There is a sentence I hear from nonprofits far more often than I should: “The person who handled our website is gone, and we’re not quite sure how any of it works.” Sometimes that person was a staff member. Often it was a board member, a volunteer, somebody’s nephew, or the one person in the … Read more
You visit your website and find a blank page with one deeply unhelpful sentence: There has been a critical error on this website. WordPress may add a link about troubleshooting, but that does not tell you whether the site will be back in five minutes or whether you are about to lose the afternoon. The … Read more
Practical ways to raise more, save time, and build something that lasts. I founded Watermelon Web Works to serve nonprofits. We work with both nonprofits and businesses now, but that original purpose remains close to my heart. I love seeing organizations that do genuinely useful work survive and thrive for decades. That takes more than … Read more
A client sent me a PageSpeed Insights report recently. Their WordPress site was failing its Core Web Vitals assessment, Google was complaining about server response time, and the score had become a bit of an obsession. They had compressed the images, installed a speed plugin and worked through (some of) Google’s recommendations. Some changes improved … Read more
WordPress maintenance gets talked about like it is a small technical chore. Run the updates. Check the backups. Make sure the site is still online. Done. That version of maintenance is fine if your website does not matter very much. But if your website is important to your business — i.e., it brings in leads, … Read more
WordPress maintenance is easy to underestimate when everything seems fine. The site loads. The forms appear to work. The plugins are mostly updated. Nothing is obviously on fire. But the expensive WordPress problems rarely start as obvious emergencies. They usually start as small gaps: an outdated plugin, a broken form notification, an untested backup, a … Read more
You run a business. Your website takes payments, manages user accounts, or handles recurring billing through WooCommerce. Then the emails start. Customers are frustrated because their subscription renewals failed. You lose revenue, you lose trust, and you spend your afternoon digging through logs trying to figure out whether your site is broken or the payment … Read more
Most business owners treat their website like a set-it-and-forget-it appliance. They pay for hosting, install a few plugins, and assume the digital gears will keep turning forever. This is a mistake. WordPress is a dynamic system. Every time a visitor lands on your page, a user logs in, or a plugin runs a background task, … Read more
I’ve taken over a lot of WordPress sites that looked fine at first glance. Sometimes more than fine. The logo was well-crafted and in the right place. The colors mostly matched. The homepage had that “recently redesigned” smell. The contact form appeared to work. Then you try to change one sentence. And there it is. … Read more
You wake up to an inbox full of angry emails. Your website, the primary engine of your business, is showing a “Critical Error” message. The checkout page is broken. Your contact form is dead. Your search rankings are already starting to slide. You call a developer, any developer, and they quote you an emergency rate … Read more