We made it through the year (barely?). I chose to close my laptop lid + enjoyed two weeks with family — the dogs really — and my favorite heated blanket. If you also took some time off + you’re diving back in, let’s tackle your annual site care tasks. I recommend giving yourself 3 hours to tackle all of these things. If that sounds like way more time than you have to spare, remember that you can have tiny blue orange take care of all of these things (+ more)….
WordPress speed + performance
A fast WordPress site builds trust, keeps visitors around + works harder for your business. These articles help you understand what affects your site speed + how to make it even better.
Holiday Season Ready
It might feel as though the holiday season is eons away, but it has a way of creeping up on me every year, and I know I’m not alone! If you’re like tiny blue orange, your business isn’t as holiday dependent as a clothing store. Yet no matter what industry you’re in, there are a few things you can do to prep your WordPress site early. Update Everything You’re hopefully updating your plugins, themes + WordPress every month, or at least every quarter when I give you a gentle nudge….
Basics: time your site
The quality of your website hosting can make or break your website. Humor me for a second, well a few seconds. Count to five in your head or out loud. Choosing the wrong hosting for your WordPress website can make visitors wait at least five seconds every time they try to load a page on your website. Five seconds may seem like an insignificant amount of time. In real life, it feels like not much time passes at all. However, it’s a crucial time if you’re looking to generate leads…
Stop doing this to WordPress
Before I dive into things I hate seeing in WordPress, I wanted to know if you’ve created your press page yet? I asked back in April + noted that I also didn’t have one of these pages. Holding up my end of the bargain, here’s my in-progress press page. It’s not my favorite site page, but it’s now painfully easy for me to point folks to a spot where they can grab a photo, bio, or reminder of how to spell my name. Speaking of being “in-progress,” I really hate…
How to Improve Your Mobile Site
Roughly half of the visitors to the average small business website use a smartphone or mobile device. For some industries, this can be even higher. While you might not hire a web developer while browsing your phone, looking at a new fitness facility or clicking through FB ads are more often done on phones over laptops. A website that hasn’t been optimized for mobile devices will lead to an annoying experience for your visitors. They’re not going to stay on your website if it’s hard for them to use. Over…
Common Search Console errors
Once your WordPress site is connected to Search Console (a free service provided by Google), you’ll get alerts for areas that need to be improved. These common Search Console errors are often easy to remedy — when you know what to do! URL errors within Search Console Since Google will crawl your WordPress site content, they often uncover link issues within any website. These errors don’t always appear immediately as it takes a little bit for the Googlebot to crawl your site. Instead, they will likely trigger email alerts within…
WTF… what is caching?
If you’re digging through the difference between managed hosting + shared hosting + find yourself scratching your head asking what is caching, let’s tackle that nerdy term right now. The verb cache means store for future use, which is the perfect way to think about caching your site. When you use caching for WordPress, you are storing a condensed copy of your content. And this means the site loads faster. Site visitors are none the wiser because it doesn’t change what they see. But sometimes you notice a difference when…
Run safe WordPress updates with a staging site
You don’t have to risk breaking your live site because everyone is telling you to update to the latest version of WordPress. If you have a staging site, you can test the update without impacting your live site. Want to know the steps? Keep reading…
Does your site load fast enough?
It’d be easy to throw in a few jokes about size, but the reality is that site speed does matter, no matter what anyone tells you. ? Not a week goes by that I don’t have a website owner asking me “is my site fast enough?” As popular as mindfulness is, attention spans are not getting longer. Because of that, having a quick loading site is a great goal for your business. Users will leave your website if the content they want to check out loads too slowly. So what…