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Many people dream of a career in web design, but it may actually be more attainable than you think. There are countless online courses, of variable quality, with little to no academic structure; self-learning is an option, but it doesn’t come with a curriculum. Without a professional structure and a comprehensive curriculum your dream career might never be more than that. But there is a practical, fast-track option to making a career in...

Contentful; Webster’s Dictionary defines “contentful” as… not found. Clearly someone made up this word, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The world of user experience metrics is moving quickly, so new terminology is needed. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is one of a number of metrics measuring the render time of content on a web page. What is Largest Contentful Paint? Google defines LCP as “the render time of the largest...

Like it or not, we’re slowly edging towards a two-tier web: those sites that are secure, and…everything else. There was a time on the web, when we didn’t have SSL certificates, and lots of people’s data got stolen. To address the problem, and regain users’ trust SSL certificates were introduced to secure sites handling sensitive data. And because they were initially a niche technology, you paid through the nose for them. (An SSL...

Let’s be honest: the WordPress classic editor wasn’t the easiest solution for building great-looking websites. While Gutenberg has helped, page builder plugins like Elementor are responsible for making a it much easier for any WordPress user to build a powerful and professional website on their own. As a result, users want to know that the theme they’re going to use is compatible with at least one of the leading page builder solutions. ...

When you’re designing a website, the single most important thing you can do is gather strong feedback, so your team knows what’s approved, what needs improvement, and what direction to take the project. Unfortunately, the most important group to gather feedback from, your stakeholders, is also all-too-often the least technically able. BugHerd should be your primary tool for gathering website feedback, especially from non-technical...

WordPress plugins are both great for adding functionality to WordPress and by extension reducing website designers’ workloads, as well as reducing costs to their clients. There’s certainly no shortage of plugins. 55,000+ currently reside in the official WordPress repository and more are added with each passing day. Some of these plugins are free, some are quite affordable, and some are premium products that can be quite expensive....

More than a few multipurpose WordPress themes have become big sellers in recent years, and for a reason. Actually, for several reasons. One reason is they serve as excellent toolkits for web designers who have large and varied clienteles. The best multipurpose themes, like those presented here, are popular for other reasons as well. They are uniformly responsive, SEO friendly, and flexible. Most are either reasonably, or very easy to work...

Teamstack is a password manager for your whole team. Running in the cloud it allows you to manage your tools and resources, and seamlessly scale your teams’ access, from a single, easy-to-use control panel. Teamstack is powerful, and secure with multi-factor authentication, single sign-in, SAML and form-based authentication. It works with desktop and mobile apps, and in the browser. Teamstack means easy access for your team, zero access...

Since mankind first crawled out of its cave, looked at a block of stone, and wondered if it wouldn’t roll better if it were round, human beings have been looking at technology and trying to make it better. Almost every tech you can think of, from digital music players, to cryptocurrency, to search engines, may well be revolutionary in their first incarnation, but only go on to change the world once they’ve been reimagined with the kinks worked...

When the time has come to make some changes to your website-building toolkit there’s no shortage of tools or services you could use to smooth out your workflow, save money, add to website capabilities, or put bigger smiles on your clients’ faces. There are literally hundreds of tools and services you could choose from, if you had the time to make the necessary comparisons, and if you could be confident your choices were good ones. Or, at our...

When the web was young, a 56k connection was fast, CSS was new, and Flash was but a glint in Macromedia’s eye, there was a phrase that graced half of all splash screens: Best viewed in IE6. You see, back in the early 00s, the web was a lot less competitive. It was perfectly possible to ignore 40% of your users and still turn a profit. In fact, given the expense of maintaining a different codebase for every browser, it was often financially inviable...

We are always looking for ways to improve our skills and services and what we create. Sometimes that desire to improve is a conscious one. Most of the time it’s in the back of our minds, yet active. Short term results can be OK, but good long term results are what you want if you are to grow in your profession. In terms of web design, that means subscribing to, and adhering to, design trends that have staying power. You might have to stray from your...

Even web designers who prefer to design websites from scratch eventually look for frameworks, past work, or shortcuts. That way they speed up their workflow. And there are also those times when it’s hard to find the right template. You need help to create a special page and you feel compelled to build it from scratch. It only makes sense to take full advantage of drag and drop, front-end editing, design modules, customizable demos, and other...

One of the best things about the Internet is that it (mostly) doesn’t care where you are. The person you’re interacting with might be in Rio or Rhode Island, Bahrain or Birmingham. The Internet opens up the world. But opening up the world doesn’t mean removing it. The geographic independence loved by users can be a real headache for businesses, because nearly all businesses are constrained by geography. For business, having an accurate...