WordPress articles
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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.…
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Keeping Your Site Secure
Getting hacked isn’t usually about bad luck, it’s about missed basics. These five straightforward WordPress security practices are simple, affordable, + often one-and-done. If you want fewer surprises + more peace of mind, start here.
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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…
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Own Your Domain
It only takes one missed renewal or one unresponsive contractor to lose your domain name. And getting it back isn’t always simple. Here’s why keeping your domain registration in your own account is one of the smartest business decisions you can make.
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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…
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Behind the Scenes: How I Build Websites
One of my favorite clients — no, I won’t name names this time — just gave me the green light to start building her new website. I love kicking off a new project because it’s a chance to either help a brand new business grow or create something that will improve an existing business. Every single new site I build kicks off the same way, with me looking over the design files for any questions, hiccups or details that will need some flushing out. Did you think that I was…
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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…
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Check Your Links
A couple weeks ago, I launched a site facelift for a client. After I coded the site, another member of the team imported blog posts + added team member bios. One of those blog posts had a broken link that wasn’t discovered until launch day. It had been broken on their old design for at least 2 years (if not longer) but was caught + resolved on launch day thanks to the free tool I’m going to share with you. For many of us, keeping users engaged is the first…
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A Business That Empowers
If tiny blue orange was a human, it could drive. That’s right, 16 years of owning this business + 12 years of being my own boss while building the career + life I’ve wanted since I was young. Working for myself in a creative field was always the plan. I grew up watching my dad as a self-employed architect + absolutely loving what he did. The way he approached his career appealed to little Alison + I made it my goal to follow in his footsteps, in some ways at…
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Add search to your WordPress website
Have you ever stumbled upon a new business or site that seems like it might change your life? When I was training for a marathon last year, I found Jane on Instagram + quickly worked my way through the mountain of blog posts she had available to endurance runners like me. Some of our site traffic has been with us from the start. But more often than not, they are newer + don’t know all of the content you have available. Which is why having a search option + clear…
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Using duotone in Gutenberg
The Gutenberg image block has some tools that I feel like most WordPress users ignore. I get it, you have stuff to do + learning new icons is not one of those to-do list items. But, duotone in Gutenberg could be your new favorite thing. What if I told you those icons + tools make it painfully easy to change image colors? The duotone icon in Gutenberg Image blocks have a triangle icon that’s half black + half white. Clicking that icon opens up the ability to add duotone to…
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Avoid busted columns on mobile devices
If your site has columns of content (which I’d be willing to bet that it does), tell me this – what happens to those columns on mobile? I’ve seen 3 answers to this question in the last week alone. Which one applies to you? Most WordPress themes + builders have a default function to either stack or hide columns as screens reduce in size. And I think it’s the right solution for columned content. When a screen is no longer wide enough for more than one word at a time…