WordPress is a Crime
WordPress is a bad decision for most businesses. Yet, the vast majority of web developers push WordPress on their clients. They should know better. WordPress developers either don’t know what they are doing or are knowingly pushing bad solutions onto their clients…which makes them crooks.
Case Study: The Gifford Team
When your WordPress site is falling apart and you can't reach your web designer... who you gonna email?
(yes. version2.)
The Lifespan of a Website
How long should a website last?
Change is inevitable. As technology and aesthetic tastes change, you’ll need to redesign your site or build a new site. But that can be a good thing. A clean slate. A fresh approach. A chance to reinvent your brand to reflect new visions and new priorities. But you don’t want to do it more than is healthy. You have other things to do, right?
Web Designer Field Guide: Who Should You Hire?
Web designers vary wildly in skills and experience. If you’re shopping for a web designer or agency, hopefully you’ll find someone who understands your goals and concerns. Your web designer should be able to explain technical options clearly and give you recommendations while letting you make your own choices. Here's a quick run-down of the types of web designers you're likely to encounter in the wild.
Eating My Own SEO Dog Food
I've loved the expression "eating your own dog food" since I first heard about it being used at Microsoft. It means that if you are going to expect people (or dogs) to use your product, you had better be willing to use it yourself.
I've known how to do SEO for years, but this is my first really big push into an extended SEO strategy. And it's the results of experimenting on myself. So here's a little of my SEO data and experiences from 2021. I've learned a lot about what works.
Spoiler alert: It takes a lot of effort.
How to Write Website Copy
It can also be extraordinarily difficult to write about the things you know so well that you do them almost automatically. So if you’re stuck in front of a blank page or screen that is staring back at you, here are some tips that I’ve relied on for years not to just fill up a page, but to write clear, concise copy that works.
WordPress vs. Squarespace
WordPress is the undisputed king of the CMS world, but Squarespace has a lot going for it: excellent UI (user interface), stability (no manual updates), excellent uptime and transparency about it, full CSS control, very fair pricing, great add-on features including eCommerce, eMail list management, and scheduling. But the most interesting thing is that Squarespace is almost hack proof.
What does a web designer do?
Web design is pretty complicated. I'm not just talking about HTML. There are lots of skills required to be a good web designer. This is an outline of the major skills and qualities that make a good web designer.
SEO in a Nutshell
SEO. The black art of fiddling around with your website to be "#1 in Google." ...or so the spammers say. But today SEO isn't about a bag of tricks. It's about quality, some common sense, and just putting in the work. I've written up this article as an introduction to the core principles of SEO. Hopefully this is an informative read that will get you up to speed on the principles behind SEO.
Tech Company Name Generator
This is just a short and hopefully fun post. I had this idea back during the first web-tech bubble of the early 2000s. Generic (but clearly technical) companies were constantly popping up. I was also inspired by the movie Office Space and the company names "Initech" and "Initrode," which was mistakenly called "Penetrode" at one point.
This is a quick little JavaScript that generates some random combinations