2023 has been another busy year at Castlegate IT with new clients coming on board and exciting projects completed successfully.

We’ve continued to strengthen our existing relationships as well as building new partnerships with inspiring and innovative brands. Some exceptional work has come out of the last 12 months. Here are some of the highlights…

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Castlegate is a forward thinking website design and development company, based in the Walmgate area of York City Centre. Castlegate works with local, national and international clients:  from NGOs in India (Animal Aid Unlimited) to local cultural institutions (York Museums Trust); household names (Network Rail); and numerous charities, businesses, and academic research centres.

We prioritise doing the right thing and working with the right people to make great things happen.  Our ethical policy represents our commitment to integrity, honesty, and the high standards our clients value and rely upon.

Where you come in!

If you’re interested in a career in web development and seeking professional tuition and qualifications, Castlegate is York’s leading provider. We’re looking for individuals who are enthusiastic, ambitious, and passionate about web development.

Working with the The Coders Guild we provide a complete apprenticeship scheme including training for a year and a half worth £18K free of charge, and the opportunity to work alongside industry leaders in a friendly workplace environment.

Castlegate will give you real world experience and help you to build your career. You will learn languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP; frameworks such as Bootstrap; and the WordPress content management platform.

Through your paid apprenticeship you will partake in engaging training sessions, teaching you the essential knowledge and expertise to turbo-charge your path to become a professional web developer. Alongside quality tuition, you will be assigned a senior staff mentor so that you learn from the best first-hand.

Our apprenticeship isn’t just academic, we want you to help us succeed by doing meaningful work on real projects. We encourage you to try new things, think outside the box and bring fresh perspective to our projects. We believe that you learn best through doing.

Interested in web developer apprenticeships in York?  Get in touch now!

Current and graduated apprentices

Weronika Siuda is currently working as apprentice after graduating from a cognitive science degree. Whilst studying, Weronika developed an interest in coding, an interest which would lead her to the apprenticeship scheme. Weronika is now honing her skills to excel as a software developer. Knowing that the work and skills she develops throughout her apprenticeship is making a real difference to people’s lives and livelihoods has given her real job satisfaction.

Lamé Moatshe completed his apprenticeship and is now a fully-fledged developer.  Becoming an apprentice in 2018 after studying IT in college. Lamé decided to specialise in PHP and WordPress, enabling him to build, update and maintain a range of websites for Castlegate’s clients. A key element for Lamé choosing our apprenticeship scheme was the focus on hands-on learning and opportunities to work shoulder to shoulder with world-class experts to learn industry-leading skills.

Robin Bell is our newest apprentice, having joined Castlegate after working on a family run website. Robin decided to retrain as a web developer after achieving a degree in English, seeking to convert a hobby into a career. Government and Coders Guild accreditation gave Robin assurance that the apprenticeship would provide the skills and knowhow necessary to forge a career within an ever-changing industry.

Interested in web developer apprenticeships in York?  Get in touch now!

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What is an accessible website?

Website accessibility is the inclusive practice of designing websites with no barriers to users. It is made up of a number of different elements. There are visual components like using legible typography, meeting the contrast ratio, and having text and images that adapt to different screen sizes. Then there is the code, which can be optimised for text-to-speech software and text-to-Braille hardware. And there is the accessibility of the content that lives on the site. Are animations free from strobing or flashing? Are videos closed captioned or signed? Are written communications in plain English? A fully accessible website satisfies all of these and more.

Web accessibility is for everyone

Accessibility is best approached as a mission that impacts and benefits us all. It goes beyond only catering to those with ongoing disabilities. Most of us are heavily reliant on the internet. We use it to shop, pay bills, work, have fun, and stay fit. Anyone who has ever had a child, broken their arm, or struggled to get online from a rural location will have become aware of web accessibility, or the lack of it. Where you are in the world, how much money you have, even your age – all these factors impact accessibility.

Protect your reputation and your bottom line

Accessible website design is not a passing fad, but a core business concern. The spending power of disabled households worldwide is currently estimated at £6.75 trillion. In the UK alone £17.1 billion of business was lost in 2019 because potential customers clicked away due to accessibility issues.¹ An accessible website encourages user engagement and increases conversion rates.

The World Wide Web Consortium publishes guidelines to web accessibility called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Within this there are three levels of compliance – A, AA and AAA with AA considered the acceptable standard for the majority of websites. Having a more accessible website can boost its ranking in search engine results. Fully accessible sites command fierce loyalty and enjoy repeat business.

Progress proceeds perfection

With so much at stake, the task of tackling web accessibility can seem overwhelming. Happily there are tools out there to help you. Start with an accessibility audit so that you know how accessible your site currently is and which areas to prioritise. Share this with your users via an accessibility statement, explaining how you are working to improve. Making an established website accessible is a marathon not a sprint and your users will appreciate your transparency and honesty along the way.

Our approach to accessible website design

We consider accessibility from the outset of any new project. Designing with accessibility front of mind saves time, money, and stress down the line. We take a holistic approach to website accessibility, considering the way a site looks, how the information is organised, the content strategy, and the desired outcomes.

We know from experience that accessible sites can be stylish, exciting and unique. Take a look at how we incorporated accessible website design into some of our recent work:

Every image featured on the British Bryological Society website has a clear and concise descriptive tag accompanying it. These appear when you hover the cursor over the image and can also be read by text-to-speech software and text-to-Braille hardware.

While building Animal Aid Unlimited’s new website, we worked to the principles of digital inclusion to ensure that the website looks great and performs well on all devices, to reach as wide an audience as possible.

One of the key features we designed for Rollaturf’s revamped website was the “turf calculator”, which enables users to easily work out how much turf they need. The calculator meets the WCAG contrast threshold and features large buttons with highly legible typography.

Want to know more?

Find out how you can boost your web accessibility. Call us on 01903 654 036 or email [email protected]

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Most of our staff are currently working from home.  With a skeleton service operating from our York city centre office we want to reassure you that we’re still here to help.

How to contact us

For help and support, website updates, and changes to domain name settings email [email protected]. This mailbox is monitored continuously during working hours. Your request will automatically enter our task management system and be promptly allocated to a member of our staff.

Everyday we will pick up messages left on the office phone answering service and get back to you as soon as we can.

If there is a serious issue with your website out of hours, you may also contact us via text message: 07904254939.

Contacting your customers

Many of you will be contacting your own customers to inform them of your arrangements or services.

Please note that mailboxes provided by Castlegate limit the number of emails that can be processed. If the limits are exceeded the service is automatically blocked.

A typical sending limit is 1000 emails per mailbox per day, although per minute and hourly limits may also apply.  In normal circumstances, these limits allow plenty of scope for most users.

If you wish to reach 100s or 1000s of recipients use a reliable bulk email sending service such as  Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor. We can help you set up your account and/or send out the bulk email for you.

Wishing you well

We want to support you as best we can during this difficult time.

Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions about these arrangements of if I can help with anything else.

Best wishes

Jim Semlyen
Managing Director
Castlegate IT Limited

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Our technical director Andy and managing director Jim were recently asked to weigh in on an article about cyber security published by NatWest.

Castlegate has provided web development and website hosting services for many years — as a result, we’re responsible for keeping over 200 WordPress websites secure. This is a responsibility we take seriously, and we devote a great deal of time to researching cyber security practices and developments.

“If you understand the methods and tools hackers use to gain access, you’re able to lock your site down”

We keep up-to-date on the latest developments in cyber security so that we’re able to protect our sites against threats of all kinds. By putting measures in place such as two-factor login authentication and software to detect unexpected file changes, we can prevent unwanted parties from compromising websites.

“We have around 200 WordPress sites running currently under our security process, and we’ve had no incidents in years.”

Since most Castlegate websites are built using WordPress, we’ve invested our resources into becoming WordPress security experts. We put our security expertise at the forefront of everything we do, and fortunately our efforts are paying off: keeping our finger on the pulse means we can be confident about the security of our clients’ websites.

Read the full article here to see what Jim and Andy had to say on the subject. If you need advice on how best to keep your WordPress website secure, we’d be happy to help – you can get in touch with us here.

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When it comes to attracting visitors to your website, few things are more effective than displaying a star rating next to your company name on Google.

This is why we’ve partnered with review aggregation service Trustist, who can help you display stars in your natural search results using your reviews. They aggregate all of your reviews from wherever they exist – including Google, Facebook and many others – and bring them into one account for you. There are also other features available within your account that allow you to get more out of your reviews by responding to them and sharing them across your social media accounts.

How it works

Installing Trustist on your website means that a widget is displayed on each page showing your overall review count and average rating score from all sources. This widget is updated in real-time, and, when clicked, takes the user through to the full list of your reviews. This can be on either your own site or the Trustist site – so if you don’t have a review section on your website, there’s no need to create one.

The widgets on your website add “structured data” to the pages, which tells Google all about the reviews you have collected from your customers. This structured data then prompts Google to display stars with your listings in natural search results.

Instant results

The stars in natural search results make your listings more attractive to prospective visitors, which leads to an increase in the amount of clicks you receive from natural search results. Other Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques generally need some time to take effect, but displaying a star rating on Google has instant results. Having the stars to help increase your Click-Through Rate (CTR) also helps you to convert more customers once they land on your website, as they are able to see your reputation at a glance.

To find out more, visit the Trustist website here.

We offer a full range of search engine optimisation services. If you’d like to get Trustist installed on your website, or you want to find out how to improve your website’s position in search results, get in touch with us.

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Our three latest projects are now online. This time we’ve been busy working on new websites for Harrogate-based social care organisation Community Catalysts, social development and human rights charity Good Neighbours UK, and bakery management app Cybake.

Community Catalysts

Local not-for-profit Community Catalysts is working to redefine social care by connecting small caregiving organisations with people in the community in need of help. The previous website had been in place for over 10 years, during which time Community Catalysts had established itself as an organisation of national influence – so we were asked to redesign the site and bring it up to date.

Our challenge in this project was to retain the characteristic style elements of the old site but integrate them into a more contemporary site design. In addition; we put icons in place to improve navigability, implemented contrast and text size controls for accessibility, and ensured that the site was compatible with all devices.

Take a look at Community Catalysts’ new website

Good Neighbours UK

Good Neighbours UK is the UK branch of the global Good Neighbor Network, a charity organisation that works to combat poverty and oppression around the world by strengthening communities and advocating for the rights of vulnerable people. Castlegate was asked to build a new bespoke website for the Good Neighbor Network to enable them to better promote the organisation’s interests in the UK.

The design of the new site was informed by in-depth research of other UK charities, while adhering strictly to the Good Neighbor Network’s global brand identity. The site enables Good Neighbours UK to keep the public up to date on all areas of their campaign work, aided by a straightforward site layout and easy-to-use navigation system. The use of high-quality photography and distinctive icons brings the site to life.

Take a look at the new Good Neighbours UK site

Cybake

Software development company RedBlack Software developed the Cybake app to provide all-in-one management tool for bakeries. The Cybake team felt their existing site no longer represented the quality of their app, and asked Castlegate to build a new website to showcase their product.

Cybake is a feature-rich application and, as such, the website needed to provide a lot of information on the many ways in which the software can help businesses. To make this information easily accessible, we implemented a simple navigation system that enables users to quickly find the information they need while keeping the site uncluttered. Clear calls-to-action and live chat functionality ensure that the site reliably generates leads by encouraging prospective customers to get in touch.

Take a look at Cybake’s new website

Bespoke WordPress Websites

Each of these sites is built on the industry-leading WordPress platform, which enables the three organisations to easily manage and update their website’s content as they develop and grow.

If you’d like to see more of our work, take a look at our portfolio – and if your organisation is in need of a new website then please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help!

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A massive speed boost for your website

Google favours fast websites and so do your customers. Faster websites rank higher in search results, increase conversion rates, and keep users happy.

Our new optimised WordPress hosting can boost page load speed by more than 400%.*

400% is a bold claim, but that’s typical of the improvement after migrating to the new platform. Home page load times have been slashed from 3 seconds to 500 milliseconds or less!

Since we moved www.castlegateit.co.uk our Google positions have increased across the board. We’re now outperforming every other York-based web company for local searches and gaining ground rapidly with our nationally targeted landing pages.

Fast low-cost hosting is new

Standard website hosting is designed to run all manner of websites efficiently. When designed to run a single application, such as WordPress, it’s possible to make hosting very fast through highly specific performance optimisations. 

This kind of hosting is new and wasn’t available when we launched many of our existing client’s websites. We’re excited about the benefits it will bring to our client’s businesses. We’d love to tell you more about it, so if you have any questions, please contact us.

Get in touch: 01904676772 [email protected]

* Results vary depending on your website, the measurement method and your internet connection. We provide before and after results via the Pingdom Tools London test centre.

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We’re delighted to have recently completed a number of bespoke website projects with high performing results.

Websites for engineering & manufacturing companies

Chromatics Glass manufactures a specialist safety glass. Following an in-depth brand discovery process, our senior designer and branding expert Sunny developed a new logo for Chromatics  to use across all their products and marketing materials. We also built a vibrant bespoke website informed by Sunny’s excellent graphic design work.

Having previously built a website for Harsh UK we were delighted to work with them again. This time we installed an online shop and redesigned their home page and site structure to emphasise the two arms of their business: HARSH Truck and HARSH Agri.

We worked with Rosti Automotive  a couple of years ago to build their main website; this time they approached us in need of a microsite for their not so micro Welsh factory Canning Brett. We used the same corporate branding and design as the original Rosti Automotive site to build a clean-looking and professional site, brought to life by excellent photography from Gareth Buddo at Furmoto Photography.

Last, but certainly not least, we’ve been working hard to build five bespoke websites for Yorkshire engineering giants Hindle Group, which are just reaching completion. Watch this space!

More examples of websites for engineering and manufacturing companies.

Websites for charities and CICs

We are proud to work with many not-for-profit organisations.

SASH is a fantastic charity doing important work to prevent youth homelessness in Yorkshire. The website we built for SASH is carefully designed to raise their profile, make it easy for donations to be made, and to provide help to young people.

We also built Small Good Stuff for Community Catalysts, a network website connecting those in need of care and support with local micro-enterprises who can help them.

More examples of websites for charities.

Websites for research networks

We’ve also developed portal-based websites for two research networks: the Biomass Biorenewables Network  (BBNet) which is working to promote biomass research in the UK; and the THYME Project, a new academic network offshoot of BioVale, boosting the bioeconomy in Yorkshire, the Humber, and the Tees Valley.

As well as giving BBNet a professional online presence, the new website has enabled BBNet to manage and communicate with over 700 members. The portal allows BBNet to efficiently share information with its members; and enables these users to easily access information about funding and upcoming events.

Similarly, the THYME website provides an attractive design, clear access to information, and a network membership system. New members sign up directly on the website and, subject to administrator approval, are provided with access to exclusive information about the project and other members.

More examples of websites for academic research networks.

Looking Ahead…

There’s still more to come from us this year as we look forward to launching a number of high performing bespoke websites.

If your company or organisation needs a brand refresh or website upgrade we’d be happy to help.

Get in touch: 01904 654036 [email protected].

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We’ve teamed up with York IT Services, who are experts in the field of email hosting and run servers on behalf of a growing number of businesses in York. With email communication now being critical for any modern business, email hosting has become one of the most affordable and attractive services for organisations who need to create and manage a number of business email accounts.

For those wondering whether a managed email service is right for your company’s digital infrastructure, we’ve summarised five key benefits of email hosting that will provide lasting results for your business.

1. A professional email address linked to your domain name
York IT Services will set up and manage a professional email address for your business that mirrors your domain name. Although web hosting companies may provide a basic email hosting service, if something goes wrong it can be costly for your business in both time and money. Having an experienced email provider will mitigate the risk of problems occurring, as well as ensure that any issues that do arise are resolved immediately.

2. Customisable plans to suit your individual needs
The level of email hosting you require will be dependent upon the size of your business, and may change over time as your company continues to expand and grow. York IT Services will recognise the needs of your business and constantly work with you to ensure you have enough storage space, IT support and mobile device capabilities to reflect the current needs of your organisation.

3. Instant access to your emails from any device
York IT offers a range of cloud-hosted email services that enable you to access your emails on any device, from any location. This fully functional email system, hosted securely in the cloud, ensures complete protection of your emails, calendar and contacts. York IT Services also ensures that your important emails are automatically archived, but are still easily retrieved so that you don’t have the worry of having to constantly upgrade your servers or storage.

4. Adequate storage for your valuable emails
As your business grows, the amount of storage you require for emails will also increase. To eliminate the risk of losing valuable information and archived emails, York IT Services offers flexible plans and adaptive services to ensure you have adequate storage space for your emails.

5. Spam and virus filters on all mailboxes
An email hosting service provider will ensure that spam and viruses are blocked and remain out of your mailbox. York IT Services provides full antivirus and spam monitoring, which are constantly updated without any unplanned downtime for your business, ensuring that your business information remains secure and protected at all times.

More than an email hosting provider…
“At York IT Services, we understand that no two businesses are the same, which is why we take the time to get to know you and your company before using our expert knowledge and experience to recommend the best email hosting packages for you. Our managed email services will allow you to focus on running your business with the confidence that your emails are running efficiently, reliably and securely at all times.” – Simon Langley, Managing Director at York IT Services.

Contact York IT Services
Tel: 01904 424700
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.york-it-services.co.uk

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