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It’s almost the end of the year (how??), and like everyone, I am trying to get a head start on my 2023 – stuff – and encouraging my clients to do the same.

As you plan your website needs for January and beyond, here are a few things to think about:

• Do you need a brand new website in 2023? 
• Will you need landing pages for a 2023 marketing campaign? 
• To avoid a last minute crisis, will your older site need to get fixed, updated, or rebuilt? 
• Do you just need to offload day-to-day web tasks?

If you have projects that you’d like to begin later in 2023 and need the money “spent” in 2022 – we can help with that. Or if you have projects that you need to budget for, for next year – let us know! We can provide estimates and specs and help make sure you’re in position to start the year strong. 

More urgently, if you have projects to wrap up before your holiday vacation (what is a vacation?), or internal goals to meet – let us know and we’ll work with you to get those done while there is still time in 2022.

*There seems to be no clear consensus on the origin of the idiom “get your ducks in a row” though many sources refer back to bowling, carnival games, or actual ducks.

https://grammarist.com/idiom/get-ones-ducks-in-a-row-and-have-ones-ducks-in-a-row/

In part 1, we talked a little about the importance of having smaller images on your website. Here in part 2, we talk briefly about how to do it.

There are two areas you may need to make smaller, and depending on your editor, you may see different numbers or terms.

1 – the image dimensions/area – how many pixels by how many pixels. For most websites, 2000px wide is more than enough for full-width banners or backgrounds, often smaller is ok for product photos or anything that isn’t full screen width.

2 – image resolution – often listed as pixels or dots per inch – dpi. 144 max if you are super concerned about some Apple hi-res screens, though for most sites 72dpi is still fine.

In your image editor, you can find an image size menu or button, and change the dimensions – width and height – and or the resolution – dpi – to numbers that fit your needs.

Then save it with a new name in a web friendly format – I still like JPG for photos and PNG for logos/line art – and replace the image on your site. (There are many other formats – but these two will get you started and are universal and easy to work with.)

Oh, and that 42mb file I mentioned? 

When resized to 72dpi and 2000px wide?

I got it down to 151kb. Which is 99.94% smaller (https://percentagecalculator.net 42000 to 151).

So if your site is running slow, take a look at some of the pictures on your site and see if they can be reduced in size.

And if images are an issue and you need a hand – let me know! We can go in and knock image sizes down, improve performance, and maybe even save you money on hosting.

Not long ago, a client asked me to take a look at their home page and see if I could figure out why it was loading slower.

I did, and, I did.

I found a 42mb photo (that is way big!) loaded into the top banner area. They had loaded in a photo from a stock photo site. At full resolution. While it had shrunk it to fit the box on the page, at actual size the image area was almost 20 square feet. Which is bigger than you need on a web site. 

Don’t do this, please.

Back in the 90s, when web was new and connections were slow, the emphasis for web people  was always on making our graphics as small as possible, because back then, downloading anything that was 42mb would have taken forever.

Then, modems got faster, cable internet was popular, and sites were using larger images and graphics – with no real issues. 

But that time has passed and we’ve come almost full circle back to the olden days. 

Mostly because of phones.

Websites need to load fast on phones, which have more limited connectivity and slower speeds (still fast historically, but not as fast as good wifi or hardwired). But, today customers expect the same speed and performance on their phones as they do on a laptop. Also, Google will penalize you for slower loading pages and impact where you show up in search results, especially on mobile devices.

And in addition to images, today’s websites load a lot more content, scripts, tracking, and other files than they did in the 90s.

So please make your images smaller. Don’t upload them directly from your phone, your stock photo site, or your camera. Because what else has happened is – hi-res images have become much higher res then even a few years ago. Which means even bigger files to manage.

In part two, we’ll talk about how.

Here at RPS, we wear many hats. I personally wear several on any given day.

And on any given project – our extended team is wearing even more.

• The Design hat.  
• Custom code hat.
• WordPress hat.
• Development hat.
• Maintenance hat.
• Client Service hat.
• Red Sox hat (maybe not this season…)
• SEO hat.
• The “Just make it work already please” hat.

I could go on. But today I am going to talk about one of the more common hats, and the hat that tends to kick off many new client relationships.

The Fixing hat.

It works like this – 

You have a website. Something isn’t working. You call or email or text me. I put on the hat. I fix the issue.

And there is much rejoicing.

It isn’t always that simple, but, sometimes a website problem that is causing you strife can be addressed fairly easily. This can lead to more site fixing, which can lead to faster, leaner, easier-to-manage websites for your team to update, which can lead to new content, which can lead to more leads and sales, which makes the bosses happy, and everyone gets a raise. (Cue further rejoicing.)

At RPS, every project doesn’t need to be a massive project. We’re happy to focus on smaller issues and make website things work better for you and your team. Contact us today to see how we can help solve small problems on your site (as well as any bigger problems you may have.)

Are you and your WordPress site ready for 2023?

If you are still relying on the Classic Editor plugin, you may not be.

When WordPress 5.0 (also known as Gutenberg or block editor) launched in late 2018, the Classic Editor plugin became one of the most popular plugins available.

This plugin let you ignore the new weirdness and weird newness that was early Gutenberg, and simply pretend that it hadn’t happened. It was awesome.

In late 2020, WordPress announced that support for Classic Editor would end by 2021. In early 2021, they extended support “until 2022” but they haven’t really said until when.

As of today, the plugin hasn’t been updated in a year and hasn’t been tested with current WordPress versions.

All of this means – if your site relies on Classic Editor and you see it installed in your site’s plugins, it may be time to think about some updates.

The good news is – we can help.

Much like fixing a leaking roof – it is much cheaper to stop the leak, than to let it leak, and rot, and have to rebuild the rafters and walls and the sills (ask me about the barn project some day).

Taking action now, to make sure your site will last and work well for years to come, will be more cost effective and easier than having a crisis should something go wrong with older, incompatible plugins.

Have you ever had an older phone and the operating system updated (intentionally or accidentally) and things started not working quite right or not working at all? 

That’s similar to what can happen with an older or outdated WordPress website when updated without care. 

Wonkiness.

From pages not loading properly to missing styles to no site at all – it can sometimes be catastrophic to force new updates on vintage sites – which include many sites built before late 2018.

As important as it is to keep your WordPress site updated and current – there are some questions that are worth answering before hitting “update” an older site.

• Are the plugins many versions out of date?
• Was this site built before late 2018?
• Does the WordPress version start with a 4? Or 5.0.x?

If you can answer yes to any of these questions – for safety and security, your site should get updated today.

You have a few options. You can hold your breath and update it yourself, and call me if there’s a problem. Or contact us first and save yourself some heartache. We can recommend next steps to safely get your site updated, rebuilt, or recovered.