QD Design

02/02/2026

New customer site launched today.

To coordinate with an upcoming TV advert for their products, Aquashield Solutions asked QD Design to refresh their existing website, move it from Wix to a more flexible WordPress platform, add eCommerce functionality and connect payment gateways to accept customer payments.

Happy to have helped them get ready for their advert launch.

https://www.aquashieldsolutions.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558932848791 if you want to check them out.

08/08/2024

Lovely feedback from one of our recent projects The Quay Gallery
We know that websites can sometimes seem confusing and a bit 'techie', so we do our utmost to keep everything simple and easy to understand. Plain language with no 'geek speak'.

31/07/2024

Happy to announce our latest web design project for Kymme Fraser, an outstanding contemporary artist based in Aberdeen.

This is https://www.facebook.com/kymmefraserart first website and she needed something to show case her work and to sell to a wider audience. Built in WordPress it includes an Ecommerce function to handle sales, a contact form and a newsletter subscription.

Needless to say, it is blazing fast and fully optimised out of the box. Check it out for yourself at https://www.kymmefraserart.co.uk/

25/07/2024

Delighted to announce another new site going live today.

The Quay Gallery relocated from Fife to Stonehaven and needed their existing website refreshed. It was sadly very out of date with many Plugins way behind the current version. The site relied upon a premium Theme which had never been updated since the day it was installed. As a consequence, the site was sluggish and proved impossible to relocate without crashing.

QD Design built a brand new site which reflected the design cues of the original but used 50% fewer Plugins and a lean 'bare bones' Theme for optimum loading speed. We deployed a Custom Post Type to handle a specific exhibit type and a suite of template parts to create an easily updated site that showed a consistent design across all pages.

The Quay Gallery reopened today in its new home in Rodney Street, Stonehaven.

We wish Will the owner all the best in their new location.

https://www.thequaygallery.co.uk/

23/07/2024

At QD Design, we are big fans of 123 Reg, we have used them since 1998 for all our domain registrations and encourage our customers to do the same.
The new(ish) control panel has flummoxed a few people as to how they should go about setting up their Name Servers for using our hosting.

We've made a short video to show you how.

11/07/2024

Another new site, launched today.

Long term customer Pilates Plus Stonehaven wanted to add a Blog to their existing website. The original site was written in HTML / CSS so we added a WordPress installation alongside the static site, styled it to look similar and linked it to the existing menu(s).

Need a Blog or a News section for your website to keep it fresh and up to date? We can help!

https://www.pilatesplusstonehaven.co.uk/

14/06/2024

This week WooCommerce published a critical update for their WordPress eCommerce plugin with the advice that it is installed immediately.

What is it?

A serious vulnerability had been reported that could allow a 'bad actor' to exploit a cross-site scripting bug where a link is manipulated on a page. Anyone clicking on the link (the store / site admin as well as a customer) could be affected.

https://www.qd-design.co.uk/blog/woocommerce-vulnerability-act-now/

01/08/2023

SAVE THE DATE - 8th August

WordPress v6.3 release

You know when a new WordPress release is imminent; this morning there was a deluge of updates across all of the popular Plugins. No doubt there will be more in the days to come.

If you manage your own site, now is a good time to get everything up to date ahead of the v6.3 release. That should minimise the risk of any unforeseen conflicts between plugins and WordPress.

What will be in WP 6.3? Apparently a new navigation and interface for the site editor section and further improvements in the block editor making page updates and changes more powerful.

07/06/2023

Do you use Google Analytics on your website? Time is fast running out (you have until the end of this month) to turn on and install the new Google Analytics v4 code. After this, the existing Universal Analytics code will stop collecting data.

Don't be left in the dark about visitors to your website. Find out why the change is happening and what you need to do about it at..
https://www.qd-design.co.uk/blog/google-analytics-time-is-running-out/

31/05/2023

Happy Birthday to the #1 Content Management System (CMS), WordPress. On its own it has greater coverage than all other CMS put together.

20 years ago this month, WordPress was born. A fork from a previous project saw it rapidly take off and become one of the guiding lights of web 2.0.

Starting out as a simple blogging platform, anyone who has had exposure to WordPress since then knows how far it has developed. Each new version adding more features, additional capability and an improving user interface.

QD Design have followed this development when WordPress became our CMS of choice in 2015. The changes we have seen in 8 years are astonishing, goodness only knows what the future holds for WordPress.

Why should you use WordPress? Good question! WordPress balances the competing priorities of ease of use with flexibility and capability. Some CMS tools are easy to use but have limited capability and minimal flexibility in what they can do (yes, Squarespace I mean you). WordPress is equally at home powering a personal blog as it is representing a small business or even running a holiday rental platform.

If you are finding your current website platform restricting, talk to us at QD Design about moving to WordPress.

17/01/2023

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64051121

A painful and frustrating lesson for the lady mentioned in the article. The answer however is simple....

If you have a website, make sure that you / someone you trust has a readily accessible backup stored in a different location to the site itself.

That way, if your host has a disaster or goes out of business, it is a straightforward job to get the site hosted elsewhere. It's like insurance, we give it very little thought until you actually need it!

Cloud computing is a popular way for firms to buy computing but, when it fails, chaos ensues.