The Moot Hall

The Moot Hall in Maldon, Essex, is a Grade One listed building in the heart of this historic maritime Town. The building dates from the early 15th Century when it was built as a mansion for the local gentry, howeve,  it has been central to life in the town from the mid-16th Century, having been a jail, police station, court house and council chambers. It is now run by the Friends of the Moot Hall and guided tours are available at weekends, but because the building is so ancient, there isn’t any access to most of the building for disabled people. So we created a virtual tour of this magnificent building to enable less abled people to view it.

The Moot Hall now has a license for weddings and civil partnerships, so if you are looking for somewhere rather special to get married in Maldon, you can now take a look around the building using the virtual tour from the comfort of your own computer..

Virtual tours are a simple way of showing a building off to your website visitors, perfect for wedding venues, hotels, stately homes, museums and sports centres.

If you would like any more information about our virtual tours service – get in touch via the contact page

So what’s the big deal about C3?

Here’s the video from CES 2011 showing what this software can do – coming to an iPad near you soon perhaps?

Boing Boing, the world famous “interesting links site,” have just updated their website CMS (content management system) to WordPress.  Boing Boing started life as a magazine in 1988 and made it’sbut as a website in 1995.  In 2000, the site was redesigned after one of the founders discovered the Blogger software. A further redesign in 2007 saw the introduction of comments to the site and now WordPress has become the platform of choice.

WordPress was first release by Matt Mullenweg  in 2003 as a simple blogging tool, it has now become one of the most popular Content Management Systems in the world – according to Alexa, WordPress powers around 14% of the world’s top 1 million websites.

Why WordPress?

There are many factors that have contributed to the success of WordPress.

• The system is open source, meaning developers can write additional programs to enhance the system’s core functionality.
• The interface has been designed with non-technical people in mind, so it’s easy for anyone to learn how to update and maintain their own website.
• The software is scalable – you can use it to power a simple blog or with some customisation, WordPress can power a corporate website,  an e-commerce shop, a portfolio for a photographer or an estate agent’s website with full property listing functionality and so on.
• There’s free templates available to download and although knowledge of  HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP is necessary to build a bespoke design from scratch, once the theme is built or installed, users will only have to concern themselves with the content of the site and the layout of pages.
• SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – The structure of WordPress is very search engine friendly and with a few enhancements, you can optimise your website to achieve great search engine results.

Who is using it?

The site you are reading right now is proudly powered by WordPress and below are links to some well known brands with sites and blogs built on it.

WordPress Development..

I have been developing sites using WordPress for over 4 years and have seen this popular blogging engine develop into “The Facebook of Content Management Systems!!” - or just a rather neat, open source platform that meets the needs of burgeoning businesses in the 21st century.

If you are interested in what WordPress could do for your site, you can get in touch at the contact page – we love new ideas.

I am based on the East Coast of Essex but I get to work all over the world from here!

Websites no longer reside in the “nice to have” category for modern businesses. The web has matured to become an entirely new marketplace and if you don’t have a well-presented market stall, your organisation could be seriously disadvantaged.

This new marketplace is still full of the chatter familiar to more traditional markets but there is one major difference – the chattering voices are heard globally, which is wonderful if your customers are saying good things about you but can be disastrous if not.

Successful modern websites are no longer merely market stalls listing services or products your company sells – they can be places for discussion, support, collaboration and fun. Everything else being equal, consumers are more likely to purchase an item from the local market trader if he has some interesting banter, answers your questions comprehensively and helps you to get the most from your purchase – rather than some monolithic organisation that offers nothing more than a price tag and standard answers delivered in that dreary drawl of corporate speak.

New and Improved!

Facebook recently announced they now have over 500 million users globally;  for every person living in the UK there are ten Facebook users worldwide – one website, lots of chatter! Social networking is a relatively new phenomenon for most people; the ability to have your voice heard by so many is psychologically very appealing but listening is equally rewarding. With applications such as Facebook and Twitter it’s easy for individuals to find like-minded people and join in with their discussions, share their knowledge and opinions – be it about their favourite football club, what they had for dinner last night or how terrible your company or product is.

Bite Back

Two years ago David Carroll, a Canadian singer discovered the baggage handlers from United Airlines had damaged his guitar and so naturally put a claim in for it.  The result was that the airline refused to pay any compensation and were less than courteous during the customer service process, so he decided to make a song about his experience and post it on You Tube, where you can now buy the MP3 of Dave’s song, United Breaks Guitars.

Within three days of Dave uploading his video, the song was watched by half a million viewers;  after two months the video had been seen by over 3 million people and a year later that figure is now around 9 million. It has been written about on news sites and blogs and people are still sending emails to each other with links to the song. Of course, the whole affair was a disaster for United Airlines and I’m sure they now have some form of social media monitoring service up and running (probably the best that money can buy) and a more robust complaint management protocol to boot. You can read the full story in Dave’s own words here.

Join the Discussion

Many large organisations are now acutely aware and reasonably paranoid of PR car crashes such as the United Airlines story. These corporate companies will be employing social media consultants and specialist PR companies to help manage the online discourse while listening out for the negatives. The networked society is not something to be frightened of;  as long as you are aware of the pitfalls and possibilities and use it correctly, the network will become a sort of extension of your organisation. This is all very good and reasonably simple for large organisations that can afford to employ specialists to guide them through the digital labyrinth, but for smaller organisations, most will not have the time, skills or knowledge to engage the Facebook generation beyond setting up a company Facebook page or an underused Twitter account.

Help is at Hand

Thankfully, there is an array of business tools designed to help companies navigate this new marketplace and to get the most out of it too. In the past, I have worked with a number of organisations who initially weren’t keen on embracing these tools; however when integrated into the daily routine the benefits become rapidly apparent and adopted almost overnight. Technologies such as RSS enable specified information to come to you, so rather than visiting several websites looking for updates, the updates are delivered to your inbox as soon as they go live.

Google news alerts work in similar way allowing you to stay informed about any subject, very simple to set up, highly configurable and can save your organisation huge amounts of time on research, staying up to date with industry news and as a media monitoring tool for watching the blogs.

And with the ever pervasive smart phones, the convergence of this information straight to your handset will keep you in the loop while you’re on the move.

There are hundreds of other useful, often free tools which can have a positive impact on your organisation’s productivity – if you would like more information or to discuss any of the topics above, I’d  be more than happy to hear from you.

Professional Web Services.

I have over 12 years experience in working with the web and provide digital project management services, web design and development, digital marketing consultancy including SEO and social media strategies and can provide graphic design,  photography and 3D CGI services. I’m based on the Essex Coast and work with companies in London and surrounding areas.

Say hello via the contact page

In addition to the visualisation services, I was involved in the delivery of a number of microsites, for larger housing developments,  a job aggregation service to delivery geo-located jobs to specific websites and the delivery of TVHA’s Homebuy4u website..

http://www.homebuy4u.co.uk

Over time I worked on many other projects with several local authorities, housing associations and private companies including, The Institue of Contemporary Arts, Vince Power Music Group, Orbit Housing, Accent Peerless, Moat, Swan Housing, TVHA, East End Homes,  London Boroughs of Camden, Islington, Hackney, Merton, Southwark, City of London and Enfield.

I was commissioned to build an e-commerce website to handle the online sales of their funky cosmetics range. The site was built on a content management system enabling the directors to maintain their own site and e-shop from the admin section. On site training was provided and the team are now confidently managing the site.

Nature’s Finest Cosmetics Website

Nature’s Finest Cosmetics Photography