Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

Christenson Photographer site launched

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

Chris Christenson is a photographer based in Midlothian who specialises in wedding and event photography. Additionally he does studio and commercial work.

Christenson Photographers has had a web site for a number of years but it was felt that with competitors updating their web sites, it was time to revisit their web presences in order to remain at the cutting edge in this competitive sector.

Aesthetics were important in this brief. Wedding traffic depends strongly on a slick, professional looking site but without compromising the quality of the content. The use of high quality photography was essential due to the subject matter. Luckily Chris was able to supply a vast library of top notch images to use around the site and to create example galleries of previous work.

One of the two central purposes of the site is to provoke enquiries. As a result, a solid mechanism for soliciting and tracking responses to web lead generation was built into the site which allows the client to monitor ongoing progress with enquiries.

The second purpose is to display and sell prints to newlyweds and wedding guests. A password protected photo gallery was implemented that allows Chris to upload photos to the site and gives users the option to purchase images directly from the site. Being a small business with limited resources, there was little incentive to implement a full e-commerce operation so the Paypal shopping cart was implemented instead that fulfils the business’ need.

Textile Artists Freewheeling site launches

Friday, January 25th, 2008

Freewheeling is a group of textile artists who have recently teamed up to hold quilting exhibitions around Scotland. They were looking for a site that would allow them to highlight their talents and raise awareness of their abilities.

esspeedee decided to use the open source content management system WordPress due to its simplicity for end users to maintain. Additionally, WordPress provides the flexibility to implement all the functionality that Freewheeling were looking for.

The Coppermine photo gallery solution was implemented to host photos of Freewheeling’s work. This was closely integrated into WordPress and with the addition of Lightbox technologies gives a modern and professional look.

esspeedee produced a clean design that highlights the profiles of the group members and their work. It excels at re-use of content which is essential in creating a “sticky” web site that encourages visitors to remain on the site and click to more pages.

Sharepoint and Handshake

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Working in a large business means there are huge volumes of content stored across a number of disparate systems. Document management, practice management, knowledge management, customer relationship management and internal staff all have their own systems for storing information. Having these separate systems, in a best of breed approach is great, you get the power and functionality of the best system in each category. However, when you need to access this data together it gets time consuming opening up each system individually. (more…)

Content Management System Development

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

I’ve written before about power in the organisation shifting to knowledge. This can be supported by large businesses, but small businesses can still struggle to effectively manage their information. I’ve been developing software aimed primarily at small businesses (less than 100 employees) to help manage firm information easily and effectively. It’s not yet perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction to filling this void in the small business market. (more…)

Glasgow 2014

Friday, November 9th, 2007

Back Scotland's bid for the 2014 Commonwealth Games

Quick guide to using apostrophes

Saturday, May 5th, 2007

ApostropheHaving grown tired of the constant misuse of apostrophes on the internet (my own included!), I decided to put together a few pages on how they should be used properly. So, today I have launched ApostropeGuide.com – How to use the apostrophe correctly. I hope it is of use to some people.

This site also gives me the opportunity to practice what I preach. Apostophes are a suitable niche market that will allow me to test my search marketing skills by building links and authority with the likes of Google, Yahoo and MSN.

ApostropheGuide.com

Are you a small business with no knowledge management processes?

Thursday, May 3rd, 2007

Over the last decade the power has shifted towards a knowledge economy. That’s all very well for large businesses with six or seven figure budgets for knowledge management, but what about the average business of less than 100 employees and without the cash to spend on recording their formal and tacit knowledge? (more…)

Free wifi for all

Monday, November 13th, 2006

More and more there is press coverage about cities providing free wifi access to their citizens. Granted, most are in the US – San Francisco (Google) and Philadelphia (Earthlink) being the most prominent, but slowly free wifi is creeping over to Europe.

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Developing and executing a robust intranet strategy

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

Recently, I was asked to speak at the Ark Group conference title Developing an executing a robust intranet strategy. Having attended a number of Ark Group conferences in the past and been impressed by the quality and insight gained as a result, I was thrilled by the opportunity.

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Basic Search Engine Optimisation

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

There is a lot of coverage in the technical press currently about search engine optimisation and how, by making some simple changes, it can increase traffic to web sites.  But how straight forward is it to make those changes?

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