.
Hope this works for you, any errors or general comments let me know, cheers!
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Spry dataset Cache error
Posted by: Tim | Posted on: 15 June 2009 - 04:15 PM | Thread: Spry
Quick Spry mini-tip! If you're using {useCache: false } when instantiating your dataset and it's STILL loading in the cached version, then use the following code to append a unique value to the query string. This should eliminate your caching issues.
var date = new Date();
var unique = date.valueOf();
var dsData = new Spry.Data.XMLDataSet("yourDatasource.xml
?time="+ unique, "root/ ", {useCache: false});
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New ColdFusion IDE (Bolt)
Posted by: Tim | Posted on: 15 June 2009 - 12:30 PM | Thread: Coldfusion
Bolt is the codename for Adobe's new ColdFusion IDE destined for launch around the same time as CF9 (Centaur). As they did with the Flex Builder series Adobe have developed Bolt around the popular open source IDE Eclipse. Personally I've always had a bit of a problem with Eclipse, the text editor was always a little too slow and clunky and I always found myself jumping to the wrong line when editing, and dragging code around with the mouse was next to impossible. Couple that with the fact that at the time Dreamweaver had far more CF integration, an image map tool and flawless editor, it seemed to be a no-brainer. Will Bolt turn me back to the dark side, we'll have to wait and see, but from some of its proposed features it looks like it could be shaping up to be a CF version of Microsoft's Visual Studio, which to be honest is no bad thing.
Proposed features as listed on http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Bolt
- Object Relational Mapping auto-configuration
- Application Code Generation
- Server management
- Easily extensible through the Eclipse framework
- CFML, HTML, Javascript, and CSS Syntax Highlighting
- Code assist for tags, functions, variables, and components
- Code folding
- Snippet creation and management
- Outline viewing
- RDS Explorer for files and databases
- Line-level Debugging
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Centaur (Coldfusion 9)
Posted by: Tim | Posted on: 10 June 2009 - 05:07 PM | Thread: Coldfusion
Adobe are now accepting beta applications for Centaur Although this latest version of ColdFusion (still reporting a release date sometime in 2009) is shaping up to be a slightly smaller leap for cf_kind than the jump from 7 to 8 was, however they're promising some fairly cool new stuff:
A few new features to expect from CF9:
- Hibernate will be "Baked In"
- LOCAL variable scope (no more var scoping)
- Built-in Object Relational Mapping
- ColdFusion services exposed for Flex and AIR via Actionscript libraries
- CFC Enhancements - Implicit Getters and Setters - Explicit local scope
- CFSCRIPT Enhancements - Full definition of components via script
- Language Enhancements - New and Import Keywords - CFFINALLY and CFCONTINUE
- An onServerStart method
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Well we're here at last!
Posted by: Tim | Posted on: 04 June 2009 - 11:33 AM | Thread: Hardlight
It's official Hardlight Media Ltd is at last a living breathing organisation. Hardlight is the brain child of myself, Tim Allmark. I’m a web developer / marketer from the North West who travelled down to the South West to study at the University of Plymouth in 1999, and I’ve been there ever since! As well as the MD of Hardlight Media my particular fortes include website and application development, search engine optimisation, web design and graphic design. I also work closely with a team of experienced programmers, web and print designers, copywriters and marketers who live and work across Devon and the South West.
As well as being passionate about marketing and the internet, we also love the West Country. The economic downturn has hit the South West fairly hard with some major employers cutting back their efforts in the region such as Cadbury’s in Keynsham and the Devonport dockyard in Plymouth to name but a few. Although on the flip side it looks like tourism may be at an all time high for the region this year, as people shy away from Europe due to the weak pound. I’ll soon be starting a thread on this blog solely based around living and working in the South West, so if you're interested keep your eyes peeled in the not-too-distant future!.
All of us who work with and for Hardlight Media have a strong track record in the industry so (even though I say it myself) you couldn’t be in better hands, so if you currently have a project you’re trying to get off the ground we'd love to hear from you.. Also if you’re interested in keeping up to date with all things Hardlight, the web, marketing or the South West, why not subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed (link top right).
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