Duncan Walker had an existing website with Mr Site which was a “shop window” for his Optical Design Consultancy. He felt it was dated and could do a lot more for him. He knew that something had to be done to make the site work for him and was unsure of what or how. Mr Site is great for someone who wants a very simple website they can easily build themselves. It is limited for developing websites that perform both in terms of visuals and in terms of people being able to find them and use them.
The initial brief was to replicate the existing site on WordPress with SEO considered in the development.
It was decided to create an account with 1and1 who had a promotional deal on, build a completely new site there and then redirect the Mr Site servers to point to the external host once the new site was complete. This got around any migration issues and gave us a safe “sandpit” to play in while the site was under construction.
Once complete, Duncan realised the potential of the new website and so it developed. He was also encouraged to look at his competitors sites and come up with a list of “likes” and “dislikes”. This list the influenced to final design. Some of the graphics in the final layout were “liberated” from Duncan’s clients’ websites so authorisation from them was required before the new WordPress based website went live to the public.
All SEO for posts, pages and images was done once the site was live and the DNS servers had been changed to point Duncan’s URL (still at Mr Site) to the external webspace at 1and1. All the old website URL’s were redirected to the relevent new pages/images at the same time.
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