Matt posed a question following my last little outpouring of fluff about Leg Iron Books..

Just curious but why no mention of Curratech on the new web site? If it were me by god there would be monstrous biblical trumpet blowing.

Once upon a time Curratech was an animal that grew into a monster. It was before the days of WordPress and people were looking for sites they could update themselves. So every project had to be built with custom coding which involved a massive amount of work.

Over the period of a few years the work flooded in, the books filled up and I found myself working twelve to fourteen hours a day. I had two choices – employ another coder or quit. I chose quit.

I have a bit of free time on my hands, so it occurred to me to use Curratech just to host WordPress sites. But I didn’t want to get into the hassle of running it as a business so I decided to run it as a hobby. I set it up in such a way that I cover my costs but make little or no profit. As there is no profit per se, there is little need to advertise as I am happy with the way things are. If I get a new client I am delighted, but I rely purely on word of mouth.

So what exactly do I do? What is the difference between going the free WordPress way and going my way? There are a few major differences. When I set up a site it is tailored to that site’s specific needs. I give an enormous level of flexibility that WordPress doesn’t provide.

The other difference is the After Sales Service. This is where the fun kicks in. I tweak each site for maximum efficiency [I get very nervous if a site takes longer than two or three second to load] and monitor it constantly for security. I also make sure that everything is up to date which is an important part of security.

My main thing though is the backups. I constantly backup all sites so that if one goes belly-up I can have it back on line as quickly as possible. This has happened in the past, and the site has been fully restored [in a few instances before the client even noticed the site was down]. If nothing else, the Anna Raccoon site showed the importance of backups, and the massive difficulties of restoring a site without them!

Just as a by the by, I accidentally came across some actual businesses that provide exactly the same services as myself. One of them I remember charged around $300 a month which is around 45 times what I charge!

So there it is. It’s a hobby, but it’s a hobby that provides a service. I like to keep it small but new clients are always welcome.

I won’t advertise though.

I shall let my fame spread and do the advertising for me.