Robert Lodi

Down the hill behind our deck is a – pond. Sort of. I think technically it’s a vernal pool, since in dry years it dries up. This time of year, if there is water, it is mostly green. 

Off to one side, sticking out in the water, is a rock.

Almost every afternoon there are turtles on the rock. But sometimes there are birds – ducks, geese, and very rarely a heron. This year we’ve seen a Green Heron and a Great Blue Heron on the rock. 

Which is fairly unusual. I think we’ve seen a heron here just 4 times in 5 years.

Rare things happen rarely, but they do still happen.

And you don’t see anything if you never look.

Which is why it is also important to check the back end of your WordPress site every so often. Don’t just add a post and close the window.

Because a rare thing like a bad plugin conflict can still happen. It happened to me just the other day, in fact.

To prevent this rarity from becoming common – you can make sure your plugins aren’t too out of date, especially these next few months as a bunch of updates are headed out way. 

Look for those red dots with white numbers. 

Back up the site, and update the plugins. 

Then go outside and see what is on your rock, whatever that may be. You never know- there could be something good today. 

Some days we simply have too much cache.

For better or worse, we live in the era of cache (pronounced like the money), with local cache, browser cache, server cache, Google cache, CDNs, and sometimes double secret cache all seemingly conspiring against us as we make website edits and updates.

Because what cache does is store copies of the site files, so they don’t have to load over the internet or download to your device. But this also means that sometimes when you make edits, they never show up on the site. Or they don’t show up for a while. 

What can we do about it?

The easiest way around this is to use what they call an incognito or private window when checking for your edits. 

This special browser window will load a new copy of whatever sites you are browsing, and not use any locally cached files. 

Another option is clearing your browser cache. This is either super easy or near impossible, depending on which browser you are using. Chrome in particular is adamant about caching everything while making it very hard to empty it out.

If that didn’t work…

If you have cleared your local cache or gone incognito, and still don’t see your edits, the problem could lie on the server or hosting end. WPEngine, my favorite hosting company, caches the @#*! out of everything, but they also make it easy to clear it. Other hosts may require more steps.

If you’ve cleared what you can and still don’t see your edits, then, well, take a break. Give it some time, and check again in a while.

And if you’d rather not deal with any of it at all – give us a call. We’ll happily handle your site issues and edits for you, so you can focus on your own business cash flow needs.

Last month I had to replace a ceiling fan.

When we moved in, this fan sort of worked. It was stuck on ‘low’ speed, and the part of the fan that controls the speed was broken. Parts were not available. So, finally, we ordered a new fan and I went to install it.

Other than the inherent awkwardness, this should have been a simple task. Take down one fan, put up another.

But we hadn’t known about the size mismatch in the part of the trim that goes up against the ceiling and covers the wiring and fan support.

The new fan trim piece was smaller.

And when the previous owners painted the ceiling, they didn’t take the old fan down – we could tell, since they got some on the fan too. 

And because of this, it was going to leave a circle of old ceiling color around the new fan.

Suddenly, what went from a routine fan swap, turned into a prep and prime and paint multi-day extravaganza, to get a few square inches of ceiling painted prior to new fan installation.

Which brings me to today’s website related point.

When dealing with any given web site and making changes, some things are easy. 

Some things are not. 

And some things we think will be easy, and are instead crazy complicated fan swaps.

For example. 

Recently we’ve been working on integrating Salesforce.com with a WordPress site. There’s a tool for that, and it works fairly well. But the tool doesn’t account for the quality and structure of the data on the Salesforce.com side of things. With secret objects and hidden data and mismatched information and crosslinked elements and more. All of which turned a “hook up the plugin” project into a months-long custom coding and testing project. 

So what, you say? 

Well, what this all means is, when I am estimating a project, I know to allow for some weirdness. We anticipated some issues with Salesforce, so even with the complexities, we’re still on track within the approved budget.

I try to be very transparent with pricing and estimating and set expectations based on what we know about the website in question. I provide ranges, options, and on bigger projects, what happens if things end up over or under the estimate.

I try to be clear about what is covered, and why, and what might happen if there are some unknown issues. This is also why I often ask for a login before working on an estimate. The more we know, the better we can estimate projects. 

Because nobody wants to get a surprise fan-swap-level invoice for what we all thought could be a simple project.

So if you don’t like surprises from your web team – and if you have a fan to swap on your website that you could use help with – contact us today.

In the olden days, file names on a PC could only have 8 characters. Then with Windows 95, all of a sudden… you could name files almost anything you wanted.

And, as far as web servers go, things took a turn.

11+NAME+Resource+Reference2+Managing+Development+&+(1)Workshop+09132022.docx.pdf

I downloaded something with that file name the other day (some words changed to protect the client.)

That’s 80 characters and hard to read. Yikes.

A file name like this may be all well and good locally on your computer for your use, but, it isn’t going to work well on some websites, web hosts, or platforms. And some servers will not even allow you to upload it.

Dale Vecere Seabury had a great post last week about linking PDFs or not. (‘not’ is recommended.)

But if you must link to a PDF, or for any image or file you are uploading to and including on your website, name it something that’s easy to read and understand. 

• Don’t use any punctuation or special characters other than a hyphen or underscore and a period before the file extension. 
• Google prefers the hyphen to the underscore. Hyphens turns the name into separate indexable words, the underscore links them together so you lose any SEO value for the individual terms.
• Keep the name short yet descriptive. I try to stop at 20-30 characters. I cannot tell you how many clients have sent me a file called logo.png. Instead consider instead a name like ibm-logo-blue.png or cisco-logo-white-2022.png.
• Do include the dot file extension, .jpg, .pdf, .png, etc. 

When you can, just keep it simple and don’t make your file names look like auto-generated passwords! (more on passwords later…)

Your audience, your web host, Google, and your developer will thank you.

For websites, faster is better. 

One client’s site was loading slowly on phones, and asked me to take a look and see what could be improved.

Sure, we all love high-res photos with glorious detail. And in some cases, that resolution is needed. But for thumbnail-sized images – 150x150pixels, for example, you don’t need all that resolution.

You do, of course, need to allow for mobile layouts where the images may get bigger. But even so. 1000×1000 pixels is still plenty big.

And remember, make your photographs JPG or webp format. (I’m old, I still like JPG.)

The screenshot below shows the same image folders, before and after shrinking them, and a file format change from PNG to JPG.

We went from 13,200kB to 253kb just by changing the area and file format. We took away more than 98% of the file sizes, and immediately saw an improvement in performance, according to Google PageSpeed. Not perfect, but better.

If your site is loading slowly – it’s worth taking a look at your image sizes. They could be unintentionally oversized. If you’re not sure if your images are the problem – we’re happy to take a look and help out.

Right?

No matter how you feel about Buffybot, we can agree that that line is confusing. (And yet I remember it years later… anyway…)

I mean, she may as well have said “edit your A record to point to the new IP address, bingo!”

What?

You may think you know what a website is. Or an A record. Or DKIM settings. Or when and why to use a PNG. But you could be wrong. I know I am, sometimes. But here are my definitions, covering terminology that often comes up when we’re talking about building and launching a website.

Basics

Website: a collection of web pages all living under one domain name. 

Web page: a single location existing as part of a larger website often containing information related to a single topic, or providing a directory or links to other pages.

Link: specifically coded words, images, or buttons that when clicked take you elsewhere when clicked or tapped – either a new URL, a larger image, a popup of a video, etc.

Forms: I often find myself asking new clients where their forms come from. Forms are areas on a web page where customers (or bots) can enter information and have it sent to you. Forms can be created with old-school code, a plugin like Gravity Forms, or a marketing tool like HubSpot or Marketo, and added to your pages.

Browser: a web browser is the piece of software you use to access websites. Common browsers include Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. There are many available, and they all work a little differently. But they all let you see and interact with websites.

Cache: Cache – pronounced like ‘cash’ – is a term for files stored locally on your computer that get used by any given website. Since they are stored locally, they do not need to download every time you visit the site, which in theory can make pages load faster. Cache can also be a problem when you are making many edits, as the local files will not always update so you won’t see the edits. Therefore – it is worth learning how to clear your cache in your chosen browser if you’re doing a lot of edits.

URL: URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator but in the real world it just means ‘the address of the web page’ – something like https://www.google.com, or, https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/Buffybot would be considered a URL. 

CMS: A content management system (CMS) is a software application that enables users to create, edit, collaborate on, publish and store digital content in an online database. 

WordPress: WordPress is an open-source (free) content management system (CMS). WordPress uses a combination of information and content stored in a database combined with template files, images and code to display a website in a browser.

Hosting related

Hosting: Web Hosting is an online service that makes your website’s content accessible on the internet. When you purchase a hosting plan, you are renting space on a physical server to store all the website’s files and data and make it available online.

Database: A Database is an organized collection of structured information, or data, typically stored electronically in a computer system. Small databases (SMB or corporate website) can be stored on a shared file system, while larger databases are typically hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage (sites like Google, Amazon, etc.)

DNS: The Domain Name System (DNS) translates domain names into IP addresses, which browsers use to load internet pages. 

Domain name: A domain name is a string of text that maps to an IP address, used to access a website from your browser. In plain English, a domain name is the text that a user types into a browser window to reach a particular website. For instance, the domain name for Google is ‘google.com’.

IP address: IP address stands for internet protocol address; it is an identifying number that is associated with a specific computer to computer network. When online, the IP address allows the two devices to send and receive information, such as to your computer from a website.

A record: An A record maps a physical IP address of a computer hosting that domain. Internet traffic uses the A record to find the computer hosting your domain’s DNS settings. 

CNAME: A Canonical Name or CNAME record is a type of DNS record that maps an alias name to a true canonical domain name. CNAME records are typically used to map a subdomain such as www or mail to the domain hosting that subdomain’s content.

DKIM: DKIM, or DomainKeys Identified Mail, is an email authentication method that uses a digital signature to let the receiver of an email know that the message was sent and authorized by the owner of the domain. This helps prevent your sent email from ending up in spam filters.

SSL: An SSL (secure socket layer) certificate is a bit of code on your web server that provides security for online communications. When a web browser contacts your secured website, the SSL certificate enables an encrypted connection. 

FTP: FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a standard network protocol used for the transfer of files from one host to another over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP works by opening two connections that link the computers trying to communicate with each other.

SFTP: SFTP, or Secure File Transfer Protocol, is a secure file transfer protocol that uses secure encryption to provide a high level of security for sending and receiving files to and from your site. 

Web Development

Web languages: A web development language, or a ‘programming language’, is a vocabulary and set of grammatical rules used in instructing a computing device to perform certain tasks. It is commonly referred to as ‘coding language’. There are many out there but most common sites use the obes below, one way or another.

HTML: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a text-based approach to describing how content contained within an HTML file is structured. This markup tells a web browser how to display text, images and other forms of multimedia on a webpage.

CSS: CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is the language for describing the presentation of web pages, including colors, layout, and fonts. It allows one to adapt the presentation to different types of devices, such as large screens, small screens, or printers. 

jQuery: jQuery is an open-sourced JavaScript library that simplifies creation of web applications. Specifically, jQuery simplifies HTML Document Object Model (DOM) manipulation, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) and event handling. In plain words, you can use the jQuery library as shortcuts for more complicated JavaScript operations.

PHP: PHP (Hypertext PreProcessor) is a general purpose scripting language and interpreter that is freely available and widely used for web development. WordPress (among others) uses PHP.

AJAX: AJAX (short for “Asynchronous JavaScript and XML”) is a set of web development techniques that uses various web technologies on the client-side (they happen in your browser, not on the server) to create web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously (in the background) without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. For example, a region of the page can refresh with search results or options chosen, without reloading the entire page.

Graphic and image formats:

JPG: A JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a type of image format that is saved using a method of lossy compression. Lossy means that some pixels are lost, and are instead estimated based on surrounding pixels. The output image, as a result of compression, is a trade-off between storage size and image quality. Users can adjust the compression level to achieve the desired quality level while at the same time reduce the file size.

PNG: A PNG (Portable Network Graphic) file is a type of raster image file that is commonly used on the internet. PNG files are “lossless”. This means they have a fixed number of pixels, and do not lose any quality when they are compressed. This makes them ideal for storing images that need to be high quality, such as logos and illustrations. PNG images can also support transparency, which can be useful for creating web graphics with transparent backgrounds.

GIF: A GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is a type of often low resolution color bitmap image that is saved using a method of lossless compression. In the early days of the web they were used for small images and logos. Later, GIF animation became popular, and is still popular today.

EPS: EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is a file format created by Adobe in the late 1980s to serve the needs of designers and printers. Originally it was only compatible with Adobe Illustrator, but now there is a lot of free software to open documents with an EPS file extension, as well as to convert an EPS file into a different file type, or to view EPS files without Illustrator. EPS can be as small as a dot or as large as a billboard and not lose resolution. Very often logos exist in EPS format.

Webp: WebP is a modern image format that provides lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that may make your site load faster. Personally I have seen better results and compatibility from properly sizing and compressing JPG and PNG images, but your mileage may vary.

Other:

Buffybot: The Buffybot was a robotic replica of Buffy Summers (The Slayer) created by Warren Mears at the request of Spike for – well – Spike was evil. It was eventually reprogrammed by Willow and used as a Slayer decoy in battles, until its final destruction.