Author: Jamie Marsland

WordPress – For publishing all kinds of websites, from simple blogs and complex content management systems, to e-commerce websites. Has a huge development community and thousands of plugins that extend functionality. Firebug – Firebug lets you inspect and edit CSS and HTML in your web pages. Adobe Photoshop – Still the best image manipulation software…

We have now confirmed our first London WordPress training course will run on the 9th May.  Spaces are limited and our courses sell out quickly.  You can find more information and booking details here.

Our 8th March WordPress training course has now sold out 🙂 The next WordPress training course takes place in Cheltenham on the 4th April. More details can be found here. We are also close to finalising a date in May for a London training course.  This will be announced next week.

Last year we launched www.leckhamptononline.co.uk. Leckhampton is a small area of Cheltenham that is home to 5000 residents. 7 months since launching, leckhamptonOnline now reaches a quarter of all Leckhampton residents and is growing 15% every month. Here are 7 lessons that we have learnt so far. As ever it would be great to hear…

Poor internal communication is a common complaint in most organisations. In my previous company I was determined that communication should be two way. I am a strong believer that teams work best when everyone is engaged and all team members feel they can contribute. It was a small team comprising of 25 people but staff…

For those of you interested in having a ‘hands on’ play with WordPress and Buddypress I have set up a sandbox site at www.projectpress.co.uk. Buddypress is a social networking layer built on top of WordPress. You can either login as admin or as an end user. Please feel free to install plugins, change settings, write…

Our 1 day WordPress course will give you the knowledge and tools to manage and run a great WordPress website. To book call 07909 449 617, email jamiemarsland@pootlepress.co.uk or use the booking form at the bottom of this page. Cost is £85 per person Next course 8th March 10am – 4pm Location Cheltenham, Gloucestershire WordPress…

[box type=”tick” border=”full”]These are the 5 things I make sure I do every time I set up a new WordPress website.[/box] 1) Make sure you are running the latest version of WordPress Often when you use web hosting companies to install WordPress they don’t run the latest version. It’s important to make sure you are…

This year I launched the fundraising site www.dareboy.co.uk and the analytics show that social media outperformed the local press in driving visitor numbers. The site has been a big success and has helped me raise £3,783.46 so far. The graphic below shows a comparison between the day my social media marketing campaign kicked off, versus…

So it looks like Google will buy Groupon for approx $6 billion. Groupon is a really clever business and I’ve pulled out 4 things they did well that can be applied to communication and engagement projects. As ever feedback, questions, debate and disagreement most welcome. jamie @pootlepress Update 05/12/2010 : Since writing this post Groupon…

1) WordPress is free WordPress is free and open source. You can download it from  www.wordpress.org and install it on a server of your choice (or even on your own PC). Having 100% control of the ‘terms and conditions’ of your communications platform is incredibly important but is often overlooked.  As users of hosted providers…

Over the next 3 months I will be blogging about how I use WordPress and Buddypress to create online communities. I will share tips and lessons that I have learnt whilst using  WordPress in the wild. I will be covering the following topics but please let me know if there are any other areas you…