Update (January 02, 2017): After years of neglecting this site, I have finally converted it to WordPress and updated the old content. I have some ideas for more content to add but I am not sure when I will have time to do so. Subscribe to the RSS feed if you want to know when I make updates
Years ago before WordPress became the dominant platform, there were a lot of people like me that went the do-it-yourself (DIY) route and had to become their own webmasters. Much like the Tibetan sherpas known for providing support for mountain climbers, I created this site hoping to provide some useful guidance for others just starting out.
Although I don’t claim to be any kind of expert webmaster or developer myself, I did learn—and am still learning—a lot in my DIY webmaster journey and wanted to share that knowledge, sometimes in the form of original articles and sometimes in the form of recommended resources.
Of course, thanks mostly to WordPress, things are a bit simpler today for someone wishing to develop his or her own website. I too have joined the WordPress bandwagon, learning the ins and outs of this useful platform. Not just identifying and utilizing helpful plugins, but how to develop themes, make coding changes, work with the various hooks and filters, and optimize for page speed.
WordPress is not perfect, but what’s great about it is that a beginner can get a site up and running in minutes with little programming or Web development experience. At the same time, it is powerful and flexible enough that hard-core programmers and developers can bend it to their will to create complex, highly functional sites.
Since I have become a devoted WordPress convert, a lot of the content I add in the future will be focused on developing with it. I have already written some useful articles about WordPress on another site I run, which I will probably migrate to this site soon. For now, if you are interested, here they are:
- How to Score 100 on Google PageSpeed Insights: A Complete Guide to Optimizing Your WordPress Site Performance and Speed
Regardless of your knowledge level, I hope this guide will give you a better understanding of what’s involved in optimizing a WordPress site’s speed and performance. I will also show you ways to improve your site enough to ace Google’s demanding PageSpeed Insights test. - How to Setup a Development Version of Your WordPress Site on Your Computer
Whether you are developing a new WordPress site or planning to make any kind of significant change to an existing one, having a development version on your laptop can be immensely helpful, especially for safely testing new plugins, modifying your theme, and testing new updates to make sure they don’t break your site. Having this local setup also lets you work on your site even if you are offline. - 150+ WordPress Plugins to Take Your Blog to the Next Level
If you use WordPress, you are undoubtedly aware of the idea of plugins and are probably using some already, but perhaps you are missing out on some others that can raise your blogging skills considerably. That’s understandable since there are so many thousands to choose from and since there are some great plugins that do things you didn’t even know you might want to or be able to do. Recently, I needed to update my site for the first time in many years and in the process I did a lot of research on plugins that I might like to use. Read on to learn about the ones I found to be very useful. I have sorted them into functional categories and included (hopefully) useful extra information.
Of course, I hope you will also explore this site and likewise I hope you find something worthwhile, whether you use WordPress or not.
Regards,
Jeff Blum