Wordpress - it's not as expensive as you think

A while back I was having a discussion with an acquaintance who ran the North Walsham Garden Centre in Norfolk. He expressed an interest in having his current website redesigned and was fed up with having to go to his current developer to do even tiny text amends to his site.

I suggested he consider Wordpress, as this offers the user a great level of content management, is well supported in the industry and with its inbuilt SEO tools is great for Google. His concern was the potential cost - but then isn't every client concerned with the cost?

I reviewed his current site, which had been neglected over the preceding years for a variety of reasons and now was visually getting left behind by his competition. I decided that I could certainly build him a new site using Wordpress as a CMS platform.

The design, like the final site structure, was kept very simple and clean while presenting all the information that the client wanted in an informative manner. It may not be the most technically advanced website ever built - it didn't have to be! Do not assume that Wordpress means complicated and expensive, that's not the case. It can be as complicated or as simple as the brief demands.

The website is performing very well and the client is very happy and, apart from a bit of periodic Wordpress maintenance on my part, the client updates the content themselves.

Why you should consider using Wordpress as your websites' CMS platform instead of a 'bespoke CMS platform'

I hate it when I hear 'bespoke cms', it's a word that should give companies and individuals looking for a new website designer a sense of foreboding and dread. What it means is that in 2, 3 or 5 years down the road when you want to move your website or have someone else manage it for you, you'll have to start from scratch again, as 'bespoke' generally means 'not portable', or in the slim instances where is is portable you then have the added stress of finding a competent programmer who can decipher the original programmers code and work with it. There's the added grip of not having the latest plugins or features seemingly available to your completion in the marketplace.

I love Wordpress! There, I've said it out loud and proud. Wordpress, in my opinion, is one of the best open source content management systems and website frameworks out there today. It's relatively easy to design and build with, it's open-source, widely supported and portable. It allows both web designers, web developers and the end user to create and maintain a site that performs well, can be responsive and adaptable to the end users needs. Over 30% of the worlds' websites are built using Wordpress and it's increasing all the time.

Some people say Wordpress sites all look the same. Not true. This is where us web designers and developers come into our own. The idea is that Wordpress isn't a constraint to design but the framework - and with clever thinking, great design and a structured approach you can create a website that is both functional and graphically stimulating and more importantly different to other sites sharing off the shelf templates.

I recently designed the www.hawkins-solicitors.com website. They required a website that portrayed their professional but friendly approach to their legal services and also offered them the ability to add, edit and delete pages, update the site with additional news, service pages and staff bios - something that their current 'bespoke cms' didn't allow them to do without incurring additional charges from their current host.

Using Wordpress allowed me to open up their website to them allowing them as much control as they wanted over the content. I used custom post types to manage staff biographies and services, Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugins to create custom page areas and features and flexible templates to create a site that certainly doesn't look like your standard Wordpress 'blog' layout and creates a professional, corporate website with expansive cms-managed content. Integrated with Google Analytics and Code Guard (for automated back-ups it delivers the full package! A bonus with Wordpress is that it's relatively easy to refresh the site branding / theme at a later date.

I firmly believe in creating websites that give content control back to the end user - should they wish to use it. I also advocate that the client (with my help) sets up their own hosting account and Google analytics account.  Far too many times have I had clients say they don't have access to this element or that service. By giving the client all their own accounts it just makes what I do simpler and they have peace of mind that, should they ever need to, moving their account or changing their web designer will be much more straight forward.

Seajacks Zaratan illustration work

Final Illustration for Seajacks Zaratan vessel

One of three illustrations I did for Seajacks. A character/mascot for use on literature, clothing and on the Seajacks Zaratan vessel itself.

To find out more about me visit www.paulkirk-illustration.co.uk
To find out more about Seajacks Zaratan visit www.seajacks.com/zaratan.php

French Waiter character illustrations

I recently did some rather fun visuals of a character that had been nicknamed 'Happiere' - he's a French waiter that was to be used to promote travel to France for one of our clients. As the job has not been picked up I'm unable to say more for confidentiality reasons.

Original concept for the French waiter



The waiter was required in a variety of poses to be used on print, web and point of sale. He was a fun character which I hope comes across in the following sketches. These are purely black and White but would have been developed to include colour later on in the project. I started these using my favourite medium - a blue leaded pump pencil which I then inked in and then scanned into digital files so the designer could manipulate the various elements of the sketches, such as forced perspective.




Anyway I hope you like them.

A few helpful website optimisation and analytical tools

Your website nowadays is probably one of the most valuable real-estate that you as an individual or company owns. The development of the web and it's accessibility on a variety of different platforms and devices combined with the explosion of social media means that you have to work that little bit more clever than you used to.

A website isn't just a site that's built and forgotten about, it's a sales tool that needs to be kept fresh, optimized and promoted using a variety of channels available to you. When you commission a website you have to think long term - it's cheaper than a brochure but it carries your 'brand' to the outside world so it's important that your site is as optimised and integrated into everything else you do effectively and you don't get worried if your web programmer/designer wants to review your site in 3 months. This is normal, in the digital world trends change daily and a 'review' is a good time to see what pages/content are performing well and what's not and to then adjust elements accordingly.

Here's a few pointers on website builds and third party integration

• Make sure your 'on-page' content and tags are fully optimised for the topic or service that page is promoting. Web copy is not the same as brochure copy. It's important that you develop your content using the 'keywords' you want to drive traffic to your site/page for. Web copy should be much shorter in length - people scan websites, so grabbing their attention quickly is vital
• Make sure the site is using clean coding practices and the programmer is adding key metadata to your site.
• All images should have 'alt' tags and 'title' tags used accordingly to aid usability.
• Place a contact form or email sign-up form to  collect users who are interested in any email campaign you might send. WuFoo offers excellent integration with Mailchimp to make data gathering and broadcasting as simple as possible.
• Once live, submit your site to the leading search engines, local directories and put yourself on the map - using Google Maps. Also ask your programmer to use Google's Webmaster tools to create a sitemap and validate the site.
• Ensure your site has Google Analytics installed and that you have access to the monthly reports
• If you're a new business consider starting a Google Adwords campaign (remember to integrate to your Analytics account) to help promote your company. Google often offers £30 or even £50 starter amounts for news businesses or individuals starting their first Adwords campaign
• Place a contact form or email sign-up form on your site to collect users who are interested in any email campaign you might send. WuFoo offers excellent integration with Mailchimp to make data gathering and broadcasting as simple as possible.
• Consider creating an amazon associates account so you can strategically promote either your own media or media that you would recommend your followers, - you even get a small percentage of every sale that's made through your unique link.
• Start a Twitter account and feed this into the site. It could be a good way of offering 'web -only' offers or promoting your service(s). It's important to have a social media strategy in place as without this you could be jumping the gun and not having clearly defined goals with which to evaluate your social media push. If you're running twitter consider an analytical tool to help you evaluate it's impact - I recommend Crowdbooster, and at a basic level it's free! To schedule your tweets try Tweetdeck.

These are just a few of the points to consider and are by no means all encompassing but hopefully they give the un-initiated a few things to bear in mind.

If you're interested in my digital work take a look here: http://bit.ly/nMYOow

Here's some of the useful resources I've mentioned:
http://crowdbooster.com/
http://www.adwords.google.com/
http://wufoo.com/
http://www.mailchimp.com
http://www.tweetdeck.com/
http://www.twitter.com/

Cooking on gas! My latest website

Website design and build for Simon Morris - a gas safety, servicing and installation specialist

It's been a busy couple of months and I'm pleased to say that the website for Simon Morris - a local Norwich based gas safety, servicing and installation specialist has been performing really well. His smgassafe.co.uk website might be small but it's been carefully optimised to give him a great online presence.

View the site at http://www.smgassafe.co.uk

Google Analytics Blog: What’s happening on your site right now?

Google Analytics Blog: What’s happening on your site right now?: The web is getting faster, and not just the speed of the pages, but also the speed of change. Before, it was fine to build a website and mod...

An interview with Meg Park on character design

A great insightful interview with Meg Park on character design - MEG PARK INTERVIEW: BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE CHARACTER DESIGN BLOG

Samphire Coast book signing in Holt

Me with Robert Greenfield (right) author of Samphire Coast at The Holt Bookshop

On Saturday I spent the morning in the lovely Norfolk town of Holt at the book signing of Robert Greenfield's first book 'Samphire Coast' which I was lucky to have been asked to illustrate the cover and some b&w chapter inserts. It was the first time we had met in person as the entire project was run via email apart from the initial phone call when Robert introduced himself.

I admit to being a bit nervous and excited at the same time to see the book in print for the first time and to meet Robert.

The Holt Bookshop

The Holt Bookshop is situated in the lovely Appleyard Court and is your typical friendly town bookshop. You instantly felt relaxed walking in and it's a lovely shop to browse. Robert was set up on the left as you walked in - he was obviously enjoying the morning and he was surrounded by the prized copies of his book. I walked up and it was funny as he didn't initially recognise me but when I explained who I was he instantly got up and gave me a handshake and hug. We talked for a while (I was lucky as it was early) and he enthusiastically explained to me that the book is doing really well and that he's hoping to get more reviews on it by the local and national press - apparently he's also getting praise for my illustration work. Robert is a really great chap and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting him, it was just a shame that Michael and Barnaby weren't there as well.

Note: I've heard from Robert since Saturday that the book signing in Holt broke all records for the store and they instantly sold out of their copies at which point Robert had to leave some of his, so they would actually have some in store! If that's not a good enough reason to go and buy a copy yourself then what is?

To find out more about Robert Greenfield the author of Samphire Coast, which features my illustration work go to http://bit.ly/qU70OO

To order your copy of Samphire Coast by Robert Greenfield click here http://amzn.to/oc6DKs

Hacking out with Pakefield Riding School

Pakefield Riding school website design

The Pakefield Riding School website that I designed and built is now live. My brief was to completely revamp the site visually and integrate social media into the site content. This included expanding on their existing photo and text content and structure their key information in an easily navigated structure.

As with any website the work is ongoing and it's hoped to add further content to the site soon and send out their first email broadcast.

You can view the site at http://www.pakefieldridingschool.co.uk

A trip to the 'Samphire Coast'

'Samphire Coast' by Robert Greenfield

 I've had the privilege this year to have been commissioned by Robert Greenfield to produce the cover illustration and inset chapter illustrations for his first book 'Samphire Coast' which is published this week by Pegasus Elliot Mackenzie Ltd/Vanguard Imprint.

'Samphire Coast' tells the story of Robert and his partner, Michael (former top London hairdresser to the stars) risk-all for a no-going-back escape from North London bohemia - embarking on a new life in a rural backwater: owning and running a much-publicized boutique B&B establishment on the uber-hip North Norfolk Coast: aka Chelsea-on-Sea.

My involvement in this project all started with a phone call out of the blue one Saturday afternoon from Robert, who'd been recommended me by a mutual friend David Hobart. Usually I don't make instant decisions on these type of projects but Robert was so passionate and eloquent about his story that I'd almost imagined the cover in my head at that moment.

The sketch that started it all

That afternoon I sketched out an idea and sent it Robert and so began our journey on developing the sketch into the final wraparound cover illustration.

Like any illustration it evolved over the time I worked on it, both myself and Robert tried a variety of compositional 'tweaks' and even developed an alternative cover. Robert provided me with an extensive collection of photo references of himself, Michael and Barnaby - to date, we've never actually met, but through those photos and our emails I felt I really got to know them and I hope that I've done justice to the vision he had.

I started this illustration like all my others - on a sketchpad. From there I then worked on individual sections until we were happy with them. Once inked in they were scanned in and composited digitally in Adobe Photoshop onto separate layers to enable subtle changes/tweaks to be made even once digital colouring had commenced. I find this way of working best for me as it offers me the flexibility to fine tune and hopefully produce a piece of illustration work that really hits the mark.

To see more of my illustration work check out my website at www.paulkirk-illustration.co.uk

Samphire Coast by Robert Greenfield is published by Pegasus Elliot Mackenzie Ltd/Vanguard Imprint on 15th September and will be available in Waterstone's, Amazon and other local bookshops.

Order your copy of 'Samphire Coast' by clicking the link below:

My tech geek like iPhone favourites

So who's not got an iPhone yet? Did you justify it to your other half as 'a useful business tool' or did you just fes' up and admit it's a pre-requisite tech geek purchase.

Now you've got your iPhone what apps are you going to download. I admit to being very selective over my app purchases. I don't succumb to impulse downloading the latest free app that you use once and then never revisit - I evaluate, read fellow apple followers reviews and ponder the question 'do i really need this? Will it enrich my life?" - Although I don't feel I can truly justify my 'FallingFred' purchase.

I must admit having an iPhone/iPad has unchained me from my desktop bound Mac. I now have the freedom to create and edit a variety of documents on the go and with the advent of iCloud in September/October this year will only enhance and synchronise this workflow even further. I've even fully embraced social media like twitter, tumblr, facebook and the like.

Below are my personal top 5 favourites (in no particular order):

1. Dropbox

A fantastic cloud based service that can auto sync folders and files between multiple platforms. It even includes built-in readers for PDFs and Microsoft Office files.

2. Evernote

This is similar to dropbox in that it lets you save data and syncs across all your gadgets. Great note taking or code snippet cataloging tool.

3. Analytics App

In light of the fact that Google hasn't to date released an official Analytics app this is by far the best option I've found.

4. Twitter

Need I say more!

5. Instagram

I use this for uploading any photos i take to post on to my social media.

Obviously there's a whole host of other apps I could have mentioned like Plain Text, Wordpress, Skype, Zapd etc the list could be endless and like everyone its all down to personal preference.

I realise that not everyone has an iPhone or even wants one, and this might be for a variety of reasons - they're too expensive, they don't have a desktop mac/pc to sync to etc. Hopefully though with the launch of iCloud which doesn't tie the device to a desktop mac/pc and the rumoured advent of a cheaper stripped down iPhone coming out later this year this should open up the platform to even more users. Until then as the current apple iPhone ad says "If you don't have a iPhone... [insert your own conclusion here].

‘In the Drink’ boardgame design

A while back I was given the opportunity, at Turton Middleton, to come up with a visual style and then produce all the design and illustrative elements for a new golf related drinking game entitled ‘In the Drink’ by JR Sports.

This involved designing the board, rulebook, cards etc - in fact everything that came with the game, including the box! This was a marvelously exciting job for me as it was the first time I had designed graphics for a board game, although it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

To begin with I researched the market that the gaming product was going into and then started to sketch out concepts. From this I developed these up into full size scamps and trailed the game on my work colleagues (minus the drink). These were then worked up as line art drawings and coloured up in Freehand, before being sent to the client for printing.

‘Coneman’ mascot illustration development

I recently completed the second illustration in an ongoing series for TREK Highway Services based in Norfolk. I was commissioned to design the ‘Coneman’ mascot for the company to promote their delivery of health, safety and the environmental policies - CONE: Cutting Out Needless Exposure.

In this instance, the company’s CONE mascot is shown wearing protective clothing and chainsaw.
The character was scamped, inked in and then scanned and coloured using Freehand MX and will be used on the company’s internal literature.

Newbie!

Well this is my first blog. Hopefully it will be somewhere where you can all see what i'm up to, share my thoughts and ideas on a whole range of topics.

I hope you will all keep visiting.