Guernsey

Aug 17, 2011

Guernsey and Jersey in the Channel Islands have independent tax rules from the UK and require some special processing in a Magento eCommerce website – here is how to go about it. First of all lets look at the sales tax rules in these three jurisdictions. UK sales tax or VAT (value added tax) is currently charged at 20% and needs to be applied to all orders payed for/delivered to the UK.

Jun 22, 2011

The Internet has improved the lives of millions if not billions of people around the world in a number of ways in the few short years that it has existed. In addition to lower prices on a vast array of consumer products as well as greater choice in terms of what we buy, it has also connected businesses and potential clients in ways that were unimaginable only a few years ago.

Jun 10, 2011

This Magento site had a really fast turn-around and I think everyone has been really pleased by the results. We are aiming for a high-end market and trying to make the most of the Jewellery. From a technical point of view the site uses Magento under the hood, but the product lists have been heavily customised to show large product images and use some flashy javascript to scroll through the product photos.

Apr 26, 2011

A gently paddle around – a lovely way to spend a bank holiday monday in Guernsey. I started out from the slipway at Rousse and paddled across to Chouet, it was quite windy so there were a fair few waves and it was quite hard work. Once I was across the bay at Chouet, I paddled inland and by the time I reached sheltered Ladies Bay it was really calm. A gentle paddle across the bay again and back towards Rousse, followed by a quick look around the headland and it was time to go.

Mar 23, 2011

Earth Hour in 2011 is fast approaching, so I hope everyone in Guernsey will do their best to participate in the event at 8.30pm Saturday, 26th March by switching off your lights and doing something that doesn’t harm the environment too much for a whole hour. Seems this Earth Hour thing has been going on since 2007 and started in Australia. It has quickly grown into a global event with support from politicians and celebrities alike.

Mar 22, 2011

I thought it would be useful to start putting together handy lists of services that are local to Guernsey or the Channel Islands and that are often hard to dig up. Guernsey Estate Agents seemed the obvious place to start since I have recently been involved with building a couple of estate agents websites. Martel Maides, Find and Fairmoves, as well as working for a while looking after the Sarnia Estate Agents site.

Dec 9, 2010

The Barras Car Centre website required that they could upload details of new and used cars and display them, as well as provide a feed of the information for other third party sites. It seemed a good candidate for a simple Ruby on Rails website, which was up and running really quickly and to everyone’s satisfaction. Take a look at the screenshots below, or take a look at the Barras Car Centre website.

Aug 15, 2010

After having implemented the Cable & Wireless Guernsey telephone directory into the find website it seemed a really good idea to try to make this work for people’s mobile phones. The basic interface allows users to search the directory but also includes buttons to frequently searched items. The results were limited due to the way they are presented to us but I managed to ensure phone numbers were clickable on most phones – and allow immediate dialing of numbers.

Apr 13, 2010

Fairmoves was a website for a startup estate agent in Guernsey, the project gave me the chance to write a Ruby on Rails application and involved a really slick integrated design. The design used a simple informational front page with a scriptaculous slider control that allowed users to select a price range to view on the property listing page. The listing for each property was put together from highly structured database fields that allowed for some slick graphics indicating the number of bedrooms, bathrooms etc.

Mar 30, 2010

A brief meeting with Cable & Wireless Guernsey and we hit upon the idea of integrating a portion of the find website with their island wide telephone directory. The main complaint with their service was that you had to select several drop down boxes and enter your search into a different box depending on whether you wanted to search white/yellow pages. They have since updated and improved their website but we still prefer our find version.