Web site maintenance, website management and web consulting services

After trying to get listed on CSSmania for about 6 months, and I’ve finally made it!

If you’re visiting from CSSmania, enjoy your 2 seconds on my site. If don’t know what CSSmania is, it’s a showcase of websites built using (almost in my case) valid XHTML/CSS. Some of the world’s best designs are featured on the site, so it’s definitely worth a visit if you’re planning a new website for your business.

I don’t think that a CSSmania listing is quite as spectacular as it was a couple of years ago, but it’s still nice to see that my work is good enough to be featured.

Incidentally, my site is running a modified version of the VibrantCMS theme by Woothemes, so they deserve a lot of the credit for it. Thanks guys.

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The WordPress.com free blogging platform is a great tool for people wanting to start a personal blog, but for someone serious about making money online  the WordPress.com offering isn’t going to work.

The developers of WordPress  made a decision (and a good decision it was) that people running WordPress.com blogs would not be able to advertise on their sites, add pay-per-post content or do anything else that could monetize the blog in any way.

Kind of restrictive isn’t it? But here’s the thing. WordPress.org, the self-hosted WordPress platform that most professional bloggers, and a growing number of companies, use to run their websites lets you do anything you want, and I mean anything.

How your own WordPress site benefits you

The immediate benefits of having your own self-hosted WordPress website are:

• You control your account. Nobody can pull the plug on you.
• Your content is yours forever. While it’s highly unlikely WordPress.com disappears in a puff of smoke, if it did, your blog’s content would go with it.
• You can advertise whatever you want.
• You don’t have to operate as a subdomain of Wordpress. Simply register your own domain. It takes a few minutes and costs next to nothing.
• You can make changes to your blog’s structure if you’re feeling adventurous, or hire a coder to make changes for you.
• Fully hosted WordPress sites can be made more search engine friendly than their WordPress.com counterparts.

Setting up WordPress is not expensive

The crazy thing about the self-hosted WordPress package that I never understand is that it’s so cheap to setup and host. For example, I charge a measly £50 (about $85 depending on the exchange rate) to:

1. Register a .com or .co.uk domain (for 2 years)
2. Host your WordPress site for 12-months (including email and all the other technical stuff you need) on US or UK servers.
3. Import your WordPress.com content to the new site
4. Set up WordPress with the plugins/widgets you need and any one of the hundreds of free WordPress themes available
5. Set up a Google Analytics account on your blog to allow you to track visitors
6. Upgrade to the latest stable version of WordPress when releases become available
7. Provide technical support when you need it

Considering the freedom (and professionalism) this provides, even the smallest of microbusinesses could afford this.

So if you’re on WordPress.com and you’d like to change to something a lot more flexible, please get in touch. I’d love to help you out.

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There’s a recession on it’s way and I’ve decided not to take part. I have enough problems in my life without having to worry about the economy. So I’m recession-proofing my website, which is something you should try too. I suggest the following anti-recession website marketing strategies:

1. Increase spending

If you’re like a lot of small business owners, tough economic times are an excuse to cut marketing budgets to the bone. Don’t be tempted to do this. Recently I increased my Google Adwords budget by 100% to make sure I generate more than enough sales leads going forward.

I would consider spending budget on:

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