New Xtrahair website

I'm very pleased to announce the launch of the new Xtrahair website, at www.xtrahair.co.uk.

As you can see, this is a very fresh looking design, with a conceptual design by our great colleague Matt.

In the process, he also wanted to update the Xtrahair logo, as seen.

The site is now also in the hands of the client, who has the facility to update each page of her website through an integrated content management system (CMS).  And of course, we've kept the old blog on their too (but now restyled it to fit in with the new design).

Certainly quite a significant improvement on the old design!

If you'd like us to improve your current website, or if you'd like a new one built entirely from scratch, do let us know.

New 'written contract' now available through our website

To help keep things clear to our clients, we've just added a new plain English written contract, to our website.
www.parlourdesign.co.uk/contract.html

This was very kindly provided, under the creative commons licence, by Andy Clark of Transcending CSS.  We've subsequently modified his version to fit more appropriately within our own policies and procedures, but are very grateful to Andy for his excellent direction in this, and of course his inspirational book: Transcending CSS, the fine art of web design.

Many thanks Andy.

.co domain names are nearly ready for purchase

If you're not a regular purchaser of domain names, you may have missed that .co domain names are about to go on to public release, so anyone will soon be able to buy their own .co domain name (ie www.my-new-domain.co).

.co is the new domain extension, that's been released from Columbia.Columbian nationals have the rights to www.my-domain.com.co however, you'll soon be able to purchase your own domain, ending in .co

There are of course many other domain extensions you can buy, such as the most famous .com, and .co.uk, as well as .net, .org, and slightly more recently .info and .biz.  This newer range of domain extensions (such as .me, .tv, .us) are related to countries that have decided to allow open purchase of their second level domain names (ie the bit, just before their country abbreviation).

There have been four phases to the launch of .co:

1. The first round that allowed registered Columbian brands to buy their name in the first round ,
2. The second round allowed national trademarks to buy their domain,
3. The third round was an auction style landrush (ie customers interested in domains with a high global value, to bid against each other)
4. And now the fourth round, where any person or company, anywhere in the world, can purchase their own domain on a first-come first-served basis, from 7pm British Summer Time (6pm GMT).

We've had a number of pre-purchase requests made with our domain registrars, so hopefully we may be successful in purchasing a few domains.

According to the official .co website www.cointernet.co, 87,489 domains were registered in the first 15 minutes of the domain name extension going live on the public market!