PixBlog

[SteveP]

The Lordprice Collection is a British operation (the name and dot-co-dot-uk are a bit of a giveaway) and proud of it, but what’s perhaps not widely enough appreciated is that Lordprice uses modern technology to supply pictures and images from its unique collection around the world. It’s not very British to blow one’s own trumpet, but we can at least let the world know we have a trumpet to blow.

What prompted this thought was an order for a framed picture we got earlier this week from Canada.

We have two main examples of overseas transactions. We have licensed pictures for publications in the United States, New Zealand and Japan. That means sending a high-resolution image suitable for publication by email or, less often, on CD. Straightforward.

For physical distribution of framed pictures the coverage and quality of modern courier networks mean that Lordprice can ship almost anywhere in the world and the picture will arrive promptly and completely undamaged. Lordprice has specialist framing agents in the United States and South Africa to provide even higher service levels, but lead time from the UK is pretty good anyway. We’ve shipped to the US, Canada (as I say), Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Ireland inter alia. Lordprice is somewhat disappointed that he hasn’t been inundated with orders from Slovenia yet - he made so many new friends on rugby tour there earlier this year and they all seemed impressed with his slivovic trick.

The best example of the international dimensions of Lordprice has been our work with Japan. Our client, Tokio Ohkawa, has accepted the challenge of introducing the works of that Great Briton, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to young Japanese and has published a book on the subject. Lordprice has an outstanding portfolio of Brunel material and provided images for the book and framed pictures to accompany Ohkawa’s stand at the recent Tokyo book fair.

Most impressively, Lordprice manages to ship his framed pictures abroad for the same price as he does the UK. He says it’s something about generosity and market penetration. I suspect it’s more to do with having lots of different rates for different geographies being too complicated for his small and challenged mind.

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[rolygate]

…that chap Nick S is - a very solid fellow indeed. He’s given me a link to my new website, which is all about SEO and Usability, from his magnificent railway posters site.

Perhaps I could quote him on this subject: “…and in an unusual mood of thoughtfulness and generosity I bunged one to Chris’s site from my links (not NetResources) page.”

Well now - that’s most welcome. But what’s this? His ‘links’, not ‘NetResources’ page. Hmm. That bears a little comment, I think. Let’s take a closer look at his ‘links’ page:

www.southernposters.co.uk/links-southernpo.html

I don’t know if perhaps my eyes have completely failed at last, but to me that reads ‘links-southernpo.html’ - not ‘links.html’, which one would assume he was referring to as a better arrangement. What strange chappies these business fellows are! Technology is not really their strong point, is it? One of their number was recently heard to say “Technicals are all complete *rubbish*”, though I had to replace the precise word reputed to have been used. A person, in fact, quite similar to Nick himself in description.

Perhaps I could explain the links thing a little better? And believe me, dear reader, it has to be in very short words and small doses to stand a chance of assimilation by these chappies! Not that they have a problem with assimilation, of course, as long as you make it Bollinger or Super Bock.

OK - the best link would be from within content (just like this in fact), to your desired internal page (not the index page). The next best would be from a resource page not called ‘Links’, but something a little more adventurous. The lowest value link of all comes from a links page, because quite rightly, that is deprecated.

Now, was that easy enough? And another thing - if you’re going to give me a link, is there any chance you could do it from a page with a higher Page Rank? That would really help a lot, actually. Or perhaps you could do something to raise the PR of that page a little? Would really appreciate it…

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[rolygate]

I found a solution to the security certificate problem. It involved endless research, countless emails, hours online and huge expense (well, about £12 a year). The answer: a new IP. The original problem: everybody on the server is on the same IP, which is the standard arrangement in web hosting.

But, if you get yourself a unique IP, then you can have your own SSL certificate - problem solved. Actually, you then have to pay $XX per year for a certificate if you want one, but I haven’t mentioned that to Lord Price yet (or the honorary accountant, which is probably of more import). So: front up a very small amount of dosh for a new IP, and maybe a bit more for a certificate, and it’s problem solved.

The shared/unique IP question is quite interesting, so I might do a bit more on that next time round.

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