I recently blogged about preparing to give debbidoo.com a big facelift.  In this post, I said that my plan is to do away with the services I rarely get asked about, and to bring in some new services that I do get asked about.

One of these is web design. Since building debbidoo.com 18 months ago, I’ve since built websites for clients as well as for other debbidoo projects, and for another business of which I’m a director, Petha Ltd.

As web design is something I seem to be doing more of – and something which I really enjoy doing – I’ve decided to add it as a service to clients. And as it’s brand spanking new, I’ve decided to launch this service with a cracking introductory offer… but it’s limited to the first FIVE people to apply. Continue reading “Introductory offer: bespoke websites for £295” »

The services I’m being asked to provide by my clients have turned out to be quite different from the services I expected to provide when I first started my business (no rude comments, please!) so I’ve decided that it’s time my website was overhauled. Time to weed out some of the stuff that I never get asked to do, and bring in the stuff that I do get asked to do. And have a general tidy-up, add some extra functionality, change the look and feel a bit, that sort of thing.

My new site is going to work quite differently. I won’t say too much now – I’ll hang on until release, and mither on about it then instead – but while I’m in the planning stages, I thought I’d ask around and see if anyone has any suggestions for things they’d like to see added, removed, or improved at debbidoo.com. Continue reading “Planning the new debbidoo.com – any suggestions?” »

Many businesses go bust in their first year; look around the web and you’ll find articles which claim that anything from 25% to 80% of businesses won’t be around to celebrate their first birthday.

What a relief it is to be able to say that debbidoo isn’t one of them!

For today, 7 April 2009, we’re celebrating one year to the day since we launched debbidoo to the big wide world (in fact, the anniversary of incorporating the business slipped quietly by at the end of February; launch-birthday is the biggie). Continue reading “Now we are one – phew!” »

I’ve been a Christmas addict all my life.  Ever since those massive week-long family gatherings at my grandparents’ house as a child, those magical times when we’d post our letters to Father Christmas (not Santa; it was Father Christmas when I was a little girl) through the air vent in Nan’s kitchen chimney and then wonder excitedly how he’d get through the tiny slats, I’ve always had a lot of love for all things Christmassy. Continue reading “Keep Christmas Cheap: don’t let money worries spoil your celebrations” »

When you can afford it, it’s lovely to have access to a fully managed email newsletter broadcast service; it saves you work, you don’t need to spend ages learning something new, and you can relax knowing that an experienced professional is doing it all for you.

However, times are hard, and at times like these your budget may not stretch to a fully managed service. Continue reading “New from debbidoo: self-serve email newsletters” »

Over the past few days I’ve been busy making changes at debbidoo.com.

We now have a ‘callback‘ form which visitors can use if they’d like us to give them a call. There are links to this form on most pages of the website, so it’s now easier than ever to get in touch with us. Continue reading “Site updates at debbidoo.com” »

Don’t panic – it’s still chinwag!

I’d been getting frustrated with the old theme, as all the links, categories etc only appeared on the front page – so I’ve changed the theme to one that carries all the right-hand-column stuff through every post.

Which means that when visitors land on an individual post rather than the front page, they’ll now be able to see that there’s more to chinwag than the post they landed on

If you like what you’ve seen on chinwag so far, and would like to keep up to date with our future posts, you can now do so by using our new “subscribe to chinwag by email” feature.

This service is provided by feedburner and is safe and spam-free.

To subscribe to chinwag by email, simply click the “subscribe to chinwag by email” link at the bottom right hand side of the front page of chinwag, enter your email address, and Bob’s your uncle – every time a new post appears on chinwag, you’ll get an email notification.

We now have accounts at MySpace and Twitter to add to our social and business networking collection.

If you’d like to hook up with us at any of our social and business networking hangouts (or just be nosy!), please pop over to the new ‘mingle’ page at our website for more details.

In the past couple of days I’ve set up an account for debbidoo at YouTube, where I’ll be saving bits and pieces that might interest chinwag/yakety yak readers. Continue reading “debbidoo at YouTube” »