Web Services
The world of web design encompasses a diverse ecosystem of technologies. Other than designing and building websites I offer a variety of correlated services ranging from maintenance plans, content delivery network (CDN), full site optimization, search engine optimization and consulting (SEO), as well as hosting and hosting migration. Not satisfied with your current hosting company? Don't yet have a host for your site? Need someone to take over common maintenance tasks? Let's chat.
Design and Build
Website projects begin with a discussion of your requirements, after which I provide a cost estimate, a tentative timeline, and a full breakdown of the project scope and your expectations.
- WordPress
WordPress powers over 40% of sites worldwide. It long ago abandoned its humble blogging roots and has since become a fully fledged, extensible content manager. Its self-hosted version is my platform of choice due to its massive ecosytem, open community and solid architecture. For all of its flaws it is still the most accessible and client-friendly CMS on the market today.
Deliverables
- Full Site Build
- Image Optimization
- Additional Security
- Cloud Backup and Restore
- Downtime and Security Monitoring
- Site Migration
- Site Caching
- Database Lists and Facets
- eCommerce
If your site is built on the WordPress platform and you need a small eCommerce shop for virtual downloads or a handful of physical goods, WooCommerce is the go-to solution. WooCommerce also runs mid-size to enterprise-level stores but requires a more robust hosting setup. Inexpensive shared hosting won't suffice. Any ecommerce site with more than several dozen products should ideally exist on a VPS server with enough dedicated resources delivered on a solid backbone.
Recommended
- WooCommerce
- Snipcart
- SureCart
- Static Site Generators
Static Site Generators are the new rage. JAMstack development leverages modern technology stacks to deliver sites that are not only incredibly secure but also highly optimized for lightning fast page loads across all devices and connections.
Recommended
- Astro
- Eleventy
- Hugo
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS encompasses everything from mailing list services such as MailChimp to eCommerce, event, and scheduling platforms. These offer vital complements to your primary portal site and can offload much needed functionality, server resources and requisite maintenance and upkeep headaches to third party vendors.
- Hosting
Not all hosting solutions are created equal. In fact, the most popular hosts on the market are typically some of the worst (I'm looking at you Godaddy). They overload their servers causing slowdowns during peak traffic. Their "premium" plans are often slower than the cheapest shared hosting plans on better hosts. I offer VPS hosting which provides a solid backbone and plenty of resources that scale for peak traffic. If something goes wrong, I'm there to fix it.
- Virtual Private Server (VPS)
- 99% Uptime
- Free Email
- Basic and Premium Plans
Recommended Hosts
Prefer to maintain your own hosting account? Here are my recommendations.
- Cloudways
- Digital Ocean
- Vultr
- Opalstack
- Siteground
Maintenance and Upkeep
Once your website build has been finalized for production there are a variety of options which many people don't often consider. Some are optional, others advisable, while others are absolutely critical.
- Site Updates
If you rely on WordPress to power your site you'll notice the system often requires updates not only to the core itself but to the litany of optional plugins that might be installed, not to mention the server-side language on which the whole thing runs. These updates range from merely helpful to absolutely critical. Of course auto-updates can be enabled but this can occasionally cause issues, conflicts and downtime. Whethere you're on my maintenance plan or simply need to hire me on a per-issue basis, I can help.
- Optimization
Optimization includes analysis of page load speed and fine-tuning to serve potentially heavy web pages as fast as possible on any device. I compress all images and provide various page caching options. Ecommerce, membership sites and blogs with active commenting can benefit from more robust object caching than smaller brochureware and static marketing sites. Serving a global audience? Delivering static assests such as images, style sheets and scripts from a content delivery network (CDN) can be an incredible benefit.
- Content Delivery Network
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) provide global delivery hubs for you static assets such as images, stylesheets and scripts especially if you are on an inexpensive shared hosting plan, even more so if your market is global-centric. The farther away a visitor is from your primary hosting provider's server (e.g. Dallas, San Franciso, Toronto) the slower your site will load. A good CDN ensures your site loads quickly no matter where the site visitor lives.
- Automated Cloud Backups
Full site and database backups offsite to cloud server. If your site is ever hacked or goes down for any reason the full site can be easily restored.
- Uptime Monitoring
Don't wait until a customer informs you that your site is down. Uptime monitoring will let me know if and when your site goes down for any reason so that we can promptly address the issue and get your site back online ASAP.
