Contextual menus

A contextual menu is a menu or list of links on your website that changes depending on what page a visitor is on.  Some examples of contextual menus are:  a list of subpages within a section, a list of items related by subject matter or keyword, a list of items that are newest or most popular.  AlbanyWeb can build into your website a variety of contextual menus, that will generate automatically - all you have to do is add a page, and the menus will take care of themselves.  AlbanyWeb also ensures that contextual menus are visible in sitemaps to allow for better search engine indexing. 

We can add a contextual menu to your existing AlbanyWeb website too, just ask.

We were approached by children's author Hilary McKay to update her website on the retirement of her original designer.  The original website had lasted her a long time, but was now difficult to keep up to date, and not viewable on mobile devices.

We completely re-built her website to include a very visual and mobile-friendly display to show all her titles - this display can be filtered by series to make searching for specific books a little easier.

With each...

Too often we see websites that look great and well organised on the surface.  Somehow all the important information is not where you expect to find it.  We call it the 'empty calendar' syndrome.  This is where we see a lovely calendar or diary widgit or box or area, which has no events or activities.  Instead, they are in one big text list in a blog post or news article.

Because it is often easier to add a blog post, the blog area becomes the dumping ground for all the updateable information, and the rest of the website remains with the pristine (and often generic) wording it had on the launch date.  Which is now increasingly out of date.  What is wrong with this scenario?  It makes the visitor work very hard to find the important information from your website, and most visitors won't work very hard, and won't visit...

Personal and social care consultants the Personalisation Partnership approached AlbanyWeb wanting to create a brochure website that would be easy to maintain, and that would showcase their skills in a competitive market.

Because of the work that they do, it was critical that the website be accessible to a very high standard.  At AlbanyWeb we are careful to create accessible websites as a matter of course, but used this project as an opportunity to double-check our working practices.

For this...

The MouseAGE website details the work of an EU COST Action, examining mouse models in the use of examing age and age-related disease.  Like all COST Actions, MouseAGE represents a diverse community of scientists from many countries, and they needed a flexible public-facing website with some networking options for members of the network.

We started with our standard COST Action website package, which offered most of what MouseAGE required, including automated listings for events and news items.  However, we...

This is an informative blog site with advice and anecdotes about change ringing on handbells, run by Tina Stoecklin and Simon Gay.  The original blog was built using Wordpress, and the aim of this AlbanyWeb conversion was to replicate the look, and the functionality as closely as possible.  Because the blog already recieved a regular stream of traffic, and had a reasonable catalogue of links from other websites, it was very important to ensure that the content was migrated exactly...

Elizabeth Wein is a best-selling Young Adult author who originally approached AlbanyWeb to convert her Google Sites site, so as to better display her novels.  Whilst the content remained the same, the new site was much easier for Elizabeth to update, and easier for her fans to navigate too.  We added:

  • a custom page layout to display and organise her catalogue of novels to better effect, including grouping into series. 
  • keyword-based menus, that would update automatically as new content was...

In addition to keeping all our AlbanyWeb websites well-maintained and speedy, Adam Shepherd offers private Thai massage and yoga classes. Adam's logo was created by our graphic-designer based on a photograph of him in a yoga pose.  Adam's previously had a Google Sites website but decided to completely overhaul his website instead of simply transferring it.  His new AlbanyWeb website includes a newsletter sign up, photo slideshows, and a special contextual menu that categorises his articles by subject matter.  

Working effectively with images is a balancing act, if you want to empower your editor to add and change images...

Recently, Google increased the security warnings on the Chrome browser.  Chrome now generates a warning for any website without a...

One of the most useful ways to keep in touch with your audience, customers or regular readers is to send...