I’ve been playing around with Twitter lists for the past couple of days, and (once Tweetdeck finally integrates with them) they will be a useful tool.
I’m starting to build a social media twitter list, and in doing so found this little widget on Twitter that you can use to embed your list posts directly into your website. I’ve put it here in a post for now, but in the next few weeks will integrate it into a sidebar so it’s visible on all pages. Read More
I’m a great believer in clever eating, what you put in has a huge effect on what you get out, so I was really excited to be invited to design the website for Nutritionist Charlotte Parton.
The site, which can be found at www.food-power.co.uk (click the image on the left to visit) is based on a really clean & simple design.
Built on the WordPress content management system, the site also features a blog, so that Charlotte can keep the world posted on her latest news. She aims to use the website as a way of drumming up business for her fledgeling consultancy. If you’re in the London area and need a nutritionist, she’s the woman to see!
I launched this site a couple of weeks ago under my ‘Gite Guru’ business, which focuses on helping people in France with rental properties.
With unlimited pages, this is a particularly good example of the type of WordPress website I build for people as it features:
I first worked with Ed Green on the launch of his property rental website, and was then invited to help him launch his new business, a litigation consultancy website. The site is pretty straight forward, consisting of:
The site is built on WordPress so as Ed’s business grows, he’s able to grow and improve the website himself without having to come to (or pay) me. In addition to designing and building the site, I carried out search engine optimisation to ensure the site ranks highly for the important search terms.
I launched this site under my ‘Gite Guru’ banner recently for a client with rental properties in Brittany in northern France.
The site is based on popular WordPress content management solution as the ability to update her own site was important for the client. Features include:
If you have a blog or website, it’s worthwhile encouraging users to social bookmark or ‘share’ your articles because:
I’ve just released a free WordPress theme in the past few days on one of my other websites, mainly as an experiment in Search Engine Optimisation.
The theory goes that you give away a free theme (WordPress design template) which people then use on their blog. In the footer of the theme (and therefore in the footer of every single page) is a ‘credit’ link to your website. So if your theme ‘takes off’ and is used on thousands of blogs / pages, then you get thousands of links back to your site with the exact ‘anchor text’ you want. It’s a search engine optimisers wet dream.
I was approached a few weeks ago by a company selling me ‘Google Shopping Optimisation’ and I was initially sceptical.
For the uninitiated, Google Shopping is the ‘product’ section of Google Base, the service from Google which allows you to automatically add data to their search engine. Read More
Picture Courtesy of Design Packaging on Flickr
As well as helping clients with their ecommerce websites, I also run 4 of my own shops online selling baby products, vitamins, pet products and self hypnosis MP3s (really). There’s a huge range of shopping cart technologies on the market, and until recently my preference was for Oscommerce, which is open source and free.
However, altering the basic set up does require an understanding of PHP and nerves of steel, and once you’ve customised the shop, the prospect of upgrading would fill you with fear. When you compare it’s ease of use to something like WordPress (admittedly a CMS and not a shopping cart but you get the point), it leaves a lot to be desired. Read More
The Pigeonnier at La Taupe is a beautiful holiday rental property in France and the owners have meticulously restored the beautiful property. To drive rentals at the property, they asked me to produce them a website which carefully communicated the luxury nature of the brand.
The website is built on the WordPress platform, and features an image gallery with full screen imagery, a blog, an interactive guestbook and a contact form.
In addition to the build, I performed the search engine optimisation on the site which has quickly resulted in organic traffic to the site.
The client is very happy with the website, has had excellent feedback from clients and has since briefed me on a second project.
