Union Room Ltd | Web Design Newcastle, Web Design Newcastle upon Tyne

We are excited to have started working with St. Joseph’s RC Middle School, Hexham, developing a school online report system (ORS) for all the teaching staff to use.

The system is an eagerly awaited solution to a long-term problem. The ORS will allow teachers to write student reports remotely from any online location, any time of the day. This will remove the current restrictions placed on teachers having to write reports at school.

Other advantages include automatic notification when a report is completed, a comprehensive student search method and automatic PDF generation of completed reports.

More information about the ORS to appear here soon.

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It’s been a very busy time in the studio as the summer months come to a close. As a result of this hard work we are pleased to announce a collection of websites going live this month.

These include The Wessynton Group, design for Makoosh, Parkdean Holidays Holiday Homes, Team Savant, Blue Badge Tours and the Harrison Foundation.

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Now that Parkdean Holidays have launched their new website from the static templates we provided them with, I thought I would demonstrate one of the more advanced features we produced for them. This is a regional map showing the locations of Parkdean Holiday parks. Using the fantastic jQuery library, we have made it so that when you roll your mouse pointer over each region, information about the parks in that area are shown on the left.

Whilst this is a demonstration of what we produced during development, you can view, for yourself, the final version Parkdean chose on their newly launched website at http://www.parkdeanholidayhomes.co.uk/

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The Zenith People website was quite a large and complex project. There doesn’t seem to be much happening on the surface, but when you look at it a little closer, most of the work goes on behind the scenes. However, with two different vacancy searches, a vacancy application function with CV upload, a Postcode distance search and an email contact form, the public-facing part of the site is far from feature-free.

Even still, by far the most detailed part of the website is the administration panel, specifically the vacancy management tool. This project saw our first widespread use of AJAX, the admin tool being the perfect place for such a process-streamlining technique.

AJAX, standing for Asynchronous Javascript And XML, is an approach used to allow processing to happen and be redisplayed on a webpage without reloading it. It allows for swathes of traditional click-and-reload operations to be streamlined onto just the one webpage.

At its simplest, AJAX was used to show, hide and delete advertised vacancies. On a more detailed level, we used it to manipulate the vacancy-posting screens. For example, if a particular job was to be put into their own ‘careers’ section, the form changes to display only the fields such a posting requires without reloading the page. In-line forms were also provided to help stop any unnecessary back-and-forth between admin sections.

We also spent a fair bit of time and effort using JavaScript effects to make the whole process of adding a vacancy as simple as possible. If a user were to miss out a required field, a notification is shown and the page scrolled to show the highlighted field. It may not seem like much, but it certainly saves a user from searching for the problem themselves.

Zenith People have been a great client to work with. With their continuous input, we came up with a site that matched their individual needs, complementing their working process. From my own point of view, this has also been a great project to work on. An enthusiastic client with a challenging set of requirements is always a bonus in my eyes.

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We are excited about embarking on a new project working with The Vermont Hotel to produce a fresh, dynamic new website for them. We are collaborating with specialist online marketing agency, Occupancy Marketing, based in Edinburgh, to make sure that the new website will be fully optimised in what is an extremely competitive market place. The combined expertise of both agencies will provide the best results possible.

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We are very pleased to welcome Steve to the UR development team. Steve joins us with experience not only in web design and development but also working on graphic design, corporate identity and e-commerce projects when previously running his own business.

Steve further built on his experiences by undertaking a Bsc (Hons) degree in Applied Computing at Northumbria University, graduating this summer.

In addition to being a talented web developer, Steve enjoys photography and we’re hoping …taking his turn to whip up a little liquid refreshment for everyone in the studio!

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After the recent launch of Zenith People’s recruitment website, we are excited to have secured work with The Wessynton Group, engaging a project with similar objectives.

As a new client, we are pleased to offer The Wessynton Group our specialist knowledge and experience in delivering online solutions for the recruitment industry. We are working on a fresh and interactive design with the intent of firmly establishing The Wessynton Group online amongst their competitors.

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The Union Room Email Marketing Solution (EMS) is a web-based email announcement delivery system. The EMS will allow you to send and track unlimited emails from a list of contacts that you can manage and categorise. You also have online, telephone and email support, plus full training from the Union Room team.

Different from many other email marketing solutions, once established you can send unlimited bespoke designed HTML emails to clients in your database(s). You can also control your EMS remotely online and your database is stored on our dedicated servers for security.

For more information about how you could market your business using UR EMS drop us an email at ems@unionroom.com.

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UR recently travelled south of the Tyne to Manchester to listen to an inspirational Blair Enns, the man behind winwithoutpitching.com. The event, presented by the DBA and hosted by Manchester Metropolitan Uni, was a verbal tour de force of how to approach the business of pitching (or rather not pitching!) for new work. As a result, we now approach new business opportunities from a different perspective, which from our own research has become mutually beneficial to both our clients and us as a business – more conversation, less documentation.

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