Read the latest blog on our projects and new developments in areas like security, WordPress and Typo3. The team at Prater Raines write how projects have progressed with challenges that have been faced. We like to keep you informed in technology and security updates.
In September 2017, the management of the Liberal Democrat Christmas Draw told us they were hanging up their tombola wheel. It made us dad that they were going to stop the draw after over 20 years.
The Lib Dem Christmas Draw was a nationally organised ticket based raffle run by a team of volunteers since 1995. In that time, it raised well over half a million pounds for local parties and central Lib Dem funds. Party members, supporters their families and friends won over 800 prizes.
However, in recent years there had been a fall in the number of Local Parties participating. Much of this was due to the amount of work that was involved for the Local Parties and the draw organisers. Tasks such as ordering, distributing, collecting and sending back the tickets, stubs and money. Buying the tickets became more inconvenient as the use of cheques fell. The draw looked to be on the way out.
But it remained a great idea, and a really strong fundraiser for the Party. So after discussion, we were delighted to be commissioned to develop and launch the new online Liberal Democrat Christmas Draw.
![Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, by Viktor Vasnetsov. Painted in 1887. Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov [Public domain] No Deal Brexit](/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/01/Apocalypse_vasnetsov-400x210.jpg)
An email arrives from our local (Folkestone and Hythe) District Council regarding a no deal Brexit:
Dear local business
The district council has been asked by the Government to provide intelligence from our business community on the impact of a potential “No deal” Brexit.
The questions that Government is requesting information on are set out below. I would therefore welcome your responses to these and also to hear back from any business that have no concerns and are not undertaking any measures.
Happy New year deal! After a great Christmas and New Year break, it’s always nice to be back in the office – Happy New Year!
Although we’ve been monitoring and checking email and voicemails throughout the Christmas period, we’re now back up to full speed.
You can call us on 01303 905245 from 9am-5pm Monday to Friday, or email info@praterraines.co.uk to get in touch. Alternatively, if you live near our Sandgate HQ then you can drop in there to have a chat – always happy to see you.
New Year special deal
Is this the time to finally get your company website sorted? We’ve got Happy New Year deal to help you meet that New Year resolution – we’ll set you up new basic WordPress website for just £250 plus VAT * this January – HALF our usual price!
How will .eu domains be effected by Brexit?
Its been widely expected for some time, but it has now been confirmed. At the point of Brexit, UK companies and residents will no longer be able to register .eu domain names. Additionally, if you already hold a .eu address at that time, you will not be able to renew them. This is unless there is a new agreement before the 21 January 2021.
Read why it is important to update your WordPress site.
We pride ourselves on our WordPress hosting, which watches for new updates and patches to WordPress for our clients. These updates are then applied automatically.
There’s a really good reason for doing so. If you don’t, your site is more exposed to exploits and other vulnerabilities putting your data (and that of your users) and site at risk. Hosting WordPress yourself can be a few quid cheaper a month. But you need a robust process in place to ensure you are updating your installation – at least daily.
We were delighted to be asked by our friends at Tendo Consulting to help with work on the End Our Pain campaign , which is a Campaign to Legalise Medical Cannabis. We started by moving their existing campaign website onto WordPress. When the new site was updated the “Email Your MP” functionality was put into place. This “Email Your MP” functionality was developed by us to help people lobby their MP directly.
You may have seen a lot of coverage (in the Mail on Sunday, across the BBC and elsewhere) about Alfie Dingley. Alfie suffers from severe epilepsy needs medical cannabis to control his epilepsy. The news coverage and Social Media support from a huge range of people including Patrick Stewart – saw THOUSANDS email their MP. Many thousands more signed the End Our Pain petition.
Come and join us for The Prater Raines Summer Party!
Over the August Bank Holiday weekend, Sandgate (where Prater Raines is based) holds an annual Sea and Food Festival. There’s free music, with a public fireworks display from the beach on the Saturday night. On the Sunday, there is a range of entertainment and food stalls.
Prater Raines are delighted to invite our customers down to visit Sandgate to join us for a few drinks, some food and fireworks on Saturday 25th August.
Nothing fancy: if the weather plays nicely, we’ll be on and around the beach: if not, in and around Sandgate & local pubs!
We’re proud to be supporting the HG Wells Short Story Competition in 2018, providing their website and giving Facebook support. It’s great to see that this year’s competition is going well (get your entries in by 23 July!).
We rebuilt their site onto our own WordPress hosting (including SSL support, daily backups, keeping WordPress updated with all the most recent patches and updates etc), and new for 2018 created the online entry process, replacing the former post or email entry system.
Prater Raines are delighted to be accredited by the Liberal Democrats as an Approved Supplier under their GDPR compliance programme. We’ve been supplying websites for the Party for over 15 years, so really hoped we would!
The accreditation is for our Lib Dem “Foci” website service as a “Website, Email, Campaigns and Social Media Platform”.
However, our WordPress installations and support are acknowledged to meet their GDPR compliance requirements as well. Our WordPress sites have UK hosting and always run on the latest version. They automatically upgrade on your behalf, ensuring data is stored within the local WordPress database. Additionally providing regular plugin updates and built-in SSL support.
An Apology
An ApologyAs website developers, we take a great deal of pride in the work that we do, and hope that we go the extra mile to keep our clients happy, and their sites well supported.
However, sometimes things go wrong. Yesterday it went badly wrong on the site of one of our long-standing clients – the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland.
It was our fault, and we’re mortified, but we wanted to also explain what has happened and what we’re doing to fix it as best we can.
The problem occurred when ensuring the Alliance website and emails match up to the standards required by the GDPR. The site then started sending emails we didn’t want it to and were not expected. By the time we identified the issue and stopped it fully at 10pm last night, it had already dispatched thousands of emails. Some users who had signed up to accept emails have received over 100 separate emails.
Sorry
This mistake was entirely ours, and not that of Alliance. Prater Raines wants to apologise to anyone who received those emails, and to them and the Alliance Party for the distress caused.