Telephone:
07970 012 622
Email:
contact {at} benfrain.com
AIM/iChat & vCard:
vCard: 
Ben Frain
AIM/iChat: 
benfrainuk
Social Networking:
Twitter: benfrain
LinkedIn: Ben Frain
IMDB (from a past life): Ben Frain
07970 012 622
contact {at} benfrain.com
vCard: Ben Frain
AIM/iChat: benfrainuk
Twitter: benfrain
LinkedIn: Ben Frain
IMDB (from a past life): Ben Frain
Semantic and Valid (X)HTML/CSS code
I build websites using W3C valid HTML and CSS code; the international standards of web code. By designing and building websites that validate to international standards your website is guaranteed to work in all major web browsing platforms. Building web sites with standards compliant code also means the little web robots from Google and the like can read and understand the content of your web site and rank it accordingly.
E-commerce
I’ve built numerous e-commerce websites over the years so I’m confident I can tailor a solution to suit your needs. Whether it’s merely a way of selling one or two items online or processing thousands of transactions a day, chances are, I have built something similar already. Check out my demo store here... I can build e-commerce websites with Actinic, Magento, Cubecart and Foxycart.
Content Management Systems
Want to add pages and tweak the content of your site without paying someone to make the changes? Good. I can build you a website with a Content Management System (often referred to as CMS for short) allowing you to easily add and edit pages, upload photos and video etc. I use open source CMS solutions like Wordpress, Joomla, MODx and Drupal and bespoke them to your exact requirements.
Browser Compatibility
I ensure that your website will look similar in the major Internet browsers. That’s Internet Explorer 7 and 8 (I can make it work for 6 too if you ask really nicely), Firefox 3, Safari 4 and Chrome. If you receive a lot of mobile phone browsers, it’s also possible to offer a alternate version of your site for mobile phone browsers like the iPhone.
Want to be top of Google? Sure you do. Everyone does. Unlike the lies black magic spouted by many SEO strategists, the only way to get up the rankings is to produce readable, semantically coded and useful content for users - and then get bigger and busier websites to link to it. Stuffing your site full of keywords is a technique of the dark ages. Instead, by working with you to make your website content as appealing and useful as possible and then submitting it to the major search engines your website WILL be found and the content ranked accordingly.
How sites I've built rank...
Here are some examples of sites I have built and where they rank for appropriate searches:
Website Speed Optimisation
Standard with every web build is an optimisation of the code that powers it. Once the design is finalised and everything is working peachy, the CSS, Javascript and any relevant portions of the HTML are compressed to remove excess flab. Like Weight Watchers (other diets are available) for web code. This keeps your site a mean, lean, information serving machine.
I work freelance too!
Do you need a coding super hero to lend a hand from time to time? I also work freelance in the Cheshire, Manchester and Birmingham area. Get in touch here.
Technology experience
I've got a broad experience base, having worked on everything from single page sites to fully bespoke e-commerce systems. I've also produced articles covering CSS and HTML for magazines like Computer Active and MacUser. Here's a list of my core experience areas:
Here's a selection of recent website builds. I'm also a wiz at PSD to HTML/CSS & jQuery conversion. Want to see examples? Get in touch
The Retreat is a health and beauty spa in the historic market town of Leek, Staffordshire. (more info...)
buyit247.com is an online supplier of laptops, PC's and other electrical goodies based in Stoke On Trent. (more info...)
Aco are a massive multi-national. Working for Push Creative... (more info...)
Everyone loves Ice Cream, right? Mr Whippy Ice Cream was looking for a friendly web designer serving the Manchester area... (more info...)
Addeco is an aggregate and building material supplier in the heart of Stoke On Trent. (more info...)
Here's the latest website/design related posts from the blog. To read the blog in full, click here...
Want to make a new responsive WordPress theme and need to remove the automatically generated width and height attributes? For example, WordPress is generating image code like this: When what you need is: Exactly the same, sans the width and height attributes. Well, here’s how (filter info from here) 1. Open your theme’s functions.php (e.g. [...]
This post currently has no responses.
I recently reviewed MacRabbit’s Espresso2 code editing application for MacUser magazine here in the UK and it’s now hit the shelves (9th December issue).
This post currently has no responses.
I’ve just finished a quick revamp of the www.addecoltd.co.uk website, an aggregate and fence company based in Burslem, Stoke On Trent. I’ve been doing a lot of responsive design work of late but much is under NDA’s of sorts so I’ve been able to post much info. However, this one is a responsive design so [...]
This post currently has no responses.
If you work with responsive designs, you’ll perhaps be interested to learn that amongst the current working draft of the CSS3 Fonts module is reference to ‘viewport relative’ fonts: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-values/#viewport-relative-lengths. The ‘vw’ unit (for viewport width), ‘vh’ unit (for viewport height) and ‘vm’ unit (for viewport minimum – equal to the smaller of either vm [...]
This post currently has no responses.
I’m doing a lot of work with responsive web design at the moment and I wanted a quick and simple cross-browser way of showing what size the current viewport window (you know that bit that actually shows the webpage, sans the interface) was. There’s lots of cool extensions (Resize for Safari being a favourite) out [...]
This post currently has no responses.
As part of a piece I’m writing for MacUser magazine I’m trying to explain how to easily add jQuery and an associated custom script to a Child Theme in WordPress (v3 onwards). If you’re a designer primarily, the following code snippet may well help you. It assumes you have already made a child theme. With [...]
This post currently has 8 responses.