Even though it is actually a very simple process, it can break things, leading to frustration and lost time. It is however recommended highly, so of course, it is seen as something that must be done. Developers have it a little easier as there are tools available to make the process easy, but what about the average Joe or Jane?

There are plugins out there but these can be difficult to utilise, as their behaviour might vary, based on the theme and plugins your website is using. Minification is not an exact science and its unpredictability is one reason it creates havoc.

So what is minification?

Here we call file optimisation and it can be used for optimising CSS files, JavaScript files and HTML. Other plugins often label it minification.

Usually it comprises two processes that work side by side:

Minification & Concatenation

Minification

Minification means taking out unnecessary parts of CSS and JavaScript files to reduce them in size. When developers code, they include elements that make the code easier to read by other developers, but not for your browser to process the code. Minification strips those elements.

So the point of minification is reduce the file size of your CSS and Java Script assets so that they download quicker.

Concatenation

Concatenation means to join together. If you have 7 CSS files on your site, concatenation will combine them into less files, maybe 2 instead of 7.

So what does this do?

Browsers can only handle a certain number of files at the same time. So the more files on your site, the more times your browser needs to communicate with the server adding time to the site load. Modern websites often process dozens of files simultaneously. Concatenation will sew multiple files together so your server needs to speak less with the server speeding the ‘order’ up.

So what’s the issue then?

Sometimes minification and concatenation can break things. Your layout might break completely, or a function stops working, like your payment portal (big oops). . Each site behaves differently depending on the themes and plugins installed, and how they have been written into code. The state of your server can also contribute to the evil… Often, particularly for JavaScript, it’s often related to the loading order of the files which can affect Google’s page load speed test, as Google wants the files loaded differently.

Whenever there is a problem you have to find the specific files and fix them, which can be a drag.

Is it worth it?

Minification is not a first thing to do, it is a fine tuning option. So don’t start with it. There are far greater gains to be had from some more primary optimisation techniques.

CSS minification normally works well, and debugging these files is easier.

JS minification can be extremely difficult to debug because the files often need to be found through trial and error. This can be akin to needles and haystacks in a big site with a non-developer.

Page caching and image-optimisation are both processes that are fairly easy to implement and provide larger loading time gains initially. before mininfication and concatenation we recommend these larger gain processes first in all cases!

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You must have seen the ads offering the ease and cheap price of building your own website with providers like Wix, Squarespace and Weebly, but when is it good to have a go at building your own site and when should you hire a professional?

For start-up businesses or those with budget constraints, a website builder can be the perfect fit. They are easy to set up, often easy to use and the templates used to design your website can make it easy to deliver a professional looking product at a good price.

There is also often free, or reduced cost hosting and support, they are mostly mobile friendly and there are often add-ons that allow you to embed video, create contact forms or add social media. Their development team handles updates so you don’t have to, and support can be excellent. The fact that you can do it all on your own time is also very handy!

However, for larger organisations or people needing additional customisation outside of the builder’s capabilities, or a custom design, employing a WordPress web professional is often the best thing to do for your business. A professional website author will design your website to target the market to which it is intended, from choosing colours, placing content and using calls to action to engage your customers. Your customer’s perception of your business can often be dictated by how you have chosen to present yourself online, so hiring a professional can make all the difference. The difference between a properly executed website and a poorly executed one will show in profits.

Design Constraints

Although the templates from Squarespace and Wix are able to be customised, unless you have a lot of HTML and CSS knowledge and know the platform well, it is quite possible you will wind up with a website that looks remarkably like your competitors, and if you do need to customise it, or pay someone to, why not hire a WordPress professional first anyway?

WordPress is infinitely customisable, with the ability to build your site around your brand, exactly how you wish. A custom theme will support your business as it grows and comfortably aligns with your branding, permitting changes to the theme as your business expands into new areas, without needing to start from scratch as with some of the builders.

Development Issues

Sometimes the interface of the website builders can generate a lot of code, which can negatively affect such things as page load speed and your ability to rank highly for chosen keywords can also be negatively affected as a result, as messy code is not great for search engines. With a WordPress professional all code is kept clean and minimal allowing search engine bots to travel freely throughout your site!

Any add ons and extra functionality your company needs can be provided as WordPress powers up to 40% of the world’s websites at any time, so support and functionality are incomparable.

Pain-free Building

Even if the ads promise a painless experience building your website, there is still a fairly steep learning curve for the novice builder and promised estimates of thirty minutes to build a site can easily turn into a couple of days of tearing your hair out, and then never actually launching the site because of the frustration. Customisation is difficult with a system that only the website builders really know how to change, and if what you need isn’t available, you might find that the quick and easy website is never going to deliver like you had thought.

Hiring a WordPress professional allows you to direct the operation without all the headaches,

Why not pay a professional to do all the heavy lifting?

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There are many kinds of caching but what I want to tell you about today is “page caching”. WordPress plugins like WP Rocket, WP Super Cache and others are the type of plugin that handles page caching.

So: what does caching do?

When you get a visit to your WordPress site, the visitor’s browser communicates with your web server which loads WordPress – this happens via PHP code processing, talking to your database, and then sending the correct files to the browser to be turned into a complete webpage. This can take a few seconds – or what seems like forever to a modern web user.

Page caching delivers a static HTML file to the browser instead of the back and forth above, which is considerably faster.

Now while this is all accurate, it can be hard for the average user to grasp.

Caching – The Big Picture

Imagine you have a very difficult question and it takes a while to get the answer. For instance what kind of fruit is a banana? I see you rushing to Google it, and after a few minutes you will come back to me and tell me a banana is a berry.

Now I ask you again: what kind of fruit is a banana? And instantly you tell me: a berry.

The initial long process of finding the relevant information was done once, then after that, when the same question was asked, the answer was then instantly available, and given much faster.

If applied to the subject of a website, this means the ability to deliver webpages with a very fast response time, without all the time-consuming processing.

The first visitor to a page on your site is asking the difficult question about the banana and your server will eventually provide the answer. The next time a visitor goes to the same page and asks about the ‘banana’, your server can provide the answer, i.e the web page, much faster.

What does this mean for your WordPress site?

A caching plugin provides those fast answers. The plugin basically takes snapshots of all your web pages.
All of the hard work that WordPress does to display the webpage is done the first time a page gets a visit. Once that process has happened the first time, your caching plugin takes the snapshot and when the next visitor comes to your site, it produces the snapshot instead of going through the longer process again.

Static vs. Dynamic

Technically, the snapshot is a static HTML file. This means it won’t change on its own. It will remain the same if it isn’t told to update. 
There isn’t a file stored for every page on your site, because the page is dynamically generated fresh each time it loads – there is no physical file. When you have caching, you will see a cache folder storing all the HTML files. Those files are only changed when the cache is refreshed.

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Hopefully this post will clear up a lot of the confusion surrounding SEO!

Truth: SEO has both a good and a bad reputation.

SEO for 2015 needs to be honest, transparent and genuine.

One of the main reasons that SEO has a bad rap is because bad SEO is one of the main reasons that Google can penalise your website. People have often sold SEO services to companies who were unaware that the services they were purchasing would harm their web rankings dramatically.

So called black hat (BAD) practices such as poor or spammy link building, duplicate content and keyword stuffing all worked once, but now Google’s constantly updated algorithm penalises sites that are looking for a way to game the system.

Good SEO, when done well, is the reason your site will feature higher in the search engines.

Fiction: SEO Is Dead

If SEO is dead, why would Google publish an SEO Starter Guide? As long as search engines exist, so too will optimisation.

At its heart, SEO still means building and optimising a website to make it easy to crawl, index and be ranked by search engines.

Even a beautiful website with amazing content still needs good SEO.

Truth: On-Page SEO Still Matters

Good on-page SEO is the art of making your pages simple to understand, this will include:

Using a keyword in your web address

Including your primary keyword in the page title

Not overusing your keyword (stuffing)

Ensuring content is relevant, and easy to read

Including optimised images & videos

Using proper grammar and spelling

Ensuring your meta description is interesting and relevant

Supplying mobile friendly website versions

Checking site speed – fix slow loading pages

Fiction: Google Wants You to Avoid SEO

Google’s webmaster tools is an excellent resource for understanding what Google is expecting from modern SEO, and what it isn’t expecting.

Google expects a good internal linking structure so that all of your pages are easily found and can be indexed by Google, especially if your site is large or complex. Check that the number of pages indexed matches the number of pages published to see whether there are indexing issues.

Google also provides information in Webmaster Tools about search queries, the search words that people are using to find your site. This information can be very helpful in understanding how people are or are not getting to your pages.

Webmaster tools also allows you to submit sitemaps and new pages, further helping your site to be crawled.

So Google appreciates SEO, if it is done honestly and thoroughly!

Fiction: Link building is (also) dead

The old and now punishable form of link building, where low quality links to a website were bought in the thousands, is certainly dead. But links are still incredibly important. The main way that link ‘earning’, as we should perhaps call it, is achieved is through the creation of content and websites that people WANT to link to. Social media links and links from articles and blogs are valuable SEO weight. So make something people will want to link to!

Fiction: You Should Not Be Paying for SEO Services

SEO is specialised work, and just as you hire someone to develop your website, or do your advertising design, so an SEO specialist will know the best way for your company to earn a higher place in the web rankings. Find someone honest and with a proven track record.

In conclusion, the idea that SEO is dead is just not true. It is certainly true that bad SEO practices have been eradicated by changes in Google’s algorithm, but good SEO, meaning thorough and careful attention to the SEO factors that Google approves of and encourages, is not going away any time soon, and can lead to healthy web rankings and higher customer engagement levels.

Still not sure about SEO then why not get our Website SEO report here.

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Each large organisation across the globe portrays a logo, from Starbucks and their green and white lady to McDonalds with their “M”. This is because they want to ingrain their business in your brain, they want you to immediately see their logo and think of the product or service they are selling. When you’re rushing from a meeting, parched – Starbucks want their logo to pop into your mind as the solution to quench your thirst. They want you to associate their logo with the answer to your problem.

Nevertheless, the importance of a logo doesn’t hinge on recognition. It starts and and ends with trust. A business with a well designed logo immediately looks as if they have it together. We all know its an essential part of branding, but whats even more essential is that it’s not designed on Paint or Microsoft Word. A logo is an extension of your business, so it should be in alignment with the quality of the product of service that you are providing. A polished, professional logo implemented by a designer will prove to consumers and potential customers that you are capable of doing what you say you will. Putting no thought into the aesthetics of the logo will prove to the general public that you don’t care about making your business appealing to them- and thats the last thing you need.

So, if you’re in the process of starting your business, rebranding or jus think your logo could do with a tweak – get in touch. Please bring along any ideas you have and we’ll be happy to work with you until we’ve created a design you love. A logo doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be polished and memorable – after all, it’s the face of your business.

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Although we hear about many of the major attacks there are thousands being stopped every year by the WordPress team and the positive actions of users and developers worldwide.

We’ll tell you about five essential tips to keep WordPress safer.

1. Strong Usernames and Passwords

One of the main ways someone can hack your site is one of the easiest to remedy, changing your default username to something harder to guess.

If someone’s trying to get into your website, leaving the default username as it is makes one less step for the hacker.

Since WordPress 3.0 users have been able to choose their own admin username during setup. If you need to upgrade to get this option, now would be a good time to do this!

Secondly, a strong password is key to the first line of your website security. It may be a pain to remember, but there are great tools that will store passwords, and if you keep organised it makes the whole process simpler. Certainly better than losing your site to hackers.

2. Login Screen Security

Limit the number of login attempts. This means that only a certain amount are allowed from any single source within a set period of time. Although someone may be innocently trying to access the site and has forgotten the password, it may also be an unwanted attack.

A captcha, which is a way to test whether a site user is a bot or a human can also help prevent attacks from bots looking to crack your site.

Notifications can be configured to alert you when someone unauthorised is attempting to access your site. A hit from Turkmenistan at an odd hour might be a signal something is wrong. You can also configure a firewall to block IP addresses of people who try to get in without permission.

3. Get a Handle on File and Folder Permissions

File permission modes are a bit of a difficult one as there is much to learn, but two of the most common modes are 644 and 755. These make the rules as to who can open, read or change files in a directory.

644 files can be read and written to (changed) by the owner, but everyone else can only read them. This would usually be the best setting for most kinds of files. 755 is what is often used for folders, as many users can modify files in this directory using this setting.

The permission setting 777 should most often be avoided, as this will grant permission to anyone to read, write, or delete as they choose. Obviously this could be a problem, and any plugin that asks you to set 777 as a permission should be handled very carefully indeed.

4. Backup, Backup, Backup

And again: backup backup backup! We cannot stress how important this is!

A weekly or bi-weekly backup for the majority of websites ought to be adequate, unless you have added a significant amount of content or changed things around drastically in which case a manual backup would be recommended. If you have your site backed up you can reset it to a previous time and simply restore the data in the event your site is compromised. The cost of any backup solution is necessary insurance against the havoc that losing your site can bring.

Our WordPress hosting includes free daily backups

5. Install your WordPress Updates!

Updates handle known security issues, fix bugs and offer new functionality. WordPress and its range of plugins offer a great platform to build your website with, but a massive system needs maintenance, so although it is a hassle it is well worth it to keep on top of updates, so your WordPress is protected as much as possible from any security vulnerabilities. It is also worth looking at the changelogs, as they can point to software clashes that might also cause troubles.

It is worth checking regularly to ensure your site is up to date to avoid being exposed to any potential threat.

If you need any help securing your WordPress website or anything else then why not contact us

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In the days before broadband and wireless technologies were introduced, advertising was carried on mainly on signs and posters, by giving out flyers or placing some text in a newspaper. However, though those methods are still very important – an effective website is essential for you to thrive in the digital age.

It is almost a guarantee in the 21^st century that any potential consumer will search for you online before deciding whether to pursue your company further. If your website looks outdated or is none existent, you are alienating your potential clients. Successful companies all have the same thing in common – great websites full of rich content and sharable images. Staying ahead of your competitors is only possible by making sure you are ahead of the curve in every avenue, without a sleek website this is not possible.

All companies have different budgets, so we tailor our web-design to suit your specific needs. Some require a shop-window holding page, whereas others need a fully equipped website with multiple pages and heaps of content. Either way, we are able to work with you to make your business the best version of itself that it can possibly be.

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Logos are considered to be the most important component of a branding strategy. A logo provides your business with an image and should convey the message clearly. A simple, good looking logo will often be easier to remember than the name of a product. Make it unique so that it is easier for customers to remember it.  In today’s fast-paced global market it is critical to stand apart from the crowd. If your branding is consistent and easy to recognise then clients are more likely to choose your business again.

A good brand engages the attention of potential clients and connects with them at an emotional level; your company brand is not just a symbol but the picture that comes to mind when they require the service or product you offer. As great as you think your product is, there are thousands out there who are selling the same thing. Branding communicates what you are all about and makes this information meaningful to people; you can’t tell someone about a brand you can’t remember. A strong brand gives your business the advantage of being the first company to enter a person’s mind, and it is very well known that word-of-mouth is the most powerful form of advertising, which makes it critical that your brand creates a positive impact.

Technology allows you to showcase and advertise your business in an easier fashion. People tend to look at your website first for information about you.  Brand identity is created for an online world. Your website is the primary application and any brand must succeed as a dynamic web destination. Your website, your social media and your customer relationships are all part of your branding – the way your clients perceive you.  The most profitable companies in the world all have one thing in common – they have built a strong brand.

Brands are living things, they communicate and form relationships. How is your brand seen in the world and how does it communicate? Your concepts, ideas, messages and themes need to be included.  In a world where everyone wants to stand out, style is power. Style elevates you and sets you apart. It commands attention and respect. A Brand is not a product or a promise or a feeling; it is the sum of all the experiences you have with a company. A good brand helps people find what they need in you.

It is important to note that a good brand does not just “happen” – it is a well thought out and strategic plan.  Many new businesses neglect to spend the necessary time thinking about their brand and the impact it has on their business. It’s important to spend time researching, defining and building your brand. It is the foundation of your business and one you cannot be without. If  you create a strong brand that is easily accessible and memorable you will reap the rewards as your business grows and expands.

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However, paper has been in circulation for hundreds of years. From the shabby tomes that have been found across time to the leather bound novels that we can buy today in stores, paper still serves an incredible purpose to man.

But when did paper become the style it was today? When did it move away from being shaven wood or tea-stained scribbling’s sent via an eagle?

There has been a widespread, international standardization for paper for many years now. However, beforehand the world had a huge variety of different standardizations which made the easy transport and delivery of paper in different countries very difficult indeed.

The current standard, the ISO standard, compromises of you’re A, B and C classes. The paper size of course affects what you will be doing – A4 makes up your general writing paper or letterhead, whereas A1 is the largest and can be used for designing placards or used as a basis for a large plan.

The constant changing and arguing between nations about what standard to use eventually led to the creation of the ISO standard. The first advantages of having a standardized paper use was noticed in 1786 by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg, sending a letter to Johann Beckmann, created formats which made up the modern-day A2, A3, B3, B4 and B5 paper sizes. However, they were forgotten as the French Revolution was underway and many parts of French culture were lost or destroyed.

The main reason the standard was used for the ease of which is could be scaled – an A1 sheet can be folded down many times to make up a huge pamphlet or brochure. A5 sheets can be folded down to make a small letter, for example. The idea is that when folded in half, the size of paper will then reflect the size below i.e. an A1 sheet folded in half will represent an A2 sheet.

There are/were variations of the paper standard in countries like Sweden and Germany. The German standard known as DIN 476 made up the original A & B sizes, but it also had larger formats the largest of which was 4A0, which was four times the size of an A0 page. The Swedish, in contrast, added a D,E,F and G standard to the original A,B, C format.

However, both countries will use the ISO format as it is the natural standard. Even though so many messages are sent electronically today, the practicality and refinement of a paper document cannot really be matched and it adds an almost finalized feel to things. Without standards, however, we may have moved away from paper many years ago.

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