What does it entail? You will need a domain and a hosting company. The WordPress software and theme will need to be installed. Content is usually provided by the client, but often needs editing or enhanced to fit into the layout. Images and photos need to be researched, curated and sized. Pages and links need to be planned and a blog started or imported from the previous website. As many or more than ten plugins that add important security and functionality need to be procured and configured.

Check for broken links, test for mobile, and publish. Revisit the domain and point to the correct url. Test for broken links again. Test for mobile again. Wait ten days and check again. Finally add Search Engine Optimization with researched keywords and google analytics to track your progress. It’s a lot of work. But the cost is one time and can be financed over months. The site is yours and can be edited and altered as you grow.

You can alternatively go to a commercial website and hosting company such as Squarespace, Shopify or Wix, and many do. They use predesigned templates  that are not builder templates and cannot be modified except with CSS coding. You pay a monthly fee indefinitely and if you decide to change companies, or self publish, you cannot take the site with you.

If you need a simple site that is quick and less complex that may be the way to go. But if you are in the long haul, a self published website is worth the time and effort.

Here is a way to circumvent the WP builder, which is not at all user friendly. Divi users are already have a beautifully working builder and why would we want to change? Divi also, in answer to this new WP update, went ahead and reworked the design of their interface and it is slightly less user friendly than the Classic, but will be fine once you get used to it.

[Be aware that I may have already changed your settings. If you don’t see any difference, then you are all set.]

Now for the instructions: In your Divi Theme Options, you will see the default General area, turn off the two Minify options which are just above the black css panel. Save. Then go to the Tab labeled “Builder” and open its Advanced tab. Here you turn off what is currently on and enable the New Divi Builder Experience and The Classic Divi Builder. Save.

Now, when you go to your pages, look for the Return to Classic Builder button on the bottom right hand side. Immediately you will return to the familiar interface of the Classic Builder.

During the updating process, a couple of clients, including me, lost some recent edits in their website. I’ve talked to both BlueHost and the Elegant Themes people (who design Divi), and no one seems to know why. Remember, though, that I have monthly backups and can revert you back in time to that version. Some clients may want to consider weekly backups. Let me know if you prefer that service. It is only $2 more per month. All Pro Users now get this in their package as part of their subscription.

For those of you who do not use the Divi Theme, there is a plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic–editor/) that will get you back to the classic editor. Support will continue for the Classic Editor into 2021.

Here’s to a happy and healthy New Year with no more big WordPress updates!

1. SECURITY: Weekly updating of your software, WordPress, Theme, and Plugins, will help keep up with security assaults. You may not realize that malware and spam is an ongoing problem for small websites too. The robots sweep through looking for vulnerabilities without discretion to find a place to insert their bad code. Your site becomes the conduit through which the virus  spreads. WordPress itself updates over twelve times a year, then the Themes and Plugins follow suit. Perugi Design uses state of the art software to approve these updates each week or more often, if prompted. If there is a problem, it is hunted down and addressed.
2. BACKUPS: Your site can go down for various reasons. Sometimes, it gets infected, sometimes the code or php software is outdated. Perugi backups your website at least once a month, so that it can be restored to a previous, uncontaminated version. If you blog often or have an e-commerce site, you may want to back up once a week. Knowing that you have a safe version of your website that can be immediately restored is reassuring. Each week I look to make sure your site has been backing up, so you have a fresh version for a restore.
3. CONFLICTS: I will know when the software is not updating. There can be several reasons. It was not updated automatically and the plugin or theme must be downloaded from the developer and reinstalled manually. There are plugins that conflict with each other, with the theme or with my software. I will let you know when this is an issue before changing any plugins running on your website.

If you run into a problem and you don’t have professional help, give us a call at 617-365-3418. Find plans on the Services Page of my website for more information and to sign up.

TEXT
You may already have text from a previous website that you want to update or you may have none at all. Brochures, reports and other publications may offer you a good start. The designer or content developer will take this to edit into something usable for the new website, keeping in mind what key words need to be added for search engine optimization. This is a start and you will have to involved in the editing to make it work for you.

GRAPHICS AND PHOTOGRAPHY
If you have a logo, that is a good place to start for color exploration. Not having a good logo may provide an opportunity to include that design in your agreement. Photographs you may already have should enhance your color palette and brand. If you do have good photography, the designer will suggest or select the ones that will be placed on the home page. Another option is to purchase high quality photographs from a stock agency. Designers will look for photographs with the right colors and style for your site.

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Mapping out the layout is key to good user experience. Your visitors will need a clear understanding of what you do and how you will help them. Your designer will create a design that provides a satisfying pathway for a visitor who follows through with a call of email to find out more.

SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH
When all the functionality is set and the layout is finished, your designer will launch the site and make sure everything is working correctly. Flow, typos, links and software kinks need to be worked out. Your site should have a security certificate and your new site should be added to search engines and social networks. Incoming marketing efforts can begin to provide traffic to your site which can then be tracked.

Your involvement as website owner is necessary to achieve good results from your website from the very beginning to the end!

Where do you start with color?

Type “color” on Google and you will find color wheels, web color palettes, color theory and even a link to the International Color Consortium, which promotes vendor-neutral, cross-platform color management systems for computers. It’s getting complicated.

Even if you aren’t a visual artist, you probably go to the paint store and draw on the color wheel information you learned so long ago. It is as valuable as the algebra we use to calculate size variables. How many of us remember learning the color wheel in art class? Well, it is still a valuable tool for graphic designers, interior designers, architects and other visual professionals. When sitting in font of a blank canvas (by this I mean my computer screen), I often pick a starting color based on client research. It may start with a main logo color. The next color I pick is going to be complementary. Why? Because it looks good! See basic color wheel rules from coschedule.com.

Cool Tools
A  cool tool for color, from the software company, Adobe, can help you create or complete a color combination for your website. Use their color wheel to create a whole new palette or download one from their online community. Try it out! 

A color mission at Color Marketing Group
The Color Marketing Group’s “mission is to create color forecast information for professionals who design and market color.” They state that “color sells and the right colors sell better.” At annual design workshops, members track trends and their influences on design and color. The site says these “influences run the gamut from social issues to politics, the environment, the economy and cultural diversity. It is an understanding of the influences that provides the most useful information, and it is the input of so many color designers, that gives each forecast its tremendous validity.”

Start with one color based on what’s new.
Pantone, a design color authority, already announced Ultraviolet as the color of 2018, also assembled a list of new hues to watch as we approach Fall ’18. Consumers will continue to focus on self-expressive colors and non-traditional choices. So, what are the colors for this year, keeping in mind that one of colors from Pantone could be used for your website, and not all of them at once!

Susan was introduced to me by Nancy Wolff Leary, of Online Amplify. Nancy provides marketing solutions to companies that help them grow through an improved online presence. Nancy and I worked together to provide Susan with a head start on her new company website Fundraising Focus. Nancy is an expert on content writing and she asked me to provide the design piece of the puzzle.

Nancy wanted to have a design in place before providing web copy, which is something I did not anticipate. My usual strategy starts by meeting and discussing objectives with the client, looking over text (either a previous website or brochure) and building a wire frame (or layout sketch) from that. But I had a solution. I would find a Child Theme site layout with dummy copy that was approved by Susan and myself for Nancy to view. Susan and I easily agreed on one. I made suggestions on where headlines and links should go based on what I knew Susan needed. And Nancy would have enough sections to consider.

But this solution was not without its challenges. Three women who each have their own ideas about website development made for some interesting discussions. I think we can agree the site is the better for it. It incorporates Susan’s precise objectives, Nancy’s lively and thorough text and my sense of appropriate color, layout and photography. Go see for yourself and if you know an organization that could use fundraising help, go here! To ask me about this project, contact me.

We all know that cell phone use in the United States (and worldwide) continues to increase each year. Statistica.com states that “…73 percent of the population in the United States were actively browsing the internet from their mobile device.”  So, if you are hobbling along without a responsive website, you are falling behind. An article on the Five Reasons You Need a Responsive Website, they list three additional important points.

• Great User Experience is a Must.
• Responsive Website Design is Ideal for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Speed of Your Responsive Website is Key

The tendency to use plugins to fix your lack of a modern theme runs a risk of it not working well. It can take several hours better used to build a new site and lastly, it sets up a scenario where the plugin causes conflicts and the site breaks. The free versions are far from perfect.  The plugin may not include a tablet version. Pro versions are costly. And why would you pay to have a band-aid option?

Meet Divi. Our modular theme includes all the tools to customize both cell and tablet versions. You can resize text and remove sections or images. It is built into the theme and completely compatible.

Since DIvi is constantly being updated and improved, you won’t need to change themes ever again. There are thousands of designers and developers that can help you make changes and even alter the look and feel of the site.

So for me, it’s a no brainer. Switch to Divi and take control of your website for the rest of your life. (Divi can be purchased by you at https://elegantthemes.com or through your web designer…me.  😉

I arrived at 8:15 or so and found a nearby parking lot for only $12, despite being warned it could cost $30 due to a Red Sox game held today…. making up for the $75 parking ticket I got last month at a meter during a Red Sox game! But, that’s another story. If you’d like to skip this first hand account and read real transcripts, go to the WordCamp website.

I found out from the first talk, Intuitive Editing Workflows by Erik Bernskiold, that Structured Data Input is an important feature to offer clients, so they can keep their web sites fresh. Problem is, there isn’t a plugin or theme that does this very well yet. We have two options: Create Custom Post Types for the client to write in updates or use a Builder type plugin or theme. The second option can be dangerous as the design can get destroyed without the client realizing it. Some themes, such as Divi by Elegant Themes allow editor roles, thus limiting the ability to change the format.

Next that morning was, The Frustration with Website Security, hosted by Surcuri software. It was labeled WordPress 101, which I took to mean it was for “beginners”. I picked up a few tips, but basically it reinforced what I already knew. 1. Back up your site, not on the server, for instance with Amazon SImple Storage, Dropbox or on your hard drive. Do not rely on the hosting to do it for you. Their backup may also get infected. 2. Attacks are highly automated. which make money for the hackers, even with your small family website, as it can act as a jumping off point to infect other sites. 3. Use a password manager, such as Evernote, so you can have a different password for everything. 4. You can get malware from many places, even plugins!

Designing and Theming for Performance by Matt Dorman was really nerdy, so I won’t go much into it. In a nutshell, Performance of your website, i.e. speed, is important. And there are various tools to determine and help you fix that problem. Obviously, you don’t want your site to load in more than two seconds or you’ve lost the smart phone customer. Sometimes it’s the size of your imagery, or its a plugin or the theme or even the hosting. Test your site on Pingdom, Yahoo’s YSlow, or Google’s Page Speed Insights and then let your web designer/developer know there is a problem so they can help you.

Designer’s Panel with four designers/developers of various backgrounds was next. A lot of chatting, but the important points were: Sliders are on the way out… too much movement especially for phones, which is where all the design is focused now. Give reasons for your design decisions and back it up with information. Quote data and anecdotes. Clients don’t always know what is best for their websites. Consider that what is fast for you and the client, because we have good wifi, is not necessarily the case with many of our users. Someone said the next iteration of WordPress, REST API, will focus on design components and not just the whole page.

Page Builder Showdown given by Gina Deaton rated six or so page builder themes (such as Divi) for creating web page design. A couple came out at the bottom, a few in the acceptable range and two on top. Surprisingly, Divi got knocked down a few points because Gina felt there was a learning curve and the theme only builds out to four columns. She acknowledged that it is a powerful theme, but that in order to use it at it’s full potential, you need to know css coding. The winner was Beaver Builder and a simpler free new theme called Elementor.

Why Good Design Matters was given by a young designer, Andrea Trew,  from the agency Fly Wheel. She mentioned a few books on design or design philosophy including As Little Design As Possible by Dieter Rams. She designed a clever intern campaign based on the Wes Anderson movie, Moonrise Kingdom. New interns were given notebooks backed with fake fur. The take home was “It’s not how it looks, it’s how you make people feel.”

Organizing Your First Website Usability Test by Anthony D Paul, was all about testing web design prototypes. Some results can be “too much content” which can be determined early in a testing environment and problems with Brand Perception, which usually takes some time to uncover and shopping cart abandonment. His favorite quote is “The Price of Light is less than the cost of darkness, by Arthur C.Nielson, market researcher.

Intro to Wireframing, by Karalyn Thayer pointed out that wireframing saves time and money, because you can easily make changes early on. A wireframe, either low fidelity such as a sketch on a napkin, or high fidelity made with software,does not contain any color, fonts, or other stylish elements. The client can more easily understand the hierarchy of content, layout and path of the user.

Are we having fun yet? That’s it for Day one!