Just over a month ago, a web designer called Alex sent us a message through his @prettierpixels company account on Twitter, offering to volunteer some time and help us build a WordPress blog. Somehow, five or six weeks later, we have a beautiful new website, Waggy Walks, promoting a big sponsored dog walk for Dogs Trust. I’ll be there, and am negotiating to have my husband on a collar and lead, so do go and visit the site to find out more / sign up to take part…

WaggyWalks was built on MicroSimple in the end – a new CMS being developed by Jamie Knight which is ridiculously easy to edit. This was helpful as there would be multiple non-web savvy users needing to add updates and the more straightforward the better.

Alex spent quite a few hours reconstructing the design from flyers another designer had produced, putting the site together, redirecting URLs, sorting out registration forms, setting up and testing emails, making last-minute changes to the original brief and getting it all working beautifully for us. He also found time to advise and help Jacqui and me as we re-built the website for the International Companion Animal Welfare Conference (ICAWC).

We’re so grateful for Alex’s hard work and expertise, and would recommend Prettier Pixels for any design and development work (particularly using WordPress) that you need. He’s incredibly helpful and fitted all this into the day job. Although he volunteered his help this time, his rates are really reasonable considering the amount of effort and perfectionism he puts in.

Many thanks must go to Alex and also to Jamie for the use of MicroSimple. Now we’re just looking forward to seeing more and more people sign up for the Waggy Walks event. You don’t need to have a dog (if you check out my blog header you’ll notice I don’t!) and if you can’t come to any of the 10 nationwide events you can still take part by sponsoring the Mascot Dog, whose name, chosen by our online communities, will be announced shortly.