Martin Dower
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Posts by Martin Dower
We’re growing = we’re hiring
We are a pretty disruptive digital agency, focussed on delivering high-end digital solutions based around the WordPress platform. We’re also growing pretty quickly and we need help supporting and delivering digital stuff for our ever-expanding client base. We are based in the UK – Yorkshire and London, but location of folks is irrelevant, due to […]
A quick guide to virtual support teams
We’ve been largely a virtualised business since we founded in 1996 – in fact, when we started we had just 3 employees and those were located at the opposite ends of the country. Our next two hires were also remote, so we’ve probably got more experience than most in running virtualised teams. However, we viewed […]
Twitter Bootstrap : LESS is more
The adoption of Twitter Bootstrap as a fast and consistent development environment is the stuff of legends. Before Bootstrap, various libraries were used for interface development, which led to inconsistencies and a high maintenance burden. In simple terms, web-sites were expensive and time-consuming to develop whilst exhibiting huge inconsistencies. Brought to life by Mark Otto […]
October Support Review
October proved to be a little busier than predicted. The team solved 241 tickets, up two thirds from Sep and 3 times the level we solved in August. This is not a surprise and really just tracks the growth in the business over the last quarter. The higher level of tickets placed a greater strain […]
Google adds custom URLs for corporate pages
Google have eventually widened its rollout of custom URLs. Instead of profiles being identified by a randomly assigned and impossibly long number string, the new batch of URL receivers are able to switch their profiles over to a simple name based on the actual name of the page. Our own Google+ page, for example, can […]
VNX 4.2 (Senna) in final beta
The next version of our curated digital framework, VNX, is in final testing. Named after a great racing driver, Ayrton Senna, who was tragically killed at Imola in 1994 and the last F1 pilot to lose his life on track. 4.2 is planned to roll out over the next month, automatically. Big changes include: Updated […]
Protected: October21
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WordPress 3.7 release candidate is out
WordPress 3.7 is due for release in the next 2 weeks, and if you’re feeling brave you can get early access to the release candidate. We’ll be rolling out the update onto WPE & Amazon AWS hosted clients over the next month as part of current support contracts. Clients on legacy, or client-contracted hosting will […]
Office Not Required : the location independent generation
David Heinemeier Hansson & Jason Fried – Founders of 37Signals Back in 2010, we asked ourselves a very important question: “Where did we want to work?“ The answer started us on the road to true location-independent working. We got there in 2012. What this means is a totally flexible approach to work, based on what […]
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You can have your cake … and the icing
Mobile as a trojan horse The drive to go mobile will be well understood across your business, from chairman down. The expensive legacy platform issues won’t, though. When you embark on the Mobile Journey, you start from the irreducible core and usefully that can sweep away lots of old platforms and applications. Do you still […]
Web forms: The basics
It’s easy, in our new and exciting responsive design world to get carried away with making the site look sexy on all devices. Yes, it’s important to base your site design on a mobile-first approach but please don’t forget about your forms and calls-to-action. After all, they fundamentally pay your salary so maybe we should […]
Official (and proud) Sponsors of WordCamp London
WordCamp is a global series of conferences that focuses on WordPress, the world’s leading digital CMS framework – the core platform that underpins our curated digital framework, VNX. We are proud and pleased to be official sponsors for the first WordCamp London event, on November 23rd & 24th 2013. WordCamps are informal, community-organised events that […]
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PayPal : Simplifying business payments
We now officially take PayPal. No, we’re not moving into selling second-hand tat or magazine subscriptions. We feel it’s important to give our clients the widest range of payment choice and that should not be restricted to paying by bank transfer only. What’s next? Bitcoin? We’ve been huge fans of PayPal and their trust approach […]
Special Offer: HALF PRICE mobile review
Your customers are already mobile. Are you? We believe to design and deploy for mobile should put the needs of mobile users at the heart of the process. Just because you can view your website on a mobile phone doesn’t mean it’s mobile-friendly. We understand mobile is more than just size of screen, it’s as much […]
Telecommunication migration (aka new phone system)
NEW NUMBER : 020 3468 2150 We are pleased to have completed the migration to our new telephone system, it’s only the second change in 17 years so not too shabby really. The 3 big differences you’ll see are: Change in our main telephone number, to 020 3468 2150 Addition of an automated attendant (IVR) Removal […]
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September Support Review
Client Services is one of the four key cornerstones of our business (the others being Innovation, Deployment and Communication). We live and die on our reputation of providing first-class client solutions and key to delivering this is a can-do attitude to fixing problems and providing first-class solutions. Since January this year we’ve dealt with nearly […]
Using a tablet for business : iPad Mini vs Nexus 7
By Martin Dower Before I start the review, I’d thought I’d better point out that I am an Applephile; I extensively use their products at home and at work including a MacAir for portable work, a MacBook Pro for static work, iPhone 5 as a phone and data-tethering and an assorted selection including iMac, Apple […]
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Picking the pace up : The need for speed
By Martin Dower There are three main driving forces surround web-site speed optimisation. Google rewards faster load times The explosion of mobile = slower download rates (sometimes) The user experience Compared to todays normal broadband speed of 8000k, the early days of the web so access speeds around 30k. As a result, in the late […]
Are you ignoring mobile search? [infographic]
In a world of thirds, your organisation cannot afford to ignore mobile search. Tablets and Mobile volume is expected to grow from today’s 500 million to over 800 million units by 2017. This year the number of mobile devices will exceed the world’s population, comfortably. 21% of smartphone users would rather give up TV 65% […]
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