The website was old fashioned, badly laid out, had slow loading images, didn’t portray the quality of the club and its massive success, and the business owner was not enjoying adding updates or promoting it. So we had a meeting and started planning the improvements.

As you would expect, the revamped site’s function is to quickly give details of forthcoming shows but we also wanted to include everything that people would want to know – how to get tickets, directions, who’s played there before, what the club is like, etc.

The main objective was to truly represent the club’s popularity and success with a high quality website, the way it was before did not do the club justice at all – you would never have believed the shows are always packed out.

We designed the new website to help ensure the shows are always sold out and to help the Stroke Club progress to putting on more than one show a month.

We focused on the design from a function view point rather than a certain look – it had to be fast loading, easy to use and navigate, but also simple to update and have a system for managing show dates and supplying them as RSS feeds to subscriber’s emails.

We optimised the site code and content for search engines and added buttons for people to add it to favourites, Facebook,  Twitter, etc, and designed a crisp new logo with a showbiz feel.

Ken Jenkins the club manager is now proud to talk about and promote his website unlike before the revamp, and the task of convincing some of the best London-based comedians to take the long road to Lichfield is easier now, with greater confidence that it’s both a professionally managed club and it will be packed out.

We also manage the site’s content on an ongoing basis – updating the show details and photos – so life is a lot easier for Ken now – he just books the acts and we update the website.

“Roxbourne were very helpful and imaginative in designing the perfect website to meet my needs. Their knowledge and advice was invaluable and they also provide excellent support. I have no hesitation in recommending them.”
- Ken Jenkins – The Stroke Comedy Club, Lichfield

What we could do for your website…

In other words – Wake Up Your Website will get your site more attention, enquiries and sales – we’ll turn it into a modern, hard working 24/7 marketing machine for your business.

Find out more about our website overhaul and promotion service “Wake Up Your Website“

Before:

After:

Thanks to the work of hundreds of contributors to WordPress, plug-ins can address a lot of these drawbacks.

So here is a top ten list of some of the ones we use. No doubt we’ll do a part two to this post if it’s useful to anyone!

1. Customising The “Read More” Tag.

A small problem I faced was when someone clicked “More” or “Read More…” to read the rest of a blog post, It would scroll the article down to where the more tag is. This plug-in prevents this and starts the post properly from the beginning.

Search “More To the Top” when adding a plugin.

2. Adding Custom External Hyper-links to your Navigational Menu

Normally WordPress only allows internal pages to be added to your navigational menu.

With the plugin below all you have to do is: create a new page, give it a title, and right at the bottom you’ll see the “Page Links To” box. Next to “Point to this URL” type in your link url.

Search “Page Links To” when adding a plugin.

3. Re-arrange your Posts (For Bands and Clubs etc.)

If for example your posts are “events” for a band, or a club, you may want to have posts show up that are a date in the future.
Normally when you set the date of a post to the future, it won’t show it until that date, however once the plugin is installed and active you can set the date of your post to the date of your event. It’ll show the events in date order.

Search “No Future Posts” when adding a plugin.

4. Re-arranging your Pages (For Sidebar Vertical Menus)

If you don’t want your pages to arrange themselves in date order, having to go through each one and giving them an Order number can be a pain.
With the help of this plugin it becomes as easy as “drag and drop”.

Search “My Page Order” when adding a plugin.

5. How to Duplicate Posts Easily

Once installed, the plug-in will add a “duplicate” option next to edit, quick edit etc.

Search “Duplicate Post” when adding a plugin.

6. Check Blog Visitor Stats within WordPress

The visitor stats will appear in your dashboard, and in the dropdown menu for “dashboard”.

Search “WordPress.com Stats” when adding a plugin.

7. A Better Meta Widget

Once installed you’ll get an extra widget named “Enhanced Meta”. It allows you to have a whole list of links in your sidebar for example, a login box, or new post etc. Pretty useful.

Search “Enhanced Meta Widget“ when adding a plugin.

8. Maintenance Mode

This plug-in allows you to put a temporary maintenance page up, whilst you work on new major updates for your website. Useful for websites under construction.

Search for “Maintenance Mode” when adding a plugin.

9. Change WordPress Navigation to Horizontal

This is one of my favourite plugins. It moves all the navigation for wordpress to the top of the screen, saving ALOT of screen space for editing posts etc.

Search “Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu”when adding a plugin.

10. Enhanced WordPress Code Editor

This is a favourite too, it completely changes the code editor to give you numbered lines, and colour coding for tags, properties and comments etc.

Search “WordPress Code Editor” when adding a plugin.

Well that wraps it up, I hope i’ve shown you some gems that some of you may not have known about. I know without these plugins the wordpress experience wouldn’t be quite so appealing

Peace.

Let’s use the analogy of custom building a desirable house……

If you wanted an impressive and desirable custom designed home – you’d hire an Architect to design and manage the project.

• You would need to set out a realistic financial budget capable of producing the desired results
• You would have to decide on and provide an extensive project brief and get involved in ongoing discussions.
• Realise that there’s plenty to do – crucial research, comparison, compromises and decisions over cost, quality, practicality, efficiency and improvements.
• Understand that some things cannot be controlled by either you or the Architect/Manager e.g. the weather, 3rd party contractor reliability, availability, etc – so you should be prepared for delays and re-adjusted costs, consider and deal with amendments and corrections.

So if you have high expectations for your website -

1. Hire a capable dynamic web designer/manager
2. Provide detailed, effective and ongoing briefing
3. And have a realistic budget

Alexander Bullivant

Roxbourne Online Marketing Services – Web Design, Search Engine Optimisation SEO, Web Site Graphics, Web Videos and Internet Promotion

www.roxbourne.com 01543-415423