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We want to and will make it easy for schools to keep their staff, pupils, parents, partners, other stake-holders and wider community informed, updated and engaged.
Now, by merely typing in the text you can do it too!
It's so easy even 7 year old children can do it. If you are able to move a mouse, click a few buttons and string a few sentences together you can maintain a cutting edge site.
We'll give you all the training you'll need, support you on the phone or with email, all to make sure you get the best out of your investment.
Our killer features are:
Superb content management and blog software. Excellent Google optimisation.
An email to weblog interface, making updating your school blog a doddle.
Top draw support and feedback.
Try a demo or build your
Now, by merely typing in the text you can do it too!
It's so easy even 7 year old children can do it. If you are able to move a mouse, click a few buttons and string a few sentences together you can maintain a cutting edge site.
We'll give you all the training you'll need, support you on the phone or with email, all to make sure you get the best out of your investment.
Our killer features are:
Superb content management and blog software. Excellent Google optimisation.
An email to weblog interface, making updating your school blog a doddle.
Top draw support and feedback.
Try a demo or build your
30 day free trial
school website yourself. What will you write today's school news to be?Your School's Website Sucks!
Sack your web designer!
I see far too many schools, mainly secondaries and 'colleges' who employ a full time web designer. Normally, these are the most vicious replies I receive from my marketing emails.
Web designers look at our sites, run by Heads, teachers, children, secretaries. Look at their job description, creating HTML and FTP'ing. Look at the management issues of their sites. Look at the complexity, that no one else wants to understand, that no one else would dare presume to understand, and they see that the writing is on the wall for web designers and their bottleneck silos and processes.
Websites have been commoditised—for a long time. And it's only the LAs and school boards that employ these people that haven't yet caught up.
Paying £12,000 to £24,000 plus all the software and hardware, servers in the main, is not sustainable.
It's like employing your own paper-maker in school. Then, paying them to write on it. Check the monks below...
Do it yourself, it's a zillion times more empowering bringing you, the Head, the teacher nose-to-nose with your pupils and you'll save a ton of money.
Look at the schools here. See that they're getting a huge amount of traffic and excellent feedback and they're run by staff and children who don't care about the how, just the what.
How you have a website isn't important, it's the what's on it that is vital.
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You're fired
Web designers look at our sites, run by Heads, teachers, children, secretaries. Look at their job description, creating HTML and FTP'ing. Look at the management issues of their sites. Look at the complexity, that no one else wants to understand, that no one else would dare presume to understand, and they see that the writing is on the wall for web designers and their bottleneck silos and processes.
Websites have been commoditised—for a long time. And it's only the LAs and school boards that employ these people that haven't yet caught up.
Paying £12,000 to £24,000 plus all the software and hardware, servers in the main, is not sustainable.
It's like employing your own paper-maker in school. Then, paying them to write on it. Check the monks below...
Do it yourself, it's a zillion times more empowering bringing you, the Head, the teacher nose-to-nose with your pupils and you'll save a ton of money.
Look at the schools here. See that they're getting a huge amount of traffic and excellent feedback and they're run by staff and children who don't care about the how, just the what.
How you have a website isn't important, it's the what's on it that is vital.
Keep it simple
Profoundly, adding news to your site is simple. 8 year olds do it, Heads that can barely move a mouse do it. And, with the email interface, it becomes even quicker, more powerful.
But, I keep adding little bits, little fun bits, like the themes, like the whiteboard illustration engine. All these are to make it more fun. I just hope that newbies coming here to inspect my wares don't think it's hard or complex. The day to day operations, i.e. blogging is simple, painless and easy. Not complex at all. Bookmark your new news item page, and adding content is a few button clicks away.
I eat my own dog food, I've several sites I blog at, so I've got to keep it simple, painless and make it more fun for myself.
If adding content to your own school's site, is hard, if you've a bottle neck, if it's not fun, if it's not addictive: then your school's website sucks!
But, I keep adding little bits, little fun bits, like the themes, like the whiteboard illustration engine. All these are to make it more fun. I just hope that newbies coming here to inspect my wares don't think it's hard or complex. The day to day operations, i.e. blogging is simple, painless and easy. Not complex at all. Bookmark your new news item page, and adding content is a few button clicks away.
I eat my own dog food, I've several sites I blog at, so I've got to keep it simple, painless and make it more fun for myself.
If adding content to your own school's site, is hard, if you've a bottle neck, if it's not fun, if it's not addictive: then your school's website sucks!
Any colour so long as it's black
Many of our school sites have switched over to our festive theme. I'd expect many of them will switch to the seasonal themes too, after Christmas. (We're sporting the Winter theme here, for a few days.)
But... I received an email from a prospective school saying. "Humph! All your sites look the same!"
Erm... They each have their own design, with logos and collages and school colours... But for a while they're using our festive designs...
The pupils don't really know, nor do the parents, not really. Nobody is going to notice. Only if you go to several of our school sites, will you notice. I mean, do you buy mass produced shirts and skirts from Tesco? This is the same sort of thing. And we're going to have hundreds and hundreds of outfits for each school to change into.
Most school websites look the same, ALL the time. Here...We're just having a little bit of fun, dressing up, for Christmas. Ho! Ho! Ho!
But... I received an email from a prospective school saying. "Humph! All your sites look the same!"
Erm... They each have their own design, with logos and collages and school colours... But for a while they're using our festive designs...
The pupils don't really know, nor do the parents, not really. Nobody is going to notice. Only if you go to several of our school sites, will you notice. I mean, do you buy mass produced shirts and skirts from Tesco? This is the same sort of thing. And we're going to have hundreds and hundreds of outfits for each school to change into.
Most school websites look the same, ALL the time. Here...We're just having a little bit of fun, dressing up, for Christmas. Ho! Ho! Ho!
Sitemaps
Another jib-jab at school sites that aren't professionally managed. We've added sitemaps to each site. This means nothing to editors and readers, but it means a lot to search engines, particularly Google.
Now, Google and others know exactly where to find pages and when they were last updated.
We tell Google (and other aggregators) that you've updated, when you update. So, Google et al will crawl that one update in any case.
Now, Google and others know exactly where to find pages and when they were last updated.
We tell Google (and other aggregators) that you've updated, when you update. So, Google et al will crawl that one update in any case.
Being top in Google
If you're not in Google you may as well not be on the Internet. In the US Google accounts for 65-70% of traffic referrals. Here, in the UK it's higher—we tend to stick to just Google.
All our school sites are top in SERPs for common queries. And here lies the trick.
All our sites are indexed fully and rapidly. Usually within hours of an update. This is because we ping Google's blog search. We ping all the major services: Technorati, Weblogs.com, Feedburner, Yahoo, Feedster; immediately your post is published.
But pinging doesn't get you to top result in Google's SERP. It's a mixture of keywords, page rank, back links and internal links, anchor text, domain, age and topicality. That mixture is called Google's algorithm. It's their secret sauce.
Keywords. Obviously, they need to be in the document, in the body text and in the page's title. All our sites make sure that keywords are in the right places. Even our deeper, archived news items have the key words in their URLs. Each page is SEO'd correctly, perfectly, semantically. That is, we are optimised for Google.
Page rank. It's a number assigned to a website saying how good it is. Sites are PR1-PR10. Some are PR0 (zero) and aren't ranked at all. The vast, vast majority of sites are PR unranked.
All our sites are PR2-PR3!!!
Which means, to Google, that they good, proper and handy. Good, that they aren't spam sites—they're trusted. Proper, that they link to good places on the net. Handy, that they have the right sort of information inside them
Back links. These are links from other sites to yours. If you have lots, this is good. Google thinks, if you're well linked to, you must be a useful site. But, if those back links are from bad sites, spam sites, rough neighbourhoods, this may adversely affect you. (Some sites spam other site's comments, referers, trackbacks, just to get more link juice.)
If the sites that link to you are good, that they have a high page rank themselves, then you get extra credit.
All our sites are interlinked from this site and from most of our school sites. Each high PR site passes good link love to other schools. Thus, new schools on our network rise to number one in SERPs, within a day or two.
Internal links. Our internal linking structure has developed over the past years, since our first use in 1999. We have site maps, or or as we like to call them site structures on every page. Each links back to the home page, each page also has a nice shiney Home button and some other links back to the front page. All telling Google what link is important.
Likewise our department pages are always on each page, each department lists news items, which each have their own page. As visitors can easily find their way around, so can Google's crawler.
Anchor text. Not only does Google examine back links, it examines the text that's used in that link.
<a href = "http://toftstead.educatr.com/">Toftstead Primary</a>
In this case, this new school, Toftstead Primary, is the anchor text. So, if you search for "Toftstead Primary" the above link will help you move higher up the SERPs, where as this anchor text:
<a href = "http://toftstead.educatr.com/">a school</a>
Will not help much at all. Though Google will know it's a school. It's not much, but it will help a little.
Age of site. Older sites are usually good sites. New sites can sometimes be spammy. This is what Google thinks. But here, we help boost new sites to the top, because we're here to help.
I recently had a commercial site sent to Google's sandbox. A mythical place where your site isn't to be found at all in the SERPs. Why? It was a new site on a domain that had been used before. And, it rose too fast in Google PR, Google became suspicious, looked at the back links, at the subject areas of those back links and figured that education had nothing to do with phones. There were a few other reasons, but essentially, Google thought a brand new site was gaming the system.
Topicality of back links. All our sites are school sites which back and interlink with each other, adding weight to each other.
All this adds up to your site being in the top SERPs page. It's no good if you're below the 10th position, people have to go looking for you, and they don't. They assume you haven't got a website.
But also, it means that you can link to other sites and pass on you authority in some good link love. Be careful though, don't go linking to web farms, don't go promoting your site to unsavory places either! There's no need to promote your site at all, we've done it for you, from the get-go.
All our school sites are top in SERPs for common queries. And here lies the trick.
All our sites are indexed fully and rapidly. Usually within hours of an update. This is because we ping Google's blog search. We ping all the major services: Technorati, Weblogs.com, Feedburner, Yahoo, Feedster; immediately your post is published.
But pinging doesn't get you to top result in Google's SERP. It's a mixture of keywords, page rank, back links and internal links, anchor text, domain, age and topicality. That mixture is called Google's algorithm. It's their secret sauce.
Keywords. Obviously, they need to be in the document, in the body text and in the page's title. All our sites make sure that keywords are in the right places. Even our deeper, archived news items have the key words in their URLs. Each page is SEO'd correctly, perfectly, semantically. That is, we are optimised for Google.
Page rank. It's a number assigned to a website saying how good it is. Sites are PR1-PR10. Some are PR0 (zero) and aren't ranked at all. The vast, vast majority of sites are PR unranked.
All our sites are PR2-PR3!!!
Which means, to Google, that they good, proper and handy. Good, that they aren't spam sites—they're trusted. Proper, that they link to good places on the net. Handy, that they have the right sort of information inside them
Back links. These are links from other sites to yours. If you have lots, this is good. Google thinks, if you're well linked to, you must be a useful site. But, if those back links are from bad sites, spam sites, rough neighbourhoods, this may adversely affect you. (Some sites spam other site's comments, referers, trackbacks, just to get more link juice.)
If the sites that link to you are good, that they have a high page rank themselves, then you get extra credit.
All our sites are interlinked from this site and from most of our school sites. Each high PR site passes good link love to other schools. Thus, new schools on our network rise to number one in SERPs, within a day or two.
Internal links. Our internal linking structure has developed over the past years, since our first use in 1999. We have site maps, or or as we like to call them site structures on every page. Each links back to the home page, each page also has a nice shiney Home button and some other links back to the front page. All telling Google what link is important.
Likewise our department pages are always on each page, each department lists news items, which each have their own page. As visitors can easily find their way around, so can Google's crawler.
Anchor text. Not only does Google examine back links, it examines the text that's used in that link.
<a href = "http://toftstead.educatr.com/">Toftstead Primary</a>
In this case, this new school, Toftstead Primary, is the anchor text. So, if you search for "Toftstead Primary" the above link will help you move higher up the SERPs, where as this anchor text:
<a href = "http://toftstead.educatr.com/">a school</a>
Will not help much at all. Though Google will know it's a school. It's not much, but it will help a little.
Age of site. Older sites are usually good sites. New sites can sometimes be spammy. This is what Google thinks. But here, we help boost new sites to the top, because we're here to help.
I recently had a commercial site sent to Google's sandbox. A mythical place where your site isn't to be found at all in the SERPs. Why? It was a new site on a domain that had been used before. And, it rose too fast in Google PR, Google became suspicious, looked at the back links, at the subject areas of those back links and figured that education had nothing to do with phones. There were a few other reasons, but essentially, Google thought a brand new site was gaming the system.
Topicality of back links. All our sites are school sites which back and interlink with each other, adding weight to each other.
All this adds up to your site being in the top SERPs page. It's no good if you're below the 10th position, people have to go looking for you, and they don't. They assume you haven't got a website.
But also, it means that you can link to other sites and pass on you authority in some good link love. Be careful though, don't go linking to web farms, don't go promoting your site to unsavory places either! There's no need to promote your site at all, we've done it for you, from the get-go.
Are you top in Google?
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I'm amazed at the Google traffic Leeds' Pudsey Grangefield Maths & Computing College is receiving. Take a look at this thumbnail.It's not only from Google, but also from the BBC, and Facebook.
Mind, as each of our sites are optimised for search engines, any search for the school name brings up their site as the top link.
I'm saddened when I search for a school in Google, and it's not there, or is so badly disguised and/or so far down the results, it's painful to find. There are a lot of sites that absolutely refuse to allow Google in to their servers. Serco's Teknical is one. If you're not in Google, to most, who think Google IS the Internet, you simply don't exist.
One of my pet hates
Too many school websites add their news letters home as a Word document. Not everybody has Word. It's expensive! It's an extra step to have to download and open. It's against accessibility rules. Only the truly dedicated will read your letters. Even PDFs suffer the same fate.
Personally, I use the free Open Office, it's not a bloated as Word but it does for my needs. And it's free.
Personally, I use the free Open Office, it's not a bloated as Word but it does for my needs. And it's free.
Dumping your weekly news letter onto your website is a good idea, certainly. In fact add as many letters home as you can! But please, the best way is as plain text in a HTML web page. If you have a search engine, you weekly newsletter will be indexed too. Word docs are bad, bad, bad.
Here's one typical example: newsletters: "Every Friday a weekly newsletter is sent home so that parents know what is happening in school. To view the newsletter you'd like to see click on the appropriate date."
Nur nur na nur nur (revisited)
Boy, am I sorry I said nur nur na nur nur to a teacher, to lots and lots of teachers! Some people have no sense of humour. Or, is it that they're easily insulted? Perhaps there's a reason that they're so fragile and vunerable, so quick to temper?
So I started to look at the sites of the unsubscribers and those that have written back saying they're, 'insulted, hurt and offended' by my 'rude, unprofessional' phrase, "our websites are better than yours. Nur nur na nur nur."
I find that in all cases, if they've got one at all, they're built in-house. It's someone's pride and joy. A ton of work has gone into them. Hard, sweating years and years writing HTML, FTPing, and using such long winded, skilled tools as Dreamweaver. A powerful, professional tool. I'd guess from some knowledge, that the webmaster has been on a course. Has sweated and learned lots.
But please, oh please, forget it. Ditch the horrors you've built. Stop the pain and chore. Move over. Get out of the way. Let the floods of fun begin!
Give the building to a 10 year old child! To the Head. To a parent. To all the staff. There's no excuse for your silo.
Tired of pussy-footing around
I'm going to start a new department, "Your School Website Sucks!" Time the rest of the world knew of the sorry state of too many of the UK's school websites.
Offenses include, but will not be limited to:
So I started to look at the sites of the unsubscribers and those that have written back saying they're, 'insulted, hurt and offended' by my 'rude, unprofessional' phrase, "our websites are better than yours. Nur nur na nur nur."
I find that in all cases, if they've got one at all, they're built in-house. It's someone's pride and joy. A ton of work has gone into them. Hard, sweating years and years writing HTML, FTPing, and using such long winded, skilled tools as Dreamweaver. A powerful, professional tool. I'd guess from some knowledge, that the webmaster has been on a course. Has sweated and learned lots.
But please, oh please, forget it. Ditch the horrors you've built. Stop the pain and chore. Move over. Get out of the way. Let the floods of fun begin!
Give the building to a 10 year old child! To the Head. To a parent. To all the staff. There's no excuse for your silo.
Tired of pussy-footing around
I'm going to start a new department, "Your School Website Sucks!" Time the rest of the world knew of the sorry state of too many of the UK's school websites.
Offenses include, but will not be limited to:
- Viewable email addresses, for spambots. Rendering such accounts useless for quick replies.
- News updates dumped as PDFs, Word docs, or even amazingly Publisher docs.
- Lack of updates. Is your school closed down?
- Awful, childish or amature layout and graphic design.
- Useless navigation.
- Broken images, 404s and missing page titles.
- Use of f-f-frames.
- Don't forget Google--if you're not in Google, you don't exist. You should be in the top 10 results for common searches for your school.
- Dull, boring, boring, boring information.
- Lack of interactivity, or feedback loops.
