Are you new to the world of web hosting and wondering what it’s all about? Look no further! This guide will provide a simple explanation of hosting, including its meaning, how it works, and why you need it.

We will explore the various types of hosting and how they differ from each other. We will also include a few hosting companies and discuss the best options for hosting.

So, what is web hosting and how does it work?

Web hosting is a service that gives individuals and organizations access to the technology and resources needed to serve a website on the internet.

A web host stores your website files on a server. A server is a powerful computer that is always connected to the internet.

The server handles delivering your website’s content to users whenever they request it. This happens when someone types in your website’s URL into their web browser. The web host’s server will then send the requested files back to their computer, allowing them to view your website.

But why do you need web hosting?

Even if you have the skills and resources to build a website on your own, you still need a place to store your website files and data. Without web hosting, your website won’t be accessible to the public. Web hosting provides the infrastructure and support necessary to keep your website up and running smoothly.

Types of Web Hosting

There are several types of web hosting to choose from, each with its own set of pros and cons. It’s important to consider the size and type of your website and your budget when choosing the best web hosting option for your needs.

1. Shared Hosting

   The most affordable and popular type of web hosting. As the name suggests, shared hosting means that your website will be sharing server space with other websites. This is a cost-effective solution for small businesses and individuals who don’t have high-traffic websites. However, it’s important to note that shared hosting can also have its drawbacks, such as slower website speeds and less control over the server.

2. VPS Hosting

   VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is a step up from shared hosting. It provides you with more resources and control, as your website is given its own virtual server space. This means that your website won’t be sharing server space with other websites, which can result in faster loading times and better performance. VPS hosting is a good option for medium-sized businesses and websites with moderate traffic.

3. Dedicated Hosting

   The most expensive and powerful type of web hosting. With dedicated hosting, you have an entire physical server all to yourself. This means that you have complete control over the server and can customize it to meet your specific needs. Dedicated hosting is best for large businesses and websites with high traffic.

Web Hosting Companies

There are many web hosting companies to choose from, each offering various plans to suit the needs of different types of websites. Some popular web hosting companies include Dreamhost, Bluehost, HostGator, and GoDaddy, to name a few.

WordPress Hosting Options

If your website will be running on WordPress, you may want to consider hosting options that are tailored specifically for WordPress. There are two main types of WordPress hosting: managed and unmanaged.

1. Managed WordPress Hosting

   Optimized for WordPress websites. The hosting provider takes care of all of the technical aspects of running a WordPress website, such as installing updates, backing up your website, and providing security measures. This is a good option for those who don’t have the time or technical expertise to manage their own hosting. However, it can be more expensive than unmanaged hosting.

2. Unmanaged WordPress Hosting

   Gives you more control over the technical aspects of your hosting. It’s up to you to handle updates, backups, and security measures. This is a good option for those who are comfortable with managing their own hosting and want to save some money.

Choosing the Best Web Hosting

When choosing the best web hosting option for your needs, consider the following factors:

• Size and type of your website
• Budget
• The reputation of the web hosting provider

If you have a small personal website with low traffic, shared hosting may be the most cost-effective option. If you have a large e-commerce website with high traffic, dedicated hosting may be the best choice. Determine how much you are willing to spend on web hosting and look for a provider that offers a plan within your budget.

It’s also important to consider the reputation of the web hosting provider. Look for a company with a good track record of uptime and customer support. It’s also a good idea to read reviews and ask for recommendations from other website owners.

Let’s wrap it up

Website hosting is an essential service that provides individuals and organizations with the technology and resources needed to build and serve a website on the internet.

There are several types of web hosting types to choose from, including shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting. If your website will be running on WordPress, you can also choose between managed and unmanaged hosting.

Consider the size and type of your website, as well as your budget and the reputation of the hosting provider, when choosing the best website hosting option for your needs.

The post Web Hosting Explained: A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on Web Redone.

The year is 2022. We have plenty of WordPress starter themes aimed at creating a solid foundation and speeding up our development process for creating custom WordPress websites. WordPress Gutenberg editor has taken over the old classic editor and now we are building more sophisticated WordPress websites via blocks.

Theme Redone is the new theme starter on the block that focuses on the new WordPress concepts, Gutenberg blocks, and much more.

Gutenberg-oriented custom WordPress theme development framework

Since 2020 we at WebRedone have started exploring and working with Gutenberg and integrating it into our clients’ websites. Slowly, day after day, month after month it started taking its shape, and Theme Redone is now a solid foundation for building Gutenberg blocks oriented websites in an MVC manner.

Since it’s helped us a lot build better websites, and way faster in an organized and standardized way, we decided to open-source it and share it with the world.

We haven’t stopped at the theme on its own; We’ve spent more than a couple of months documenting everything in detail and writing solid documentation 50+ pages long.

Along the way, we’ve polished the theme and tried to cover as many mundane and repeating tasks as possible. We’ve also created a TRB CLI, which is a CLI helper to speed up the Gutenberg Blocks creation and refactoring process.

MVC-oriented approach to abstract the view and the logic layers

We’ve taken the inspiration from Laravel and other similar projects that really approached this aspect of coding cleverly and made it a breeze to organize and reason about the code.

In Laravel, we would write plain old PHP for the logic, and then we would use Blade templates for the View layer, we also have model, view, and controller files to separate the concerns and organize code logically and efficiently. We have adopted that same approach but in the context of the WordPress environment. Conceptually, the way we organize code is similar to Laravel, but with a few differences.

Template (page) files

Let’s take the front-page.php file as an example. The old way of writing WordPress code would be done by mixing the business and view logic in the same file, opening and closing PHP tags over and over away. Theme Redone’s way of handling this is via the Latte templating engine (In the section below, we’ll explain why we opted for Latte).

We have the front-page-php file where we write a snippet of code telling WordPress to use the front-page.latte template file. We also see the attrs empty array. That array is used to send the data that we “fetch” and manipulate from this file to the latte template responsible for rendering it. Here’s a quick example.

Gutenberg Blocks files

When it comes to blocks created via the Theme Redone framework, this is where the MVC approach really shines. The 3 most important files responsible for the block are model.json, controller.php, and view.latte.

The files’ names and their purpose should be self-explanatory.

Model.json is responsible for the model of the data. In our environment, this is a JSON file where we write the fields schemas.

That data (fields’ saved values) are then going through the controller.php file where we can modify or filter them. Finally, they are passed to the view.latte file that renders the block to the front end.

Here’s a quick and simple example similar to the video from the start of this post.

Every time we’d want to create a new block, we’d need to create a few files, copy-paste and modify code. Since that’s such a repeating task, we’ve created a TRB CLI (Theme Redone Blocks) NPM package that speeds up a process and helps create a new block with a single terminal command (“trb add block-name“) in less than a second.

Visit Theme Redone’s documentation page dedicated to creating custom blocks to learn more.

Clean and consistent UI for the admin side, along with the block preview image

Latte templates for cleaner and more manageable code

We’ve been experimenting with different templating engines since day 1 of developing the framework (Twig, Blade, and so on…). The day we discovered Latte by Nette, we knew that was what we need.

It’s simple and easy to learn and implement, yer very fast, powerful, and secure.

Templating systems fail to defend against XSS. Latte is the only system with an effective defense, thanks to context-sensitive escaping.

Anyone who wants a well-secured website uses Latte.

Besides its elegant and simple syntax, the same company that created it also created one of the best PHP debuggers called Tracy, which is an integral part of the Theme Redone framework as well.

Here’s the PHP vs Latte comparison screenshot taken from the docs page about Latte.

WordPress framework that supports React, Svelte and Vue out of the box

The days of the good old jQuery have long passed and we are now writing modular and component-oriented Javascript. We are using Gulp 4 with ESBuild for the compilation and watching tasks.

We configured it in a way that it supports React, Svelte, Vue, and Petite Vue out of the box. The only thing you need to do is to render the component either in a block or in the page template, via the library’s specific rendering function.

Code splitting and conditional scripts and styles loading

SEO and loading speed plays an important role when creating a good website. The There Redone WordPress framework is created in a way to help spend as little time as possible focusing on that, and actually working on the business logic of the website.

Each block’s CSS and JS (that are optional), are loaded conditionally only if the block is present on the page. If one same block is used multiple times, CSS and JS will be loaded only once. This is only one example of how we made it modular. Here’s a page in docs where everything is explained thoroughly: SCSS and JS compilation/bundling.

The Theme Redone WordPress Framework Documentation

All the topics mentioned above and much more is explained and detail and with a lot of example code and screenshots to make it easier to understand. It is a 50+ pages long documentation.

We suggest starting from the beginning and focusing on Latte and then on the blocks part of it. Everything else should be easier to understand, and you could learn about it on the go (helper functions for example).

Should you have any questions, or suggestions, visit the Support page, and feel free to reach out.

Thanks for reading, and if you like the theme let us know of the projects you’ve built and help us spread the word.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Hopefully, we’ve grabbed your attention, but to truly understand Theme Redone, go ahead and start exploring the docs :).

Try installing it locally and test it for yourself, we are sure you will love the way it works. If, and when you create a project or two with it, please reach out and send us the link to the website, we’d love to see it.

The post Introducing Theme Redone – the modern WordPress Starter Theme appeared first on Web Redone.

“Use React in a WordPress theme” is our previous article in which we started speaking about the combination of React and WordPress. We spoke about the whys and hows, and the benefits. In this article, we will speak about the implementation and show examples of how to embed React components in a WordPress theme. Read on.

Making WordPress Understand React, A.K.A. THE BUILD PROCESS

We glanced into the configuration, combination of technologies, and tasks we use to compile and “enable” React in our themes in the previous blog post we mentioned above. Here, we’ll dive deeper, and explain how we do it in much more detail.

Since we are not building a single-page application in this scenario, we will not be using “create-react-app”. Instead, to embed React apps into WordPress we will need to configure the build process that compiles our React components manually. It’s a combination of these technologies.

1. WebPack
2. Gulp
3. Babel

Why a Combination of Tools Instead of only using WebPack

Yes, we could compile and build our theme only with WebPack, but we don’t like the idea of processing and importing SCSS files into Javascript, and gulp-sass has proven itself to be a much faster SCSS processor than webpack, plus with many available Gulp plugins, it can be configured to do more. WebPack, on the other hand, is a better solution for processing Javascript. Because of those reasons we’ve decided to combine Gulp and WebPack. A few years ago, we’ve been processing Javascript code with Gulp as well, but since WebPack emerged and proved itself to be the best Javascript bundler and transformer on the market, we’ve decided to make a switch, and we never went back. Gulp, as a task runner, WebPack, as a JS bundler, and Babel, as a compiler made a reliable and fast solution for us, and a winning combination.

WebPack

Taken from their documentation, WebPack is a Javascript module bundler. Primarily, it is made for Javascript, but it can work with, and transform other front-end assets such as HTML, CSS, and images. To do so, WebPack uses loaders that are appropriate for the task at hand. We use it to bundle our theme’s vanilla and JSX code, thus, making it possible to embed react components.

Gulp

Gulp is our preferred task runner. It allows us to automate repetitive and slow tasks such as SCSS compilation, browser reloading, or injecting CSS. BrowserSync plugin makes it really easy for us to get live reloads and test on multiple browsers and devices while developing. It’s fast, reliable and its syntax, which mainly consists of “pipes”, is really easy to understand. You can make it your own and configure it to do almost whatever you can imagine to improve your workflow.

Babel

Babel compiles our Javascript. Actually, it is a transcompiler. It allows us to write modern Javascript that it then converts into a backward-compatible code that the browsers or other environments that run on older JS engines can understand.

Embedding and Rendering React Components on the Front-End

To make it possible to embed react apps in our WordPress theme we will need to configure a few files properly and install NPM packages that help us do that.

We will be creating and configuring these files: gulpfile.js, .babelrc, webpack.config.js, webpack.config.prod.js, gulptasks.js, and lastly, package.json.

gulpfile.js

Our task runner configuration file. For this example, we configured our gulp to watch for updates and call SCSS and Javascript compilation tasks. Since we are speaking about embedding react apps in this post, we will focus on JS and React-related code.

doThemeJS is a function that calls the compileJS task that’s defined and exported in gulptasks.js file. Then inside the watchFiles function, we watch for Javascript files updates and call the doThemeJS function.

Here’s what the gulpfile.js looks like:

const gulp = require('gulp')
const sass = require('gulp-sass')(require('node-sass'))
const autoprefixer = require('gulp-autoprefixer')
const gcmq = require('gulp-group-css-media-queries')
const minifycss = require('gulp-uglifycss')
var plumber = require('gulp-plumber')
var notify = require('gulp-notify')
const { argv } = require('yargs')
const browserSync = require('browser-sync').create()

const tasks = require('./tasks/gulptasks.js')

const LOCALHOST_PROJECT_URL = 'localhost/react-test'

process.env.NODE_ENV = argv.production || 'development'

const watchPaths = {
  css: {
    theme: './src/scss/theme/**/*.scss',
  },
  js: {
    theme: './src/js/**/*.js',
  },
}

const OUT_DIR = './prod'
const srcSCSS = './src/scss/style.scss'

function compileSCSS() {
  return gulp
    .src(srcSCSS)
    .pipe(
      plumber({ errorHandler: notify.onError('Error: <%= error.message %>') })
    )
    .pipe(
      sass({
        errLogToConsole: false,
        outputStyle: 'compact',
        precision: 10,
      })
    )
    .pipe(autoprefixer())
    .pipe(gcmq())
    .pipe(
      minifycss({
        maxLineLen: 1000,
        uglyComments: true,
      })
    )
    .pipe(gulp.dest(OUT_DIR))
    .pipe(browserSync.stream())
}

function doCSS(done) {
  return gulp.series(compileSCSS, (done) => {
    done()
  })(done)
}

function doThemeJS(done) {
  return gulp.series(tasks.compileJS, reload, (done) => {
    done()
  })(done)
}

function reload(done) {
  browserSync.reload()
  done()
}

function watchFiles() {
  browserSync.init({
    proxy: LOCALHOST_PROJECT_URL,
    injectChanges: true,
  })

  // Watches for theme scss updates
  gulp.watch(watchPaths.css.theme, doCSS)
  gulp.watch(watchPaths.js.theme, doThemeJS)
}

gulp.task('default', watchFiles)

gulptasks.js

Here, we’ve defined and exported a function that we call from our gulpfile. The function in this file depends on the webpack.config.js file.

const { argv } = require('yargs')
const webpack = require('webpack')

process.env.NODE_ENV = argv.production || 'development'

const webpackConfig =
  process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production'
    ? '../webpack.config.prod.js'
    : '../webpack.config.js'

function compileJS(done) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    webpack(require(webpackConfig), (err, stats) => {
      if (err) {
        return reject(err)
      }

      if (stats.hasErrors()) {
        return reject(new Error(stats))
      }
      resolve()
      done()
    })
  })
}

exports.compileJS = compileJS

webpack.config.js

In the WebPack config file, we are telling it to compile our Javascript and JSX syntax. In this specific configuration, we have two entry files that we are watching and compiling: app.js, which lives in the /src/js/app.js of our theme, and react.js, which lives in /src/js/app-react.js in our theme. They are compiled and renamed into the /prod directory of the theme. They become app.min.js and react.min.js, which we then enqueue.

Here’s the webpack.config.js code:

const path = require('path')
const outputDir = path.resolve(__dirname, 'prod')

module.exports = {
  mode: 'development',
  entry: {
    app: path.resolve(__dirname, './src/js/app.js'),
    react: path.resolve(__dirname, './src/js/app-react.js'),
  },
  devtool: 'inline-source-map',
  output: {
    path: outputDir,
    filename: '[name].min.js',
  },
  devtool: 'source-map',
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.js$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        use: ['babel-loader'],
      },
      {
        test: /\.js$/,
        use: ['source-map-loader'],
        enforce: 'pre',
      },
    ],
  },
}

webpack.config.prod.js

This code is run when we use the npm run build:prod command to minimize the code. It uses the Terser WebPack plugin for optimization and minimization.

const path = require('path')
const outputDir = path.resolve(__dirname, 'prod')
const TerserPlugin = require('terser-webpack-plugin')

module.exports = {
  mode: 'production',
  entry: {
    app: path.resolve(__dirname, './src/js/app.js'),
    react: path.resolve(__dirname, './src/js/app-react.js'),
  },
  output: {
    path: outputDir,
    filename: '[name].min.js',
  },
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.js$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        use: ['babel-loader'],
      },
    ],
  },
  optimization: {
    minimize: true,
    minimizer: [
      new TerserPlugin({
        parallel: true,
        terserOptions: {
          ecma: 6,
          format: {
            comments: false,
          },
        },
        extractComments: false,
      }),
    ],
  },
}

.babelrc

This is the configuration that WebPack uses to know how to transpile the code. The two most important blocks of code are highlighted in the image below. The file is configured to use wp.element.createElement so we can create custom Gutenberg blocks (the admin part), and @babel/preset-react, so we can use React on the front-end on its own (without Gutenberg). If you are not using Gutenberg, you most probably wouldn’t need the pragma part, but even if you leave it, the code will work and will compile React for the front-end.

package.json

Finally, we have the package.json file with defined dependencies and tasks. To start the task runner, watch for changes and compile, run npm start. When you finish and want to minimize the files, run npm run build:prod.

{
  "name": "gulp4-webpack",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "A modern ES6 Gulp workflow combined with Webpack",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "gulp",
    "build:prod": "gulp --production=production"
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": "14.15.1"
  },
  "author": "Nikola Ivanov - webredone.com",
  "license": "MIT",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@babel/core": "^7.14.8",
    "@babel/plugin-proposal-class-properties": "^7.14.5",
    "@babel/plugin-proposal-object-rest-spread": "^7.14.7",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-react-jsx": "^7.14.9",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-runtime": "^7.14.5",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-spread": "^7.14.6",
    "@babel/preset-env": "^7.14.9",
    "@babel/preset-react": "^7.14.5",
    "babel-eslint": "^10.1.0",
    "babel-loader": "^8.2.2",
    "babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx": "^6.24.1",
    "del": "^6.0.0",
    "eslint": "^7.32.0",
    "eslint-config-prettier": "^8.3.0",
    "eslint-plugin-prettier": "^3.4.0",
    "gulp": "^4.0.2",
    "gulp-autoprefixer": "^8.0.0",
    "gulp-group-css-media-queries": "^1.2.2",
    "gulp-notify": "^4.0.0",
    "gulp-plumber": "^1.2.1",
    "gulp-sass": "^5.0.0",
    "gulp-uglifycss": "^1.1.0",
    "prettier": "^2.3.2",
    "source-map-loader": "^3.0.0",
    "terser-webpack-plugin": "^5.1.4",
    "webpack": "^5.47.1",
    "webpack-cli": "^4.7.2",
    "yargs": "^17.0.1"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "axios": "^0.21.1",
    "browser-sync": "^2.27.5",
    "embla-carousel": "^4.5.3",
    "node-sass": "^6.0.1",
    "toastify-js": "^1.11.1",
    "uuid": "^8.3.2",
    "react": "^17.0.2",
    "react-dom": "^17.0.2"
  }
}

Rendering React apps in WordPress front-end

With the configuration from above, you should be able to now write and use React components in the front-end of your WordPress theme. In create-react-app, you would render the whole app to the #root element. The idea is the same here, but we are not rendering to one #root element. Instead, we define our own elements, which we then query for and inject our react code into.

Here’s an example of how to create a simple react app that we attach to the element which has a  “test-simple-react-component” class.

app-react.js

We are doing it with a ReactComponents class. Inside its constructor, we define the selectors for elements we want to inject React code into, and then we call the init() method to render the components if we find those selectors on the current page. This simple example shows how to render one component on the element that has the test-simple-react-component class. You would simply add more selectors, checks, and render methods to attach more react components.

import React from 'react'
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom'

import TestSimpleApp from './react-components/TestSimpleApp'

class ReactComponents {
  constructor() {
    this.$test_simple_react_components = document.querySelectorAll(
      '.test-simple-react-component'
    )
    this.init()
  }

  init() {
    if (this.$test_simple_react_components) {
      this.$test_simple_react_components.forEach(($simple_app_wrap) => {
        ReactDOM.render(, $simple_app_wrap)
      })
    }
  }
}

new ReactComponents()

TestSimpleApp.js

This is our component’s code. It’s a simple background-changing app.

import React, { useState } from 'react'

const [color1, color2] = ['#cecece', '#e9e9e9']

const TestSimpleApp = () => {
  const [color, setColor] = useState('#cecece')

  return (
    <div className="test-simple-app" style={{ backgroundColor: color }}>
      <h2>This is a simple react app</h2>
      <button
        className="btn btn--brand"
        onClick={() => setColor(() => (color === color1 ? color2 : color1))}
      >
        Change color
      </button>
    </div>
  )
}

export default TestSimpleApp

Now, wherever you want to show this component, you would just add the element with the corresponding class name. For simplicity’s sake, we are hardcoding it into the front-page file (Note: we are using latte templating engine instead of plain PHP, but you get the idea).

{include tr_view_path('/layout/header')}

<div class="test-simple-react-component"></div>

{include tr_view_path('/layout/footer')}

And, here’s what our example component looks like on the front end.

That’s a wrap

This example only shows a tiny bit of what’s possible when you embed React components into WordPress. Imagine creating dynamic and interactive archive pages, filters, search pages, or animations with React-Spring or Framer Motion.

If you haven’t, make sure to read our previous article about this topic.

The post Embed React Components in WordPress Websites appeared first on Web Redone.

React and WordPress are both fast, state-of-art technologies. When combined, they complement each other very well. The time of jQuery has passed, and we now have better and more modern tools at our disposal. Some of the new technologies we will be talking about in this article are React, WebPack, and Babel. These technologies have been tested, proven, and stable for quite a few years now, yet we still see developers and agencies build WordPress themes with jQuery and plugins depending on it. If you ask us, it really is time to embrace the modern tech stack and build more valuable and scalable solutions for the Web of today.

Embed react app in WordPress. Is it possible, what are the benefits?

Very much so! WordPress already in its core uses React. It uses it for the Gutenberg Editor, new widgets admin screen, and since recently, for the full site editing experience.

It’s become the standard practice for us when building custom WordPress themes. In this article we will explain why we embed react apps in WordPress, and how and when we do it. But first, let’s start with the basics.

What is React?

React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. React makes it painless to create interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state in your application, and React will efficiently update and render just the right components when your data changes. Declarative views make your code more predictable and easier to debug. An extensible architecture, together with a pluggable ecosystem of complementary libraries, lets you build modules specialized enough to handle most of your needs while reusing code wherever possible. One way of building standalone React apps is on top of the create-react-app package. In our case, where we focus on embedding react components in WordPress, we would need to do a manual setup with WebPack and Babel.

How do WebPack and Babel come into play?

Webpack is a module bundler. It allows you to import assets like images, JavaScript files, and stylesheets, and process them into one or more bundles. Think of it as asset packaging.

Babel is an ECMAScript transpiler that supports modern syntax extensions. This means you can use any ES6/ES7/ES8 code without worrying about browser support.

That’s a lot of tech talk in one paragraph, but the takeaway is that we are using WebPack and Babel to compile and transpile our Javascript and React code. To put it simply, to make it possible for our theme to understand the latest Javascript and React’s JSX syntax. Even tho Webpack supports handling stylesheets and images, in our case, we are not doing that. We use Gulp to take care of our CSS.

Embedding React components in a WordPress theme. What are the use cases?

This all varies from project to project, and how important SEO is. If there are no specific requirements from the client, we assume that SEO is important and use React carefully. In this case, it’s safe to use it to create Archive pages with filters, Search pages, and repeatable sections (Gutenberg Blocks) with pagination, that might show custom post-type cards. Examples may be team members’ images, the latest news, and so on.

Another use case to embed react components in a WordPress theme is when we are doing third-party integrations. Some time ago we coded a custom Ping Identity (Identity and single-sign-on management platform) embedded React app. This had nothing to do with SEO, so we went 100% React. Handling requests and responses, JWTs, and persisting data was a breeze. We used Redux for handling data, tho, lately we’ve been using Zustand.

In these cases, React helps not only by making it simple for us to write, and organize code in a more modern way; It also makes the user experience much better. Pages are not refreshing, response time is quick, transitions can be animated, and all this adds value to the end-user by showing him/her what’s going on.

How do we automate the compilation and bundling of es8, React, and SCSS code

We use a combination of Webpack, Babel, and Gulp to streamline our development workflow. WebPack’s tasks are compiling and minifying our Javascript. It watches for changes and compiles into three bundles:

1. Plain javascript that we use on the front-end: Menus, accordions, tabs, sliders, and other related UI components and additional custom logic.
2. React components are used on the front end. As mentioned above, this includes archives, filters, sorting, reusable sections with pagination, and other project-specific stuff.
3. Gutenberg Blocks. Since our framework is Gutenberg-oriented, and we make use of our custom fields, components, and blocks, this bundle takes care of that.

Gulp’s tasks are compiling and minifying our SCSS to CSS, writing critical CSS and watching for file updates and refreshing the browser, or injecting CSS changes (via BrowserSync) for faster local development and testing on multiple devices.

Here’s a sneak pick of our WebPack.config.js file. And we also have a bonus insight. Really soon we will be open-sourcing We open-sourced our in-house-built Gutenberg-oriented framework for everyone to use. It will be well-documented and it will have better examples and explanations about the concepts we wrote about here and much more.

This was the introduction to using React with WordPress. To learn more, make sure to read our new article about how to embed react components into WordPress and the technical details of it.

The post Using React in a WordPress theme appeared first on Web Redone.

WordPress plugins come in a lot of different shapes and forms. There are plugins for adding forms, optimizing images, and security, to name a few. In this article, we will write about a few essential plugins that we use on each new project.

WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for content management systems. It’s easy to use, versatile, and comes with a lot of plugins that make it even better! As an agency that focuses on Custom WordPress development, we prefer not to use too many plugins. The reason for this is that we want your website to load fast, to be easily manageable, to avoid site vulnerabilities and compatibility issues. Having said this, we do love and use a few tested and proven ones, that complement our objectives very well.

Types of WordPress plugins we use and avoid using

WordPress is a great platform for creating websites and blogs, and the best CMS ever created, at least that’s our humble opinion. It’s flexible, customizable, and open-source, which means there are an endless number of plugins available to help make your site more secure and easy to use. However, not all plugins are created equal. We put plugins into 2 main buckets. One is a bucket with plugins that focus on the back-end, add features, and optimization, and make it easier to develop custom themes. The second one is filled with the UI and front-end features. Things like sliders, modals, and other UI elements. We avoid the second bucket because 90% of the time, these plugins depend on jQuery and have their own additional scripts and styles that can slow down the website’s load time and in the end negatively affect its SEO and performance.

We aim for scores like this, and we can’t achieve them if we use tons of plugins

Finally, here are the 7 WordPress plugins we use and recommend

1. Advanced Custom Fields PRO
2. All-in-one WP Migration (Unlimited Extension) – We really love this one
3. Custom Post Type UI
4. CPT UI Sync
5. FakerPress
6. SVG Support
7. Yoast SEO

Each of these plugins has nothing to do with the front-end and is a great additional tool that makes it easier for us to develop, test, and migrate our websites.

Advanced Custom Fields PRO

This plugin is a must-have, and I believe a standard go-to plugin that all serious WordPress developers know and appreciate.

It allows us to create and use additional content fields throughout our website. Be it a single page, single post, or as a global field (for example, additional footer fields).

It allows us to create all kinds of fields, like text inputs, text areas, checkboxes, file uploads, and more.

This plugin is a must-have for any serious WordPress developer or agency looking to customize the website even further than the default WordPress theme options allow us to do so. Especially the PRO version of the plugin, which unlocks a few powerful additions like The Repeater Field, ACF Blocks, The Flexible Content Field, Options Pages, and a few more. And for only $49/yr, which is for one website, or $249/yr, for unlimited websites, it’s definitely worth the price tag.

All-in-one WP Migration (Unlimited Extension)

WP Migration is a plugin that helps you to migrate your WordPress site. It is an all-in-one solution that will help you migrate your data and settings from one WordPress installation to another.

WP Migration has a simple and intuitive user interface that makes it easy to use for beginners. It also features a lot of useful features such as backup, restores, and import/export options.

The WP Migration plugin can be used for various purposes – including migrating from one hosting provider to another, migrating from one domain name to another, or migrating from one WordPress site to another. It comes with a free plan, but going with the Unlimited Extension, which is only a $69 one-time payment, you are getting more than what you are paying for; Unlimited imports/exports for unlimited websites. The upload limit that was 500MB for a free version gets removed, and you also get premium support.

Custom Post Type UI

Custom Post Type UI is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to create custom post types with custom fields and custom taxonomies.

This plugin is perfect for developers who want to create their own post types and add new fields to the existing ones.

Sure, we can write custom post types inside the source code, but this plugin makes it so much easier for a task repeatable as this one. You populate a few fields, hit save, and voila, your custom post type is created. It’s also easier to update the data in case you made a mistake, or simply want to change the slug; even if you already have a decent amount of posts written for this CPT. Source control via git becomes a problem, but the next plugin on our list solves this issue.

CPT UI Sync

This one is the addition to the previous plugin we talked about, the Custom Post Type UI. It complements it by making it possible to track settings and changes of the CPT UI plugin; thus, simplifying the version control.

When you create or update a custom post type or taxonomy via the mentioned plugin, the plugins will export and save needed code inside the theme’s “cptui” folder. Now, your configuration will be saved and tracked, you can create and edit custom post type settings in the dev environment, and it will always reflect in the live or staging environment.

FakerPress

WordPress Fakerpress plugin is a dummy data generator that can be used to create fake content. It is mainly used for testing purposes or when you need to create content before the real one is ready.

I believe this one is also a go-to plugin for all the serious WP devs. The best thing is that it’s completely free. But it makes a breeze to create hundreds of dummy data posts. By doing so, you can test, optimize and build the REST-APIs, filtering and sorting, pagination and so much more.

It works well with the ACF and CPR UI plugins.

SVG Support

This one is a simple and small plugin that makes it possible for us to use SVGs inside WordPress, mainly, we can upload them via the Media tool. By default, WordPress disables the ability to upload SVGs, because they may impose security issues, but, if you know what you are doing, and if the admin is well educated, it’s a great addition. The great thing about SVGs is that they preserve details, no matter how small or large the screen is. They can also be animated.

Yoast SEO

Lastly, but not any less important than any other plugin on our list. In fact, maybe the most important plugin in the whole WordPress ecosystem is the Yoast SEO plugin. If you are blogging, doing affiliate marketing, and want to make it to the first page of google and to track your efforts, then there’s no better solution than Yoast SEO.

It adds all the meta code (Schema) that might be difficult to do manually, watches while you are writing, and gives you suggestions about how to structure and improve your content to satisfy the SEO “needs”.

It is free (and this will usually be enough), but if you want to go next level with your SEO-optimized content writing, and want to get access to their premium courses (more than 15 at this moment), there is a PRO version that comes for only about $110 per year.

And that’s a wrap

As promised, we covered and wrote about our top 7 plugins that we use here at WebRedone daily. We use these plugins for any type of website that we build. Be it a traditional custom WP website (done with ACF), or with our in-house-built Gutenberg framework that we always suggest to our clients.

We hope we provided some valuable insights here, and in case you have any questions, need a reliable custom WordPress development partner agency, or you want to have a website that’s well coded, optimized, and easy to use, feel free to say hi. We’ll be more than happy to help.

The post 7 WordPress Plugins We Use on Every Project to Make Our Life Easier appeared first on Web Redone.

Gutenberg is the new standard editor for WordPress

We will get to Gutenberg Editor and explain it and its benefits shortly, let us first honor WordPress itself.

WordPress has a long tradition of always improving and providing the best CMS experience for its users. Our humble opinion is that it is the de-facto standard CMS and the best one ever created. After all, as of this writing WordPress powers over 43% of all the websites out there. Let that sink in, almost half of all the websites.

For comparison, here’s what the old classic editor looked like.

In November 2018, Gutenberg arrived as a standard editor and replaced the classic one

Gutenberg is WordPress’ latest editor experience. The core idea is to use blocks instead of only text, which was the case in previous versions of WordPress.

It adds so much more flexibility and diversity and makes creating pages and writing content a breeze.

Page templates were good but they were kinda static. Say, you had 10 pages that used one template. All of them would end up looking the same and would differ only in terms of text content and images.

With Gutenberg, we now have reusable blocks. We can treat Gutenberg blocks as “legos” that represent sections. They can be reused over and over and we can build pages and posts in a more flexible manner. Now, each page or post can have a unique layout.

Other Page Builders

There are “page builders” such as Elementor, WP Bakery, and Beaver Builder, to name a few. But, those are all third-party plugins that are not created nor maintained by core WordPress developers.

When compared to them, Gutenberg has a huge advantage because it is not a third-party plugin. Rather, it is WordPress’ native solution. It is created, regularly maintained, and updated by the WordPress team.

It gives us the security that with each new WordPress update it will simply work without any issues. Apart from its core blocks such as images, paragraphs, galleries and so much more, we can create custom blocks.

We can design and tailor custom blocks specifically per the client’s needs. And that’s exactly how we build WordPress websites here at WebRedone.

The advantage of Gutenberg in terms of load speed and other metrics that can affect your SEO in a good or bad way is that Gutenberg doesn’t depend on 3rd party software such as jQuery, Sliders, and other UI libraries that add to the file size and slow down the website.

We, the developers, can take responsibility and work with it in the most optimal way so that you always end up with a performant, fast, and SEO-optimized website from the launch day.

From the developer’s perspective, it is also flexible in a way that we can code blocks tailored to your needs. Each block, no matter how complex it is, will always end up with a straightforward and intuitive set of controls that will help you easily manage and update content without worrying about potentially breaking something.

Commonly asked questions (summary)

What is a Gutenberg editor?

WordPress’ Gutenberg Editor is the newest and constantly improved version of the WordPress editor experience.

It is built with the React javascript library, which makes the new editor way faster than its predecessor, which relied on PHP and refreshed each time you hit the save button.

As opposed to the classic editor that used the WYSIWYG approach, Gutenberg focuses on flexible and repeatable blocks.

What is a Gutenberg block?

The Gutenberg block is a reusable and flexible component that “lives” inside the main editor. It represents a section or part of the section that we can reuse and customize to create a page’s or post’s layout.

It usually consists of two parts: the main one, that’s on the left-hand side and the complementary one which appears in the sidebar on the right-hand side. The main part is on the left. This is where you would write content, and add images, links, and any other content that the block is built for. The complementary one appears in the sidebar on the right-hand side (if the block is configured to have one). It can be used to control space (margin/padding), background colors, or any other custom setting that’s needed for the block. Here’s a GIF demonstrating how we used the sidebar controls in one of our client’s websites to control padding and background color variations of a section.

There are core WordPress blocks such as paragraphs, headlines, lists, images, columns, and video embeds. Besides core blocks, we have various plugins or themes, or even fully custom-built themes (what we at WebRedone focus on) that offer us accordions, tabbed content, frequently asked questions, people’s cards, and similar flexible components. Gutenberg blocks can be customized, reused, duplicated, and moved around the page to provide us better editor experience and more flexible and authentic Front-ends.

How do I use the Gutenberg editor?

In the editor, we can add new blocks, drag and drop them, and customize and reuse them. We add them by either typing the slash “/”, which shows all the available blocks, or we can also click on the plus icon and choose from there.

Here’s a GIF showcasing how to add or edit blocks with our Gutenberg framework for building custom WordPress websites.

Is the Gutenberg editor good?

I believe we at WebRedone share an opinion with the majority of people who have worked with WordPress that Gutenberg editor is the best content editor that has existed in WordPress, ever. It is WordPress’s native solution, so it doesn’t depend on jQuery or similar other libraries that could slow down the website and badly affect SEO and loading time metrics. It’s also very intuitive and fast to wrap your head around.

How do I download the Gutenberg editor?

The good news is, you don’t need to. It is a standard feature of WordPress as of November 2018.

How do I make a Gutenberg website?

There are a few options. If you need something quick without that much branding and optimization, you could go with the WordPress official TwentyTwentyTwo theme that comes preinstalled with every new WordPress installation or some of the Gutenberg-ready themes such as Astra. Both of the mentioned themes support core WordPress blocks. In case you want to go a bit further, you could install plugins such as Kadence blocks to give you a bit more flexibility.

In case you are serious about your business, every KPI such as SEO, load-time, and accessibility matter to you. You also want a fully customized and branded website and editing experience that will not cause you headaches. If this is the case, we advise working with a dedicated web development company that can build a solution tailored to your needs and integrate any third-party software that’s important to you and your business. That’s where we come in 🙂

Is WordPress Gutenberg free?

It absolutely is. The core concept of WordPress and why we love it is its open-source nature which is one of the Gutenberg, as well. Here’s the link to the official Gutenberg repository on GitHub.

Let us help you create content with a breeze and make your website stand out. Contact us to build you a custom-tailored website with our in-house-built Gutenberg editor framework.

The post WordPress Gutenberg editor – what it is and why it’s great appeared first on Web Redone.

You are having problems with the Google ranking of your pages and website?

No matter what you do your website is still on the 13^th page of Google.  Do you feel like Google holds a grudge against you?

Nothing is as upsetting as this. I know and I am here to help you!

I learned the hard way that making minor mistakes can rig your Google Ranking.

But, you don’t have to.

Let’s start with the question:

Why is it important to rank your website on Google?

The answer is:

to bring more readers to your website!

Follow these tips, and improve your web visibility!

Let’s right dive in.

Duplicate Content- BIG NO-NO

We are going to start with this.

Duplicate content is used in SEO to describe the content which appears on more than one website or more than one page of the same website, in other words, if you copy someone’s content and add it to your own, you are making DUPLICATE CONTENT.

The problem is that search engines don’t include web pages with the same or even similar content in search results.

There are two types:

• Internal – the same copies on the same website
• External– the same content on two or more different websites

In order to avoid creating internal duplicates write unique titles and meta descriptions in HTML code.

Watch out for the scrapers! Bloggers know they exist, try not to be one of them. They steal content from other websites and post content as their own.

How to avoid it?

1. Create High-quality Content
2. You can use a tool that helps you explore your own site, I like using: https://www.siteliner.com/
3. Canonical tag

Too Long to Load

Does the speed of your page affect your Google ranking?

Obviously, the answer is: YES!

There is a difference between “site speed” and “page speed”.

Page speed is your page load time. If it takes too long to load people will bounce faster.

Google prefers websites and pages that load quickly.

But, there is a simple solution!

Here is what you need to do:

There is an app, Page Speed Insights. It provides a description of your website’s loading speed on both mobile and desktop, and there is a guide on how to improve it.

You can find it here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ 

But wait, there is more.

Pingdom helps you identify your website speed as well. Pingdom is easy to use. Type: https://tools.pingdom.com/#5ca0fc10f1c00000 and just enter your website’s URL: www.example.com

Also, make sure that you choose a good web hosting provider, and that images on your site are not taking up too much space.

Not Thinking About SEO From Day One

You see, you have to think about SEO from the first word you write. In my experience, following these rules might save your website.

Here are some for you:

1. Match your keywords
2. Avoid keyword stuffing
3. Write the right snippet
4. Get to the point
5. Pay attention to your audience, you are writing for them
6. DO NOT waste your readers’ time
7. Pay attention to your headline
8. Shorter is better, write short paragraphs

I don’t want to waste your time, so let’s go to our next tip.

Broken Links

Do you hate it when you click on the link and get “Page Not Found”? Your readers hate it too.

Broken links are not good for SEO.

This tool can help you find broken links: https://moz.com/free-seo-tools

It is free and you can use it.

There are two types of broken links: internal (inbound)  and external (outbound). Internal links are the links to other pages of your website. The external links are from your site to other websites.

The easiest way to repair this is, simply, to replace the broken links with working ones.

Broken links compromise SEO and irritate your readers.

Don’t forget to Optimize Your Images

As it turns out, images are great for the website.

But, there is a catch, you have to optimize them if you want them to affect your SEO ranking.

By now you know that large images slow your page loading time, undoubtedly, slow loading time hurts your ranking.

What do you do?

Make your images smaller, and compress them.

What’s more, you can name your images using keywords.

Here is an example:

Let’s say your website sells dog food, so instead of naming your image “food” you can type “ best dog food for small breeds.”

MOBILE DEVICE Friendly

Did you know that more than 60% of Google searches come from mobile phones?

Mobile phones are becoming more popular than computers and laptops.

When you wake up in the morning you read the news using your phone, am I right?

So, what you need to do is: Optimize your website for mobile devices.

CONCLUSION

It is never too late to start focusing on SEO, if you are a newbie or just little behind, follow my tips.

Write unique content, your readers will love you for it.

Simple is better. Use your headlines wisely.

Do your research before writing!

If you do all this, you have a great chance of reaching the first page on Google results.

The post What Is SEO Pt3 – Here’s What You Don’t Know About Google Website Ranking That Could Damage Your Website appeared first on Web Redone.

The Meta what?

Yes, been there done that.

Honestly, I was confused about meta description as you are right now, not only I am going to help you understand it better but also share some of the tips that helped me.

 Let’s jump right into it! 

What is a Meta Description?

A meta description is a brief snippet you see underneath a site’s headline in Google’s search results furthermore, it is a mark within your meta tags that helps describe your page. Here’s an example of what it usually looks like:

Here is the “formula”:

<meta name="keywords" content="meta description,google meta description,meta name description" />
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />

Is it really necessary? It absolutely is!

The meta description will not improve your website ranking, but it can help with the CLICKS and the clicks will, unquestionably, help you rank better.

Keep in mind that the search engines won’t automatically use your meta description, alternatively search engines might pull a different meta tag from your content. If this happens, there must be something wrong with your meta. It might be too long (over 160 characters) or isn’t representing your page or topic to fit the query.

Furthermore, every meta description must be unique, as well as the title.

If you are using a plugin, be meticulous, avoid duplicating your meta descriptions and titles

But wait there is more! Here is the 5-step guide to writing your perfect meta.

STEP 1 – How to add a meta description to your page?

You are probably new to the world of SEO, obviously, you need a simple explanation! I understand because I was there!

If you are using Word Press, you’ll need Yoast SEO Plugin because it analyses your content, helps you rank your website better.

This plugin analyses your content and helps you write better SEO content as well.

Yeah, I know, it is a lifesaver, and it is so easy to use.

STEP 2- How long should the meta description be?

Firstly, keep it between 150-158 characters because Google shortens excerpts that are longer than 158 characters.

Google has a new meta description length of 920 pixels, which means up to 158 characters on your computer and 620 pixels, up to 120 characters on a mobile device.

Secondly, try not to pre-truncate your meta description because “…” is an unreliable indicator.  Look at this:

Delete a few words, to avoid this.

What’s more, I am going to show you some of the great meta description examples:

As you can see here,

As you can see here, meta is short and unique!

One more:

Again, short, simple, and unique.

Step 3 – What is the page about?

Put the most important information first.  Every meta description needs to quickly show your reader what to expect from your article. Look at this example:

They started their meta with “savings”, informed readers what to expect, and BOOM, people all over the world are using Booking to find a hotel. I use it too!

Simply stated, keep it natural, you are writing for people!

Note: Sleep on it. Write your meta description, leave it, and read it again in an hour or two. You’ll see better ways to fit more benefits.

STEP 4- Never deceive searchers.

Create something click-worthy—not clickbait.

Writing irrelevant descriptions, titles, or keywords into your tags, will, undoubtedly, cause a high bounce rate.

You don’t want your website to have a high bounce rate.

But wait, bounce rate?

Good news! I will explain everything about the bounce rate in the next part of my SEO for Beginners.

STEP 5- How to write better Meta Descriptions?

• Make it easy to read. Stuffing your keywords doesn’t help, it will, definitely, make searchers think it is spam.
• Include a call to action. Call your readers to visit the website. Give them a reason to click on your website among 10 other websites.
• BOLD your main keywords to draw attention.
• Do not use quotation marks.
• Use active voice, not passive.

CONCLUSION

You are all set! This post helped you understand the meta description better. As I said, I was confused at first. I did my research, and, hopefully, this post will have the same effect on you! You might think you are not the right person to do this, but, believe me, you are!

The post What is SEO pt2 – 5 Steps Meta Description Guide 2022 appeared first on Web Redone.

Do you have a website and need help optimizing it for SEO?

You are in the right place! We will help you learn to rank your website better and make it to the top 3 Google search results.

What is SEO copywriting?

What is that? Is that like content writing? Is it copywriting?

Where do I learn to do that?

You’ve been repeating these questions in your head over and over, am I right?, am I right?

Let me answer the questions for you!

SEO Copywriting is a form of online writing. The key to SEO:

1. Include the key phrases or keywords that people type in the search box
2. Optimize it for Google
3. Finally and most importantly, write for the readers.

Wondering what keywords to use and how to write for google?

I am about to show you….

What are SEO KEYWORDS?

Your SEO keywords are the words in your content that help people find your site when they type in the search box. In other words, think about the words and phrases you would type if you would like to find information.

Here is the list of a few SEO keywords:

How to OPTIMIZE your content for GOOGLE?

Billions of searches are conducted online every single day. This means an immense amount of specific, high-intent traffic.

Did you know that Google handles the majority of the search engine traffic in the world?

The question is, how to position your site and its content to rank?

• Make your content high-quality, relevant information to the searcher’s question
• Google’s algorithm determines whether that content is relevant to what the searcher is looking for, based on the keywords it contains and other factors (“Ranking Factors”)
• The site’s link profile – the number and quality of other websites that link to a page and the site as a whole

How to write for the audience?

Use the APP approach! Now, let’s break it down and include some real-life examples.

Let me explain how…

People want to read something they understand. Using complex words and terms will only confuse people who are trying to learn and understand SEO.

AGREE

You want to start with an idea or concept that someone searching for an article will agree with. This means you understand them and you’ve been through the same. If they see that, they might stick around and click on some more links.

Are you looking for a way to increase your website ranking? -Yes, I do!

Make them interested in what you have to offer.

PROMISE

Now when you’ve got the thumbs up in their heads it is time to show them that they can learn something new from you.

I will show you how to improve your ranking.

Use keywords and key phrases

PREVIEW

The PREVIEW is all about telling your readers exactly what you have in store for them.

You are about to learn how to optimize your website to rank better.

BUCKET BRIGADES

Do you know what bucket brigades are?

Not analog delay line by F. Sangster of Philips Research Labs back in 1969.

And no, not the human chain method for passing the items from one person to another.

Ready to find out what bucket brigades in content writing are?

QUICK ANSWER: A bucket brigade is a phrase that encourages the reader to keep on reading.

Bucket brigades are like bridges, they connect two sentences.

In copywriting the purpose is to keep your readers interested or sell something.

What happens when the following sentence is weak or it is impossible to get to the punch-line in one sentence?

Well, this is the time to use a bucket brigade.

There are many reasons why you should use bucket brigades, and here are some of those reasons:

• They keep your readers’ attention
• They help you to connect with the reader
• They save you a lot of time
• They come in many different kinds and shapes

But wait, I am going to give you some of the bucket brigades I use:

• This is why:
• And this:
• You know what sucks?
• Want some examples?
• Here is what you need to know….
• Check this out!
• You are about to learn…
• Now:
• But wait
• Oh, and there is this!
• Turns out
• In case you might be asking
• Best of all
• It’s true
• The truth is
• On the other hand
• Quick answer

And yes, I know it is a bother to write them down, you can simply bookmark this page or even make your own bucket brigades up.

It is that easy.

DESIGN

Bucket brigades, APP approach, and choosing your audience are very important, but designing your content is one of the keys to successful internet marketing and better ranking.

Here is what you need to know:

First of all, your text should be clear and simple.

Look at this:

Would this draw your attention? – NO!

Avoid large chunks of text. Write in paragraphs.

MAKE IT SNAPPY

You have to accept that people scan web pages, rather than read them in detail.

If you want to cover a complex topic, try breaking it into several paragraphs or even a series of posts.

And why is this important?

Well, it is an excellent way to keep your readers interested and keep your content easier to digest.

SEO HEADLINES

Use simple headlines to get more readers.

Here are a few tips:

• Use phrases like “… ways to”, “15 reasons why” and “step-by-step”
• Include numbers in your headlines: 5, 10, 15, 7, and 12. Readers like headlines with numbers
• Target a keyword with a high search volume

When the hardest part is behind you, comes the part where you have to do the proofreading. Correct the superficial errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation….

Use spellcheckers, Grammarly is a great way to correct typing mistakes.

And you are all set!

Dive into a copywriting business!

There is more: Bookmark our website, and stay tuned, Part 2 coming soon!

The post What is SEO pt1 – SEO Copywriting-for-Beginners appeared first on Web Redone.

Examples of types of websites and tips to help you understand what’s best for you

There are around 2 billion websites all over the Internet. That’s more than the stars in the clear night sky that the human eye can perceive. Even though this may sound a bit overwhelming, there is a simple trick that can effectively make this matter more understandable. It’s called categorization and it’s been used for centuries in every aspect of life. By dividing the existing websites into different types, you simply allow yourself to get to know and understand them better. That would also help you see the difference between them. Also, it will be a huge help with the aim of understanding which of them is suitable for your goals. The main purpose of this article is to help you with this task.

Although there may be various criteria that can be used to categorize the different kinds of websites we choose to present to you the most common website types. We also include some examples and good practices from each kind.

1. Personal Blog type of a website

Blogs have been a generally adored and favored kind of website for people and families who wish to chronicle different occasions of their lives. 17 years ago, when WordPress was created, its aim was to serve as a blog-publishing system. We all know that gradually WordPress evolved into a complex CMS able to support all different types of web content. And still, WordPress is the most common and renowned platform for blogs and its usage ranges from small bloggers to complex brand-building teams.

There are still millions of blogs on the internet. The main tone of a blog is informational and can be easily kept up to date by one or several people. Blogs can be created on different subjects – culinary blogs, travel blogs, a blog for sharing personal memories, beauty blogs, and so on. If you want to start a blog our simple advice is to keep it authentic. Personalize it and make sure that you are adding unique content to it. That will help you to distinguish yourself from the competition and help you to attract more new visitors.

Even if your website type is not a blog, it’s yet a helpful additional element to add intrigue and inside information to your website. A section with articles or interesting facts on your subject can attract new customers and will definitely benefit your SEO. Simply ensure to update it on a regular basis.

A great example of a successful personal blog is WELLNESS MAMA. It’s a health and wellness blog for mothers. As you can see the target niche is very specific and, in this case, this is one of the reasons it’s so successful. So, do your research before starting a blog and go for a specific audience that’s still not represented informationally. That will guarantee you a great start!

2. Business and corporate websites

A business site is any site that is focused on the representation of a specific business. If you own any kind of business and you still don’t have a website, we advise starting planning one right away. The online presence is of huge importance for the business’s credibility. Even small businesses should have an online representation, in the digital-minded world we live in. That will help the business to be pinpointed, and it’s a great channel to promote and reach new potential customers. In fact, there are a great number of practices online that can help you boost your business. And believe us, you don’t want to lose in that field! If you are looking for a professional website in a timely manner, you can contact us right away!

Business and corporate websites can be very complex and big. Their structure contains complex menus and a large number of pages. Naturally, these websites can be far more expensive than a simple blog. But WordPress offers a lot of budget options for medium and small businesses and is a preferred platform for this kind of website. It’s an extremely user-friendly CMS (Content Management System), easy to build, and can save you a lot of time and money.

A great example of a business website, built on WordPress is the site of Toyota Motors Brazil.

3. E-commerce

The most direct way to profit from your website is most definitely the e-commerce sites. These kinds of websites are generally described as online shopping directories and their main purpose is to simply sell products to customers online. Every website that includes a shopping cart and a way to pay with a credit card, PayPal, or any other payment gateway is considered an e-commerce website. These online stores can function as standalone websites, or can be an addition to a blog or corporate website.  

Ecommerce websites became increasingly popular mainly because of their huge improvement in recent years. Almost every reliable CMS offers tools or plug-ins for selling online nowadays. WordPress has to offer a flexible open-source plug-in called WooCommerce specifically designed for selling products or services online. The major advantage of WooCommerce over other platforms is that it’s fully customizable which makes it adaptable to specific business needs.

In case you’re figuring out how to start a business and plan to sell items through your website, at that point, this is the sort of site you will need. There are some particular advances you must make certain to incorporate when fabricating an eCommerce site. You should put your resources into eCommerce development and get your SSL certificate to guarantee your clients can pay safely.

The most popular and huge e-commerce platform in the world is Amazon.

4. Portfolio

We use Portfolio websites to showcase one’s previous work. Creative professionals like artists, designers, photographers, architects, and filmmakers use them to highlight all kinds of projects. These websites are creative by nature and typically have unique designs with different layouts and features.

If you are a freelancer looking for new clients, or a job seeker this is the best way to put a comprehensive image of your talents and build a reputation. Portfolio websites don’t need multi-level menus or large numbers of pages and they are generally easy to build.

A great example of a creative and aesthetic portfolio is one of Steven Mengin.

5. Media & Entertainment websites

Media and entertainment websites have become quite a big consumer of our time spent online. They both have content that scoops our everyday life and are always fresh and updated. Newspapers and magazines are revolutionized from print-only platforms to largely digital formats, called media websites. They still have reporters and journalists to write on important subjects but also feature entertainment content like gossip stories, fun facts, quizzes, and similar.

Entertainment websites on the other hand also sometimes include some media topics. That makes the line between them blurred. Both of them are extremely dynamic and can directly earn you profit like e-commerce websites. You achieve this via paid ads that appear on the site, subscription models, or a blend of the two.

6. Brochure & Catalog websites

Brochure and catalog websites have entirely informational purposes – giving a review of what the business is, and how you can get in touch. They were used back in the days by small and middle-sized businesses just to mark an online presence without aiming to develop an online strategy. Brochure sites normally just have a couple of pages and are utilized by independent or small businesses that need a straightforward online presence.

They are perfect for dental surgeries, hair salons, manufacturers, etc. Unlike the media websites, the content of the brochure and catalog website is far more static, which means that they don’t need regular updates.

7. Educational websites

Educational websites refer to sites of educational institutions, a platform with tutorials for self-learning, or a website with educational content for kids. These websites have the fundamental purpose of either giving study materials to their audience or giving information on specific educational organizations. Their content includes articles, videos, games, tests, and images that aim to educate the audience. Some of these sites include ads in their content or use the subscription model to earn a profit.

Educational websites in some way are switching the use of libraries for gathering basic information. Their use is an important key to self-education and self-prospect nowadays.

Brightstorm is a great example of an online learning platform for teenagers that is used by more than 12 million students and 800 schools.

8. Web Portal

Web portals are websites intended for internal purposes of business, association, or establishment. They are platforms that gather information from lots of different places and present it in one. Web portals involve a login process and customize views for their users to data of a specific institution, business, or organization. Variants of portals include mashups and intranet “dashboards” for executives and managers.

We define Web portals as the most complex and difficult to make. Because of their complexity, they are rather Web Apps than websites. They can contain hundreds and thousands of pages, multi-level menus, and a large number of options and modules. Corporations and large educational institutions utilize them to make all crucial data open to individuals who need to see it.

WordPress offers some paid plug-ins that can help you generate a web portal. However, if you want to build a portal we advise you to contact professional developers who can help you with this task.

9. Crowdfunding or Payment Platforms

The modern practice of funding a project or venture, also known as Crowdfunding, is achieved by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people. Crowdfunding websites serve the idea to find financial help for your cause or idea online.

Popular crowdfunding websites include Kickstarter and Patreon.

10. Nonprofit websites

Just like any business, nonprofit organizations also need to appear online. A nonprofit type of website serves as an informational site for the purpose of a nonprofit and also helps with its biggest challenge. Which is finding funding and bringing more awareness to a certain cause or problem.

These websites often encourage volunteering, donating, and any kind of collaboration that will help with the realization of a specific cause. If you already have a nonprofit organization and still don’t have a website, you should start exploring the possibilities of creating one.

Nonprofit websites are quite straightforward. They usually have functions to collect email addresses and create a database of people interested in keeping in touch with the organization through newsletters.

One drop is a nonprofit that provides sustainable access to safe water to millions of people across the world.

Summary:

We outlined 10 of the most popular types of websites that are created worldwide every day. The best part is that all of these types of sites can be built in WordPress. And it’s done fast and can fit your budget. It’s up to you to decide what form will fit your needs best. Whatever kind of site you’re keen on making, make sure your final decision offers real value to your audience.

From that point, it’ll take some more research and planning to guarantee that you’re following the best practices to build your online presence. A website that is both stylishly satisfying and easy to use is vital for your success in the future.

The post Top 10 types of websites in 2022, and how they differ appeared first on Web Redone.

Up your web design game by following web design trends.

The opportunities that it has to offer revolutionize the way we think about it. In order to stay competitive, you should regularly review your website’s design and functionality. Be ready to change and evolve.

In this article, we will review the most significant web design trends for WordPress websites and we will discuss tons of opportunities they bring along.

Top 6 web design trends

1. Blocks will define the future

If you ever had to change your WordPress theme with a new one, you know how disturbing the process might be.

The latest WordPress themes are very complex, made for concrete goals with additional required plug-ins and code. Most of the time, when you change your design you have to remake your website from scratch.

This problem can be overcome with page builders and in particular, the latest version named after the inventor of the printing press – Gutenberg.

The name is appropriate because this tool is as revolutionary as it sounds. Gutenberg is a block-based editor.

It’s based on reusable Gutenberg blocks, making it simpler for theme developers to utilize WordPress center code instead of rewriting the whole theme.

The opportunity that Gutenberg’s block-based editor gives is simply more freedom to the customers to design and customize their own posts and pages.

Here we already talked about how important the customization of a website is.

Even though Gutenberg is still a work in progress, it promises to be easier and more comfortable to use a page builder.

Matt Mullenweg himself promises that the efforts put in Gutenberg are a huge step in the process of democratizing WordPress.

This kind of customization will most definitely reduce the need for specialized themes. Instead, the multi-purposed themes will appear and they will serve as a framework in which users can make whatever they want.   

There are also other promising page builders such as Elementor, Divi, and Beaver Builder.

As this trend will probably live on, we can expect more in this field to come.

2. CSS Grids and Mobile-Friendly Designs

Since the rise of smartphones, we witnessed how the range of internet customers on mobile devices passed the number of those on desktops.

This changed into a web usage turning factor and made it clear that responsive websites are more crucial than ever.

And here is the CSS grid technique to help you with this task. Though it’s not an official standard, it’s supported by the major browsers and allows web developers to create complex responsive web design layouts.

It’s a sure thing that CSS grids will continue to grow in popularity. In fact, a lot of WordPress themes are using it as a way to reorganize the elements on the screen and to make it more dynamic.

The other great “side effect” of using them is the asymmetry that they are bringing in. And that’s the other trend we’re going to talk about in the next bullet point.

3. Asymmetry web design trend

The main reason why asymmetry became so popular these days is simple – it’s just another element of design fighting for people’s attention.

The asymmetry became an effective way to highlight content and to add more aesthetic looks to your website.

A broken grid layout and Overlap themes can deliver this effect. But you should be careful. You should make sure that the content of your website can handle this kind of experiment. It’s good to check if your page’s loading time is fast and your site is mobile-friendly. You should bear in mind that this kind of design is difficult to maintain. It can turn out to be difficult to configure the page and comprehend its structure. That’s why if you want to go for it we most definitely recommend the help of professionals. They will make sure that this creative and visually appealing style fits your needs and does not influence the speed or functionality of your site.  

4. Minimalism

“Less means more” is a core principle of minimalistic designs. White spaces, flat colors, and simplicity are common ways to turn your looks into an all-time classic. This minimalistic approach is quite popular these days for different reasons. One of the most obvious ones is the rising need for fast load speeds. That will not only improve your SEO but also will improve the UX score and make the navigation through pages look like a child game. Isn’t that what we all really want?

It will basically remove all distractions and will allow you to showcase your products. As a result, you will get clean and self-explaining content.

Although, it can be hard to be minimal, daring, and effective at the same time. You have to be sure of what’s your brand’s message and what you are aiming to achieve with it.

5. Video Backgrounds and 3D animations

Despite the fact that video backgrounds and animations can cause a big loading delay to your webpage they are still a trendy element in the modern design. Their usage is proven to reduce the bounce rate and to keep the user’s attention span, which in many cases can be crucial.

The key is to find the balance between catching the eye and afterward guiding people to whatever it is they are looking for. If you are struggling to keep your visitors engaged, this is the trend you should go for. We recommend short and very informative videos and a lot of speed tests before releasing.

We are hoping that the 5G revolution and the massive improvement of internet infrastructure will allow us to see more video backgrounds and 3D animations in the future.

6. Dark mode and darker designs

Dark-mode designs are extremely popular these days. Their popularity started with programmer’s software editors that had one main goal – to reduce eyestrain. A lot of websites decided to give choices to their customers by simply letting them switch between light and dark designs.

The trend can be very useful because it helps colors and other elements to stand out. This contrast produces an effective way to point out something important and it’s a very elegant method to do so.

Finally, this trend is an eco-friendly decision, because it reduces the power of screen lights. Good for you, good for nature!

6. Play BIG AND BOLD with Typography

Typography should have a special place in your website design. For most people it’s just an unexplored world as vast as the creativity it brings in. By using LARGE FONTS, you insist YOUR MESSAGE to be DELIVERED. The best way to try it is to place it in the header.

The other trend is to use a font variation. The combination of several fonts can be a creative way to point out your versatility.

Before you jump into the world of typography, we advise you to respect some rules. Make sure that the typography you choose matches your brand line. It should be easy to read and responsive. The most important part – don’t overuse it. Besides, you should feel free to experiment and get to know all the effects that typography can deliver.

Summary of the web design trends:

People’s attention span these days is very limited. That’s what every design element stands for. Before making the decision to integrate any of the above-mentioned trends ask yourself again about the goals you want to achieve.

Feel free to contact us for design-related (or other) advice anytime.

The post Top 6 Web Design Trends for WordPress Websites in 2022 appeared first on Web Redone.

As an emerging web development house, we constantly strive to make every project as perfect as possible because client satisfaction matters. Our diverse team of experienced resources focuses on building long-lasting relationships with our customers as we journey through a project together.

It’s no easy task, but we do it because we care.

That’s also why we’re immensely proud to announce that we’ve won a leadership award for top development firms in Serbia on Clutch!

Clutch is an independent research firm based in Washington, DC. They provide industry insights into high-performing service providers within the B2B space, analyzing each company’s market presence, technical experience, and client feedback.

Clutch Leaders in Serbia demonstrate a proven ability to deliver exceptional services, and it’s a real milestone for us to achieve this title.

In the words of our leader:

“It’s an honor being recognized as a leader on Clutch. It means that all the work
we do, and the effort we provide for each of our clients, is not meaningless.”

— Nikola Ivanov, Founder

Over the past few months, we’ve worked with Clutch’s business analysts to interview our past clients to collect case study-like reviews. We’ve worked on a range of projects, including custom WordPress and WooCommerce development, React apps, load time optimization, and SEO.

We had the chance to show off all of our skills while partnering with Bixlabs, a startup-focused development house. We still work with them to build out WordPress sites for their third-party clients and they’ve left us a 5-star review in exchange!

Thanks to all of our positive client feedback, we were able to secure a top position in both
Clutch and its sister sites — The Manifest, a business resource guide, lists us among leading
development experts in Serbia, and we’re also featured on Visual Objects for our ability to
create and design top websites.

Again, we’re thankful to all of our clients for leaving such positive reviews. Without you, we
wouldn’t be able to grow as a company.

Don’t be a stranger if you’d like to collaborate on a project with us or have questions about our portfolio!

Contact our team to get an inside scoop on our services.

The post WebRedone Named a Top Developer in Serbia by Clutch appeared first on Web Redone.

WordPress Content Management System

As a “factory that makes pages” WordPress has proven to be one of the most trusted and preferred Content Management Systems (CMS).

The main reason for this is the great plugin architecture that stands in the core of WordPress. It allows users to maintain features easily: adding pages, additional functionalities and basically to fully maintain the content of their website. That makes WordPress a lot user-friendlier and easier-to-learn than the pure HTML-based websites. Latest statistics show that over 60 million websites, including 33.6% of the top 10 million websites use WordPress. There is no doubt that WordPress is worth its prestige.

One of the most important parts in the process of creating a good-looking WordPress site is indeed a good theme that will match your needs. These themes are a set of design templates that make the visual concept of a website and include the user interface (UI), like a frame of a blank canvas that must be filled with content.

Even though there are a lot of different free WordPress themes, the highest percentage of WordPress customers choose the paid version. Why? The most logical answer is that a good value always comes with a certain price. The so-called Premium WordPress Theme is a paid theme and can offer you a stable and decent design but it comes with several limitations – which we will discuss in the following section. Another alternative is a fully custom-made WordPress theme. In this case, a team of developers and graphic designers will serve the best of your interests to make a professional-looking website with a unique design.

Let’s examine both options by comparing them and measure their pros and cons to make a grounded and reasonable choice.

Premium vs Custom

One of the first things you have to do before choosing either custom-made or Premium design is to define the goal you are looking to achieve. The theme choice has great importance as it has a direct impact on your customers/visitors and it can literally define the success of your business. That is why it’s very important to make a sound choice based on your initial goals.

Let’s measure the qualities of both options in five different criteria and see what the results will show us:

• Personalization
  In Premium WordPress Themes you can find a lot of feature variations like color combinations, typography, buttons, theme icons, sliders, footer & header options, menus, widgets, etc. But even with such variations, there are only three themes that are massively used (Avada, Divi, and Genesis). That’s mainly because they are proven to be working extremely well in terms of user experience (UX). Actually, a lot of other themes mimic the working ones to provide higher quality. No matter what you choose there is a big chance of finding not only a few other websites similar to yours – but many. This, unfortunately, means that Premium WordPress Themes can make you stand out in front of the competition a lot more difficult. On the other hand, a custom-made theme gives you more freedom to be different and creative. Custom WordPress Themes provide your project with more specific features and elements defined in the requirements of your business. You are empowered to put weight in every little detail and make it work for you. The creation of an absolutely unique website design, made by a professional team of developers and graphic designers can give a flying start to your entire project. That’s why the biggest and most successful companies prefer the custom-made option. So, it’s obvious that in terms of personalization, the Custom WP Themes is your best choice. One-of-a-kind website that is user-centered and efficient can be achieved only with custom-written code and it’s up to you to decide if this is what you’re looking for.
• Functionality
  There are a lot of high-quality themes that a premade premium version can offer. In fact, a lot of businesses can find themes that look and work as they wanted it. But most of these themes are intentionally made with a lot of options so they can be as customized as possible and serve in a bigger range of business needs. This means that they come with additional code to perform a lot of different configurations without much development skills. Unnecessary code is always a precondition for problems. For instance, if even a small modification is made to the premade theme, this can cause future bugs or malfunctions that can crash the entire website. Sometimes it takes a lot more work to fix this kind of problem than to basically rewrite the entire code from scratch.
  But the major disadvantage of all the additional scripts that aren’t being used is that they cause slower loading times. The performance of page speed today for SEO and the better user experience (UX) is of great importance. Google can penalize you with bad ranking and this problem can be hard to solve even by the best SEO experts.  Custom WP Theme will save you from these headaches. There will be no line of unnecessary code written. Your loading speed can be easily optimized. Even if you decide to add new functionalities at a later stage, this can be executed without causing any troubles to the performance of the website. The professional team of experienced developers and designers can guarantee a high-quality, high-functioning website and better support when it comes to the modifications. Everybody knows how important an up-to-date website is. So, let’s check how the Premium WordPress Theme and a customized one are dealing with updates.
• Updates
  Updates are an important part of the theme configuration not only in terms of better performance but mostly because of security reasons. When you choose a Premium theme, you have to make your research about the qualities of the developers releasing it. Among the reliable factors are the regular upgrades they are obligated to make to fulfill the constantly changing security concerns. The statistics show that more than 50% of hacked or somehow infected websites lack the latest updates. You can’t just ignore their importance. But even if your theme is always supported with the latest updates, it all depends on you to regularly check for, download, and install them. Yet, there’s a chance that you’ll have a lot more work to do than just that. If you have applied even a small change to the premade theme, this can be problematic for the proper installation of an update and a bug may appear. Then the help of professionals will be required and that’s additional work that may yield a substantial amount of money and time. Custom-made themes don’t have that problem. They simply don’t need many security updates as the code is unique and it’s a lot harder to get hacked. In cases of updates, you can count on experienced developers for its execution. They are responsible also for all the modifications you want to put to make your website more fresh, advanced and attractive for your users.
• Security
  We already pointed out how important the latest updates are for the security and normal operability of your website. Without updates, your website can be a lot more vulnerable to hacker attacks. That’s basically because the premium WP themes are overused. Even if there are a million themes on the market, they are also open for purchases by cybercriminals. In that way, it’s easy for anyone to learn the theme’s weaknesses and use it to crash hundreds of good-working websites. We already mentioned that over 60 million websites worldwide use WordPress and that’s a huge field for cyberattacks. It’s hard to guarantee a 100% security, even with a custom-made theme. However, when the developer opts for the cutting-edge core code and sticks to the minimum amount of trusted plugins, the risks of hacker attacks are kept to a minimum. It also won’t be necessary for you to think about security updates, as all will be in the hands of professionals. Note: No matter which options you use or consider choosing, please pay attention to the security measures presented in the following article and make sure you do all of them to reduce the risks for your website.
• Price
  Let’s not beat around the bush. Price is often an essential factor when making your online presence. And here lies one of the major cons of custom WordPress theme – it costs more than choosing a premium option. In some sense, this is fully understandable. Knowing how important the presentation of your website is for your business liability and better results, the investment will indeed pay off. Sometimes the lower price of the Premium version will lead to additional work that will also cause you time and money. In the end, we have to come back to the initial question – the goals of your project. One-time investment can play a huge role in your business when you want to grow your potential in the long run. So, it’s up to you not only to define your goals but also to decide if future possibilities and growth are what you are looking to achieve with your online presence.
  

Conclusion

By analyzing five important criteria, we checked how a premium WP theme and custom-made are performing. It turns out there are five reasons why the custom-made theme is better. Let’s see point them out again:

1. Unique design that can provide better functional solutions for your business
2. Fewer problems with updates
3. Safer and more stable to cyberattacks
4. Modification can be easily made
5. Better loading speed and SEO
6. A better solution for more complex interfaces
7. Reasonable price that will pay off

Once again, it’s all up to the plans and what you want to achieve starting with WordPress. But keep in mind that your online presence has great importance for the success of your business and a high-functioning and professional-looking custom-made design can make you reach unimaginable heights.

The post Custom WordPress Theme: Why is it a better option than a premium one? appeared first on Web Redone.

What is a UI Style Guide, and why it is a useful tool?

Starting to plan the design of your project has the utmost importance for its future realization. What is even more – it can bring you a lot of benefits that can give you a great starting push. Nowadays, the attention span of online browsers (readers), or potential customers, has drastically lessened. The key to creating a good-looking and workable design definitely depends on a good UI (user interface). The result of that will be a greater UX (user experience), which is a major factor not only to attract new users to your website but also to ensure their revisits.

One of the hardest parts of creating a good design is to strike the right balance between beauty and functionality. This can be a subject of a whole study you can feel lost and helpless. But with a good UI Style Guide, you basically create a strict A to Z plan for your entire project and that’s a solid start for its good execution.

There are tons of UI Style Guides that can help you create beautiful and original designs. Yet it’s hard to search for the best ones, especially for something that will work for your needs. This article aims to guide you through the process of creating your own UI Style Guide that will ensure your project’s better results with lesser effort.

UI Style Guide will lead your way

There are lots of aspects to consider when you are about to start the design process and an essential part of it is the cooperation of the team working on it. UI Style Guide provides a set of elements, typography, and colors that provide guidance and documentation for reference to the team working on a project. The designers, developers, and stakeholders should be able to communicate and collaborate throughout the whole process of creating a consistent UI. UI Style Guide is defining rules for all of them and makes sure they’re speaking the same language.

The most attractive style guides are those that explain different elements from a developer, a UI designer, and a graphic designer’s point of view. In that way, you can ensure that the team works on the same page in regard to the sets of standards that they need to follow to provide a consistent and solid product at the end. Making use of it brings cohesion to a website/app user interface (UI) and experience (UX).

Here’s an example of a UI Style Guide template:

Here is the right moment to say that there is no universal fit-for-all UI Style Guide and you will hardly find one on the Internet. That’s because every business has its own peculiarities and a simple template may not work great in every case. The best way is to create a custom-made UI Style Guide to be sure that it will serve you the purpose that you need it for. Apart from that, this article will provide you with some crucial elements that are a must in every UI Style Guide.

Main Design Components of a UI Style Guide

Every digital product (website or an app) is composed of reusable design elements.

Those elements include:

• Color palette
  Defining a palette of colors that you will use throughout the website is one of the most important parts of the design process. Remember to define colors and stick to them when you start designing. This means that the combination of colors must be listed with the numbers of the matching colors. There shouldn’t be too many variations, even on different pages.  It’s also good if you use the main colors of the brand, something that is already familiar to your customers. If you’re only a start-up and haven’t come up with any ideas, it will be of great use if you check similar businesses to see what is working for them. Try to learn from them, but not copy and think about what diversifies your brand and makes it unique. When you define this, it will be much easier to choose the right design elements for your purposes.
  
• Typography Scheme (Headlines, Paragraphs, Blockquotes, and so on)
  
• Typography is definitely a common interface design element. Work with your graphic designer and write clear instructions for Titles, Subtitles, Headings (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6), Body Text, and Captions. Google fonts have a great database with fonts that are safe and easy to use. For better website load time optimization try not to combine too many fonts or font weights. You should also be strict in the determination of font sizes, style, and weight. An important part of the typography standard that you need to consider is the kerning and the line size. You should also think of the purpose of your texts, and what effect you are looking for, as this is a reasonable way to choose between serif and sans-serif fonts.
• UI elements (buttons, forms, links, navigation menus, accordions, tabs, images, sliders, icons, modals, etc)
  A website without its buttons is like a bird without wings. So, make sure you define a few button variations and reuse them throughout the website. You must include their sizes, colors, styles, spacing, placement, and all other typographic elements. Also, if there is a variation of buttons, make sure you define every purpose and write clarification if needed when and why one or another button is used. The same must be applied to the other elements mentioned.
• Responsiveness
  This is one of the main features that designers and developers must bear in mind while working on design elements. The Mobile-first rule is now the main feature for almost all kinds of businesses. Nowadays we have so many different screens like tablets, laptops, and even smart TVs. We just can’t ignore the need for responsive layouts (grid system). That means that our UI Style Guides must address interface layouts across all screen sizes. All examples for spacing, padding, and placement must be included. It will also be good if we have an example of the design elements in a mobile version. Here is a list of the most popular screen resolutions.
• Additional UI Components
  You have a great variety of options when it comes to design elements. But it will be inappropriate if we use all of them. To complete a balanced and powerful design you have to choose several elements and make sure they click together. Simplicity is always modern. Before applying anything inform yourself about the variety of elements and their proper usage. In one way or another users have become familiar with elements acting in a certain way, so choosing to adopt those elements when appropriate will help with task completion, efficiency, and satisfaction.
  Interface elements are grouped mainly into three categories: Input Controls (checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdown lists, list boxes, buttons, toggles, text fields, date field), Navigational Components (breadcrumbs, slider, search field, pagination, tags, icons), Informational Components (tooltips, icons, progress bar, notifications, message boxes, modal windows) and containers (accordion). Learn more about them here.

All those together compound the user interface or UI as it is commonly referred to.

Once again, it is important to reuse them to create cohesion in a digital product so that a user can easily learn and adapt to it.

Some common-sense practices

As we have said above, the UI Style Guide is a tool that makes it easier for you to create consistency and cohesion in designs. We can look at it as a “framework” of reusable elements that, when combined, form a complete UI design (web or app design). But what else can you include in order to make the work of your team even easier:

• Organization and frame of reference
  Except for the aforementioned elements, there are a lot of practical decisions that you must include in order to make your UI Style Guide more efficient, understandable, and handy. A table of Content is always a good idea when it comes to references and practical guides and it’s always the easiest way to find the information that you need.
• Mark the Dos and Don’ts
  If you contextualize this part of your UI Style Guide with lots of pictures and notes, this can save time for the developers. Also, the usage of bullet points and paragraphs will make everything a lot more readable and good-looking.

Tools to create UI Style Guides

In the beginning, designers started to create style guides manually and all by themselves, and that cost time and a lot of work. After a while, they started to automate the workflow, and slowly style guide tools appeared and made it easier to create well-organized UI style manuals. This doesn’t mean that they don’t use Photoshop. There are new techniques you just can’t ignore, tools like Adobe XD, Figma, and Sketch that make the design process easier, intuitive, and fun.

Major benefits of UI Style Guide

Let’s once again point out why a solid, well-rounded style guide will have crucial importance for your business:

• It ensures you’re consistent (and consistency is an important part of a branding strategy)
• It saves time and makes communication between teams more efficient
• Reduces redundant work
• Components are easier and faster to test
• UI Style Guides are especially important when there are many designers working on a product

We live in a time when the virtual world is evolving every day. The key to surviving is to adapt and the best way to do it is when you have a straight-to-the-point and clear concept of what you’re doing and how you want to achieve it. Creating a good UI Style Guide is a great chance for you to be unique and to work to the best of your potential in an ever-changing environment.

The post UI Style Guide: The best way to have a consistent design in 2022 appeared first on Web Redone.

If you own a business but still don’t have a website for it, you are missing a lot. In this article, we will explain why you need a website and what are the benefits of running an online business.

OFFLINE “BRICK AND MORTAR” BUSINESS IS NOT ENOUGH, HERE’S WHY

First, your direct competitors may have their websites with useful information already set up, which gives them a huge advantage.

Billboards and newspaper ads are still relevant, but potential clients are definitely more used to doing simple Google research.

It’s efficient and fast, they do it from their home and they find what they search for in a few seconds. If you don’t have a website already, you are literally sending your potential clients to your direct competitors.

If you are located in a small town, having a website built for your business allows you to reach a broader audience outside your town. You can expand your reach and then sell on a much larger scale, think country or even the whole world. This alone should be enough to explain why you need a website, but we will go into more detail and see why is it important to have a website.

THE WORLDWIDE WEB AND WHY DO YOU NEED A WEBSITE

Having a website for your offline business (thus, taking your business online), makes it easier for your potential customers to find your business. It gives you credibility, visibility, accessibility, and community.

If the website for your business is well designed and developed, it will have all the useful information about your business that will get some answers to your visitors and potentially convert them into clients.

Research shows that 6/10 customers expect brands to have a good online presence with quality information.

Your website is live, the next step is making sure it leaves a good impression at first glance. It needs to build trust and have clearly defined CTAs (Call to Action), which is easily navigable with logical content architecture.

HAVING A WEBSITE OPENS SO MANY POSSIBILITIES FOR ONLINE MARKETING

Taking your business online by having a website opens a door to utilizing a wide spectrum of online marketing possibilities to reach your target audience. There are a lot of ways to promote your business online (it all comes down to what your goal is).

The two most prominent ways are using Google and Facebook for targeting your perfect audience and engaging with them. Both platforms allow you to define what geographical areas, demographics, interests, and behaviors you want to base your marketing strategy on.

Both these tools also allow you to track your users in a lot of ways. Who is viewing your website, how much time they are spending, how did they find it, and many more parameters.  All these parameters can give you invaluable insights and help you plan your marketing efforts.

IF THIS DIDN’T CONVINCE YOU why you need a website in 2019, HERE ARE A FEW FACTS TO MAKE YOU THINK ABOUT IT

• Your Business is open 24/7
  This means that customers will always be able to find you, no matter your official business hours. While you may be sleeping, you may get inquires about your products and offers through the use of contact forms.
  
• You get to save some money
  The initial web design and development process may be a bit pricey, but in the long run, you are cutting the costs of traditional marketing solutions. Online marketing can get you much more, for a cheaper price. In the case you are selling products, in some cases removing the need for physical stores will save you so much (rental, employee salaries, utilities).
• Advertising
  A website is more environmentally friendly when it comes to advertising and marketing. There are lots of ways to advertise your products or services through the internet. One example is Facebook ads, an advertising feature offered through Facebook. Another one is called SEO.  This is a major advantage for your business. Having a good SEO service provider can boost the ranking of your website which quickly results in increased sales and higher profits.
  
  
• Access to Info about your website visitors
  You can track how many people visited your website, where are they located, how many of them contacted you, and many more. Anyone, from any country, may find and visit your website and become a client. More visitors leads logically to more potential sales. The more effort you put into updating your website and making sure it has fresh and relevant information, the greater the possibility of increasing your sales.
  
• Growth opportunities and sales increase
  Websites are great ways of providing a centralized place where potential clients or investors can be referred to. It shows what your business is about, what you are offering, and what have you achieved. As your site is accessible to anyone all over the world, it clearly indicates that you will be able to sell more.
  
• Make it easier to showcase your products or services
• Having a blog with fresh and valuable content and news
  Smart business owners create and run a blog for their companies. Having a blog, as part of your online business strategy, to post fresh and valuable content will keep your website attractive, fresh, and informative for your visitors and will bring you more organic traffic.
  
• Here’s a bonus article about this topic we’ve found valuable.

Some other questions you might have about taking your business online

• Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
  Having a Facebook page for your business is a good first step for taking your business online. But, likes alone mean little. However, if you have a website that is connected to your Facebook page, and you use social media channels to feed your company’s site (to encourage people to visit your website), you are going to find more success in converting new clients. Every person that visits your website will see exactly what you want them to see. You will also have access to Facebook analytics for tracking your website visitors and setting and managing Facebook ads.
  
  
• What is the importance of having a website & the benefits of doing business online?
  First of all, the website is important because it helps you establish credibility as a business. Websites are available and accessible 24 hours a day, every day of the year.  Your website will act as an invaluable and always-available resource for information that would otherwise only be accessible during your company’s business hours. In case you are running an e-commerce online business, you will have faster delivery of products. You will be able to manage your business from anywhere in the world.
• Do I really need a website for my small business?
  Tech businesses know they need a website. If you’re in real estate for example (even an individual agent) you definitely need a website. An online presence you a higher number of potential customers. If internet users don’t find you on the web, they’ll seek out your competitors who have websites.
• Do I need a website built for my business in 2019?
  You do. Modern Customers expect you to have an established online presence. Your business will gain credibility. It is for sure a cost-effective solution (running a website and online marketing campaign can be relatively “cheap”), you will get more customers and target a wider audience for your business. Your competitors most probably already have a website, so they are ahead of you.
• How to start a small online business?
  There are a few steps you will need to take:
  1. Find a need and fill it; 2. Get a website that’s well-designed and easy to use; 3. Use search engines to drive traffic to your website, 4. Establish a reputation for yourself.
  This is a summary of the steps needed for starting a small online business (Here’s a good article about this topic).
  Now, if your question is “How do I start an online business with no money?”
  The answer to that question is that there are free website building and hosting platforms such as Weebly, Wix, Blogger, and many more. Of course, if you are serious about your online business you should consider getting a professionally built website that is tailored to your needs. The benefits are that you have full control of your custom website, and your domain name will not contain “prefixes” from those providers, but only the words you choose (which will help you drastically with SEO efforts, will give you more trust and resonate better with website visitors).

If you are considering taking your business online, feel free to send us a message for a free consultation or let us help you build a great online business presence.

The post Why do you need a website and what you get by taking your business online appeared first on Web Redone.

What is CMS Website (Content Management System)?

A content management system (CMS) allows you to manage the website’s content with ease. You have control of almost everything on your websites such as text, images, links, and menus.

For simplicity’s sake, think of it as Facebook for example. You log in to your website admin panel, add new pages, and update or delete existing ones. Same as you manage your Facebook profile ( images, statuses, comments, and so on).

Back in the day, there were only static websites that you had no control over. We used to build without a content management system. Because of that, you needed a developer whenever you wanted to do a simple website update.

static sites are still here and are a great alternative. The appearance of new tools such as static site generators made them popular again. We would suggest going with a static site generator if you need a website consisting of a few pages tho. They make development and “going live” much faster. But the issue arises once you have a lot of pages that need constant updates.

Content management system, however, allows you to do it yourself and with ease. You don’t need to know and touch the website’s code at all; That’s a developer’s job after all. Everything is visual and intuitive, and in the end, you even get to save some money because you do it on your own.

Content management system makes it easier for developers as well

It allows us to focus on the core design and logic of your website and build it faster. We don’t reinvent the wheel since common features like Login, Media Uploads, Menus come out of the box.

We then take it from there. Build on top of it and customize it to fit your needs and be intuitive for you to understand and use.

The technical aspect of the CMS is that it uses a back-end programming language and a database. PHP, Ruby, Python, MySQL, and MongoDB to name a few. So everything is dynamic and with each update, you change and save the content to a database.

Static sites, as already stated, do not need a back-end programming language and a database. We code them with the standard website “building blocks”: HTML, CSS, and sometimes Javascript.

There are many Content Management Systems

We can code CMSs from scratch, but that means reinventing the wheel without the need. They should be a starting point for building a website. And we should focus on the business logic instead of wasting time coding a CMS from scratch. There are a few tested and proven solutions that make developers’ and users’ lives a bit easier.

A few Content Management Systems that stood apart throughout the WWW’s history are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. There are also Content Management Systems that exist for E-commerce websites only. Some of the most notable ones are Shopify, WooCommerce, Big Commerce, and Magento.

The evolution of Javascript and rest-API-driven development led to a new “CMS breed”. It’s called Headless CMS. But E-commerce and Headless CMSs are a topic of their own.

WordPress is the de facto industry standard and our CMS of choice

WordPress started as a blogging platform, but it evolved into a full-featured CMS. We can manage every kind of website with it these days.

From few-pages sites all the way to large-scale ones including E-Commerce. WooCommerceis an E-Commerce Content Management System. It is built on top of WordPress and transforms a simple CMS to an online shop Content Management System.

WooCommerce is our tool of choice for developing online shops. It is a tested and proven solution loved by many.

Some large brands/names that power their websites by WordPress and Woocommerce are:

• TechCrunch
• The New Yorker
• BBC America
• Dreamhost’s Blog
• Bloomberg Professional
• The official Star Wars Blog
• Beyonce
• The Walt Disney Company

In fact, WordPress powers 33.6% of all the websites on the Internet, according to W3Techs. When we are speaking about other CMSs, WordPress dominates with a 60.5% market share.

WordPress is a mature platform for building websites that constantly evolves. It has a great community behind it and is one of the best-organized documentation for developers.

Its newest update is called Gutenberg. It is a complete rewrite of the page editor, at least for now. The WordPress team is working on rewriting the entire WordPress. The goal is to improve the user experience of editing pages and managing websites.

Why your website should run on WordPress and how it can help your business?

If the facts and statements we wrote already about aren’t enough to convince you that your website should run on WordPress, read on. Here are some of the most important aspects of it that would help you get the most out of your WordPress website.

• WordPress is free software. It means that you download it, upload it on the server and you can create any kind of website with it. There are absolutely no fees for using it.
• Its large ecosystem of themes and plugins allows WordPress to be easily customizable. If you can’t afford a custom website, you can use one of the free themes or buy a premium one. But if you are serious about your business, that’s not the road you want to take. Premium themes are full of unnecessary features that slow down a website. That then negatively impacts SEO and ranking. We prefer designing and coding custom WordPress sites from scratch. By doing that, we make sure that your website will be tailored to your needs. It will be SEO and load time optimized and bug-free, and in the end, you get a unique design as opposed to a theme that a large number of other websites are using.
• WordPress is SEO friendly. It is written using standard compliance high-quality code and produces semantic markup. In non-geek terms, this makes search engines “love” WordPress. WordPress sites tend to rank higher than others in search engines. Among the large WordPress ecosystem is a plugin called Yoast SEO. Along with custom SEO optimizations, Yoast can do wonders for your rankings.
• WordPress’s admin panel is intuitive and easy to use and manage your website.
• It is safe and secure – WordPress is developed with security in mind, and it is considered to be a very safe and secure platform to run a website.
• WordPress supports different media types out of the box. Whether you are working with images, .gifs, video, audio, Youtube embeds and many more, WordPress can handle it all with a breeze.
• It’s highly customizable – It means that we can build a WordPress admin panel uniquely tailored to your needs.
• A few more large brands that use WordPress are Mashable, Nasa, Mozilla, Coca-Cola, Wall Street Journal, and many more. Meaning that you should consider WordPress as a serious business website solution.

You can build any type of website on top of WordPress, but here is a list of a few, to give you an idea of the possibilities

• Blog
• Informative Business Website
• Online Store (E-commerce)
• Membership Website
• Courses Platform
• Restaurant Website with Reservations
• Hotel Website with a Booking System
• Forum Website
• Multi-lingual website

Summary

As you can see, you can use WordPress in almost any way imaginable, as a personal, business, or E-commerce website. It provides all the tools needed for your online business and makes it a breeze to manage your website.

If your website is not running on WordPress, after reading this, you should definitely consider recording it in it.

Feel free to contact us if you have questions, need a consultation, or need a custom WordPress / Woocommerce website built. We at WebRedone will be more than happy to help.

The post What is CMS Website (Content Management System), and why WordPress is de facto standard CMS? appeared first on Web Redone.

Website Load Time Optimization can “make or break” your online business.

A few seconds determine if your website visitor will continue browsing your website or will leave it asap.

So, having that said, website loading time speed is essential. It hurts users and search engines.

Website load time statistics from numerous studies show that if the load time exceeds 3 seconds, the abandonment rates soar.

High abandonment rates then affect bounce rates which signal to search engines that your website is not useful to visitors. That, in the end, affects the ranking of your website (and will make SEO optimization harder to achieve).

If you are an e-commerce website owner, then load time optimization should be one of the most prioritized aspects of improving your website in order not to lose your new customers, or even lose your existing ones.

A few facts about how website loading time affects your website:

• 1-3 seconds of load time increases the website bounce rate probability by 32%
• 4-5 seconds of load time increases website bounce rate probability by 90%
• 6 seconds of load time increases the website  bounce rate probability by 106%
• 1-10 seconds load time increases website bounce rate probability by 123%
• 53% of web surfers leave pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load.
• 79% of online shoppers state that any performance hiccup will make them stay away from an online store.
• 39% of people will leave a website if images take too long to load or don’t load at all
• $18 billion per year is the total cost of abandoned shopping carts for e-commerce business owners
• A 1s delay decreases customer satisfaction by 16%
• AliExpress reduced load time for its website pages by 36% and recorded a 10.5% increase in orders and a 27% increase in conversions for new customers.

These were just a few facts to make a point that load time optimization is crucial before launching a website.

So, the optimal load time for your website should be 1 – 3s.

You can measure your website load time on tools such as GT Metrix, Google page insights, and tools.pingdom.com.

Some of the key factors that negatively impact your website loading speed.

1. Oversized images and non-optimized: Images that are too wide (we’ve seen examples of people using images that are 6000px wide on their websites.
   A large and non-optimized image means that it will take for example 4MB which is way too much for a website page (Which should ideally be less than 1MB).
2. Too many <script> and <style> tags. If you are using a CMS to run your website, WordPress for example, you may have added too many plugins that generate these files and slow down your website.
3. Non-minified javascript and CSS files
4. Placement of <script> and <style> tags (files): You should ideally place scripts at the bottom of your page’s HTML code so that HTML and CSS (Structure and looks of your website) first load.
   If scripts are placed at the beginning of your page, they may block the rendering the page.
5. Poorly configured servers: This refers to tech concepts like website caching, GZIP compression, etc.

WebRedone’s take on website load time optimization.

We take this aspect of website design and development seriously and start considering and implementing it even it the initial design phase. For example Not too many images per page, server optimization from the start, etc.

That’s the case for all our projects, be it static websites, WordPress Content Management System (CMS), or Woocommerce e-commerce website.

When we speak about WordPress/Woocommerce, this is why we don’t work with premium themes but instead develop from scratch.

The post Website load time optimization & why it matters for your online business appeared first on Web Redone.

A developer’s guide to web design

This web design guide is an opinionated one, as it is from a developer’s perspective, and focuses more on the technical aspect of designing for the web more than on the creative one.

Learning how to design for web if you are just starting might seem difficult and confusing, but you need to start from somewhere and take baby steps. This website design guide will serve you as a solid starting point to continue further develop your skills.

It aims to teach designers how to design for developers, and to help graphic designers transition to web design. Also, these website design guidelines are recommended by google and follow the latest web design standards and best practices.

You will learn about terminology used in web design, web design conventions, web design principles, what is a style guide and a handful of useful tools that will help you in your journey of designing for the web.

Disclaimer: This website design guide assumes you have some knowledge of Photoshop. In case you don’t, there are still some useful tips for you that you can implement in other tools.

HOW TO LEARN WEB DESIGN?

As with everything else in life, nothing comes easy and fast when you start learning web design.

Fortunately, there are a lot of for-free resources out there. Just do a quick google search for “how to learn website design?”. You will be surprised how much free content about it is out there.

This web design guide will teach you a lot, but you will need to continue expanding that knowledge. That said, reading alone is not enough. 

What makes you really understand things in-depth and excel is a lot of practice and learning from the best.

A few ideas are searching websites like Behance, Dribble. Or in general, finding a great looking website and trying to design something similar. You will need to “steal” a bit in the beginning, of course. 

There are sites like Udemy which have a lot of great tutorial for a bargain.

Again, whichever road you take, it all boils down to a lot of practice.

WHAT IS A STYLE GUIDE AND HOW DO YOU CREATE ONE FOR YOUR WEB DESIGN PROJECT

Web design style guide or a brand style guide as it is also known is a set of rules that you as a designer define and then use in the design process of a website. It is the set of rules that will determine how your brand will be portrayed. 

It is comprised of rules about fonts that will be used, what font-sizes and weights they will use, what color palette you will use to create a website for a particular brand. The style guide may also have guidelines about UI elements that are repeating throughout a website, think buttons and icons for example.

The benefits of having one and using it as a starting point are that you, the designer, will maintain a consistent style in your designs, and consistency is a key to a brand’s success. If after you finish and leave the project some other web designer takes on, or you work as part of a team, it makes sure everyone will follow the same already defined rules. 

It makes the job easier for a developer as well. Before starting to develop the website, the developer can take a look at a style guide and start defining the rules. Rules about the typography, buttons and other UI elements that he will later use to compose a website. This stops wasting caused by manually measuring things in a Photoshop file.

Feel free to download an example of a style guide that we created (the image above), for your reference.

PDF: web-style-guide.pdf

PSD: web-style-guide-template-download.psd

Color Palette

Define a palette of colors that you will use throughout the website. 

Depending on whether the color palette is monochromatic, adjacent colors, triad, define colors and stick to them when you start designing. There should not be too many variations. If you use a certain shade of gray for a border of some elements stick to that shade, don’t slightly modify it for a border on another element.

Fonts

Focus on web-safe fonts that you can pick here: https://fonts.google.com/. For better website load time optimization try not to combine too many fonts or font-weights. 2 – 3 fonts with 2 – 4 weights are enough (400 for standard text, then 600, 700 and 800 or 900).

Headings (Titles)

In HTML there are 6 headings: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6.

H1 should only appear once per page (usually at the top of a page in hero – section with a background image below the header with navigation, at least in standard layouts)

Define font-sizes and wont-weights (how bold or thin letters are) only for these 6 headlines (You may use variations tho; For example on the homepage, hero h1 may be larger than h1 in inner pages and blog posts).

H6 should have either the same font size as <p> (paragraph) or a bit larger.

Standardize margin-bottom for headings and all text elements in general (for example headings can have a margin-bottom of 20px, while paragraphs and lists can have margin-bottom of 10px).

Also define a good line-height for all text elements for better readability (Good value for paragraphs is about 1.4 or 1.5 – again, that depends on what font you use, and what you want to achieve for example).

Lists and Paragraphs in Web Design

List elements (either ordered or unordered) and paragraphs should have the same font-size (there might be cases where there are lists variations that may be different based on the design, but in general they should be the same as paragraphs.

Paragraphs may also have variations (For example if it is used as a subtitle below the titles (for example below h2). You can make it, for example, have a larger font-size and font-weight to better match with the headline that is above.

Standard font-size for paragraphs and lists should be about 16 – 18px (But again based on the design and how things are positioned they might be larger).

Buttons in Web Design

Define a few variations of buttons and reuse them throughout the website. (Design them in Photoshop, not in Illustrator)

For example One with the main brand color as a background, one with the main brand color as a border and font color but with a transparent background. Then a few more depending on the needs of the website based on the same color palette defined previously.

Photoshop (or any other tool) organization

Try to group as many things as possible and name them logically.

For example:

The header is one group that may also have sub-groups (for example navigation items).

A hero is also a group that has a background image, overlay (for better contrast), and text for example.

Stack groups logically as they appear in the design. (Header first, then below it hero, then section 1, and so on).

When you are working with sections try to standardize top/bottom padding (White space between the end/border of a section and contents of it) and margin (White space between 2 sections). If sections have standardized padding and the design allows it, there is no need for margins.

Use a starting width of 1920px for a .psd document but also use a 12 column grid to better align everything on the page. The grid should be somewhere about 1100 – 1300px wide, so the content can easily fit into laptop screens that are usually 1366px wide. (Disclaimer: You don’t have to use “containers” for everything, some sections may span the full 1920px width, but a large portion of the content should fit into a container (again, don’t strictly follow this).

You can download one of the grids here: https://hackerthemes.com/bootstrap-4-grid-psd/

When designing, try to do as much as possible in Photoshop and only use AI to design SVG graphics. Buttons, images should be defined in Photoshop – so that it’s easier for a developer to measure things, get colors, and in general have a faster workflow. 

Also, that allows easier and better integration with 3rd party hand-off tools such as Avocode and Zeplin. Those tools generate CSS out of Photoshop pretty accurately and make it easier for a developer to just copy/paste styles instead of measuring things manually in the Photoshop file.

SVG elements: graphics, icons can, of course, be just imported from Adobe Illustrator.

Don’t use blending modes; Instead, achieve what you want by stacking layers on top of each other.

Responsiveness

When designing, keep in mind that 1920px (which we use as a starting width for the layout) is not fixed. There a lot of different monitor sizes, then there are tablets, cell phones, and so on. Try to imagine and then design so that it is easy for a developer to adapt for tablets and cellphones.

Learn the terminology and standard UI elements that are used in website design

For example Accordions, sliders, carousels, tabs, modals, forms (input fields, text areas, checkboxes, radio buttons, toggles) are all web design elements. 

There are a lot of sources where this can be learned but here are a few good ones that showcase commonly used website design elements:

• https://material-ui.com/demos/app-bar/
• https://bulma.io/documentation/components/
• https://foundation.zurb.com/building-blocks/index.html
• https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/user-interface-elements.html
• https://www.pinterest.com/bex_reynolds/web-ui-elements/?lp=true
• http://styleguides.io/examples.html

Interaction states

These refer to the mouse actions (hover, click), or if you check or select something among other things.

2 most common states are:  

• :hover  – when we hover over links, we should add a nice hover effect to indicate it is a link or that something will happen if we click.
• .active  – State applied when something is “active”. Active tab item, selected option, open accordion panel. 

What is a Good Website Design?

Website design, just as any design in general, is usually a matter of subjective preference, but there are still web design principles that when followed in the website design process can “make or break” a website.

Follow these web design principles to create great websites: 

• Simple, easily understood, design with the right visual properly placed to grab user attention and emphasis on what matters most.
• Focus on white-space as much as you focus on the actual visual elements. Content needs space “to breathe”, and be easily spotted, and in general, it makes a website more effective.
• Fewer distractions (like banners or ads). Focus on what matters to the aimed audience and what they are on the website for.
• Visual cues and design elements that inspire users to go deep and research the website.
• Consistent use of design elements, color palette, and fonts across various pages of the website. (Don’t design 5 different versions of tabs for example).
• Navigation should be easily understood and intuitive.
• Make sure you have a balanced and tested color palette and keep in mind that there are visually impaired people. Good web design is all about everyone having the same user experience. Emphasize the contrast between text and background colors for example.
• Your website should be responsive (In the first quarter of 2019, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 48.71 percent of global website traffic).
• Animation helps users better understand what is happening or what is about to happen. It also makes the website feel more “alive”. Make sure to design subtle visual cues (What happens when someone hovers a link, clicks and when something is loading).

If you need help setting up a new website, or want to do a redesign of your old website with mobile responsive optimization, feel free to reach out, and we will be more than happy to help.

The post Web Design guideline from the developer’s perspective appeared first on Web Redone.

Responsive web design means having one website that fits all screens and devices. From Large 1920px wide monitors all the way to cell phones that have 340px wide displays.

Is there an actual need for RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN (RWD)?

Some may argue that digitalization is a process that made everything easier and smoother, but it has also brought up a few new challenges, i.e. having a website that fits various devices.

Whether you are offering a service, solution, or product, the website helps you attract potential prospects and it represents your business, so it is important to have a website that offers the best user experience. The landscape is constantly changing, and keeping up with technological development comes naturally when having a website.

This means that the website needs to be adjusted to new devices and systems regularly.

Even though people still use PC while browsing the internet, the fact is that it is not the only or the most common device we use to go online anymore. With operative systems such as Android, iOS, and others, smartphones are there to take over the lead when it comes to the main internet medium.

It is predicted that by the end of 2019 mobile devices will make up 63% of global internet use. “Around 50% of global internet usage happens through mobile phones.” Besides, people are using tablets, iPads, netbooks, and so on. Moreover, because of the various devices which we use to browse the web, one of the biggest challenges when creating a website is making it compatible with and responsive to different devices.

According to research, about, 81% of American adults own a smartphone and 63% of them use it to access websites.
Based on the report from 2017, 95% of Facebook users accessed their accounts via a mobile device.

These are some of the reasons why it is of utter importance to make your website compatible with all devices and give the best user experience through graphics and resolutions.

WHAT IS RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN AND WHAT ARE THE PRINCIPLES BEHIND IT?

It was 2010 when Ethan Marcotte said coined term responsive web design. He advised designers that it is better to treat all of the designs as facets of the same experience and make them more adaptive to the media that renders them.

Nowadays, RWD has become the most important thing when creating a website. It is especially significant for those building an online customer base. Responsive design is there to give users the best website experience; not only in viewing but in browsing as well.

By having a responsive website, you avoid blurring and pixelation of images as well as the scattering of the content and you prevent customers from leaving the website. The study shows that almost 8 in 10 customers would leave the website if it does not display as it should on their device.

Three main features help designers create a responsive website. Those technical ingredients are:

• Fluid Grids – this feature is used to resize the content so it can fit the screen. Besides being essential for having consistency on different devices, another benefit for the designers is that it saves time and money since the designer is required to update only one version of the website.
• Media Queries – this is a feature that detects which type of device you are using when accessing the website and it adjusts the page size based on the device.
• Flexible Media – this allows the creation of designs that can be used on different devices regardless of the size or the shape of the design. It helps to adjust the design according to the user’s device.

RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN – necessity not luxury

Some of the facts and reasons to have a responsive website design are:

1. In 2012, people performed more than half of the local searches on a mobile device.
2. 61% of people have a better opinion of brands that offer a good mobile responsive experience of their website.
3. According to Google, if a user visits your website, and it is not responsive, it may hurt your business. There is a 61% chance that they will leave your site and go visit a different one (most likely a competitor’s website).
4. It’s also said that if they have a positive experience with your responsive website, they are 67% more likely to buy a product or use a service.
5. Most people access social media on cell phones. Once they click the ad and land on your site, if it’s not responsive they will leave it in a matter of a few seconds. That may damage ad campaigns that you might be running for your E-Commerce business.
6. 57% of internet users agree on not recommending a business whose website is not well designed for a mobile phone.
7. According to 86% of adults, a company’s website should be as good or better when viewed on a mobile phone than it is on a PC.

IF YOUR WEBSITE IS STILL NOT RESPONSIVE, NOW IS THE TIME TO REDESIGN IT WITH RESPONSIVENESS IN MIND

1. A fact section above this one shows you some of the benefits of having a responsive website. Apart from those facts, there are more reasons why you should have a responsive website.
   Google favors websites that are designed with responsiveness in mind.
   You serve one website for both desktop and mobile visitors, so it is easier for Google to crawl your pages. That results in better ranking in Google searches. It also solves issues related to duplicate content.
2. A mobile responsive website is easier and better for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A process of optimizing a website so it ranks higher in Google search for targeted keywords.
3. It will help you reduce your website’s bounce rate since your visitors will not be put off by bad user experience on their cell phones.
4. Responsive web design increases site usability. This makes your users happier, and the happy user will return to your website more often.
5. It is easier for you to manage one responsive website than multiple websites. This is why a responsive website is much preferred over separate websites for desktop screens and mobile phones.
6. Responsive design allows you to keep track of who visits your website via Google Analytics.
7. A responsive website is better suited for load time optimization, which is important because the standard is that a website should load in 1 – 2 seconds according to Google PageSpeed Developers standards. And load time optimization is also a key factor in whether your website visitor (that might be a potential lead), will stay on your website or leave it asap.

LET’S IMPROVE YOUR WEB PRESENCE

Responsive web design has been a standard in the web design and development industry, and here at WebRedone we design and code websites following the latest industry standards and best practices. Every single website that we designed and developed is responsive and load time optimized.
Whether you need a new website designed or you have an old website that is still not responsive and could benefit from redesign and load time optimization, feel free to reach out via our contact form and we will be more than happy to help improve your web presence.

The post What is responsive web design (RWD) & the benefits of redesigning your website appeared first on Web Redone.