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Your Friend on the Web, Diana Ratliff

Website Strategy & Digital Consulting

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Don’t Reinvent the Web Design Wheel

Ben HuntProfessional web design versus custom web design – the distinction was eloquently made in a recent blog post by website optimization expert Ben Hunt (I love the way this guy writes!).

Ben’s advice is never to reinvent the wheel – unless the wheel doesn’t work.

Here’s why, in his own words.

Things that are done for the first time are more likely to fail than things that are tried and tested.When you use a system like WordPress or Shopify, you get the benefit of a system that has had literally years of design and development invested – possibly decades of effort!

With a hosted system, you can get a website up and running almost immediately, without the thousands of dollars of custom design and coding you would need with an old-style model.

You can be confident that it will be reliable. You can be confident that it has been tested thoroughly. And you know that you will benefit from continual improvements, along with all the other customers using the system.

You get none of those benefits with a custom-built system – you have to pay for everything.

The flip side is that you may need to pay a monthly fee… that’s fair, because they are providing an excellent service.

So we should always use best practice, use conventions, use what works (when it works). And for me, in almost every case, that means using hosted systems, existing platforms, themes, plugins, and widgets wherever possible.

This is one of the best answers I’ve ever seen to the question of whether or not to design a completely custom site or start with a theme/template.  A professional, modern web designer understands the pros and cons, knows when to make exceptions, and can identify high quality platforms, themes etc.

 

Ozark Cabins Website | WordPress Theme

I just finished a site for the owners of Rock Eddy Bluff Farm in Dixon, MO.  Owners Tom & Kathy Corey had been doing their website for years, and in their own words “it just grew like Topsy and before long there were loads of pages, a format that did not fit many computers, and a general lack of maintenance that was noticeable.”

Their goal was a modern, easy-to-manage website that still had the rustic feel of their country resort.  The site was built with a very user-friendly WordPress theme so that it was affordable as well as easy to manage themselves.  Tom is an avid blogger so we also connected their blog to their Facebook page and are still tweaking the settings on that.  I did a logo for them too.

Rock Eddy Bluff Farm

 

I really enjoyed doing this site and it sounds like a wonderful place to visit if you want to relax, de-stress and get away from the hustle and bustle for a while.  Some of these Ozark cabins and cottages are right out of the 1800s, what a refreshing change that would be!

 

Veterinarian Website | WordPress

My Zoo Animal Hospital | WordPress Website

I was delighted when Dr. Debbie Leach of My Zoo Animal Hospital asked me to transform a previous one-page website into a more complete version – and I’m equally delighted with the results.  The site was built in WordPress (as most of my sites are) and we wanted to the site to feel as happy and friendly as My Zoo Animal Hospital is, itself.

They’ve already begun to blog; the site is set up so that blog posts automatically appear on their My Zoo Facebook page.

If your current website is out-of-date, incomplete, or simply not doing anything for you, contact me – I’d be happy to talk about a redesign.

WordPress Statistics – Not Just for Blogging Anymore

WordPress is an amazing web design tool – it’s what this site runs on, and nearly all of the others I’ve built.  Hard to believe it’s not even a decade old – 10 years ago I was using Frontpage.

My web design customers love it too, because it makes it easy for them to make their own site updates.

 

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