Bristol-based design and marketing agency Proctor & Stevenson is coming over all piratical to celebrate International Speak Like a Pirate Day on Sunday. This unofficial addition to the international holiday calendar has gained a strong following, particularly here in Bristol where Treasure Island can trace its roots.

The agency is getting into the swashbuckling spirit by switching its entire website – proctors.co.uk – into pirate-speak at 4pm on Friday afternoon. But the big questions must be how… and why?

A website you can use like Word

Unlike some local providers, Proctors is an agency that lives by what it recommends, and has built its website using open-source software called Drupal. The software is designed to make creating new content pages as simple as word processing.

Drupal is ‘open source’ – so free to use – and developers all over the world are constantly developing new ‘modules’ so users can add new functionality to their websites with ease. The speak-like-a-pirate module is just one of thousands…

Why go pirate?

Proctors MD, Roger Proctor, explains:

“We thought turning the site ‘pirate’ for the weekend would be a fun way to raise awareness about how user-friendly and powerful Drupal is. It’s a cost-effective, responsive platform from which to build a website – one we strongly believe in.”

And in a challenging economic climate – even in pirate-speak – that’s a message that makes sense.