I manage WordPress security for over a dozen client sites. In the last 12 months, Wordfence blocked more than 40,000 malicious login attempts across those sites combined. WordPress powers 43% of the web, which makes it the single biggest target for automated attacks. These eight steps are what I implement on every site I touch. … Read more
I manage WordPress maintenance for dozens of sites, and the pattern is always the same. Someone skips updates for six months, then calls me after their site gets hacked or goes down on a Saturday night. The fix costs five to ten times what ongoing maintenance would have. WordPress maintenance is not a nice-to-have. It … Read more
Content theft costs real money. A 2024 study from the Content Marketing Institute found that 65% of publishers have discovered their work republished without permission. I see it constantly with Sacramento business sites: scrapers lift blog posts overnight, republish them on junk domains, and sometimes outrank the original in search results. Here is how I … Read more
I have managed dozens of WordPress redesigns over the years. Some went smoothly. Most of the ones that landed on my desk did not, because the previous team made avoidable mistakes. Here are the 12 WordPress redesign mistakes I see sink projects repeatedly. 1. Skipping a Content Audit Redesigning without inventorying your existing pages, posts, … Read more
I audit WordPress sites every week, and the same dead weight shows up almost every time. These 12 things slow your site down, confuse visitors, and hurt your search rankings. Removing them takes an afternoon and the results show up immediately. The Cleanup List 1. Image sliders. Less than 1% of visitors click past the … Read more
Every WordPress site collects data. Contact forms, analytics scripts, WooCommerce checkouts, even basic comment forms store personal information. California’s CCPA covers businesses with $25 million in revenue or data on 100,000+ consumers. The EU’s GDPR applies the moment a single European visitor hits your site. Fines under GDPR reached $4.2 billion total through 2024. I … Read more
Footers get 20% of total page engagement according to Chartbeat scroll-depth data, yet most WordPress sites treat them as a dumping ground for copyright text. I’ve redesigned hundreds of footers and the pattern is clear: a focused footer with the right elements outperforms a bloated one every time. The 12 Elements Worth Keeping Trust and … Read more
I’ve launched over 50 WordPress sites. The ones that went smoothly all had one thing in common: a checklist. The ones that didn’t? Someone forgot to uncheck “Discourage search engines” or left the staging URL hardcoded in the database. Here’s the 30-point WordPress launch checklist I run through on every project. Pre-Launch: Foundation (Items 1-10) … Read more
I audit Sacramento business websites every week, and the single fastest way to lose a visitor is bad navigation. According to a KoMarketing study, 50% of visitors use the navigation menu to orient themselves on a new site. If that menu is cluttered or confusing, they leave. Here are eight WordPress navigation rules I follow … Read more
I used to install slider plugins on every WordPress site I built. Revolution Slider, Smart Slider, Soliloquy. They looked impressive in client demos. Then I started measuring what they actually did to performance, and I stopped using them entirely. WordPress Sliders Cost You More Than You Think The average slider plugin loads 200-400KB of JavaScript … Read more