Website tips

Tips and tricks for your WordPress website. Please comment with your own tips!

Why Open-Source Software is Important For Your Website

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People make decisions between proprietary (closed-source) software and open-source software daily without even realizing it. Do you own an Android phone or an iPhone? Are you browsing the internet with the Safari browser or Firefox? Internet Explorer or Chrome? Open-source software has a significant place in the world and in our lives, and that is especially true when it comes to all-things-internet-related. Chrome, Firefox, and the new Microsoft Edge browser are all open-source. As is the Android mobile operating system. At least a third (probably significantly more than that) of all websites are hosted on servers running Linux, an open-source operating system, and more than a third of all websites run on WordPress and many more are on Drupal, Magento, Joomla, and other open-source content management systems.

User Testing: Find the Bugs in Your Website Before Your Customers Do

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Recently we provided some tips on successfully launching a Magento Ecommerce site. Regardless of what type of website your are building, there really is no better way to prepare for launch than allowing real users to interact with the site. User testing is an excellent way to find all the bugs you may have overlooked before your live customers discover them.

From Good to Great Design for Your WordPress Site

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Design on the web can seem to be changing at warp speed. Thankfully, we’ve moved beyond the worst of the worst of the beginning days of website design. But now that we’ve mostly filtered out the lowest common denominator, where do we go from here? What does stepping from good design to great design in your Wordpress site look like?

Common Website Development Roadbloacks – Website tips

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Creating a new website is a thrilling process. A website can go from back of envelope concept to launch in a short period of time if done correctly, especially if a user-friendly content management system like WordPress is used. However, more often than not a web development project will hit a sizeable roadblock or two along the way, turning that thrill into frustration. Here are some common pitfalls to progress that we have observed over the years.

Using the Eye’s Scanning Patterns on the Design of Your WordPress Site – Design

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Recent studies show that people are more likely to scan your WordPress site rather than going through each block of content one at a time. Thankfully, there are ways in which good design can use the eye’s natural scanning patterns to guide them to the most important elements. A 200 site study has found noticeable … Read more

The Importance of Great Photography on your WordPress site – Photography

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There’s no way around it, we are visual creatures. That means an image on your WordPress site can communicate a thousand times more effectively in a moment than a paragraph of text. And we’re assuming that the viewer even took the time to read that paragraph. Why do we love images so much? Why do … Read more

WordPress Audio Streaming

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We were recently asked by a client to build an audio streaming player for their proprietary recordings. What a fun opportunity to use some of the built-in multimedia features of HTML5! The basic audio player for WordPress audio streaming is very simple to code, and even those not familiar with hypertext markup language can understand: … Read more

Which Magento 2 hosting platform is right for my business? – Magento

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If you are looking to build a powerhouse eCommerce site, you would certainly do well to harness the power of Magento 2. Built for scalability and custom implementation, with hundreds of marketplace addons ready to architect your site just how you need it, it is no wonder that Magento has risen from the masses to … Read more

Magento: the Importance of Lean Development Practices

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Here at Watermelon, we regularly work with Magento (or WordPress) projects starting from the ground up by estimating project costs, implementing Content Management System (CMS) solutions, creating and deploying site designs, and working with product, customer, order, and content data for a variety of eCommerce, membership-driven and boutique web sites. Magento and WooCommerce are favorites … Read more