Rachel Robbins - Pixel Mountain Web Design LLC

Why You Absolutely Need to Keep Your WordPress Website Maintained

May 4, 2020 By Rachel Robbins Leave a Comment

Search Engine Optimization

**You want your potential customers to find your website.**

For that to happen, you want Google, Bing, and other search engines to list your website.

Therefore, keeping your website up to date and optimized is important to ensuring search engines find and list your site in search results.

Search engines check to see if there are problems with your site, such as slowness and security issues. If the search engine detects problems, it’s apt to downgrade your site in search results.

User Experience

**You want your website visitors to want to use your website.**

That’s what will keep them from leaving and entice them to come back.

The best way to keep visitors coming back to your site and staying on it once there is by making it easy to use. And the best way to make it easy to use is to keep it maintained.

A poorly maintained website might have broken links, design glitches that make it hard to navigate, and a variety of other usability errors that could drive your potential clients away.

If your site is slowed down by outdated software or a bogged down database, it might be too slow to respond to user input.

Keeping your WordPress software up to date and your database optimized are key to preventing all of the above usability problems and more.

Security

**You don’t want hackers to take control of your website.**

But the last thing you want is for your website to be hacked. It’s embarrassing, it makes your business look bad, it can result in information and identity theft, and it’s horrible for search engine optimization (SEO).

The very best way to reduce the odds of website hacking is to keep all of the site’s software up to date. For a WordPress website, that’s the WordPress core, theme, and plugins. Hackers look for ways to enter a website through poorly-written code, so software developers regularly close those potential holes. Update the software, close the security holes. It’s that simple.

Conclusions

The moral of the story is to keep your WordPress software up to date, correct broken links when they show up, take measures to protect it from hacking, optimize the database periodically, and monitor your site to make sure it’s running smoothly.

If you have a technical bent, these are things you can take care of yourself. If you don’t, or you simply don’t have time, you might consider a WordPress care plan.

Why Dubsado is a Lifesaver

February 26, 2020 By Rachel Robbins Leave a Comment

As my client base has grown, so has my stress level!

So lately I have been trying to put together systems to help keep my business under control.

I have some tried and true favorites

Asana for project management; Harvest for time tracking and invoicing; Focusmate for co-working; QuickBooks Self-Employed for tracking finances.

Some people advise that you find an app that can do it all

Dubsado is the most-often recommended in the web design groups where I hang out. So I sprang for a year’s subscription to Dubsado and have been working on setting it up. I can see how it might be the answer to everything.

Dubsado takes some time to set up

I considered hiring someone to do it for me – there are whole services based just on that!

But then I found an amazing resource

I have been working my way through Copy My Dubsado Process by Nicole Macdonald of January Made Design. At $16.51 as of this writing, it’s an absolute steal. Nicole walks you through every step of setting up Dubsado for a web design/dev business. (And it’s adaptable to other service business, as well.)

So I’m working through these steps and learning how thoroughly Dubsado can cover my needs.

I’m excited to be on this Dubsado journey

I feel like, once I have this multi-tool for business processes fully configured, I’ll be able to sit back and let it automate much of the work that I spend far too much time on every day.

I’ll keep you all posted about how it goes!

If this works the way I think it will, I will be able to pass on some advice and tips.

Great AppSumo Deals Right Now!

November 19, 2018 By Rachel Robbins Leave a Comment

I love AppSumo! I admit that I can be tempted to overbuy at AppSumo because of the great deals they post. I have to remind myself to only purchase what I really need and will use! But as long as I keep this in mind, AppSumo is a great source of amazing deals on web apps, software, and services.

Today I came across two AppSumo deals I couldn’t turn down. One I’ve purchased before and makes a regular appearance. The other is new to me, although I understand they had a deal on AppSumo last year, too.

This Depositphotos deal appears on AppSumo with some regularity. If you use stock photos at all, it’s a great deal: 100 standard license images for $49, and the credits never expire. You can purchase this multiple times for more credits. It’s pretty straightforward, with the only caveats being that the images must be the standard license photos (not extended license) and, as if it weren’t crystal clear already, the credits are only for images, not videos.

Depositphotos’ image library is extensive and high quality. An especially surprising benefit is the high resolution versions of each photo cost the same 1 credit as the low resolution versions. I work with an agency that uses Depositphotos on a regular basis, and I occasionally use them on my own clients’ websites. While stock photos can certainly be overused and it’s often better to use images that are unique and more specific to the website, there are times when it’s necessary or even preferable to use a stock photo.

The other deal I couldn’t pass up is for Plutio, a service for freelancers and small businesses. Note that this Black Friday deal isn’t available yet unless you have AppSumo Plus, an annual-fee membership with perks. Without AppSumo Plus, the Plutio deal will become available soon.

I was unfamiliar with Plutio, but I have been shopping around for an affordable, combined project management/proposal/time tracking/invoicing app, and this seems like it might be a good fit. I’m looking at some glowing reviews online right now.

As is usual with AppSumo, the Plutio deal is for a lifetime license to the Team plan, which is normally $30/month or $300/year. You get lifetime updates and integrations to the current products. It includes unlimited clients and 5 teammates. If you need more teammates you can stack deals to add 5 more teammates with each additional code you purchase. With a second code, when you stack your second code, you can get the white label feature for 30% off.

So I purchased the lifetime Plutio deal, along with a second code to add 5 more team members and, if I decide to take the app a step further, 30% off their monthly fee for white-labeling it. I’m keeping in mind that AppSumo will refund the purchase within 60 days with no questions asked. As long as I take the time to give Plutio a good look and run it through its paces, within two months I should be able to decide if this is what I’m looking for.

I’m pretty excited about the potential for Plutio. I tried Freedcamp but I just can’t seem to like the interface. Plutio has more of the feel I like – possibly a bit closer to Asana, which I love for project management.

Educate Yourself!

April 29, 2017 By Rachel Robbins 1 Comment

I love my job in large part because I love to learn. Half of the fun of what I do is learning new things! But like most of us, I often find myself thinking I don’t have enough time to deliberately study.

Today I’m reminding myself that as a coder, I must take the time to keep expanding my skills and reinforcing those I already have.

I’m enrolled in Know the Code, but I haven’t been keeping up on those studies. Time to get back on track!

For anyone wanting to learn knew web design/development skills or beef up the knowledge you already have, here are some great resources:

Know the Code
Treehouse
Lynda.com (Check your local library to see if they include a Lynda.com membership for free.)
Udemy
Code Academy
Skillcrush

There are plenty of others, too – these are just some of the learning resources I’ve either worked with myself or heard great things about from colleagues.

Keep learning!

Lynda.com for Learning

November 28, 2016 By Rachel Robbins Leave a Comment

Over the years I’ve found Lynda.com extremely useful for learning new skills and beefing up my existing skillset. I have paid for a membership for years and considered it just part of the necessary cost of keeping up to date and expanding my knowledge.

Then my local library added free access to Lynda.com as one of their many membership perks. I love it! Definitely check to see if your local library has done the same.

I’ve used Lynda.com courses to fill in gaps in my knowledge, to learn specific skills that I need for an upcoming project, and to reinforce and refresh my knowledge of programming languages in which I’m proficient.

Today I’m looking at Lynda.com‘s new “Learning Paths.” I’m intrigued by the Front-End Web Developer path, since that’s the track I’ve been on for a while. But since I’m also considering going deeper into development, I’m also interested in their Full-Stack Web Developer and PHP Developer paths.

Others might lean towards the Web Designer, User Experience Designer, or Ruby on Rails Developer paths. And they’ve set up a bunch of other paths for other technology and art fields.

And while you’re looking at their offerings, keep in mind that there are many videos in other fields that you might enjoy just for the fun of it, or to reinforce other areas of your business or your personal interests. I often watch their photography videos, for example. I’m not a professional photographer, but I love taking pictures as a serious avocation. And there are a myriad of courses in marketing, finance, business relations, etc., that can be useful to anyone in any field.

Facebook Groups for Web Development Information

January 8, 2016 By Rachel Robbins 1 Comment

I recently began following a few Facebook groups to keep up to date and continue learning new WordPress techniques and skills, as well as information about Genesis theme development, and other web development subjects. I’ve found several Facebook groups to be extraordinarily useful: