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Completely FREE delivery for one more week!

There is still one more week left where you can take advantage of free delivery on any order over £200! All you need to do is quote FREEDJULY on purchases. Head over to our website http://www.3b-it.co.uk and take a look at all of the cabling and rack solutions that we can offer you as hugely discounted prices.

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Quote FREEDJULY for free delivery in July | 3B-IT

Throughout July 3B-IT will be offering free delivery on all orders over £200. All you need to do is quote 'FREEDJULY' on purchase orders and you will be entitled to this exclusive offer. Browse through our data storage cables and rack solutions today! 

Conditions apply – next day UK mainland delivery – single parcels under 25kg – must quote code on POs).

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Call Back Request Form | 3B-IT

3B-IT have recently introduced a call back request form on our website. Getting in contact with us has never been simpler. Send off your name and number to us and one of our team will give you a call back within moments.  Whether you want a quote on data cables, rackmount solutions, or simply need advice for your office setup then send us a call back request, send us a message, or give us a call on 01942 260500. 

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New Email Signature Design

3B-IT have undergone a huge redevelopment, specifically with our online profile. When designing the new websites (http://www.3b-it.co.uk and http://www.technoshack.co.uk) we were aware of the fact that we had to keep our branding and design consistent.

With consistency in mind we started to redesign our email signatures.

There is a lot to consider when creating an email signature. It is important to fit in all of the necessary information without over crowding the email. So before we began the redeveloping we decided what we wanted to include. Social media links, contact details, address information and the types of products that 3B-IT specialise in, were the main areas we wanted to incorporate. You can see the result of our new 3B-IT email signatures on the 3B-IT blog tomorrow, 5th June!

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http://www.3b-it.co.uk/products.php

After a complete website redesign we have finally completed our products system. By focusing on ease of navigation, user friendliness and consistency we created a products navigation system that harnesses powerful new CSS techniques and advanced navigation menus whilst still being compatible for old browsers and inexperienced web users.

In order to create this product system a lot of work went into building an easy to follow hierarchy. Starting with drawing up drafts and then moving on to using database tools within Access we managed to come up with this system as you can see below.

As you can see from the above illustration, all of the products within the cables category link to one product page. This idea was brought to my attention when I first began to use php within the 3B-IT website. In order to grasp the concept behind this you must first understand the basics behind MYSQL databases and PHP.

Firstly, all of the cabling and racking products are stored into a MYSQL database and are listed within columns such as 'product_name' and 'price' and all other information regarding that product. They also have a unique identifier column that distinguishes each product from the rest. (This is what we use in order to create a unique page for each product.)

So with that in mind the next step is to create the template page for each product by including the headers, footers and default CSS sheets that are used already throughout the website.

Now, this is where the PHP comes in. In order to populate this page full of information about a product we must first ensure that the page obtains the unique identifier from the product. We do this by storing the unique identifier within a link, so when this link is clicked on, the product page obtains the unique identifier and knows which product we want to display. This is where all we need to do is echo out the details that we want to be displayed and then the only thing that's left for us to do is to style the page.

Here you can see a few examples of this:

http://www.3b-it.co.uk/cable.php?product=LC-to-LC-Multi-mode-OM3-50-125-Fiber-Optic-Cable-1.8mm-CAB8383-M

http://www.3b-it.co.uk/cable.php?product=Active-QSFP-QSFP-Active-40GB-QDR-DDR-SDR-CAB8686-M-A

http://www.3b-it.co.uk/cable.php?product=QSFP-SFP-x-4-30-AWG-Fanout-Cable-CAB8688X4-M

The unique identifier is placed within the HTTP URL making it easy for the product page to find the product using PHP such as this:

<?php if(isset($_GET['product'])){$product_name=($_GET['product']);?>

Richard Doyle Website Designer & Developer