We've been named one of the Nation's Favourite Businesses! Read more
Skip to main content
Lisa Freeman

Lisa Freeman

Lisa Freeman is a web strategist, founder of 18a and fractional Technical Director.

She started her career over 20 years ago as a coder and now is primarily a “communication bridge” between developers (or tools) and clients, explaining complicated web decisions in easy to understand ways.

Join her weekly newsletter to stay up to date with her latest web explainer blog posts and helpful tips for understanding your website.

Articles by Lisa Freeman

VAT rise in January 2011

Yep, it's happening again - the VAT rate is changing. So let us know if you need a hand updating your site for it. Whether you have an online shop, a subscription based service, an online booking system or just the odd "buy now" Paypal button, get in touch if…

Alex from Much Better Adventures quoted by the Guardian

We always get excited when our clients - especially start ups with great ideas - are featured in the press. And even though muchbetteradventures.com are getting press coverage all the time now, the novelty still doesn't wear off! This month, site co-founder Alex Narracott was quoted in the Guardian in…

Facebook tries to copyright the words face and book!

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has this week granted the social media giant Facebook a "notice of allowance" to trade mark the word "face". Apparently Facebook have a history of going after anyone who use "face" or "book" in their name - UTalkMarketing cites examples such as Teachbook…

Bristol restaurants coming up trumps!

We're always mentioning the latest places we've eaten in Bristol to friends and family outside the city - and increasingly these little gems are getting the recognition they deserve! After achieving Bristol's first Michelin Star, Casamia in Westbury-on-Trym have just been crowned Britain's best restaurant by Gordon Ramsey! Brothers Jonray…

Day and Night design feature on LoveGloucesterRoad.org.uk

This is really quite simple compared to the rest of the coding we do here at 18a Towers, but it's still fun! If you visit LoveGloucesterRoad.org.uk - a website we've made for free to help promote our local area - then, depending on whether you visit it in the day…

WP e-commerce plugin User Guide

Below are instructions for how to update WP e-commerce, a very good online shop plugin for Wordpress websites. Adding products: The main thing you need to know how to do, is to add products. Here's a screenshot of (what looks like the very long...) products page. You access it by…

Halloween campaign for AQuarterOf.co.uk

Case Study: marketing with the seasons. We do the affiliate management for AQuarterOf.co.uk - the UK's favourite online retro sweet shop - and as you can imagine, Halloween is a busy time! The Halloween banners were rolled out a month ago, and we've been working with various affiliates on content…

Nasty spam email offering tax rebate

Just a quick note to watch out for emails like this one I received supposedly from HMRC this morning. Hovering over the links in the email shows me it's actually trying to send me to recivetaxrefund .xf .cz - quite different to hmrc.gov.uk!  It also doesn't have a "to" address -…

Going that extra mile with WordPress – great feedback for Growing Vision Gardens

A fine example of a bespoke Wordpress customisation, Growing Vision Gardens is now live! This site is a case study of how going the extra mile can make all the difference. Rather than stop at the initial completion of getting content on the pages, we worked with Growing Vision Gardens…

What is Google? And how does it work with your new website?

One of the most common causes for confusion with website owners is how Google works, so I thought I'd just write a little explanation! When you have a website built, you have a domain name address (www.yourwebsite.co.uk) where you and other people can visit your website. The way to get…

Browser testing to include skype?

Just to add to the long list of what us web developers have got to check for is Skype installations. I've been noticing recently how if you've got Skype installed on your computer, then it is very helpful and turns phone numbers into clickable links for you on websites you…

Tart featured in Good Housekeeping

Gloucester Road's very own Tart has a double page spread in the latest edition (October 2010) of Good Housekeeping. Tart are our client (we help them looking after their website) and our neighbour on Gloucester Road so we were very excited for them when they told us to watch out…