Build Responsive Layouts with Media Queries

You take a lightweight WordPress theme, hand-craft the basic homepage layout, fill the content blocks with a couple of responsive plug-ins, save it, test it on your phone and tablet and... the layout breaks. In today's world of mobile first, the layout answer is... how to build responsive layouts with media queries.

7-Step SEO Basics for Beginners: Link Building

Page ranking is influenced by the number and quality of the back links to and from other pages other websites. The search engines are looking at the relevance of internal links to posts and pages on the site itself, as well as relevant links to authoritative external sites on the Internet. Not forgetting important links from other websites back to yours.

7-Step SEO Basics for Beginners: Go SSL

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates are small files installed on a web server which enable web browsers to communicate securely with web sites. Having secure SSL encryption has been a ranking factor for the search engines for several years already.

WAVE goodbye to accessibility errors. Maybe.

We put a string of our own and client sites through the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) tool. It got ugly.

As we saw from the results, the combination of platform, theme, plugins and hosting plan makes a huge difference to the accessibility of each site and also determines what you can and can't fix.

WAVE Goodbye, WAVE Hello - the Re-test

Putting our own site through the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) proved a little distressing; the original Blogger template threw up a horrific list of accessibility faults. One change of template later and the re-test results are... mixed.

Riding the WAVE of Accessibility (Results)

The  Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) tool is a fantastic resource for testing your websites, as we discovered last time.

We put a string of our own and client sites through the WAVE tool to see what it would find. It got ugly.

Accessibility testing with WAVE

Your website can have good aesthetics. It can have good accessibility. Achieving both can be really hard work...

The  Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) tool  is a fantastic resource. It's a successor to the original Bobby software that was closed down in 2008.

7-Step SEO Basics for Beginners: Hosting

Why do casual visitors leave your website before the page has even finished loading? Because it takes too long to load. The search engines capture page load times and favour the fast sites because that's what people want. Get a decent web server host.

That's pretty much the advice for this step. You want more? OK...