Foundation Web Design & Development
Web Design & Development
This is a question I get asked a lot. “Aimee, I want to pay you to do SEO on my website. How much will it cost?” While this sounds like a straightforward question with a straightforward answer, it’s actually much more complicated than that. Let me explain:
Continue reading “How much does it cost to do SEO on a website?”
Dear fellow WordPress developers, it’s time to give up Classic WordPress.
I know, I know. But Gutenberg has been the core editor since December 2018. And I agree with you! When Gutenberg first came out I wanted nothing to do with it either. It was not ready for prime time, there were a lot of things wrong or downright broken with it, and it hardly fit into any sort of regular WordPress build. But the fact of the matter is that Gutenberg has been out for nearly six years now, and it’s really shined up to something great.
Continue reading “Dear WordPress devs, it’s time to give up classic”
It’s no secret my favorite slider plugin is Smart Slider 3. With a robust interface, lots of great options, ease-of-use, and accessibility as well as SEO features, Smart Slider 3 is hands down the best slide plugin for WordPress out there.
I’ve run into certain areas where I’ve wanted to use Smart Slider 3 with pngs, and make the slider as a whole fully transparent so it’s like each slide is floating and sliding on the website. It seems simple enough — just drop out the background on the slider you’re building, but it seems all slides have a solid background on them (usually white) no matter what.
The solution?
Continue reading “Making a background transparent in Smart Slider 3”
I’ve dealt with this headache so you don’t have to. Signing up for an agency account is great, because it gives you some new tools to take the confusion out for your customers when it comes time to help them with their Google Business profile. However, an agency account comes with some caveats. That is, the agency cannot own profiles on its own (it can never be an owner), so having a backup Gmail or Google account to be an owner is key. Ideally, the client becomes the owner, but that doesn’t always work out.
Continue reading “Gaining Access to a Service Area Business Google Business Profile with an Agency Account”
By now, you likely have an idea about contrast ratios in web design and when a contrast ratio is too low, it might be difficult for people to read. A contrast ratio is a mathematical way of figuring out whether or not something is readable based on a few different factors, like text size and text color, as well as background color. Generally speaking, WCAG AAA contrast ratio for text is minimum of 7:1. You can use an online contrast checker if you’re unsure; WebAim has a good one! But what happens when the contrast is too high? Does such a thing exist? The short answer is: yes.
Continue reading “In website design, is there such a thing as too much contrast?”
I’m so excited to announce the launch of a new website for client Sweet Sips Colostrum Spoons! Sweet Sips Colostrum Spoons helps birthing parents breastfeed their newborns with the help of colostrum spoons, ensuring that the baby gets enough nutrition during the crucial early moments of life. I just love the way this site came out, and I know you will too!
Continue reading “New Site Project: Sweet Sips Colostrum Spoons”
There are many ways to make your WordPress site faster, but seldom is the topic about your database. When your WordPress site starts to slog, it can be a frustrating experience for not only you, but your visitors as well. If a website is too slow, did you know it can actually lose potential customers? Really! According to Google, the probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds. Keeping your site quick isn’t just a vanity project; it has real consequences that can help grow your business.
For the uninitiated, every WordPress install has two parts: the PHP, CSS, and JS files that make up the functionality of WordPress, and the MySQL database that houses all of the information that propagates into the WordPress installation. A WordPress installation cannot function if it’s missing its database, and you’ve likely seen the dreaded “error establishing database connection” error before that tears down your entire site. So, let’s talk databases, identifying if they’re slow, and what you can do to fix them.
Continue reading “Identifying and cutting WordPress database bloat”
One thing I really love about the simple portfolio site sale is that I get to make a bunch of unique portfolios for a variety of artists. Tim Paul was part of my portfolio site sale, and he came to me in the middle of it when he admitted that he had wanted to build a site on WordPress, but hadn’t gotten around to it for years. I’m excited to show you what we built together!
Continue reading “New Site Project: Tim Paul Illustrations”
When parent company Automattic announced just a few days ago that they were going to be selling user data from WordPress.com and Tumblr to Midjourney (Company responsible for LLMs), at first I just shook my head. I read the details, including the grisly fact that all user data has likely already been scraped and sold, including private data like unanswered asks on Tumblr and private blogs, and put it aside for a moment. Later, a paltry toggle switch to opt-out WordPress.com and Tumblr accounts (despite the data likely already being taken) appeared, and I thought: no.
Continue reading “The Great Migration – Moving from WordPress dot com to Self-Hosted”
Foundation Web Design & Development is excited to announce the launch of a new site for Groveland Gecko, a NH-based gecko breeder and supplies provider.
Continue reading “New Site Project: Groveland Gecko”