Mark brings more than 30 years of hands-on experience in web technologies, infrastructure, and performance optimisation. His career spans from early internet infrastructure through enterprise consulting to contemporary WordPress hosting platforms.
In 1993, Mark was granted the Freedom of the City of London as "A Computer Analyst/Programmer", one of the oldest honours in the country and a recognition of his professional standing in technology at just 25 years old. In the mid-1990s he built and operated Boots Board, a global BBS phenomenon with thousands of users worldwide that evolved into an early internet service provider with multiple banks of phone lines and modems in a hunt group, leased lines, and his own Class C IP assignment. He sold the company in 1997. He holds a BSc (Honours) in Computer Science and has been at the forefront of web technology evolution since the early days of the internet.
Areas of Expertise
WordPress Hosting & DevelopmentWordPress Plugin DevelopmentPerformance OptimisationCore Web VitalsAI Visibility & Site IdentityTechnical SEODatabase Design & NormalisationPHP & Modern CSSCloud Hosting & CDN OptimisationSoftware Architecture
Career & Background
Career Timeline
Mid-1990s
Boots Board BBS
Built and operated Boots Board, a global BBS phenomenon with thousands of users worldwide that evolved into an early ISP with multiple banks of phone lines and modems, leased lines, and a Class C IP assignment. Sold the company in 1997.
Late 1990s
Enterprise Consulting
Worked with major Microsoft partners including QA Consulting and Anite Systems on enterprise-level projects.
2002
Founded BSolve IT Limited
Established a consulting and development company (Company No. 04607330) on 3 December 2002, delivering bespoke solutions for businesses across the UK.
2002
Launched 365i Hosting
Launched a specialised WordPress hosting platform with managed security, performance optimisation, and expert support.
2025
AI Visibility Definition
Created the AI Visibility Definition and AI Discovery File Specifications, an open standard for AI-readable site identity.
2025
365i Web Design
Launched a premium web design service combining performance engineering, technical SEO, and AI visibility expertise.
2025
Press Forge
Launched Press Forge as a dedicated WordPress services agency, combining decades of development experience with performance engineering and AI visibility expertise.
2026
Published Author
Became a published author at The Financial Executives Journal, contributing articles on AI strategy and technology for business leaders.
2026
AI Discovery Files Plugin
Released AI Discovery Files, a WordPress plugin that generates 10 machine-readable files so AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity can discover, interpret, and cite websites correctly.
2026
Mailbox MCP
Built and launched Mailbox MCP, a remote MCP server that gives Claude, Cursor and any other MCP client real read and write access to a mailbox the user already owns on Gmail, Microsoft 365 or any IMAP host.
Mark created the AI Visibility Definition: the degree to which a website can be discovered, interpreted, and cited by AI systems. The accompanying AI Discovery File Specifications define 10 machine-readable files (including llms.txt, ai.json, identity.json, and brand.txt) across three implementation tiers.
The Q1 2026 Adoption Study crawled 1,995 domains across the top 1,000 global and top 1,000 UK websites. Just 6.5% had any AI Discovery File, and 87.5% had no AI-specific policy in their robots.txt at all. The full dataset is published as open data under CC BY 4.0, with three downloadable CSVs covering adoption rates, readiness scores, and crawler blocking policies across 15 AI user agents.
Mark's newest build is Mailbox MCP, a remote MCP server that gives Claude, Cursor or any MCP client real read and write access to a mailbox you already own. Gmail, Microsoft 365, or any IMAP host. 32 mail tools, plus up to 21 more where it can reach your calendar. Nothing to migrate, and no message content stored anywhere.
Reading mail is the easy half. The hard half is leaving the mailbox exactly as you found it: replies that thread correctly, sent mail filed once, and a message that stays unread until you say otherwise. Open Outlook afterwards and there is nothing to say a machine did the work.
Verified behaviourLive mailbox, 26,930 messages
Replies thread properlyIn-Reply-To + References
Attachments arrive intactSHA-256 identical
Sent mail is filed once1 copy, ID matched
Reading leaves it unreadflags untouched
Duplicate copies in Sent0
Free tier, 5 calls a day. Pro is £34.99 + VAT per mailbox, per year.
The update email is the one job on a web design project with no deadline attached, so it is the one that never gets written. We connected our project mailbox to an AI assistant and mapped what changed onto our five-step process. Here is the mechanism, the honest limits, and the fortnight of real client work behind it.
Most small business websites are a leaflet you read once. The best ones you keep in a tab. Using the Brewood Removals rebuild and its two free tools, here is how non-commodity content and genuine utility give people a reason to stay, come back, and get you cited by search and AI.
The unedited post-launch conversation between Mark McNeece and Sean Hamilton about the Lockerfella build. Trust, area pages, AI Discovery Files, prices, and the locksmith version of mission control. The primary source behind the case study.
AI Visibility
Articles about AI Discovery Files, AI Site Identity, and optimising your business for AI-powered search.
Ask ChatGPT about your business right now. Is the answer right? For 97 out of 100 UK businesses, it's not. The free AI Discovery Files WordPress plugin lets you tell AI systems who you are, what to call you, how your brand sounds, and what they're allowed to do with your content. Here's every feature, with screenshots.
99.7% of UK websites are invisible to ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. I built a free WordPress plugin that fixes that in five minutes. It generates all 10 AI discovery files from your dashboard, with zero coding and zero performance impact. Here's what it does and why your site needs it.
Original research: 93.5% of the world's top websites have no AI Discovery File. Only 6.5% have any, and 56% of those fail validation. Zero sites achieved full AI visibility. The window for early adopters is wide open.
WordPress 7.0 Beta 2 shipped on 26 February with a new Connectors settings page for OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini. Configure once, use everywhere, says the pitch. But installing a connector doesn't give you AI features. It gives you a connection. Here's what that means for web designers, site owners, and the WordPress ecosystem.
WordPress 7.0 Beta 1 dropped today with something no other major CMS offers: a built-in MCP Adapter that lets AI agents like Claude and Cursor interact with your site directly. Real-time collaboration, per-block CSS, and an admin refresh round out the biggest WordPress update since the block editor.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 dropped yesterday. GPT-5.2 has been live since December. Gemini 3 Pro since November. All three major AI platforms are running new-generation models at the same time, and the right choice depends on what you actually need. Here's the head-to-head comparison with real benchmarks, real pricing, and real use-case recommendations for UK businesses.
The update email is the one job on a web design project with no deadline attached, so it is the one that never gets written. We connected our project mailbox to an AI assistant and mapped what changed onto our five-step process. Here is the mechanism, the honest limits, and the fortnight of real client work behind it.
Most small business websites are a leaflet you read once. The best ones you keep in a tab. Using the Brewood Removals rebuild and its two free tools, here is how non-commodity content and genuine utility give people a reason to stay, come back, and get you cited by search and AI.
The unedited post-launch conversation between Mark McNeece and Sean Hamilton about the Lockerfella build. Trust, area pages, AI Discovery Files, prices, and the locksmith version of mission control. The primary source behind the case study.
Nobody wakes up thinking "I need a cloud server." What happens instead is slower: your checkout lags, your admin crawls, and a traffic spike takes the whole site down. Here's how to spot when shared hosting stops being enough, what cloud actually changes, and why the switch costs less than you think.
The UK government announced on 15 February 2026 that all AI chatbot providers must comply with the Online Safety Act's illegal content duties. The amendment closes a loophole that let stand-alone AI chatbots operate outside the law. If your business website uses an AI chatbot, here's what changed and what you need to do.
Anthropic closed a $30 billion Series G on 12 February 2026, valued at $380 billion. GIC, BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and Fidelity all signed on. The investor list tells you everything: institutional finance is betting that safety-first AI wins the enterprise market. Here's what that means for UK businesses trying to be visible to Claude.
Google rolled out its first core update of 2026 yesterday, the third algorithm change in four days. More than half of monitored sites are seeing ranking shifts. The update targets scaled AI content but rewards AI-assisted pages built on original expertise. Here's the five-minute audit that tells you which side of the line your content is on.
An "SEO expert" on LinkedIn told his followers to create "Top 10 [Service] in [City]" pages and rank themselves first. His followers loved it. Google's spam policies don't. Here's why self-referencing listicles now trigger penalties, and what to do instead.
Google released its first-ever Discover-specific core update on 5 February 2026. It boosts local content, cracks down on clickbait, and rewards topic expertise. The local relevance change is good news for UK businesses, and with the global rollout weeks away, there's time to prepare.
Fed up with performance plugins that break Elementor? We built 365i Performance Optimizer to speed up WordPress sites without the usual compatibility nightmares. Free, open source, and Elementor-safe.
WordPress 6.9 delivers up to 23% faster performance on PHP 8.5. Here's what changed under the bonnet, and what WordPress 7.0's collaboration features mean for your site.