My stint developing the web presence of Advanced Manufacturing Australia (then called Tooling Australia) exposed me to a range of new potential clients.
That has led to a few new commissions, including one that goes live today for Teco Pty Ltd.
Teco is a Victorian company that imports top end precision cutting tools and related advanced manufacturing equipment from international suppliers and distributes them to customers in Australia and New Zealand.
Like all the projects that come my way, this one had some very specific circumstances and conditions to take into account.
The company has set up an internal server to run its network, and wanted this to act as a web and mail server as well, making website content management easier to manage in-house.
The thing is, I’m no server expert, so all the technical aspects these were handled by the company’s “IT department”, an outsourced contactor. I think the contractor may have underestimated what it takes to get a network server to act as a web server and the battle to bring the hosting in-house continues.
Meanwhile, my client wanted to get the new website up and running as soon as possible, to take advantage of the job I’ve done of optimising the site to respond well to online searches for ket words and phrases.
Having just had some success with using WordPress for a large site, I’ve followed the same set-up – with some very specific differences – for Teco.
Once again, I’ve been a bit surprised at how easy WordPress makes it all, and how effective the end result is.
Currently the site is hosted on a commercial server, while the internal set-up work is completed. The client can still manage the content as the WordPress set-up is so efficient, but I suspect that this will be another example of me setting up a website to be managed by the client, only for me to end managing the site for them.
Like most of my commercial commissions, the perceived success of this one will largely be predicated on the results of my search engine optimisation efforts.
One of the blessings of working at this time in this industry is that, while everyone seems to accept that SEO is necessary (even those who prefer to subscribe to the “build it and they will come” approach), not many people appear to be actually very good at it.
Which is OK by me, as it makes me look good.