Search engine optimization (SEO) is complex, difficult to understand, and invites a lot of superstition and folklore—as well as a fair amount of outright fraud. It’s also really important. As a result, it’s an endless topic. Fortunately, the basic principles of SEO are simple to understand. Plain and simple, SEO is the process of getting […]
Some questions don’t really have an answer until you ask the question a bit more precisely. If you’re just here for a numerical answer, here it is: “Between $100 and $10,000,000.” Why the large range? Because some questions—like “How old is a painting?” and “What color is a girl’s hair?”—simply don’t have an answer until […]
If you’re investing in a website, one of your primary concerns will naturally be to pay as little as possible. As we’ve argued before, looking only at cost is not the correct way to approach a website project. Rather, a website is an investment—an ongoing investment—designed to help you meet one or more financial or […]
In general, developers are a lot more flexible on price for projects they really want to work on, and a lot less flexible when they’ll have to grit their teeth for the money. Web developers are like anyone else: they love some projects that come through the door, and suffer their way through others. What […]
Most people I talk to who need web development help are frustrated and unsure. Many have had painful experiences with previous developers, and almost all are suspicious about being taken advantage of. Getting web work done properly at the right price can be a grab bag of uncertainty and risk. This stems from the nature […]
If you’ve got a new web project, you may not know where to start. What does it take to get a web project off the ground? Who do you need to hire? Should you hire just one person, or will you need a small fleet of professionals working together? The web industry is ever-changing, and […]
Once in a blue moon, we author a new WordPress plugin. Today the moon is blue, because we’ve just released: Display All Image Sizes! The plugin grew out of my frustration at not being able to actually use WordPress’s (very handy) custom-generated image sizes, because WordPress doesn’t give you a very good way to figure […]
Software engineers and other technical people often struggle to be understood by people who don’t share their technical knowledge. Their frustration is widely known; it’s led, for example, to a YouTube video with over 10 million views (and a rather lively comments section) depicting the plight of a software developer trapped in a roomful of corporate idiots: I’m not aware of any similarly-loved […]
Hello… Is It Me You’re Looking For? Okay, let’s start with the obvious: I work with software, and you need help with software. You already know that, or you wouldn’t be on this site trawling through profiles. Sad to say, but you’re probably not on here looking for fashion tips. So maybe we can be […]
Over the past month or so, I’ve been getting really excited about video production. I thought I’d say a little bit about the beginnings of that enthusiasm, as well as the things I’ve hit my head against early on in the learning process. Why I Like Video It’s Got Personality! Video seems to make it […]
I recently built the theme for WPShout.com in Sass, the well-loved CSS preprocessor that we’ve written about a few times. As I dug deeper into the project, I noticed a conceptual issue coming up repeatedly that I’d like to share. Essentially: I’m worried about the power of the @extend selector to move us away from […]
Like every other web developer, I abhor Internet Explorer. I’ve already given a lot of good reasons why I can’t stand IE—in any version—in an earlier post. However, I will admit that the last truly unusable version of IE is IE8. Why IE8 is Broken IE8 is in a completely different world from every other […]
