News from Lingo Design

Have you ever felt like a nodding dashboard dog? Pretending that a load of technical mumbo jumbo is sinking in, when in reality you are absolutely bewildered and not only do you not understand what is being said, but you have convinced the culprit of your baffled state into believing you know what they are talking about too!? Oh dear, what a sticky predicament to find yourself in! Without meaning to though your head continues to nod which keeps the jargon flowing and sends you deeper into a hole of utter cluelessness!

Meta tags, hyperlinks (external & internal), resolutions, navigation bars, frames, image maps not to mention the abbreviations like URL, CSS, HTML. Unintelligible gibberish to some but perfect sense to those in the world of web design.

At Lingo, we want to share knowledge with you to help you understand, and where industry specific language is used, we make sure it’s easy to take on board, and will make sure you are not left reeling from jargon overload. If you are really green, here’s a few starters to show you how we break down the lingo and make it easy for you to take in.

Starting with the basics, and a fundamental term upon which web design is based, is “HTML� (Hyper Text Markup Language). This is the name of the language system for building components on web pages such as body text, font and colour, as well as graphics and hyperlinks. Think that the internet speaks in a foreign language? This language is HTML. The appearance and layout of a web page can be made by applying a “CSS� (Cascading Style Sheet) which is basically a HTML template that can be applied to a web site to make it look a certain way. If a website is made up of HTML, a language, then CSS is the dialect, or accent that it speaks in! (It determines the style of the page).

Just to re-track “hyperlink� is a way of moving from one place to another either within the  same web site or to a separate web site altogether. Handy when viewing a web site and useful for directing web users to the best place to get information. A hyperlink within the same web site is known as an internal link whereas a link to a different site is called external.

Meta tags are a special HTML ‘tag’ that provides information about a web page. They are descriptive key words about the information on the page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. But they are vital in boosting the number of hits on your website. Hits by the way just means how many views your website has had by internet users. Web site owners can view how many hits they’ve had which is great to see if improvements to the site have increased audience figures or not.

The internet is something you use everyday, so you shouldn’t be worried by the baffling words about it. It’s not a profane language but a specialized lingo that can be learnt and understood. It is best to start off with just a few terms, and as you would learn a new language, gradually build up your vocabulary. Check out this space soon for another friendly push towards being in the know and down with the lingo!

Reading this well written blog post on making smaller goals for writing, rang a lot of bells with advice I often give when composing new website content.

Bite-Size Resolutions by Moira Allen talks about  the approach she uses for writing her books, but the technique can be applied to writing content for your website. Rather than struggle to write the text for your website (or page) in one go, and struggle to get it done…aim to write just a few paragraphs per day or maybe a page per week.

The bite sized chunks will make it seem a lot easier and more enjoyable.

With so much going on at Lingo, it’s tricky to find time to blog about it all – thus was ever the way with blogs!

But a quick update is easier than a long one; so if you’re falling behind on your blog because you’re too busy to tell everyone what you’ve been doing – just say it…quickly!  Here’s my quick list!

 We’ve started a new e-commerce site for KLS – King’s Lynn, the big-daddy (ok, parent company) of the recently launched Fryline website; http://www.fryline.co.uk/. We’re starting a new website for heating engineer Mike Dent in Downham Market. We’re working on Search Engine Optimisation for a solicitors in Bury St Edmunds, and we’re doing adverts for our Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs consultants CambReg, in St.Ives!

(Not to mention the printed price lists for the wholefood supplier, the refreshed pictures on the vehicle wrapping website,  the address change on the IT company and the new Kitchen website too!)

With so much Busy-ness – there should be plenty more to write about soon!

Having work experience students at Lingo design over the last 4 years has been something that the team have really enjoyed. It’s even better when a student fully engages and obviously enjoys their time as part of the team.

On her last day, Lucy Benefer, from Terrington St Clements High, has been asked to summarise her time here in a paragraph or two… what she’s written sums it up nicely…!

My time at Lingo Design:

“Well, what can I say about Lingo Design? The word ‘bonkers!’ springs to mind!

Everyone is so fun and welcoming; even though they may not be feeling all that great themselves (like Claire’s heyfever) they still treat you with respect and try to make you feel comfortable.

Sure some days it’s a big yawn! :O! But that’s just part of work and you deal with it and move on knowing there will be days that fly by and make coming in all worth the pain of slow work .e.g. highlighting for two hours!

The atmosphere whilst I’ve been here has been awesome! Everyone works but has a good old joke, it’s been so great to work here for two weeks and I would love to do what they do here despite the days where it’s all stress.

I loved the designing tasks I was set here like the launch card and the analytics card and I hope my contribution was welcome, I would like to thank them for everything! So thank you, you absolutely bonkers people!! I will never forget my time here and never get rid of the habits .