beyond the office - WordPress developer & trainer in Pittsburgh, PA

How safe is your website?

Your website is only as safe as your last good backup… Thanks for checking out my talk at WordCamp Lehigh Valley. I am passionate/slightly neurotic about backups, mostly because I’ve seen lots of cases where bad things happen to good websites because they don’t have a good recent backup of their site. Enjoy the slides, and […]

Do I really need to hire a web designer?

I was at a business growth workshop one time and was asked by a professional photographer at the end of it, “With all of the DIY website builders available these days, do I really need to hire a professional website developer?” I spun the question around and said to him, “Well, with all of affordable […]

6 Things You’re Doing Wrong with Your WordPress website

1 – Not making regular backups. Even if you correct all of the things listed above, your website could still get hacked. Or your webhost could crash. Or you could update a plugin or theme that breaks your site – nothing’s infallible. Having current backups will help you recover more quickly in the event that […]

Are your pop-ups affecting your search ranking?

As part of their continued effort to make mobile internet usage more user-friendly, Google changed their search algorithm to penalize pages that have “instrusive interstitials,” which refers to popups and popovers that cover the majority of the visible area. “They can frustrate users because they are unable to easily access the content that they were […]

Yes, You really do need an SSL certificate

“Do I really need an SSL certificate for my website?” This is one of those questions that I’m hearing a lot more often from my clients. Typically, they’ve heard a rumor or something from a friend of a friend and are confused about it all. Strictly speaking, the only time you need an SSL certificate is […]

Why you must have a mobile-friendly website

According to a recent report from Pew Research Center, 77% of all American own a smartphone. When they first surveyed smartphone ownership conducted in 2011, that percentage was only 35% – that’s a fairly significant jump in only 6 years. An August 2016 blog post from Search Engine Land state that Google reports indicated that […]