We pride ourselves on producing high quality websites that fully conform to the highest web standards. Our sites are accessible and search engine friendly, making sure that all our sites have the best possible chance of succeeding where so many others fail.
We’ve been working in Hertfordshire as web designers and developers since 2000 and our combined experience of online marketing, SEO and how the internet works has got us quite far. We’re always trying to improve and discover new things about the best way to market ourselves and get the companies that we work for, our clients, noticed online and easy to find on search engines like Google.
There are lots of different web design companies in Hertfordshire so why should you decide to go with us over some of our competitors? Well, how we see it is that you could go with a design agency in London but for most small to middle-sized businesses the cost would be beyond their reach. And then there’s the option of going with your neighbours’ cousin’s son – who has just completed a web design course at college… and I’m sure you know how that can turn out!
We strive to reach a point somewhere in the middle. Our work is always up to date, accessible, search engine friendly and coded to the highest standards. We use top quality but free open source software such as WordPress – which we have become experts at working with – to keep costs down and make sure the sites we build are easy to use by our clients and their customers. But at the same time we work to budgets and timescales that are reasonable to local businesses in and around Hertfordshire. For the best in all round web design in Hertfordshire we can offer you everything you need to get your company online and running a professional website.
Just a couple of weeks ago we finished and launched the new CK Healthcare site.
We designed the site around the new branding for CK Healthcare, using the colours and fonts specified and linked it all through a WordPress front end with some extra code to allow for job search, applications and registration:
CK Healthcare is the new name in healthcare recruitment. Specialising in the recruitment of Allied Healthcare Professionals (AHP) and Health Service Scientists (HSS) to the NHS.
There’s still plenty of content to be added but the main site is up and running now. The site is a full content managed recruitment company site with job search, registrations and job applications.
A couple of weeks ago we launched an updated version of Get My Business On TV. We’ve added WordPress to the original site to give more flexibility and allow more frequent updates. There’s now a news section and areas for Testimonials, Jobs, Freebies and who’s searching for help in the TV world.
From the site:
Programme-makers are always on the look-out for products, services, locations and people for TV productions. We make the process of contacting them simpler and easier.
We aim to ensure no other service gets as many programme-makers and friendly businesses as close to each other as Get My Business on TV does.
So, if you’re interested in getting your business involved in TV, look no further than Get My Business On TV
Over the last few months we’ve been updating the design and layout of 100 Percent People to give it a bit of a boost but more importantly we’ve moved the whole site over to some new platforms.
The original site was sitting on a bespoke .asp backend with community features and directory included. When we were asked to add a more funcional news system we added WordPress but the project budget didn’t extend to a complete overhaul.
Until now.
We took the .asp backend out and started again from scratch – importing the existing WordPress posts and pages to the new site, adding on a new directory system and linking up with KickApps for the community.
The rebuild has meant that a lot of backlinks were lost in the search engines and the site has had to start again to gain momentum and traffic but with WordPress pinging out new articles around the web and the community features of KickApps, things are moving on quickly. They are now getting new members every day and, with the increase in news postings and other articles, the hit rate across the site is slowly growing.
Some links to check out:
100% People – Health and Beauty
100% People – Help and Advice
100% People – Latest News
Just a quick technical article to those of you who are trying to integrate BBPress and WordPress.
There are a number of odd little things which I thought I’d share after a couple of evenings of frustration!
Firstly, do BBPress 0.9 and WordPress 2.6.2 integrate? Urm, no. Seriously, don’t even try! There are a number of fundamental differences in the technology to do with the Cookie keys that make this pretty much impossible. Basically 2.6.2 has three Cookie keys with Salt, where as BBPress 0.9 is has two like the old WP technology.
We tried WordPress 2.6.2 with BBPress 1.0 (Alpha), but it’s just not stable enough to put anywhere with any real traffic, so decided to back pedal and use 2.5.1 with 0.9 to be on the safe side.
The second major problem we came up against after the WordPress-BBPress integration was the magic quotes. Because wordpress calls in the “bb-config.php” and related files for integration, in the “wp-config.php” file, all the stuff WordPress does to $_POST variables gets done by BBPress as well! To get round this, go to around line 388 in “wp-settings.php” file and hash out $_POST = add_magic_quotes($_POST); and hey presto! Mind you, this was on a Zeus server, other LAMP systems seem fine, but that’s probably php setup rather than the web server.
Best Served Cold is a web design company that provides a professional service with a personal touch. From start to finish you will deal with a dedicated team ensuring you can always talk directly to the people responsible for your site.
Based in North Hertfordshire we are ideally placed to meet clients from London or Cambridge and more locally in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire. We have dealt successfully with clients from all around the UK.
Although Best Served Cold is still a small company, we don’t think that should mean our websites are small. We aim to design high quality sites and deliver cost effective service to all our clients. From small, local businesses to national companies we will deliver the same level of service.
We build sites to full accessibility standards and work to ensure every website is designed and coded to a high level. All sites are coded with search engine optimisation in mind to make sure they have the best chance of being found and indexed by search engines quickly and efficiently.
If you’d like to find out more, we have a rate card for our standard work.
Whether you need a brand new site to promote your business, or a redesign update of an existing site, we have the skills to manage the project from start to finish.
Our website design clients range from small start-up companies to large organisations and everything in between. With our combined experience in graphic design, website development, e-commerce systems and content management utilities, you can be confident that whatever your project demands, we can deliver. Browse our case studies and when you are convinced of our abilities, you may request your no cost, no obligation quote via our secure contact form.
We have designed and built sites covering a wide range of businesses and used our online marketing knowledge to promote these sites in the UK, Ireland and the USA.
Very simply: Best Served Cold can provide a complete solution for any business web site.
best served cold use many methods to ensure that their sites continue to achieve the best possible rankings and exposure within the world wide web. We have detailed some examples of what we can do for you within these pages. During the web design process we ensure that your site is optimised for search engines so that it will get indexed efficiently and correctly. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) ensures that the site is easy to read by any system and therefore more accessible.
Another factor best served cold take into consideration is how accessible the site is. This ensures that the site is readable by screen readers and other tools that aid the visually impaired and other users. The idea behind fully accessible websites is that anyone is able to read, understand and use the website regardless of ability. The more accessible your site is the more professional it looks and the happier the search engines are to scan and rank it above your competitors.
Of course, these are only a few of the many factors taken into consideration by best served cold whilst designing your site; rest assured that our designers take every endeavour to maintain a relevant and up to date knowledge of current internet trends. This allows us to keep your site at the forefront of web technology if maintained in house by us.
From start to finish Best Served Cold will provide a complete solution for your website. We can help to redesign an existing site to bring it up to date or we can discuss a new site and the best way to get your company or idea online and working for you. No matter the size or expectations you have of a website we are happy to talk to you about the best way to design, produce and market your site.