Rogue Interactive Blog

Adopt a Word from I CAN, a new interactive website developed by Rogue Interactive

noreply@blogger.com (PeetyB) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:15:00 +0000

Rogue Interactive Ltd are proud to have been the chosen developers for the UK national children’s charity I CAN’s latest online project in conjunction with Remedy Creative, their design agency based in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

The new website www.adoptaword.com has been developed to help raise money for I CAN by selling words from the English language, which have been generously supplied by Collins Language.com. The words are a perfect self-indulgent purchase or a great gift for Christmas or birthdays and can be purchased with a gift pack / certificate and with other merchandise such as t-shirts or mugs with their unique word printed on them.

The website has many features including:
- word definitions and meanings
- thesaurus for alternative suggestions
- comments blog for users to comment about words
- celebrity adoptions
- corporate adoptions
- media stories area
- recent adoptions widget
- word category selection widget
- category pricing for premium words
- online order processing system
- profanity checking and administration alerts system
- integrated into Secure Trading payment gateway
- W3C, CSS and WAI compliance

We wish I CAN every success with this fund raising venture and look forward to working with them again on other exciting projects.

Rogue lauch new app for Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:37:00 +0000

View your Facebook Albums with Image Flip - a cover flow style application for quickly navigating through your albums and photos.

You can also view friends photo albums using Image Flip if they have subscribed to this service.

Click here to add Image Flip to your Facebook profile

Slideshow Edit Pro

noreply@blogger.com (PeetyB) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:26:00 +0000

A Major Core3 Upgrade has just been launched and allows site adnimistrators to create a totally new kind of image gallery to complement their image flip, transitions and picture pop galleries within their Core3 system.

The slide show system is a fully featured still-image video editor, allowing users to animate their images over a 30 second clip to an audio track.

The features include:

3 Caption Layers with customised text allowing for size, alignment, opacity and colour as well as animatable atributes: x/y position, rotation and scale.
10 Image Layers with master opacity and swap-image as well as animatable atributes: x/y position, rotation and scale.
Upload and set a 30 second mp3 audio track as background music to your clip with the new audio upload Core3 upgrade*
Layer Controls: adjust start point, fade in duration, clip duration and fade out duration.
Overlay Layers using fade in/out and opacity controls to create animated image montages.
Use within a Core3 gallery or select the share option which generate standalone HTML embedding code to place your Slideshow Edit Pro galleres within different areas of your site or on other peoples websites.

*Audio upload system also comes with a code generator for use as standalone mp3 audio player within your html/wysiwyg content pages.

Online business and advertising set to soar

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:48:00 +0000

The online business world and online advertising is well an truly on the launch pad now and all set to really take off in a big way.

You may have thought that it was already flying in a big way, but lets consider a couple of recent announcements from statistical companies and analysts.

Today BBC news announced that the The Office for National Statistics said that two-thirds of UK homes were now online, which is almost 16.5 million households, an increase of 1.2 million since 2007.

According to all the analysts online advertising spend is all set to overtake that of television next year. There is also a lot of chatter about how print sales are falling and how many of the big companies are doing more with web based campaigns and pay per click advertising and not going for the more traditional large spend campaigns that they were.

It certainly appears that the credit crunch is going to be good for the web and online businesses and our advice is that right now you should be looking very closely at what you are currently doing with your web site and what should be done to bring it up to scratch. Whilst the credit crunch is good news for your online offering don't get complacent, it won't take long for lots of new e-commerce and promotional sites to spring up as the credit crunch starts to put the squeeze on bricks and mortar only firms.

If you wish to know more or would like to discuss the issues raised in this blog please feel free to contact us.

CN Radio Group, Core3 sites launched

noreply@blogger.com (PeetyB) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:43:00 +0000

CN Radio Group, a part of the national CN Media Group approached Rogue Interactive to help develop a fully content managed solution for their online presence.

CN Radio Group currently have 9 individual radio stations across the UK and Ireland.

We recommended our Core3 CMS for the job, as it already had 75% of the tools/ functions required as well as being able to manage a multi-site environment allowing all of the station website to share content areas if they wish to.

On top of the comprehensive tool set that came installed with Core3, we have developed bespoke tools for their Core3 CMS which include:

• Presenters profiles and blogging system

• Station Show Scheduler

• Integration into 3rd party news systems

• Integrating into RCS system for individual playing now function.

• Promotions and Competition system

• Online payment system

• Business Directory System

• Voucher System

Rogue re-branding with Core3

noreply@blogger.com (PeetyB) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:50:00 +0000

Rogue Interactive has given itself a complete design overhaul!

We have refreshed the logo, colour scheme and design... deciding to practice what we preach by re-building our website completely within our Core3 CMS; utilising the tools and functions available within Core3 to create HTML pages, galleries, news categories and so on.

Have a good look around... we hope it gives you an insight into what Rogue can do, and how your business can potentially utilise our Core3 CMS and other offerings and services from Rogue.

Simple but powerful tool added to Core3

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:26:00 +0000

E-communicate is a simple tool added to Core3 to allow visitors to your site to sign up to a mailing list that you can use to communicate with them, quickly and simply.

Its a fully featured mailing system that confirms your customers email address and confirms they want to join the list before any mails are received.

Any emails sent out by you will also have an opt out link attached to the bottom of the mails that allows them to easily opt out of any further emails.

All the display pages and confirmation emails are fully customisable so can be used to tell your customers about site updates or product news or any thing else important to you and your customers.

Core3 gets first series of updates

noreply@blogger.com (PeetyB) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:42:00 +0000

Core3 clients will be glad to hear that the first set of Core3 updates has been successfully rolled out to their CMS. These updates include:

1) Press Office / News - User Comments System

Stories / articles within the news/press area can now have comments switched on or off. Switching comments on will enable readers to give feedback and interact with the story administrator who intern will be informed by email of a new post. Posts need approval by the administrator before they are set live. Comments appear in chronological order beneath the news story in-line with the new comments form.

2) Press Office / News - User Poll System

You can now attached a user/customer poll to news items/article which can be switched on and off by the story administrator. A poll consists of a simple question and multiple answers. Users can select an answer, which will
then display the current poll results. Cookies are used to remember the user has answered that question and will not knowingly ask them again. The poll system will appear as standard to the right of the comments system, below
the news story. You can move the positioning of this system within your CSS as well as changing any styles / formatting to suit your site.

3) News Area Administration

The current news management system has always allowed for multiple news categories, but has only allowed for one to be chosen as the homepage news system.

To display further news areas, i.e. Latest News, Movie News, Music News etc, can now be done with the news area upgrade. News categories can now be assigned to navigation items (as is currently done with galleries, downloads
and other functions) with their own news listing, display page and search tool.

This upgrade has opened up the news display and archiving system allowing whole sections of a website to be managed with images, music, audio and downloads within their own self contained area without additional coding or functional changes.

4) Banner System

We have upgraded the banner management tool to allow for a third banner. The third banner is set as a right hand skyscrapper utlising the internal GIF / URL feature or 3rd party inline code feature as before.

This banner is set up within the main template and CSS as #rightinfo and #skyholder which are both currently set not to display. You can amend your core design to allow for a third banner placement area (known as Skyscrapper
within the administration area) and styled to display the banner where you would like it placed.

5) Support Ticket System

We have upgraded the Core3 system with its own built-in support ticket system. The master administrator can access the system within their administration navigation.

The support ticket system allows a Core3 administrator to report bugs, ask questions and request amends through a fully tracked ticketing system, which will also sends ticket status updates via email. Documents and images
/ screenshots can be uploaded within a request, keeping all relevant information together.

If you have any queries or questions about our recent upgrades, please contact us by telephone, email or for current Core3 clients (and a large percentage of Core2 clients), through the support ticket system.

We hope you enjoy the upgrades.

The Rogue Core3 Team.

Best of both worlds when it comes to SPAM

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 09:15:00 +0000

Do you spend way too much time deleting unwanted junk mail from your inbox or do you sometimes miss important emails and never receive that confirmation email you are waiting for after signing up for a service on the web somewhere?

Problem is you can't have it both ways. Either you have junk mail getting through that shouldn't or mails that should don't. Well that has all changed with spamarrest.

The principle is really quite simple. Watch the animated demo below and you will see what I mean.

Stop Spam In Just A Few Minutes

When you visit Spam Arrest and sign up for their service, you will be given your own @spamarrest.com email address. In order to protect the inboxes of any of your existing email accounts you can do one of the following two things. You can simply forward mail to those accounts to your Spam Arrest email address. Or you can arrange to have Spam Arrest periodically poll those accounts.

All of your valid non-spam-tagged email will be placed into your Spam Arrest inbox. You can then access those messages using either the POP3 or IMAP methods which are available in your email program (e.g. Outlook or Eudora). Alternatively, you can use your web browser and read your mail by logging into the Spam Arrest webmail system.

Configure Your Pre-Approved Spam Arrest Senders

With Spam Arrest You'll find that you can easily pre-configure your account to allow certain known users to send mail to you. That way, they are never challenged

You can do this by authorising specific email addresses, domains, and even entire mailing lists. This can either be done manually, or you can elect to use Spam Arrest's easy-to-use import tools.

Spam Arrest also provides you with convenient disposable email sub-addresses. These will allow you to accept messages from unknown senders and automated systems without at the same time exposing your real email address.

Eliminate Spam By Human Verification

Spam Arrest works because it uses Challenge/Response technology to block the spam. Emails sent from unrecognised sources will automatically be sent a response message that requests a human verify the source of the message.

Spammers cannot get around this one very critical step. When the, as yet unknown, sender clicks on the link contained in the Spam Arrest request email, they will be taken to a web page where they are "challenged" to type in a word that is hidden within either a graphic or an audio file (in case the user should be visually-impaired). Once the sender has successfully completed their "response", their email message is forwarded to your inbox, and they are then added to your authorized sender list so that you can received their future messages.

The challenge/response process is very easy for people to deal with, but impossible for automated systems to deal with. Spambots cannot circumvent this technology.

Full Access To Unapproved Email Messages

Any emails that are sent from unauthorized senders will be held in your Spam Arrest "unverified" folder for 7 days.

You can access these "zombied" emails when you need to by logging into the Spam Arrest website. You can then manually approve any senders from whom you wish to receive further email.

If you are still not sure whether Spam Arrest is right for you, you can try it absolutely free for 30-days. Subscription cost is just a few pounds per month for spam free sanity. And if you are unsatisfied, you can simply cancel your subscription at any time.

Start your free Spam Arrest trial today

Core 3 Launched!

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:35:00 +0000

After much anticipation from some of Rogue Interactive’s expectant clients… and blood, sweat and tears by the Rogue Team over the past few months, we are very proud to announce the launch of Core 3.

The Core CMS system has been in development from its first incarnation some 5 years ago to the launch of version 3 this year. Many of Rogue’s past and current clients are still benefiting from and using the base CMS as the hub of their online and intranet toolsets. The Core1 and Core2 CMS currently run multi-site systems for clients such as Leeds Castle, GSE Group, English Heritage Buildings, Caldecott Foundation, KMFM Radio Group, KMFM Bands, Kent Cricket Club, Bennet Opie, ASE Solutions and most recently the KM Motoring portal which inspired many of the new toolsets within Core3.

The Core3 system is the biggest step forward in full content management for our clients, catering for both clients with little to no experience, to the more seasoned developer who can utilize the comprehensive development and customization tools.

Rogue Interactive will firmly position itself as a development partner, helping both clients who need assistance in managing their site setup and content population, through to clients requiring specific tools and functionality uniquely built into their Core3 system.

System Architecture

Linux System running Apache, MySQL V5.0, PHP V5.2, HTML 4.0, XML, JAVA applets, Flash player V8 or higher

Core3 Compliance

The base Core3 system is W3C HTML4.0 compliant and CSS compliant. Due to the nature of CMS adaptability, we cannot guarantee that after a client has populated a site with their own HTML content and images, that it will still pass the validation tests.

We endeavour to meet the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Content Accessibility Guidelines set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and we aim, wherever possible, to ensure we conform to 'Double-A' standards. We intend to keep improving our accessibility tools, but can only offer our client the tools to help them make their content accessible, for example, complete control over navigation tab indexing and access key shortcuts as well as the more basic meta data and title tagging for all images and links. Correct use of heading (h1,h2 etc) styles for content importance is purely at the clients discretion.

Security

Over the various versions of the core we have learnt many lessons over security. Core3 is by far our most secure and advanced yet. Below are just a few of these security features.

Every user is uniquely tracked through multiple sessions
Link sharing is fully catered for by reverse detection and session modification.
Session strings are encrypted
Restricted menus are hidden from view
Every page has access checking server side

Granular access and administration

Each Core3 system comes complete with a full staff administration and access level system for overall and sub website control and setup. Each sub-site has administrative access for control over all functionality relating to its specific toolsets and content control. Content Sharing is available within specific systems, allowing news categories, calendars and so on to be shared across different sub sites if required.

Navigation Setup

Create navigation items and assign to root or to any other item to create sub navigation
Apply pages, templates, directories, galleries, download categories or links to navigation items
Set access levels for user access to specific items or sub navigation folders
Set access keys for accessibility options - Set Live or Demo (On or Off) to quickly rollout or turnoff content

Homepage Manager

Optional homepage manager for basic homepage setup
Control news display listings and news archive search options
Control events calendar and customisation options
HTML / WYSIWYG editor for main homepage content

Templated Pages

Choose from one of 5 pre templated pages
Place text and upload images (auto resized) to create basic web pages
Assign pages as navigation items
No training or experience required to create and amend content

HTML Pages

Full HTML WYSIWYG inline editor (development experience is required)
Create multiple HTML page layouts
Assign pages as navigation items

Dynamic Pages

Optional override at Admin level to assign dynamic page content to navigation items, allowing for further site development by the Rogue team or other experienced developers.

Headers and Footers

Website header and footer control using HTML Editor at administrator level.
Optional override at Admin level to assign dynamic page content for expanded navigation or other dynamic based content.

Latest News System

Multiple news categories - HTML content entry using WYSIWYG editor
Story Image upload
MP3 audio player (optional)
FLV Video player (optional)
Document Downloads (optional)
News archive with keyword search system

Calendar Events System

Event data including title, address, description, dates, times etc.
Optional event image upload and display
Customisable listing generator for homepage events listing

Directory System

Database Constructor
Data input via user constructed forms
Data import and export in CSV format*
Display generator with customisable functions for sorting, indexing and paging options
Listing Image and document download enabled
HTML introduction header
Apply multiple directories as navigation items

Downloads System

Multiple download categories
Apply categories as navigation items
Create HTML headers for each category
Upload multiple file types with titles and descriptions

Photo Galleries

Image upload repository
Image titling and optional descriptions
Gallery category management
Choice of 3 gallery types, all with a maximum of 16 images Image Flip, Transitions and Picture Pop.

Site Search

Search accessible pages within group sites.
Search for keywords within Meta data – title, description and meta tags.

Banner Management

Assign banners at page level
Upload gif files or use 3rd party HTML code
Top and bottom banner placement options
Standard 468x60 banner spots with CSS editable containers

Image Maintenance

Upload images for use within your HTML / WYSIWYG based content
Image TAG generator to ease implementation

CSS Maintenance

Inline flash based CSS engine
View, amend, delete and edit full CSS classes at site level
Experience with CSS is required to use this tool to its full extent

Additional licensed tools included within your Core3 setup

HighSlide Java applet – used specifically for Picture Pop gallery system
FCK Editor – integrated as the in-line HTML editor.

Password protect your cash

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:04:00 +0000

It's vital that you keep your computer protected by a password and don't leave financial web sites logged in when your not in front of it.

Whilst the story about a three year old's online shopping spree is quite amusing it does highlight the very serious point of how easy it is to help yourself to someone else's money.

It might be obvious for me to say that you should not leave your computer logged into such accounts at work but how many actually do? I would guess a large number of us, after all the coffee machine is just over there and I can trust the people I work with. Be warned though it takes a simple "Oh Bob can you just pop into my office for a moment" and we forget that we left our paypal account logged in.

And yes I do realise the story was about a little girl at home, but would you give every visitor to your house a big wedge of cash to look after for you????

Rogue go limited

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:06:00 +0000

First off let me wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year.

For Rogue things are moving forward, as of the 1st January we have now fully incorporated the company and moved from LLP status to Ltd.

This decision was made as we are continuing to grow as a company and the change in status will enable this growth to continue with ease.

Day to day will not be any different and you can continue to expect the same excellent service we strive to provide to all our clients and yes I will be available at all hours to solve any technical issues as always.

This year promises to be an exciting year for us and our clients as online activity and sales continue to rise and with all those new people getting online with their new PCs they got for Christmas.

Congratulations Pete & Susan

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 13:22:00 +0000

Yesterday, Rogue co-founder, Peter Blay and Susan Rousell were happily married at Tenderden in Kent.

Just as the blushing bride appeared with her father to walk down the red carpet the clouds parted and the sun shone on us all for the ceremony held in the beautiful grounds of the hotel and remained out for just long enough for the ceremony. It seems the sun truly does shine on the deserving and righteous.

The rest of us at Rogue would like to wish them both the very best for the future.

New team member

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:43:00 +0000

Last week Carrie joined our team and has already settled in very well and made a great impression not only with us but also with our clients.

Carrie brings a good range of skills to the team with 8 Years experience in online and offline based technologies. Specialising in application development, e-commerce, CMS and SEO for a number of varied clients.

kmfm Launch

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Sun, 27 May 2007 21:29:00 +0000

Rogue have launched kmfm's new website tonight, having totally rebuilt their existing website.

kmfm are network of seven local radio stations across the county of Kent.

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (Phodetheus) — Wed, 23 May 2007 04:06:00 +0000

Welcome to the Rogue Interactive blog.

The team here at Rogue will be using this blog to write posts on a range of topics including:

Industry news thats relevant to our clients
Useful tips and tricks
Whats happening at Rogue
and Techy stuff for the coders out there.

We hope you will find this blog useful and please do leave comments about our posts here (good and bad).