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An Effective Website Planning, Design and Development Process
Building or refreshing a school or nonprofit website takes time and collaboration to be successful. Our website projects go smoothly because our process is well planned and organized and are most effective when the client participates in the process enthusiastically. Here is our Guide To An Effective Website Development Process:…
Revealing WordPress Hosting Review: It’s Your Lucky Day!
Recently I wrote about website speed and performance for WordPress websites. I found that the quality of hosting plays a big role in the performance of a website, and how fast it loads. As I mentioned in my previous post, testing tools can be inconsistent and different tools have different benchmarks and…
Photo Credit Valerie Hinojosa via Creative Commons License
Down the Rabbit Hole: How to Tame the Site Speed Challenge
About a month ago, I suggested a client have an SEO analysis done of their site. The site gets a fair amount of traffic, and it had been a while since it had been checked for performance. If, like me, you have mostly small, local clients, you may not often…
What is my Local Host File and How (and Why) Do I Edit It?
I am working on a big blog post about what I have learned over the past 3 weeks about website speed and performance. In the meantime, I wanted to share this quick tip. In my testing process I had a few versions of my site on different web hosts. I…
Quick Fix: Object Cache Error
Sometimes a WordPress error looks really scary. A client recently contacted me when she saw this after logging in to her site via wp-admin. I have also seen this on the front end of some websites in recent weeks as well. Notice: Indirect modification of overload element of WP_HOOK has…
Get over your fear! SVGs are not SCARY Vector Graphics
If you’re like me, there is never enough time to learn ALL the things you want to. I keep hearing about how amazing SVGs are, but have been scared to learn how to create them and work with them. Even more intimidating…. Adding animation! Why SVG? You might first wonder…
How To Use Pods For Simple, More Effective Custom Post Types
Pods is a plugin for WordPress that creates Custom Post Types and custom fields. According to the website, “The Pods Framework allows an ordinary user or developer to easily create and extend custom post types, content types, taxonomies, users, media, or comments — helping you keep your content organized and…
Photo from Pixabay
3 Practical Ways To Have Good UX AND “Cool” Design
I have recently been debating the conflict between creative, unique and “cool” website design and a good, effective user experience. As Steve Krug says in his book, Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, “The Farmer and the Cowhand Can Be Friends” (shout out to my…
A Little (Smushed) Bird Told Me: Regenerate Thumbnails Saves The Day
Have you ever had images “suddenly” look distorted on your WordPress website? The other day, I changed my theme to edit an image size in my functions.php file, as well as the corresponding style.css properties. When I did that, the images I was targeting were successfully cropped to the correct…
Case Study: A Unique Way To Collect Donations on Your WordPress Website
I am excited to announce that I recently formed a joint venture called Nice Work, LLC with Evelyn Powers of Design Powers (a future blog post about that is coming!). Evelyn and I have kept our own successful businesses, but have also partnered to expand the scope of what we can offer…
Does your website or branding communicate your value proposition?
I am excited to share a post from Guest Blogger Jennifer Mulchandani of Arlington Strategy. Jennifer is a champion of small business and a community advocate. She is a veteran in advancing agendas, motivating stakeholders, and driving sales with high-impact strategic marketing and communications. Jennifer’s holistic approach to marketing includes…
Startup Stock Photos
Creating mockup website images
I recently updated my website portfolio to add screenshots and links to new websites I have created for clients. I created a Photoshop template (click to download and use! yourself!) to make it easier to make a consistent and professional look and control the screenshot view. Since I had already started…
SEO – Writing good content
I am pleased to welcome guest blogger Grant Price III. Grant is a WordPress Tutor and Consultant in the Washington DC area. He has been training individuals and corporations about the web and WordPress since 2012. For WordPress tutoring and training, visit WPtutoring.com. Today Grant is sharing some tips about…
Original document from the public domain. This political cartoon, attributed to Benjamin Franklin, was used to encourage the American colonies to join the Albany Plan for Union. It was printed in the The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. Abbreviations: South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England.
Choosing a Membership Plugin and Setting Up Your Membership Site in WordPress
A membership website is one that has a set of specific users/members who have access to some or all of the website’s content when they are logged in. A membership site may be free for all or approved users/members; however, the more typical, commercial membership website requires payment to become…
It’s Not as Hard as You Might Think! Anyone Can Become a 9-to-5 Escape Artist
Today’s guest blogger is my cousin-in-law, the amazing Christy Hovey. Christy speaks, teaches, and writes on the topics of startups, productivity solutions, and social media marketing trends. She’s designed her work life around her family and her goals and enjoys the flexibility of being a digital nomad and lifestyle entrepreneur….
3 CSS Properties To Be Excited About
I am excited – not only about these awesome CSS properties (I love the calc property!) , but also to have a guest post from a woman in tech who really knows her stuff! My friend, Beth Soderberg is an independent web developer and digital communications consultant based in Washington, DC….
The Secret to Getting Ahead is Getting Started
Today’s guest blogger is Maura Fredericks, of Thrive with Maura Fredericks. Maura is a professional business coach and mentor who helps you determine HOW to make your business successful and make the time you spend working most effective and enjoyable. Maura specializes helping in business partnerships, business leaders and entrepreneurs….
Breadcrumbs did not help Hansel and Gretel but they can help your Website
Breadcrumbs are a secondary navigation format that reveals the user’s location in a website. The term actually comes from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale …. you know the one with the scary, cannibalistic witch and yet another evil stepmother? In the story, Hansel and Gretel drop breadcrumbs while walking…
Image by GotCredit.com
Here’s why you absolutely need to back up your website
Today’s awesome guest blogger is Nat(alia Real), Website Superhero, a Web Designer/Developer + Strategist helping world-changing women entrepreneurs get more clients and make a bigger impact with a strategically designed website, while making the tech stuff fun and easy. She posts about all things websites + dogs + pop culture…
Need A Membership Site? Join The Club. How to Choose a Membership Plugin
There are a ton of blog posts and tutorials about creating a membership site and choosing the right WordPress plugin. Chris Lema has covered this territory in depth, with a recent review of 30 different membership plugins. Marcus Couch is soon launching Membership Coach to advise WordPress users on generating revenue…