Peter Handley's Blog

Ok, well I think I have got this Wordpress lark installed properly now, picked a theme I like, installed what seem a load of relevant plugins and stuff, and everything seems to be just about ready to roll.

However, I’m new to this system, so drop me a comment if you have anything to say, for or against anything on the website, to make sure that I can improve the site in the coming days/weeks/year.

Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I am bloody pissed off about Blogger removing FTP support from their website – and as a result, I am have now made a Wordpress version of the website (which is where this is being published from, so hopefully this is all working now).

I get the reasons why they are doing this – its obviously costing them more money to run it than the share of the users dictates should be spent on it, but its very frustrating. I’ve helped a few people setup blogs using FTP to get them moving along, and much as I enjoy using WordPress and have quite enjoyed setting it up today, it was much simpler to easily create a blog with a very, very simple interface for someone that isn’t that web savvy to use.

It was also very useful for setting up an area of a website such as /blog/, in a sub-folder of the website without having to do the Wordpress installation (which I did find quite easy, but fortunately my existing host was able to support).

Now to be fair, I have been talking about moving to Wordpress for some time now, but I have finally got my arse in gear to start doing it

Hopefully this might mean the start of more frequent posting too!

Hello Internet,

This is my first real own blog, so I will begin will begin with an introduction, as all good stories have one of those.

My name is Peter Handley, and I am 24 years old. I work for a company called Vertical Leap, and work as whats called a Campaign Delivery Manager. Vertical Leap are a Search Engine Optimisation company based in Portsmouth, but with customers all over the country and indeed the world. I oversee a number of different websites Internet marketing, which involves me working to get them ranked better in search engines for particular words, driving more traffic to their website, and ultimately increasing the exposure and money making potential of the businesses that use our service.

It can be a challenging job, but its also something where I learn some new trick, or find some new tool with an interesting or fun feature. I don’t think its what I envisaged doing a year ago while I was finishing my dissertation at Portsmouth University, but I wouldn’t change it either.

I studied Entertainment Technology at Portsmouth University, which was a great broad introduction to many different forms of media, where I particularly concentrated on Internet Technologies and Music. I like music, but am not a producer. I did however write my dissertation on whether or not Parental Advisory stickers on CD’s constituted censorship. I went in thinking heavily that they did, but came out with a confused opinion, as certainly some people need protecting who are vulnerable and susceptible, but restricting access only makes this more desirable to certain individuals. Anyway I digress…..

I mainly studied Internet Technologies, and having a firm foundation in HTML and CSS has certainly helped in my new job. I launched http://www.peterhandley.com/ primarily as a platform for the websites that I designed whilst at university, although these have now been hidden from public view