, , ,

How to Update WordPress Safely

When WordPress is due for an update, it can be tempting to ignore it and continue to use the site as-is. Whether you’re nervous about navigating the newer version or you just don’t feel like going through the process, it’s important not to ignore WordPress updates — they serve to improve functionality and create a better user experience. Of course, updates can be complicated. That’s why we’ve created this guide to help you on how to update WordPress safely.

Why Should I Update WordPress?

Before we examine how to safely update your WordPress site, let’s review why updates are important. By using the latest version of WordPress, you’ll enjoy the following advantages:

  • Increased protection: Outdated WordPress plug-ins, WordPress themes or WordPress core increases the likelihood of getting hacked.
  • Improved performance: Updating WordPress boosts speed and functionality. It also fixes bugs that might be interfering with the WordPress site performance.
  • New tools: If you’re not using the latest WordPress version, you won’t have access to the newest features and tools.
    Installing updates is the best way to ensure you’re using the highest-quality version of the site. Now that you understand the benefits, here’s how you can safely update WordPress.

How to Update WordPress Safely?

If this is your first time updating WordPress, it might seem a bit difficult. However, over time, this process should get easier — you’ll soon become expert at executing these updates. Here’s everything you need to know.

Secure Your Files

Before you update WordPress, take the time to complete a thorough backup. This way, if anything goes wrong during the update process, you can still access your files. A backup should include core WordPress files and parts of your WP content folder, such as the following::

  • Themes and plug-ins
  • Uploaded media and images
  • Data

In addition to performing a backup, it’s advisable to turn off caching before moving forward with the update. Put simply, a cache is a high-speed layer of data storage. While it’s helpful during your regular WordPress operations, this function can interfere with the update. You can easily turn it off through your plug-in menu.

Find the Automatic Update

When a new update is available, you’ll see a notification at the top of your screen. You can quickly begin the update by clicking here. However, some users might not see the notification. This could be because you minimized it or because the site is hiding it. If this is the case, don’t worry — you can still access the update by going to the WP admin dashboard.

Once you’ve opened your dashboard, you’ll see an “updates” menu. There should be an option to “update now” — just click this to start the process. During the update, you won’t be able to use WordPress for a few hours or so.

Conduct a Manual Update If Necessary

Usually, the automatic update is all you need to get the process started. However, in some cases, it may not work. While this can be frustrating, you can still take advantage of updates by carrying out the process manually. This requires the following steps:

  • Get a free File Transfer Protocol (FTP) software package
  • Download the most recent version of WordPress as a zip file
  • Upload your zip file to your FTP
  • After the upload is complete, you can find the update in your WP admin panel. Although this process is more complex than conducting an automatic update, you’ll be able to enjoy all the perks of the new WordPress version once it’s done.

Update WordPress Themes

Updating the “themes” section of your WordPress website is a slightly different process. You can find the update in your “Appearance” menu — of course, before you click on it, make sure everything is backed up.

If you have any customized themes, or child themes, you’ll want to save them before the update. Most WordPress users base their themes on an original version, or parent theme. Start by noting all the differences between your theme and the parent theme. This should include the following:

  • Style
  • Functions
  • Files

Copy all these changes to a blank child theme, then go ahead and update the parent theme. Once it’s updated, you can copy the changes again and move them back to the parent theme. You can also turn caching back on at this time.

Make Sure Everything Is Working

Once the update is done, you’ll have a fully functional, high-quality version of WordPress on your hands. However, you should run a quick check just to make sure everything is working. There are two ways to do this:

  • Run a manual check
  • Use a visual regression tool

You can conduct a manual check by navigating through the site and testing features out on your own. Of course, this process is time-consuming, and there’s no guarantee you won’t miss something. Thus, it’s recommended to use an online visual regression tool that can check for you. Using online services can save time and effort while reducing the risk of making a mistake. For the best results, you should always rely on a high-quality resource like WP SitePlan.

artKenya’s Managed Web Hosting: Your Resource for Safe Updates – and so much more!

If you’re looking for WordPress management assistance, our team at artKenya is here to help. In addition to performing secure, regular updates, Managed Web Hosting includes the following services:

  • Daily data backups
  • Monitor uptime in real time
  • Consistent security scans
  • Page speed optimization
  • Monthly reports
  • Database optimization
  • Web hosting
  • Domain renewal
  • Content updates

We’re happy to customize our services to meet your needs. Enjoy safe updates by contacting us today!

/by
, ,

4 Web Design Mistakes That Keep Popping Up

Despite digital marketing’s emphasis on clean cut web design and easy-to-read layouts on custom built websites, many organizations continue to make web design choices that scare online users away more than they attract them. This is a major problem because your website’s bounce rate impacts your search engine rankings and your conversion rate.

To help you keep your website looking sharp, here are four of the most common web design mistakes organizations make and how you can avoid them.

1. Cluttering your website with pop-ups. Full-service marketing may recommend putting a pop-up subscription box on your webpage. If an online user has to click ‘X’ on more than one ad or subscription box that keeps them from the information they’re trying to read, they’ll leave your site to find that information somewhere else. Try to limit pop-ups on your website to one per page.

2. Making your text too big. The optimal choice for text size on your website is 16 px font. This ensures that online users of all ages can see the information on your site. Making the text too small can hurt users’ eyes and negatively impact legibility. Text that’s too big can seem unprofessional and makes a website look cluttered.

3. Breaking up sentences too much. A common theme right now in content marketing is to break up content so that it’s easier to read through. Content marketing may be able to generate about three times as many leads as traditional marketing. But if you’re breaking up your paragraphs after every sentence, it can actually make your website look unstructured. Keep paragraphs around four sentences long. Only use a one-sentence paragraph when you’re emphasizing the information there.

4. Making your header too big. Web design services may recommend a header on your website that follows your user as they scroll down. This makes it easier to navigate on your website if they need to go to a different page. But if your header takes up half of the web page, it makes it difficult for your users to see the information they need. This is a common problem on news websites.

When it comes to web design, it’s good to have a custom built website that sets your company apart from the competition. artKenya has the professional website design services you need to take your website to the next level. To learn more about our website design and SEO services, contact artKenya today.

/by
, ,

7 Ways to Speed Up Your Website

There’s no doubt about it – website speed matters now more than ever before!

As average internet connection speeds increase around the world, web users are becoming less and less tolerant of slow load times.  At the same time, Google has stated unequivocally that it prefers to reward fast sites with higher positions in the natural search results.

To take advantage of these dual benefits, you need to make site speed a priority on your site.  Any of the following seven tips will help to get you started on this important path.

Tip #1 – Size images before uploading them

If you use a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Joomla, you’ve probably noticed that you can upload images at full size and then adjust their display size within your website’s backend.

However, doing so forces web browsers to execute multiple commands – pulling up the initial images and then re-sizing them on the fly – which can slow down your site.

To prevent this from occurring, use an image-editing program to adjust images to the correct size before adding them to your site.

Most of us will have access to a simple tool like Preview (on Mac), or even Microsoft Paint (on Windows). With these programs all you have to do is open up the image and re-size it in your editor of choice.

Once you’ve done this you can take your image editing to the next level with a compression tool. Even after re-sizing each image the total file size might be pretty large and this will slow down your site’s loading speed.

One of the best tools available is an online tool called ImageResize. All you have to do is click the link, upload your re-sized image and this tool will reduce the file size without reducing the resolution.

Then, all you have to do is download the image and upload it to your site.

With this tool your images will look exactly the same and will load much faster.

Tip #2 – Eliminate unnecessary plugins

The huge number of plugins and scripts that are freely available today makes it tempting for website owners to add more than they truly need. Keep in mind, every plugin you add requires resources to run – and more resources mean a slower site.

Before adding any new plugins to your site, ask yourself if the functionality you gain is worth the trade-off in site speed, or whether the plugin’s content could be coded into your site’s theme instead.

If you notice your site is running slowly, or you believe it could be running much more effectively, perform a plugin run-through.

This involves you disabling every plugin on your site, one by one. After you disable a plugin, run your site through a tool like GT Metrix. This will show you the speed of your website.

If you find that the speed of your site greatly increases after deactivating a plugin, then you’ve found your culprit. If you absolutely require that specific plugin’s functionality for your site to work, then experiment until you find another plugin that doesn’t affect the speed of your site.

Plus, getting rid of plugins can prevent plugin conflicts that arise when you have too many active plugins at once. The more plugins your site has active at any given time, then more likely their code may conflict and cause them to not work properly.

Tip #3 – Make sure your site’s scripts are up-to-date

Depending on the CMS or e-commerce platform your site uses, you may need to check back regularly to determine whether new releases of your site’s scripts are available.

If they are, upgrade your site as soon as possible (making sure that you have a current backup file in place first).  Site script developers are always working on improving their code for future releases, particularly when it comes to site speed.  Updating your scripts to the latest versions could go a long way towards eliminating coded roadblocks that prevent your site from loading quickly.

Now, remembering to check-in and update your website can be tough. After all, you have so much stuff on your plate already.

Lucky for you this isn’t something you have to do on a daily basis. Often, once a month is enough to do a simple run-though of your site and install any updates that might be available.

If your site runs on WordPress, then you’ll find these updates within the Updates tab of your WordPress dashboard. Just one click and your site will install the latest software updates. No need for anything else on your end.

Set a recurring event on your calendar and set aside an hour every single month. Usually, it’ll take much less time than this, but it’s important to build the habit of always ensuring your site and plugins are running the latest version.

Plus, having all of your software up to date will help to patch up any holes that could lead to your site being hacked.

Tip #4 – Make use of CDNs

Content Delivery Networks, or CDNs, are vast networks of servers that are housed around the world. Typically, if you’re not using a CDN, then your users will have to access your web host’s server at its central location.

This can lead to slow site speeds, especially if your visitors are located far away from the central location of your server. Additionally, if you’re just using a single server, there’s a chance it could get overloaded and cause your site to crash.

CDN’s solve both of these problems by letting your users access a cached version of your site from the web host that’s closest to them. Better yet, if one of your server locations is overloaded, then they can be switched to a new server location.

The result? Faster load times that will make your customers and the search engines happy.

To get started, look into the CDN services offered by MaxCDN, or Cloudflare.

Tip #5 – Enable browser caching

Browser caching is a technology that allows a website visitor’s browser to store copies of your site’s individual pages so that, when the visitor returns in the future, the content can be called up from within the cache rather than reloading the entire page. This saves the number of resources used to display your pages, resulting in faster overall load times for your visitor.

The easiest way to enable browser caching is with a plugin like WordPress W3 Total Cache. To install this plugin on your WordPress site, follow the steps below:

  • Navigate to your site’s Dashboard, then Plugins>Add New, and search for W3 Total Cache. Click Install, then Activate.
  • Once the plugin is activated, navigated to the new Performance tab at the top or lefthand side. This is where you’ll control all of the features of the plugin.
    There are a ton of features that you can turn on or off with this plugin. If you want to fully configure this plugin, then check out this post by WPMU DEV.

Alternatively, talk to your web developer about ways to integrate browser caching into your server-side scripting.

Tip #6 – Turn on Gzip compression

Gzip compression is a technology that minimizes the size of browser-based HTTP responses – sometimes by as much as 70%.  If that doesn’t make sense, don’t worry.

Long story short, using Gzip compression can speed up your site’s load times significantly.

There are three ways to turn on Gzip compression on your site.  You can:

1. Add the following code to your site’s .htaccess file:

# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

# Or, compress certain file types by extension:

<files *.html>
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
</files>

2. Add the following code to the top of your HTML or PHP page:

<?php if (substr_count($_SERVER[‘HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING’], ‘gzip’)) ob_start(“ob_gzhandler”); else ob_start(); ?>

3. Install a Gzip compression plugin like the W3 Total Cache tool for WordPress (just keep in mind what we said earlier about installing too many unnecessary plugins!).

Tip #7 – Keep CSS files at the top of your page and Javascript code at the bottom

Finally, keep your site’s code neat and tidy by adding CSS files to the top of your page’s code and Javascript snippets to the bottom when working with raw HTML pages.  

Adding your CSS files to the top of the page prohibits progressive rendering, saving resources that web browsers would otherwise use to load and redraw elements of your pages.  Adding Javascript to the bottom prevents your pages from waiting on full code execution before loading – leading to a faster browsing experience for your visitors.

Although these are only a few of the different techniques that can be used to speed up your site, they’re some of the easiest to implement.  This list is a great place to start if you notice your site slowing down.

/by
,

What Is a SSL Certificate, and Why You Need One

As a website owner you’ve probably heard the words “SSL certificate” getting thrown around a lot. When you’re first getting your website built all of this technical jargon can seem like you’re trying to learn another language.

However, if you plan on having your customers input their private information online, then you need to utilize the additional security measures provided by an SSL certificate. Below we highlight what an SSL certificate is, how they work, and what situations it would be smart to encrypt your website with SSL.

What is an SSL Certificate?

Confidence is so important on the Internet. Any site that acquires a reputation for unreliability, insecurity or dishonesty can expect to see traffic dwindle to zero. On the other hand, a site that can prove it takes security seriously can attract more visitors. And that can be good, whether your hosted web site is for a community, a membership service, or e-commerce. Surfers and online shoppers also increasingly recognize the on-screen presence of a small padlock icon or a website address that begins with “https://…” as signs that they can trust the site they’re connecting to. That’s SSL or ‘secure sockets layer’ in action.

The biggest reason websites use SSL is to protect sensitive information that’s sent between computers and servers. If information like credit card numbers, passwords, and other personal information isn’t encrypted this leaves it open for hackers to easily step in and steal the information.

With the SSL certificate. your information is unreadable to anyone who attempts to steal it. The only people able to decipher it are the intended recipients at the other end of the connection.

With an SSL certificate, your customers can do business with you knowing that their information is going to be safe from identity thieves and potential hackers.

Read this article why Google punishes websites which are not secure.

How Does an SSL Certificate Work?

SSL operates between a visitor’s browser and your site or application. It’s an industry-standard mechanism that ensures the encryption of data being passed backwards and forwards, so that no unauthorized person can spy on the information and hack it. It also prevents cyber criminals from diverting visitor traffic to their own site using their own encryption, and gaining access to your data that way. All major web browsers have SSL capability built in.

SSL certificates add an additional level of security between your website and the information visitors are sharing. They protect your website in two main ways:

1. Enabling Encryption

It can be scary to share your personal and financial information online. A lot of people prefer to use large-scale eCommerce sites like Amazon, because they feel much safer and protected. With an SSL certificate sensitive data will remain encrypted and secure, thus providing your customers with a sense of relief.

2. Verifying the Identity of the Site Owner

The SSL credential identifies the owner of the website, and create an additional layer of trust. Put simply, your customers will know with whom exactly they’re doing business.

Before the certificate can even be issued the identity of the website owner has to be verified through multiple methods. With digital communication it’s often difficult to determine the person on the other side of the connection, but with an SSL certificate you can be sure you’re doing business with your intended recipient, and vice versa.

Do I Need an SSL Certificate for My Site?

An SSL certificate can help to build trust between your visitor and your website. Building trust online is all about giving subtle cues to your visitor that you can be trusted.

By having the little green lock on the browser bar, you’re guaranteeing to your customer that your site can be trusted.

If your website requires the exchange of any personal information, then you might want to consider getting an SSL certificate. If your user is required to enter their credit card information, then an SSL certificate is almost mandatory.

However, you don’t always need a sitewide SSL certificate. Since going through multiple levels of encryption can slow down your website it may be disadvantageous to have certain pages of your site encrypted. There’s also a decent cost involved in order to get your site verified and operating effectively, so this also has to be considered.

If you’re doing business online and are exchanging sensitive information with your visitors, then an SSL certificate will provide an additional layer of security, while increasing your trustworthiness.

Artkenya includes SSL certificates with our ‘Managed Web Hosting’ plans. Whether you need SSL encryption for your eCommerce site or something else, you can secure your site today.

/by
, ,

Configuring DNS for your GoDaddy email in cPanel

If your domain isn’t registered in the same account as your hosting or it’s registered elsewhere, use the following DNS records for your cPanel shared hosting account’s Web hosting and email.

NOTE: DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to take effect across the Internet.

Mandatory

Record Type Host Points to
A (Host) @ Your hosting account’s IP address. For more information, see Finding Your Hosting Account’s IP Address.
CNAME www @
CNAME mail @
MX (Mail Exchanger) @ mail.[your domain name], for example mail.coolexample.comNOTE: Use MX Priority 0

You must delete any other MX (Mail Exchanger) entries in the DNS zone file for your email to work. The MX entry listed above should be the only MX entry.

If you have your cPanel site set up on a subdomain (e.g. cpanel.coolexample.com), replace each instance of “@” with your subdomain and use the domain name including the subdomain in the MX record.

If your domain is registered here, you can make these changes through your domain’s DNS manager. For more information, see Managing DNS for Your Domain Names.

Optional

You do not need to add all of these records to your zone file, but doing so will make certain functions work, such as Autodiscovery through Outlook.

Record Type Host Points to/Value
A (Host) admin Your hosting account’s IP address. For more information, see Finding Your Hosting Account’s IP Address.
CNAME autoconfig @
CNAME autoconfig.admin @
CNAME autodiscover @
CNAME autodiscover.admin @
CNAME cpanel @
CNAME ftp @
CNAME mail @
CNAME webdisk @
CNAME webdisk.admin @
CNAME webmail @
CNAME whm @
CNAME www.admin @
TXT @ v=spf1 a mx ptr include:secureserver.net ~all
TXT admin v=spf1 a mx ptr include:secureserver.net ~all
Record Type Service Protocol Name Priority Weight Port Target
SRV _autodiscover _tcp @ 0 0 443 cpanelemaildiscovery.cpanel.net
SRV _autodiscover _tcp admin 0 0 443 cpanelemaildiscovery.cpanel.net

You can also remove the following DNS entries:

CNAMEs — email, imap, pop, and smtp

/by
,

13 Impressive WordPress Stats Worth Bookmarking for Clients

WordPress powers one in every four websites you visit online. Huge, right? It’s safe to say WordPress is no longer just a blogging tool – it’s by far the most popular content management system online and we’ve got the numbers to back it up.

If you’ve ever had trouble convincing clients WordPress isn’t just for bloggers, here are 13 facts that proves its dominance – and are worth sharing at your next client meeting.

1. WordPress Powers 25.5% of the Web

WordPress’ remarkable growth isn’t slowing down any time soon. WordPress hit 20% usage just two years ago and if that trend is set to continue, we could see WordPress reach its next milestone, 30%, in 2017.

In October, 29.7% of all new sites used WordPress.

2. WordPress Powers 30.3% of the Top 1000 Websites

If you don’t think that figure is impressive, consider this: using a standard CMS is not very common among the top 1000 sites, and more than 90% of them are using custom solutions. That 30.3% has some weight behind it now, huh?

Drupal comes in second with 19.7% and Adobe Experience Manager this with 11.8%.

There's no questioning WordPress' dominance.
There’s no questioning WordPress’ dominance.

3. WordPress is the Most Popular CMS

Among the 300+ content management systems that web technology survey service W3Techs routinely monitors, WordPress dominates with a whopping 58.7% market share.

It’s worth noting that 57% of websites don’t use any identifiable CMS, so there’s still a lot of room for WordPress to further make its mark.

4. WordPress is the Fastest Growing CMS

Every 74 seconds a site within the top 10 million starts using WordPress. Compare this with Shopify, the second-fastest growing CMS, which gains a new site every 22 minutes.

5. WordPress Powers Some of the World’s Biggest Brands and Names

These include Sony, Microsoft, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Mashable, TechCrunch, Coca Cola, Mercedes Benz, Samsung, Star Wars, PlayStation, General Motors, NFL, Bloomberg, MTV, Facebook, eBay, Google, LinkedIn, Flickr, NASA, and TED.

Then there’s Jay Z, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Kobe Bryant, The Rolling Stones, Malala Yousafzai, Sylvester Stallone, just to name a few.

WordPress.com’s VIP service hosts many of these brands and names. WordPress.org also showcases some of the Fortune 500 companies that use the CMS.

6. There Have Been 143 versions of WordPress to Date

This figure includes both major and minor (security, maintenance etc.) releases.

Volunteers all over the world contribute to the WordPress project, ensuring it is regularly and continually updated to improve both its functionality and security. WordPress 4.4 alone had 471 contributors.

The latest version, WordPress 4.4, has been downloaded more than 6.5 million times since it was released just three weeks ago.

7. WordPress is Available to Download in 57 Languages

WordPress can deliver your content to visitors worldwide in a variety of languages. If English isn’t your native tongue, you can download WordPress in Bengali, Danish, Esperanto, and Icelandic, just to name a few of the translations on offer.

If the language you prefer isn’t available, it probably will be soon – the WordPress translation team has almost finished translating the CMS into 12 other languages, with even more translations underway.

According to W3Techs, 37.3% of English language websites use WordPress, while usage numbers are between 38% and 40% for Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish sites, and they reach 51.3% for Bengali and 54.4% for Bosnian.

If the language you prefer isn’t available, it probably will be soon – the WordPress translation team has almost finished translating the CMS into 12 other languages, with even more translations underway.
If the language you prefer isn’t available, it probably will be soon – the WordPress translation team has almost finished translating the CMS into 12 other languages, with even more translations underway.

8. There Are 42,000+ Plugins for WordPress

And that’s just the plugins you can download for free. There are more than 100 premium plugins on our site, another 4000+ hosted over at CodeCanyon, any many developers release their own plugins for free on GitHub or on their personal websites.

With many thousands of plugins available, there’s no end to how you can extend and expand the functionality of WordPress.

9. Tuesday is the Most Popular Day for Downloading WordPress

According to WP Central, users are more likely to download WordPress on a Tuesday than any other day of the week. Saturday is the least popular day.

10. WordPress.com Gets More Monthly Visitors Than Apple

On average, WordPress.com receives visits from 35,910,572 people each month, compared to less than half that number, 16,837,476, at apple.com. To put it into perspective, that’s the population of Canada inundating WordPress.com monthly to start new blogs, write new posts, or visit existing sites.

11. WordPress Developers Earn $50 an Hour

In his 2012 State of the Word, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg revealed 6,800 self-employed people had built more than 170,000 sites personally, and charged a median hourly rate of $50. If each site took only 3 hours to make, that’s $29.5M of work at the average hourly rate. Combine that with data from the 2014 State of the Word, which showed a quarter of the people who filled in the annual WordPress Survey make a full-time living off the CMS.

Over at Quora, WordPress contributor Mark Jaquith puts the $50 figure into perspective, saying a “WordPress consultant” could be someone who can copy-paste some basic theme modification for $30-$60 an hour, to someone who can code a plugin from scratch ($80-$150 an hour), to high-end consulting on performance, security, scaling and deployment ($200+ an hour).

Freelancer, a popular outsourcing marketplace, lists 739,794 WordPress developers worldwide and reports 393,250 projects have been completed, worth $71,020,304.

Upwork lists “WordPress” as one of its top skills, with an average project cost of $194 and an average project duration of 5+ weeks.

According to SimplyHired, the average salary for “WordPress jobs” is $40,000.

12. 18 New WordPress Posts Every Second

In an average month, bloggers who use WordPress.com or have Jetpack installed on a self-hosted setup post 53.1 million new posts. That’s 1.7 million new posts every day, 71,000 every hour or about 1000 every minute.

All up, bloggers produce 43.5 million new comments each month.

Traffic-wise, more than 409 million people view more than 20.3 billion WordPress.com pages each month.

WordPress.com regularly publishes traffic stats.
WordPress.com regularly publishes traffic stats.

13. WordPress Takes Care of 80-90% of Google’s Crawling Issues

According to Matt Cutts, the former head of Google’s web spam team, sites built with WordPress are capable of ranking higher in search results because the CMS takes care of 80-90% of Google’s crawling issues.

That’s most of the hard work done so you don’t have to worry about the small things and you can get on with creating quality content for your site.

Do you share any other WordPress stats and facts with clients? Have we missed any of your favourite stats? Let us know in the comments below.

Related posts:

  1. 9 Awesome and Obscure WordPress Features You Didn’t Know Existed WordPress is getting so big it’s almost impossible to keep…
  2. Bring The Power of Google Analytics Into Your WordPress Dashboard Track and view Google Analytics statistics for an individual site…
  3. When and How to Let a Difficult Client Go One of the best things about working freelance is the…
/by
,

Find the perfect royalty-free image

Visit our partner Photodune for royalty-free stock photography; click banner:

photo_dune_728x90

/by
,

What is Responsive Web Design?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design)

Responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).

A site designed with RWD adapts the layout to the viewing environment by using fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images, and CSS3 media queries, an extension of the @media rule, in the following ways:

  • The fluid grid concept calls for page element sizing to be in relative units like percentages, rather than absolute units like pixels or points.
  • Flexible images are also sized in relative units, so as to prevent them from displaying outside their containing element.
  • Media queries allow the page to use different CSS style rules based on characteristics of the device the site is being displayed on, most commonly the width of the browser.

Responsive web design is becoming more important as the amount of mobile traffic now accounts for more than half of total internet traffic. This trend is so prevalent that Google has begun to boost the ratings of sites that are mobile friendly if the search was made from a mobile device. This has the net effect of penalizing sites that are not mobile friendly.

Note

All artKenya websites are responsive! See our portfolio here: artkenya.net/what-we-do/portfolio/

/by
,

Design overhaul for Laikipia Wildlife Forum

We completed LWF’s site overhaul earlier this year.  The site needed a full redesign to bring it up to contemporary standards.  It was also important to include e-commerce to facilitate the membership drive LWF is embarking on. Now, visitors can also purchase some of LWF’s coffeetable books and maps online. The site now features stunning photography in a large slider on the homepage. Design and development talents were provided by Lawrence Otieno. | Read more…

Visit the site: www.laikipia.org

/by
,

Artkenya got a makeover

The task of redoing your own site generally goes to the back of the queue but now our new website is published!

We’ve rebuilt Artkenya with the same overall look and feel but we hope a little bit slicker, softer, sexier.  Full screen images are still very visible and our site is now compatible with all mobile phone sizes. We’ve also added a slick portfolio section giving much more information about the sites, in addition to images showcasing our work. Take a look.

/by