PootlePress’s 1-Day Xpress: Fast, Custom WordPress Sites with Canvas

Background

Jamie Marsland founded PootlePress in Cheltenham, UK as a hands-on WordPress development and training firm. The firm’s mission was to remove the frustration clients face when they need simple tweaks on professional sites. By blending design services with direct teaching, PootlePress opened a new path for small businesses, charities, and local authorities to run sites with confidence.

Meeting the Demand for Control

More than 250 people attended PootlePress courses over six months, hailing from big names like Yell, UK police forces, and Hackney Council, as well as startup teams. Feedback revealed a shared pain point: paying high fees for every design or content change. The answer was a theme that offers point-and-click flexibility, so non-developers manage updates in-house.

Harnessing the Canvas Framework

Canvas Framework, developed by WooThemes, provides an extensive theme options panel. Users can switch grid widths, adjust header settings, or swap style presets without touching a line of code. Developers layer additional tweaks via custom CSS or child themes, making it ideal for mixed-skill teams.

Modular Thinking from Architecture

A TV feature on prefabricated homes showed a factory setup where walls, floors, and roofs are ready for quick assembly onsite. Jamie saw the potential to adapt this for web. The result: prepare templates, child themes, and style guides ahead of time, then assemble everything in a live workshop.

Introducing WordPress Xpress

Three months ago, PootlePress launchedWordPress Xpress, a service where a site is built in a single day. The team spends the morning installing WordPress, applying a Canvas child theme, and fine-tuning options. In the afternoon, clients join onsite or via Skype to add images, text, and final touches.

A Hands-On Build Session

Rather than passively receiving a finished site, clients share screens or sit side by side with the developer. They see each step: setting color schemes, choosing widgets, uploading media. By the end, they know where to find every control panel, and how to make basic edits later.

Efficiency and Collaboration

A day might sound intense but planning and a set library of child themes keep sessions on track. PootlePress refined six child themes with different base styles, so most decisions are about images and text. This focus cuts build time to under eight hours of hands-on work.

Positive Impact

• Over 250 users trained on Canvas settings in the last six months
• Sites built from blank WordPress install to live in under one day
• Clients save hundreds in support fees by handling edits themselves
• Wide range of organisations from local councils to charities trust the method

Scaling the Model

With the core library of themes and training templates in place, PootlePress plans to standardize the Xpress workshop as their default service. Prep work such as setting up child themes, defining typography, and building key page layouts happens offsite in advance, then the final assembly is the fun part.

Looking Forward

The combination of prebuilt assets and live collaboration meets both speed and quality goals. PootlePress is exploring partnerships to offer the one-day build as a white-label option for agencies. The early returns suggest this method can reshape how small to mid-sized organisations launch and maintain WordPress sites.