As the year winds down it's time to start thinking about the New Year. You've got lots of plans and goals for the coming year, but have you thought about your website? Your website is your workhorse, it's there for you and your business 24/7 but it needs help from you to be its best. Now is the perfect time to do some annual website maintenance! Get your site into its best shape for the New Year with annual website maintenance! Here's everything you need to do to ensure your website is up to the task, plus a free printable annual website maintenance checklist to help you stay on top of everything! Website Design Review Design trends come and go, but your website is here for the long ... // read more
WordPress
How to Easily Add Google Fonts to Your Genesis Theme
Want to change the look of your site without going for a full rebrand? There is one easy way to do that with only a few lines of code! What is it? It's changing the font. A different font can give your site an entirely new feel. It's easy to add Google Fonts to your Genesis theme to make it more custom, and today I will show you how. Be warned it only takes 4 simple steps and a couple lines of code. Step 1: Find Your Font First the hardest part: picking a font. With so many to choose from it's a tough choice, but trust me, this is the hardest part! Once you've picked out your font you'll need a bit of information about it. You'll need the font name and the weight of the font you want. ... // read more
How to Make a WordPress Child Theme (From ANY Theme)
Child themes aren't just for Genesis! You can make a child theme for any WordPress theme, and it's easier than you think! Before you learn how to make a WordPress child theme, why would you want to make a WordPress child theme anyway? Well, the answer is this: It's the safest way to modify your theme. Have you ever been in a situation like this? You have a theme you love, but you just want to make one small change. So you go into the theme files and make a couple small edits. Perfect! Then your theme posts an update, and being the responsible WordPress webmaster you are you install it. Boom! All your changes are gone! By making a child theme from your theme you can avoid losing your work ... // read more
How to Set Up WordPress Maintenance on Autopilot (For Free)
Performing regular WordPress maintenance is essential to maintaining your website. Remembering to do that in the midst of all the other tasks you have to keep your clients and business happy is another story. Performing regular WordPress maintenance doesn't need to be hard or time-consuming! You can automate much of your WordPress maintenance to keep your site up to date and keep the impact maintenance tasks have on your schedule to a minimum. WordPress Maintenance 101 WordPress maintenance falls into 3 categories: Updates, Backups, and Quality Assurance. Updates are essential to your themes, plugins, and WordPress itself to stay up to date. Up to date plugins, themes, and WordPress ... // read more
The Beginner’s Guide to Child Themes (And How They Make Your Web Design Life Easier)
If you've been around WordPress for a while you've probably heard the term child theme. What is a WordPress child theme anyway, and how can it make your web design life easier? Child themes aren't as complicated as they might seem! They are useful tools that help you code less and build amazing WordPress websites. They are a valuable tool that you can use to create a custom designed site or tweak an existing theme. What are WordPress Child Themes? Child themes are really a theme based off of another theme. Child themes use the styles and functions of the theme they are based on and add their own unique styles and functions. One of the more famous examples of child themes is the Genesis ... // read more
5 Things That Happen if You Ignore Your WordPress Website Maintenance
You're busy. The last thing you have time to do is make sure your WordPress website is up to date, there are just more pressing priorities! What's the worst that could happen if you just ignore your website's maintenance? I'm sure it would be totally fine...nothing bad will happen, right? 1 | The SLOOOOOW DOWN Over time your website can slow down. You add new content, and comments (don't forget all those spam comments) which takes up space on your website. This can cause your site to slow down. Your WordPress installation, theme, and plugins updates also can address issues by optimizing files sizes and other tweaks to improve performance. The optimizations help your site to run more ... // read more