2015 Year In Review
I had a great time this year building websites for some really awesome businesses. From real estate to reverse painting on glass, I got to work on a wide variety of projects this year. Take a look and see for yourself: In case you want to see more, here are the links to their websites: aceofheartsfilms.com bendpaintingparties.com cmpplumbingredmond.com colr.work eliproperty.com kelihudsonart.com optembroidery.com pacificcrestbuslines.com sagerathunts.com seventhmountainstables.com splashwpc.com studio-jay.net centraloregonweddingpros.com Thanks for a great 2015. Hope you have a great...
WordPress 4.4 update out with responsive images and post embeds
WordPress released the latest version, 4.4, named “Clifford” in honor of jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown. Wordpress 4.4 is full of new features to help make your site more connected and responsive. Once again WordPress also includes a new default theme, Twenty Sixteen. Here are some of the highlights of this new release: Meet Twenty Sixteen Twenty Sixteen is the latest default theme to be included with your WordPress installation. If you’re like me, you never even look at the default theme, but it’s great to have one supplied that you know will work great right out of the box. Twenty Sixteen is built with a fluid grid design that will look great across all devices. It has a flexible header and lots of color schemes you can choose from. Responsive Images Arguably a much bigger part of the release than the new default theme is the fact that images are now automatically responsive. No more resizing images for different screen sizes or hoping your theme can handle the duties of serving up responsive images. Your pictures will look awesome whether your visitor is on their iPhone or their computer with a 27″ monitor WordPress Post Embeds This update allow you to embed your posts into other WordPress sites simply by copying the url and pasting into the visual editor. You’ll even get an instant preview of how it will look. Now embedding other posts on your WordPress blog is as easy as it is with videos and other media. Introducing WordPress 4.4 “Clifford” For all the techies out there Infrastructure for the REST API is now included in the core of WordPress. The...
5 Free Essential WordPress Plugins
One of the best things about WordPress is the amount of flexibility and customization that can be done through the use of plugins. Now, it’s never a good idea to load your WordPress installation up with a ton of plugins because that can really put a load on your site and slow it down. If you have a bunch of old plugins (and themes) installed that you aren’t using it’s a good idea to delete them so they aren’t using up resources. Almost every WordPress website is going to use at least 1 or 2 plugins. We put together a list of 5 Essential WordPress plugins that will help your website’s search ranking, security and speed as well as keeping it backed up and helping people contact you. Not only these plugins great, they’re free! Most of them have premium features/versions that you can buy, but for most websites the free versions may prove valuable enough. SEO – Yoast SEO WordPress is a great platform when it comes to SEO. Yoast SEO takes it to thge next level. Not only do you have complete control over your page titles and descriptions, Yoast SEO will analyze your pages and give you an in-depth analysis of both the good and bad parts of the page, including: keyword density, proper page title/description, amount of words and a Flesch-Kincaid readability score. Your page analysis comes with an easy Green/Yellow/Red light indicator to show you how your page is doing. If you see a green light, great job! Red, it’s time to check to page analysis to see where you can improve. Yoast SEO also allows you to easily...
Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?
What is the new Google update all about? In just a few weeks (as of the time of this post) Google will be implementing their latest search algorithm. In an effort to deliver better search results to mobile users, the new algorithm will favor “mobile-friendly” websites. The downfall is that websites that aren’t mobile-friendly will be penalized and will fall in ranking. Once rolled out, the algorithm change is expected to have a significant impact on search results; perhaps even more of an impact on search rankings than either Panda or Penguin, two of the most impactful search algorithm updates Google has ever rolled out. What exactly is a mobile-friendly website? Mobile-friendly websites are designed to look good on mobile devices like phones or tablets. The best way to make a mobile-friendly website is to use a responsive design. Responsive websites will automatically change based on the size of the screen that the website is being viewed on. Take a look at the image below. It shows how the Bend International School website we recently built will look on a computer, laptop, tablet and a phone. If you look closely you’ll see that different parts will either resize or change position depending on the screen size. Another aspect of mobile-friendly website design is navigation. When using a website on a phone menus and navigation can be difficult to use. In responsive website designs the navigation will change to a more mobile-friendly style of drop-down menus when the screen size gets too narrow. Is your website Mobile-Friendly? If you don’t know, it’s a good idea to check your website out. Google...