Now, the boy can do words, pictures and what users like but, to be frank, couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. In fact, getting him to make a cup of tea involves a map, a torch and painstaking discussions on the essential nature of the word “kettle”.

It does sound a bit of a risk entrusting the care of our corporate site to somebody challenged by the technical problems of turning on a light switch. But we had a secret weapon: WordPress.

WordPress is the free, open source, Web 2.0 content management system. It is so simple to use that if you can handle Microsoft Word documents (or not in the case of Stewart) then you can make WordPress work for you.

As well as offering simpicity it can also be as complex as you need. And this is where the rest of us weighed in with our technical expertise. This site uses a heavily customised version of the Atahualpa theme. To make it as sophisticated as we wanted it to be we’ve given it a cocktail of plugins that we have found to be particularly effective – though some  needed a tweak or two.  These range from SEO to mobile versions to video display and beyond.

As for how the new site looks, it’s less Stalinist than the previous version but remains true to web guru Clay Shriky’s dictum: “behaviour first, design second”.

It’s precisely this kind of invention that is at the heart of content marketing.

For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together

In fact many would be better off building their websites on cost-effective open source blogging tools like WordPress rather than spending tens of thousands of pounds on bespoke solutions. There is nothing particularly radical in this. The sites of both No 10 Downing Street and the Wales Office were built on WordPress.

WordPress is easy to use, flexible and comes with an awe-inspiring array of plugins that will keep your site ahead of the curve. The plugins are simple to install and, among many other things, allow you to optimise your site for search engines, link up all your social networking activity and boost traffic. Also, a WordPress site does not need to look like a blog. It can have a professional design and all the functionality that makes it so powerful.

This site is built on WordPress (though this is supposed to look like a blog) and we are performing a WordPress migration for a client at the moment.

But it’s not just about saving money. Clients who go down this route can spend their money on making their messages more interesting to their target audiences – thus making that spend work harder. 

Our bearded Content Marketing Director, Stewart Kirkpatrick, was recently quoted in a Sunday Herald piece about blogging journalists on the importance of content in making a site work:

 ”Attracting an audience is not so easy. You need to make sure the content is frequently updated, that you’re saying something unique and reaching out to [others].”

(Stewart also recently wrote a piece for journalism.co.uk on the plight of Scotland’s papers and the need for them to improve their content and websites.)

Happy birthday to us. Happy birthday to us. Happy birthday, dear agency with the slightly peculiar name.

Yes indeed. w00tonomy is one year old. (Though, strictly speaking, as it was formed on 29 February its next birthday is not until 2012.)

It has been a very successful 12 months for us. We have won clients from the Scottish public sector and from the personal finance, IT and media sectors in the UK and abroad. And we have made it onto the Scottish Government’s digital roster.

Our clients have been attracted by our ability to make the web work for them – whether it be through social networking, improved content, strategic consultancy, analysis or web redesigns.

Stewart was on Lesley Riddoch’s programme talking about the Scottish media and public sector issues with SNP MEP Alyn Smith and the Leader of Glasgow City Council, Steven Purcell.

w00tonomy’s Content Marketing Director has continued his relentless self-promotion with an appearance on BBC Scotland’s ‘Politics Show’.

He was talking about the future of Scotland’s indigenous newspapers. 

Unsurprisingly, the former editor of scotsman.com (when it was good) emphasised the importance of targeting quality content at key audiences who would find it of value.

As well as taking part in a live panel discussion, he was interviewed while attending the Scottish Government’s recent summit on newspapers.

In that vein, he was also quoted in the Sunday Herald on the recent change of editors at The Scotsman.

Clouds, we love ‘em.

We are not here speaking of  thecumulonimbus aggregations of water molecules that are such a feature of Scottish skies but rather the images used to display key terms on a site (or indeed any other collections of words).

We like them because navigation is the key challenge online – and it’s mostly not a challenge that is satisfactorily met by IT taxonomies or rigid hierarchies of data.

Clouds tend to reflect how humans or content behave – either by showing the most popular pieces of content or the most numerous or the most searched for. They present the results in a user-friendly attractive way.

Your browser may not support display of this image.All of which means we’re thrilled to have discovered Wordle . It allows you to create your own clouds, based on text you enter or its search of key terms on a website of your choosing. You can then play around with how the words are displayed: horizontal, jangled up, black and white, coloured. It’s a great way of getting to grips with what clouds are.Your browser may not support display of this image.

In 2008, one particular word came to prominence that people flung around with great seriousness and clearly no idea what the damn thing meant.

That word is “widget”.

First and foremost, in this context, widgets have nothing to do with beer cans, though the internet would be a better place if they did.

Nor, despite all appearances, is “widget” a word you throw in there when you don’t really know what a thing is.

So, what is a widget exactly? Well, Wikipedia describes it “a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation”. This explanation leads us to the question: what is a widget exactly?

It’s a box.

Now, the guardians of the arcane knowledge of the interwebs won’t like us putting like that but it’s true.

It’s a box (or rectangle or whatever) for putting content in. Or a game. Or another bit of software. Think of it as a  window on another bit of the web.

That box can appear on your Facebook page (along with all that “pirate” nonsense) or on your blog or webpage. It’s a simple way of easily adding something extra to your online presence without having to write any code.

It can also be a way of getting your content onto somebody else’s website or Facebook page. If you build a widget to display your content or message – and if that widget is useful or interesting – then people will recommend and spread it for you.

With the rise of social networking, people are increasingly getting their content this way, rather than through the more traditional routes. If you have an online message then you need widgets to get that message to certain demographics.

It is important for content providers (and that includes advertising and marketing) to be aware that, because of things like widgets, content lives on its own.

Thanks to widgets, your content can be spread far and wide without anyone needing to visit your site.

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