Quoakle Blog
It is so important these days to make sure that businesses are visible across the ever changing landscape of the Social Media world! We have seen an explosion of different ways to promote businesses on the internet over the last few years.As we are a Graphical Directory, it made sense that we should optimize what is out there on the internet. A BIG player on the World Wide Web is Pinterest, so a few years ago we set up our own webpage - https://uk.pinterest.com/quoakle/. Another growing presence is Instagram. We only recently set up our own Great Days Out UK account.Obviously with all of these different ways to advertise, it can be time consuming for many. Trending, tweeting, hashtags, etc are always being updated every moment of the day. Because we have a wide and varied presence on the Web, we can help companies, both large and small with advertising. We have several Twitter accounts which can help businesses gain exposure as well as our Facebook pages. See, https://twitter.com/greatdaysout and https://www.facebook.com/DaysOutUK/ as just some of the examples.So, feel free to get in touch.
This is another of our website projects that runs parallel with our Great Days Out directory!If you are looking for a great place to eat in or around the United Kingdom, you won’t be disappointed! The UK’s thriving restaurant scene offers something for everyone. From fine dining to pub food, Mediterranean cuisine to traditional English, Chinese to Indian and so much more. Whether you are on a tight budget or have lots to spend for a big party or celebration there is something for everyone in the UK. Below are a small sample of some of the businesses that we help promote! Find out more here : https://www.great-restaurants.co.uk/“Great Restaurants in the UK” is one of a group of Eating Out Directories that Quoakle – the original graphical directory – has launched in the Gloucestershire region, including directories for Gloucester Restaurants and Cheltenham Restaurants.
Yes, as the post suggests, Quoakle will be getting a new look soon. Over the years it has seen several changes and has been expanding ever since it first appeared on the internet way back in 2006! Since then, there has been a steady increase of businesses being advertised, as well as an expansion of the number of topics and categories on display. It is amazing to think that it has been going for 10 years now!To bring the directory up-to-date we have taken on board a young man by the name of Tim Coysh who has been assisting us in updating the Quoakle website. We are excited to see what has been done already and we are all looking forward to showing off the new look once it has been completed! So, keep your ears to the ground. Watch this space!
We are grateful to Acorn Farm and many other businesses like them who we advertise on our Great Days Out directory who have given their time to help promote us on their respective websites! You can see their advertising link here : https://www.great-days-out.co.uk/merseyside/Below is an example of one our banners on their home page :We also have a link of ours placed without one of our banners. Climbing Works have placed it on their Sponsors webpage located just above the Day Out with the Kids banner. See below :We have dozens of businesses across the UK now who are promoting us with either just a link or with one of our banners. This helps our ranking on Google as we both benefit from the linkage.
I can't believe how long ago it is that I lasted posted on Quoakle News... 5 months!Well so much has been happening ...SEO for Australian Public Speaking Trainer, Sarah MeijerMore Australian work for a company supplying and installing Artificial Grass.The first in a series of new websites and conversions of current websites to fully responsive designs - Books for Schools using the Buntington ThemeNew websites for Ellis Sweeps and School Playground Markingsbut the most development and growth has to be on Quoakle's UK Days Out Directory ... Great Days Out!It was during Autumn 2013, that the Quoakle team began developing a graphical Days Out Directory for families – Great Days Out in the UK. The domain name, great-days-out.co.uk, was bought quite a while earlier. It was nearly discarded as not being needed but having missed the date to cancel the renewal, director, Nigel Steele, decided to give it a go!The team drew on the valuable experience gained through the development of Quoakle.com, the local business directory. They used the same geographical structure, and in addition expanded the reach to include Scotland and Northern Ireland. Stephen Holdstock again played a major part in the design.It is really since February 2015 that this website has...
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This is how you remember the Quoakle home page:Now we are excited to be displaying the new look showing the different devices with which Quoakle can be found and used:
Our latest project is for the widely experienced educator, Roy Pitcher. Roy is based in Alsager, the town where our director, Nigel, was brought up. Roy has been a school teacher, educator and trainer of teachers, author, consultant, inspector of schools and educational video producer over two generations at virtually all levels in the U.K. As a Christian teacher of religious education and pupils with special needs, he was concerned to find a basis for enhancing pupil attainment through multi-method approaches. When he became a teacher trainer he developed the concepts and practices that he describes in his new book "Jesus - a Master Teacher". Roy was soon to be launching his new book at the Christian Resources Exhibition in Manchester in October 2014, when he approached Nigel about helping him with a website.Most of the content we were able to copy across from another site and place within the Quoakle "Mega Template" that Quoakle Web developer and designer, Stephen Holdstock, has created this year. New graphics were created and pages added such as useful links and a facility to help users purchase the book. Some of the content was re-organised to aid the user experience. The new website works well on all...
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The Quoakle Team have been busy with all sorts of different projects for clients over the last few months and so have had little time for working on our own sites. However, last week Stephen began the upgrading process for a number of our own website templates.First to receive the treatment was Community Pixels, a site that illustrates the breadth of our work, from Quoakle - the original graphical directory to Quoaklecards - the highly optimised one page website, and from Quoakle's Restaurant Directories to Churcham Website Design - the website that is a focus for our local, Gloucestershire clients.The Community Pixels website now has a new deeper rotating banner on the home page (not shown). It also has an extending header and attractive mega footer with room for lots of important links. Quoakle's design team have gone for a smart grey for the mega footer with a bright, contemporary, light blue for the writing on the footer. As with all WordPress sites there are lots of options for sidebar or no sidebar and the use of widgets in various positions.Next to receive a makeover was the actual Churcham Website Design website. Since 2008, Nigel and his small team have...
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Quoakle's graphical directory has reached another great milestone ... half a million pageviews!Information taken from Google Analytics on Wednesday 9th April 2014 reveals that there have now been 583,436 pageviews since July 2007. Those visits were made by over 239,757 unique visitors to the directory!Over 87.02% of visits to the directory were made by visitors who hadn't been on Quoakle before.So lots of reasons to be encouraged by the progress that's been made especially considering the decision of the directors not to continue actively promoting the directory last Autumn and the related fall in visitors to Quoakle since September 2013. During this spring, however, visits are again rising without any money being spent on advertising the graphical directory. The latest figures from Alexa show Quoakle having its highest ever Alexa position as one of the top 2 million websites in the world at 1,761,851.The Quoakle team looks ahead to the next six months with excitement and anticipation.If you haven't been on Quoakle - the graphical directory yet, try it today, tell your friends and join the Quoakle-ution!
As a geographer and geography teacher, I have always loved maps. So one of the most fun parts of developing Quoakle's UK Web Directory was designing the regions and working out how to organise the information from a geographical point of view using regions and counties ( and having to decide how to deal with new unitary authorities, ceremonial counties etc in a way that works for our users).More recently as we have been launching a lot of new websites using the WordPress content management system, it has been fun to incorporate great maps using Google Maps. With the launch of the new Quoakle restaurant directories such as Oxford Restaurants we have wanted to have a lot more flexibility in adding new pins or markers to our restaurant location maps. Using the basic Google Maps was complex, so it was fantastic to find a really good plugin to do the job a few weeks ago!The one we found was: WP Google MapsThis is how Jean Galea describes it on the WP Mayor blog:The easiest to use Map Plugin! Create custom Google Maps with high quality markers containing locations, descriptions, images and links. Add your customized Google map to your WordPress...
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