I was long overdue getting myself a new website, so when Microsoft Office Live emailed me this week to say they were discontinuing the service I have been using for a number of years, and which enabled me to maintain and add to my own website, I decided to get a couple of quotes for someone else to deal with the hassle.
The problem was though that whilst both quotes were fair and reasonable, the time frames involved were something which, as someone who has worked in recruitment marketing and communications for many years, were alien to me. One company said ball park was two weeks, the other a month. Me? I'm used to working to a matter of days, or sometimes even hours. I'm also a bit of a 'once I've decided I want it, I want it now, not tomorrow, or next week or next month' type.
So, (with apologies to the companies I asked to quote), I got in touch with a good friend of mine who is also a web savvy sort, and asked her what she would do if she were me, given that I am a one man band freelancer who just needs a presence, not an award winning, all singing, all dancing website that people have to buy 3-D glasses in order to truly enjoy the experience of visiting it.
Her solution? "Try 'Weebly". "You know your way round a website and how to set stuff up so it should be easy for you". So that's exactly what I did. A nice new domain name (www.alasdairmurraycopy.com - check it out!) that's a bit shorter when having to give it out over the phone (I still haven't forgiven my parents for giving me a forename that has about 100 different spellings) and a site that allows me to tell potential clients a bit about myself, showcase some of my work and, above all, bore you senseless via this blog!
Don't worry though, because I'm a great believer in only blogging when you have something to say that you're passionate about. You won't find me churning out blog after blog after blog just to get myself noticed. You'll only hear from me when I have a bee in my bonnet - and I don't even wear or have a bonnet!
Seriously though, it's nice to have the facility, but I believe the internet's airwaves are severely overcrowded with billions of people now free and able to force their opinion on pretty much everything upon the world. I don't know about you, but often I get a few lines into these endless blogs that on the face of it have an interesting title, only to find myself thinking "you know what, I really can't be arsed to read all of this". Blogs should be about passion or to pass something on that's genuinely insightful or useful. They should I believe, evoke a response (obviously not this one, this is just to say "hello" from my new website and tell you why the change happened) and encourage debate, not simply state someone's opinion - their fifth one this week.
Anyway, that's me done for now. It's Saturday afternoon. I started working on this whole site yesterday afternoon when I set myself the target of having a new site up and running by Monday. It WILL be done!
The problem was though that whilst both quotes were fair and reasonable, the time frames involved were something which, as someone who has worked in recruitment marketing and communications for many years, were alien to me. One company said ball park was two weeks, the other a month. Me? I'm used to working to a matter of days, or sometimes even hours. I'm also a bit of a 'once I've decided I want it, I want it now, not tomorrow, or next week or next month' type.
So, (with apologies to the companies I asked to quote), I got in touch with a good friend of mine who is also a web savvy sort, and asked her what she would do if she were me, given that I am a one man band freelancer who just needs a presence, not an award winning, all singing, all dancing website that people have to buy 3-D glasses in order to truly enjoy the experience of visiting it.
Her solution? "Try 'Weebly". "You know your way round a website and how to set stuff up so it should be easy for you". So that's exactly what I did. A nice new domain name (www.alasdairmurraycopy.com - check it out!) that's a bit shorter when having to give it out over the phone (I still haven't forgiven my parents for giving me a forename that has about 100 different spellings) and a site that allows me to tell potential clients a bit about myself, showcase some of my work and, above all, bore you senseless via this blog!
Don't worry though, because I'm a great believer in only blogging when you have something to say that you're passionate about. You won't find me churning out blog after blog after blog just to get myself noticed. You'll only hear from me when I have a bee in my bonnet - and I don't even wear or have a bonnet!
Seriously though, it's nice to have the facility, but I believe the internet's airwaves are severely overcrowded with billions of people now free and able to force their opinion on pretty much everything upon the world. I don't know about you, but often I get a few lines into these endless blogs that on the face of it have an interesting title, only to find myself thinking "you know what, I really can't be arsed to read all of this". Blogs should be about passion or to pass something on that's genuinely insightful or useful. They should I believe, evoke a response (obviously not this one, this is just to say "hello" from my new website and tell you why the change happened) and encourage debate, not simply state someone's opinion - their fifth one this week.
Anyway, that's me done for now. It's Saturday afternoon. I started working on this whole site yesterday afternoon when I set myself the target of having a new site up and running by Monday. It WILL be done!
RSS Feed
