Doesn't time fly when you're having fun! I thought it was about time I made a new blog entry as I've just noticed the last one was back in August - so much for my weekly blogging promise to myself :) There's not really much to say other than I thought I'd better make an entry so people

I have an ongoing mental battle with myself regarding what type of business Yellow Duck Web Design actually is and I think that many of our prospective clients possibly have the same battle when they first visit the Yellow Duck site.

"small freelance web design company located in the countryside just outside Chelmsford in Essex" it says. So what does that mean then? Surely you're either a freelancer or a company, no?

Well no. Or maybe yes. The point is this - I run Yellow Duck Web Design as a registered 'sole trader' business. Officially it is just me in the day to day but that isn't really the case in the overall picture.

For a start we have Faye who does the accounts and chases all those naughty late payers who think that the odd £30 won't make a difference - it does by the way :)

Then we have my developer, Shahid and his small team of super-coders who I often ask to do work for me when I'm tied up with the graphic design or I need a specialist for some obscure coding technology.

So really Yellow Duck Web Design is a company of something from 1 to around 6 people depending on how you look at it. OK, so I guess really it is just me if you want to split hairs but the point is that, in today's modern e-World, businesses can be spread about a bit whilst still pulling together to make the all important whole. I have a team around me who, while not always being in the same building, are always on hand to get what needs to be done, done.

I guess that we have the best of both worlds and can genuinely use the age old marketing adage, "Big enough to cope, small enough to care" or some other variation. Essentially Yellow Duck Web Design can offer clients everything that the bigger 'corporates' can but with the often elusive customer service aspect.

I believe that honesty is the best policy and make a point of being completely transparent when talking about my/our services with clients and as such I make no pretence that I've just come from a flashy air conditioned city office or similar.

So I guess that Yellow Duck Web Design is in fact a 'micro-company' and I think we can safely say that it is a Freelance Web Design Company.

So there, now you know. At least I hope you do :)

We're officially excited now that the plans have been approved for the new Duckhouse HQ! We've outgrown our tiny office and are looking forward to a brighter, lighter space in which we can come up with more smashing designs and have more room for meetings etc.

I've been talking with the guys who are going to help with the conversion of one of the outbuildings at Willow Cottages and everything seems to be sorted. The timber's just about on order and over the next few months we'll all be getting stuck in to the build.

Once completed the new office will give us plenty of room to meet with clients and maybe even have a few friends over on Friday afternoons! Still within spitting distance of Chelmsford town centre we're ideally located for local businesses and the location of the building allows plenty of parking so I'm really pleased that the whole project's been given the go ahead.

We're also going to get a new beer fridge!

We've finally ironed out the little creases that we found in our shiny new blog software none of which were bugs or anything like that - we just needed to change the stylesheets and some images which took a bit of fiddling about, that's all.

I have to say, so far I am VERY impressed with Azrul's

Here at the duckhouse we've decided to set up a blog in order to let our clients know what's going on in our little corner of Essex. It's a great idea to have a blog to help improve the search engine results of your site. We already benefit from 1st page Google results but we want to be number