Over the coming three weeks, I’ll be running three evening seminars at the Dorset Centre for the Creative Arts, based in Poundbury. Each of the seminars is designed to give small creative business owners and writers a better understanding about how they can use the power of the web to promote themselves and their work.
wordpress
The amazing WordPress store
Once upon a time there was a man who had a secret recipe that turned chicken into the best meal in the world. Despite his ability to make chicken taste so wonderful that people salivated at the mere mention of his name, he had yet to earn a penny.
Which flavour do you prefer? WordPress.com or WordPress.org
WordPress is the ice-cream of website development software with two different flavours to choose from. The vanilla, if you like is the free and hosted version you’ll find at wordpress.com (like this particular blog); the strawberry is the self hosted version you download and host yourself that you can pick up for … well … nothing … at wordpress.org.
Over the last couple of months I’ve noticed a number of my compatriots with popular blogs moving away from WordPress.com in order to have more ‘freedom’ on their self hosted WordPress website. And, I’ve wanted to scream … “NOOOOOOO, stop and think about this first”.
The Business Case for WordPress
I was sent an email earlier this week about an intensive weekend workshop I’m running with a colleague (Steve Graham) on installing, setting up, using and maintaining WordPress software. The email said “Thanks for this. Seems a good thorough programme – certainly we’re interested, however we aren’t sure what the business benefits of wordpress are?“.
The perfect set of widgets
I’ve been playing again. Playing with widgets that is. I know what you must be thinking, but I am perfectly sane and normal, really 🙂 please believe me.
Let’s get a website!
Many small businesses fall into one of three camps when it comes to their own online piece of real estate; they have either had a son, sister or friend build a site as a favour; they might have bought something like Front Page and tried to do it themselves or they have paid a web design company to do it for them – and then continue paying every time they want to update something.
The almost instant website
There are many reasons why a business might decide that they need to have their own website, for instance:-