Custom post types.

Three simple words, but a whole heap of functionality. We’ve already begun development of new sites using WordPress 3 betas but custom post types will really help speed development and more importantly make easier to use and more powerful sites for our clients.

No longer will we be fairly limited with just posts and pages. Anything we can think of could be developed. I’ve already got my eye on a property type. I suspect that quite a few plugins that currently use separate database tables will refactor to use custom post types instead.

Custom menus

Up to now menus on WordPress sites have been limited to either pages, or categories or some complex custom code to create something else. Now we can have an easy to edit menu with anything, pages, links, categories etc. Again helping the most important people, our clients.

With these and everything else that the team and contributers behind WordPress have done as they say, the future is looking quite rosy, it’s going to be an exciting time.

To finish off, I’ve got to mention the WordPress app on the iPhone. Even though I may be in the middle of nowhere being able to write this is brilliant. If you have an iPhone and a WordPress powered site, this free app is a must.

Updated: If you want to view a video tour of WordPress 3 just view it below.

Morello Digital are pleased to announce that we are currently working on the following projects:

The Drury, a high quality and rather large self catering house in Oban, have asked us to design and develop their new website.

Scotland’s Hotels of Distinction have also asked us to revamp the current site. The designs are almost fully approved and we should start building the new site next week.

One of our favourite clients, Burgoynes of Lyonshall, have also asked us to re develop their sites, to include more interaction with social media channels. This is in progress and should be ready soon.

The Station In at Marshbrook have received planning permission on their new project, a fantastic mountain biking centre and Wigwam accommodation centre. The blog should be up and running next week and the full site will follow before the year end.

Pimhill Farm is our first collaboration with Carl Jones Design. We have built the current static site and the new content managed version will be live for the weekend.

Woods of Shropshire have asked us to add additional functionality to their very successful site – take a look if you need some good ideas for Xmas presents or need a new shirt!

We are further working on a new travel site based on the Facebook model – a really exciting project that we will keep you up to date on over the next couple of months ..

Close to completion also are two larger projects for Culture Colony, an arts based site for all of Wales, and another of our favourite clients LHH Scotland where we have developed a fully integrated bespoke accommodation and property management system.

Our first full Magento based e-commerce site www.sportsgolfstores.co.uk went live recently and gives a good idea of how flexible this platform can be for e-commerce web sites. It is the home of Karl Kertess Golf and also a great place to buy golf trousers and associated products so do take a look.

The White Horse Inn at Clun have also had a new site launched. As regular readers will know, I take it upon myself to quality test any pub or restaurant we work with (!!) and I can certainly recommend Jack’s establisment. If you are looking to find a good real ale pub in Shropshire that also provides B&B and an ongoing events programme I’d give them a visit. The site also provides interaction with their various social media channels and we would recommend everyone in the same gane look at using these channels to promote their business.

In association with Hunter Bevan we also worked on the development of the new Leema Acoustics website. As a Hi-Fi buff to some extent I’d certainly suggest taking a look at some of their award winning products.

We have also launched a new site for Marc Beaumont. Marc is one of the world’s top downhill mountain bikers and the site should help his many fans keep up to date. Personally, I get frightened even hearing Mark talk about what he does! This site is built on the WordPress platform.

Having developed the original Fabric Spray website on behalf of The Needham Group we have now set the Irish version live at www.fabricspray.ie. It’s a pretty amazing product so take a look!

We have also revamped www.fine-boxes.com for Andrew Crawford. Andrew is looking to teach more people – his work is really quite exceptional so please take a look.

Lastly, but not least, we set G Bryan Jones live. Locally based, in Bishops Castle, they are your port of call for all things farm machinery related.

I think that is it … working on a good few more at present so watch this space. The sites above give a fair idea of the range of work we do so if you need any help yourself, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Both agencies produce high quality work in the areas of graphic design, branding and corporate communications and we are proud to be associated with these companies. We look forward to developing the relationships over the coming months and years.

If you are a design, marketing or PR agency who feels you could benefit from a reliable and effective development partner, please do not hesitate to get in touch – we use open source platforms including WordPress, Drupal and Magento in addition to any bespoke system development that is required such as integration with in house platforms.

We have now decided to change our philosophy somewhat. This blog for instance is written with the WordPress Engine – there is surely little point in writing a new blog platform if an open source version exists.

Why? Apart from the fact it is free, there are any number of devlopers out there who keep building extensions for the platform, such as the Twitter feed you see running to the right.

The same philosophy can be extended to Content Management and E-Commerce. Indeed WordPress can operate as a Content Management platform itself – if you know how to program in the extensions. We have therefore decided to build our sites using Drupal or WordPress for those that are content managed (all our sites are content managed) and Magento for E-Commerce.

What does this mean? – It means that we can develop sites more efficiently for our clients.

It does not mean that we will take a whole lot less time for the base site build – unfortunately for those of you who thought we’d start building £500 E-Commerce sites there is still a fair degree of development work involved! It does mean however that the base site build is likely to contain more options as standard. It further means that when a client wants a particular add on that it likely exists already and  it will therefore be a quicker build and less money for the client.

New projects from 1 July are being built using the new methodology, so they will be up early August … we’re quite excited about this development and would obviously be happy to discuss implementing something for you, so drop us a line or call on 01743 244204.

Extreme Dream are an adventure activity company based in Aviemore. It all looks good fun to me so give them a look.