(When he is not running ARBU Charles Dixon-Spain is working on the restoration of Dunans Castle, Bridge and Grounds)
At Dunans we have looked for ways for people to become involved with the heritage project, and while locally this has not been a problem, we have been anxious to engage with a wider audience. We have thought about it a great deal: how to offer something which is fun, engaging, represents good value and gives Dunans a higher profile than perhaps it does now. Lairdships have been sold via the internet for a while now, and in our view take themselves too seriously.
Yes, we want our customers to feel they own a little piece of Scotland (even if it is only one foot square), and yes, we’d like them to use their Lairdly title, but more importantly, we’d like the people who buy this product to take an active interest in a project into which we have been putting heart and soul for the last four years. And this is why we have added value to our offerings: there’s a lairds’ website, with the opportunity to have a lairdofdunanscastle.com email, there are discussion forums and the Laird’s blog, you can have native broadleaf trees planted in your honour, and you can visit any time – we’ll welcome you with open arms. There are even fishing rights which you can take advantage of.
And the vehicle for this project? WordPress of course, both for ScottishLaird.com and LairdofDunansCastle.com with slightly differing themes and plugin profiles. For the e-commerce solution on Scottish Laird we used YAK which has proved itself hugely reliable for Pure Therapy among others, and for the member’s solution in LODC.com we used Chad Butler’s wp-members plugin as well as Simple Forum for all those Lairdly discussions. Of course the other element of this has been constructing the product, and ensuring it provides great value as well as an inherent sense of fun.
So go on: this Christmas have a little Lairdly fun and buy one of our great products!
And here’s a grab of the theme just for kicks!
