If you have had a new website then you will realise the importance of checking it before it goes live to the wider public. Setting a site live that has issues where parts of it do not work or display as it should have a negative impact on your business and it is therefore not advised to do so. You are better to delay the site for a few days whilst you fix the issues before setting it live.

If your website has been running for a number of months or years then there is still no harm in checking it for errors as things often come up with new browser updates and changes to the content management software you are using.

You can, of course, check the site manually by clicking links, filling on contact forms etc but you should also use one of the many tools out there that will check through the code of your site for errors. These sites can often pick up on issues with the robots.txt file, for example, supplicate content and broken links which you may have not easily been able to see yourself. Fixing errors such as these may also help your rankings on the search engines.

If you are in the web design and development industry then you may consider having your own content management systems. Many web development companies say that off the shelf content management systems simply do not always offer the flexibility they need and that they find them hard to work with. With this in mind, many of these companies go on to develop their own content management system. The beauty of this is you can build it how you want and add to it as and when needed. You will own the licensing for it and are able to lease the use of it to your customers.

The downside of this is that you will be solely responsible for maintaining it and ensuring that it is secure and updated regularly. This can be a huge responsibility and one which some agencies simply do not want to have. There will also be a large upfront cost to the business of developing the software, but this will be recouped over time.

If you are finding that the off the shelf content management systems such as WordPress simply are not doing the job for your clients, then it may be the time to start looking into other options.

If is easy to have a website and then not do anything to it for a number of months or even years. When this happens it is likely that you site will start to drop down the search engine rankings and it can be hard to recover from this.

Not only should you be adding fresh, relevant content to the site you should also be adding new technology to give your visitors the best experience. This may be adding a mobile version or app for your site, adding in calculators or improving the way customers view your products such as adding videos or 360 degree views.

All developers should be aware of new technology that can be added to sites and if you start to notice a lot of your competitors adding such items, then you may wish to contact your website developer to discuss if they can add the functionality to your site.

Over the last 12 months we have seen a huge rise in cyber-attacks. This is an attempt by hackers to damage or destroy a computer network or system. Some of the largest organisations in the world have been victim to this sort of attack including, Nasa, Minstry of Defence, PlayStation Network and HSBC bank.

Although all of them claim that they take cyber security very seriously they have not had sufficient systems in place to ensure that an attack does not affect them and their customers. It can be almost impossible to totally eliminate the risks but if a company does become victim to a cyber-attack the effects can be devastating for the company attacked and their customers. Data can be stolen and sold on or misused to access people’s bank accounts, card details and phone numbers / addresses. This can make many customers lose confidence in a company and chose not to use them again.

20 years ago no one would ever have thought of a day when our post and parcels get delivered through cyber technology such as drones, but over recent years this distance dream is fast becoming a reality.

Many companies have been piloting drones over the past 12-18 months to see how they work and how reliable they are but with the issues they have faced and risks from cyber attacks, the drone days could well be over before they have even started.

One of the main concerns regarding drones in the affect it will have on airspace and how it is going to be trafficked to avoid collisions with other drones or indeed aircrafts. This is a huge safety issue as well as insurance issue which needs to be addressed before the system can grow.

Another issue raised is the privacy infringement and it is one of the most significant concerns as well as the carelessness of drone operators and the vulnerability of the drones themselves to cyber-attacks.

There will come a time, or many times, in a programmer’s life where they get totally stuck on an issue and cannot seem to fix a problem they have. It may be something as simple as getting a block of text or image to show up in the correct place, but no matter how big or small can be extremely frustrating.

There are a few ways in which you can try and work out what the problem is:

• If you are a confident programmer you can try and break down all the code relating to the issue and double checking it all. A simple spelling mistake can stop something working.
• Use forums to ask other programmers for advice. This can be a great way to find out how to solve an issue but dependent on how active the members on the forum are, it may take a little while to get the right reply.
• Take a break – often when you look at an issue after a break you can spot something you missed a number of times before.