I’ve been a huge advocate for WordPress for about 20 years now. Where did all the time go? I like the flexibility and power that comes with WordPress especially when coupled with a great page editor like Elementor. However, I think it is time to talk about Saas websites because I think there are some important things to consider.

Saas means Software as a Service. When creating a Saas Website, you are building the web site directly through your account. There are no server configurations and for that matter getting started is easier and cleaner.

Compared to WordPress, I find that Saas are more dependable. You don’t have to be updating plugins and themes almost every day. You don’t have to worry about your website getting hacked. If a Saas website goes down you won’t be the only one experiencing the down time. These companies have hundreds of thousands of customers. So whatever the issue is, they have more incentive to fix the problem fast.

Some Saas websites to consider would be like Wix ($17/month), Weebly ($12/month), Webflow ($14/month) and perhaps OnePage.io ($13/month). There are many more. When hosting a WordPress Website you are going to be paying roughly between $12-$14 per month (paid annually). WordPress is free but the page builder will cost some more.

I find that many websites are just business brochures online. In this case, a Saas would be a good idea. As the business owner, you can build the site yourself because the idea is that Saas platforms make site building easy. However, if you are short of time and would rather have Site Mechanix set it up for you, you can always go in and fine tune copy and images to your liking.

Site Mechanix can show you how to edit your Saas website and of course if you are in a time pinch we would be glad to help you make updates when you can’t.

While I can easily move a WordPress website from one host to another, a Saas website would have to be rebuilt in order to move your website to another platform. That isn’t such a bad thing. It is an opportunity to explore new features and make adjustments to the website. Saas websites can be built from scratch but a faster way to get the site up and running is to use their supplied templates.

Another thing to consider is email. Most website hosting providers include email accounts. Saas websites are just that, websites. So they won’t offer email hosting. There are other alternatives to domain based email hosting like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or Zoho Mail.

Is your business missing potential sales because you haven’t considered making your website easier for individuals with disabilities? Who are these potential customers? They are individuals with disabilities such as epilepsy, blindness, motor impairments, cognitive disabilities, and more.

Your competition may or may not have considered this segment of the population. But you could. It is easier than you might imagine. No need to totally rebuild your website. Instead we have a widget that transposes your website colors and fonts so that a disabled individual can more easily understand your product offering. With this widget installed, your business website can be more inclusive.

Do you sell products or services that an individual with disabilities might want to learn about?

It could be financial or health services. It could be a shoe or a snack of some kind. The bottom line is that individuals with disabilities have wallets too and may want what you are offering. Let’s try to close that gap.

There are even more benefits such as being ADA compliant. The department of justice considers websites as public places. Don’t get caught off guard with a demand letter. Even if you do get one, we have a simple solution that is both cost effective and easy to install. Then we run a report showing that your website is in compliance.

Besides that, it is just good business. Join the likes of other large names like Pacific Life, Energizer, Philips, Toshiba, Panasonic, Pillsbury, Six Flags and more.

Site Mechanix knows the importance of web accessibility and digital inclusion. Call us to schedule a demonstration at (602) 904-5572. Or send us a message from this form to get compliant.

Web Accessibility Must be a Priority to Every Business.
Check out this article on Nasdaq.com
And this article in Wall Street Journal

Any website built on WordPress may need to be cleaned up a bit especially if you have had multiple web developers working on it or if it has been neglected for for the past 2-3 years. This is because you may have too many plugins. Some plugins may have become incompatible with others or simply depreciated and no longer supported. Things change on the internet constantly.

We have found that rebuilding a website with the latest tech gives us the opportunity to audit the entire website. Old photos don’t need to be archived if no one is going to see them. Maybe the company copy needs a refresh. Even a change in color scheme will help rejuvenate an old website. Rebuilding isn’t like going back to square one unless of course you want to.

Many web developers for WordPress like to rely on themes. Sure they take the majority of design work out of the way, but the code they rely on is fragile and may not stand the test of time. We develop WordPress websites with vanilla themes as a base, but design the entire site with the best and most popular page builder that can also overtake headers and footers too! There virtually no website we can’t rebuild or use as reference. So we really don’t use themes directly anymore.

Smaller sites are less costly to rebuild compared to say websites with 100 pages or more. That is because of the labor factor of reformatting each page.

You never know what technology is going to go out of style. At Site Mechanix we use the most popular and current plugins and page builders. If your site is getting old maybe it is time to take a hard look at it. When was the last time you logged in to see your own website?

Other disability mitigation companies would either rebuild your website which would be costly or they may have a widget similar to AccessiBe, but may not be entirely effective. For example, AccessiBe constantly monitors and updates its accessibilty widget. Other companies might supply a free crippled widget or have a built-in screen reader that fights with the screen reader the disabled person is already using.

After researching four different companies we decided that accissiBe was the best solution. It is easy to install on most any website and was the most cost effective. There are even more benefits to using accissiBe for ADA compliance. Your website will be scanned every 24 hours and the widget makes ADA compliance reports available for anyone wanting to review them. Just having the accessiBe disabilty icon in the lower left or right part of your website will discourage most litigants. If you do get approached for compliance concerns, accessiBe has your back with all the proof you need for your defence.

The accessiBe widget gives the disabled all kinds of ways to control how your site appears to them. The widget allows them to mute colors or highlight areas for focus. Font size and contrast tools to make text easier to read. AccessiBe does all of this without affecting your website code that was originally designed without disabilites in mind. Alternative text tags are produced on the fly using artificial intelligence giving your website an SEO boost in the process. The other compliance companies we researched were a lot more expensinve and they need more time to code the website to reach compliancy. Installing accessiBe on the website is fast and provides website owners a way of saying “Yes! Our website is ADA Compliant!”. Click the disabilities icon you see on the lower right on this page and can see what it does for the handicapped.

Site Mechanix is prepared to help you acheive ADA compliance on your website. We can install the ADA compliance widget on your website and procure the accessiBe subscription for you. You can do this yourself too If you can log into the backend of your website, for example if your website is on the WordPress platform, you can install the widget code within the body tags of your website. However, if you need someone experienced with websites, Site Mechanix can get it done for you the right way.

For more information and to get started, click here. We can install it and you can try it our for free for 7 days. We can also change the colors on the widget to match the colors on your website.

There are many visual facets to your business that need to be graphically tuned to look your best. For example, how’s your company logo? Does it need to be cleaned up or redesigned to freshen up? I run into bitmapped logos all the time that are too small for what the customer wants to use it for. If a vector version doesn’t exist I will request a high resolutions logo. Starting to sound geeky? Bitmapped graphics are simply fixed resolution files. Like your television, the screen is made up of thousands or millions of colored dots that form the image. A 100 pixel by 50 pixel logo is too small for print. If you have a logo designed for your business, the designer should always provide to you a vector version. A vector logo file is made up of shapes that are plotted mathematically. The advantage with vector graphics is that they can be used small or large with the same file. They are always sharp. There are a variety of file formats to use depending on how the logo will be applied.

While we do a lot of things digitally on the internet, there is still a physical world out there where business cards and brochures need to make a lasting impression. Some businesses can get by with Microsoft Word documents for brochures or one sheets, however, there are limitations as to what you can do to pull off a professional looking document. Here, someone that does formatting and layout routinely would come in handy. By the way, your website is a sort of a living digital brochure. Does all of your business print and digital assets appear to be coming from the same company? They should. Your customers need to recognize your material no matter where it shows up.

Even if you have all of this established it doesn’t hurt to update the look every 2 to 3 years to keep your brand looking fresh. Maybe the logo needs to be simplified more. Your company’s print and digital collateral may need to feel more new, even if it has the same information.

You can of course count on Site Mechanix to help you with your logo, print and digital collateral for your business. Please take a look at our online portfolio here.

Before you contact a web designer, you really need to have some text prepared. This is important because the text will inform the designer of what types of visual cues to use in the page design like what type of photo or graphic element to use. The basic text that you should have available is for pages like the home page, about and contact page. The home page should be a sales pitch on why customers need this product or service. The about page should contain text that tells who, where and what is behind the products or services being sold. The contact page should contain any relavent forms of communication data such as phone, email and address.

You can expand from there to include a team page, testimonial page or media page. With any of these pages, make sure you have enough items to show that your company has been around for awhile. This helps boost confidence. For example 3 or more team members, 7 or more testimonials and 3 or more places that your company has appeared in the media.

Additionally showing who your affiliated with can boost credibility. This could be products that you use for the services you provide or it could companies that use your product or service. By all means, use any kind awards or certifications to show that your company already has levels of success in the community.

Beyond that, there is blogging or article lists. This is a way to build your page depth and authority on topics related to your business. That is exactly what I am doing here. I call them guides, but they are simply blog posts. I feel that they could be considered mini articles. However, if you have a lot of text, articles might be the best way to showcase your knowledge. The more pages or posts that you make on your website the more Google will take note of you. There are of course many more aspects to SEO than that, but this is the best way to start.

If writing is a challenge for you, hire a professional writer. Content is king on the internet. You can inquire about professional writers through Site Mechanix and we will refer you to some of the writers we know.

If you are considering a new website, you need to be familiar with the options that are out there. If you hire a developer to build a website for you from scratch it would be both expensive and unaccessable to maintain. Let’s say you wanted to change your office hours that is displayed on your website’s footer, you would need the original developer or equally competent person who can rangle with raw code. With pre-packaged websites around, coding a website from scratch is essentially reinventing the wheel. If you think long term, WordPress is the type of website platform that requires some knowledge, but not a lot.

If you need help with your WordPress website there are a lot of inexpensive experienced consultants that you can hire to help you. If you like to do things yourself, there are tons of YouTube videos that will help you learn the ins and outs of WordPress. Site Mechanix offers training to all its website customers. Most don’t have the time and that is OK too. Site Mechanix offers affordable maintenance whenever needed.

WordPress is also known as a CMS which stands for Content Management System. There are also other CMS platforms available. For example: Wix, Yola, Drupal, Magento, Joomla, SquareSpace and Shopify to name a few. So the concept of no coding to build a website is nothing new and it keeps getting better all the time. Site Mechanix chose to develop websites with WordPress more than 15 years ago. Crazy huh? It is a popular platform with numerous options. What we like is the connection between the core system and the templates. Problems can be fixed easily. WordPress has withstood the test of time even though it is constantly being updated and improved.

Wix, for example, is also a good platform. They host all the websites for their customers and they have an adminstrative login for customers to go in and build pretty much any website they want. Once you get used to the page editor you will find that it is pretty easy to make pages for your website that look professional. Not all CMS platforms are the same. In fact they can be quite different. If you can get a free trial before you commit to a subscription it would be a good way to test if the platform is a good fit for your needs.

At Site Mechanix we have tried many of the platforms mentioned in this article and we still like WordPress the best. It is the most flexible. We are always open to examining other platforms but we have yet to find one that beats WordPress.

Maintenance is important because of the constant updates from plugins and themes. Never let your WordPress website languish for too long as it can cause problems. Ask Site Mechanix about the best hosting for WordPress, where your site can be made secure from hacking and have daily backups.

Name Servers

The first way is to update Name Servers. They usually come in pairs but can also come in fours. They generally look like ns1.newserver.com and ns2.newserver.com. It is possible that the name servers will have odd numbers and letters, but to be sure, you will find the information from your hosting account. So in this scenario the domain is at one place and the website is at another. Of course in the example of GoDaddy you can have both your domain and your website in the same account and with that the connection is easier. However, if you want the best for your website, chances are you may like registering at GoDaddy, but want to host your website on a faster server somewhere else like SiteGround.

So, to find your new name servers you will need to login to your hosting account and look for server details. There you should see not only the name servers but also the server IP address. If you can’t locate these, you can always call support or use chat to talk with a support representative.

Important!

The big difference between these two methods is that Name Servers carries with it the control over email. If you have existing email accounts attached to this domain, they will be oblitorated. Once you hand over control of the domain to the new name servers your email control will be at the new web hosting account. This scenario works fine for new websites or if there wasn’t any existing email accounts. It is possible to transfer email messages from the old server to the new, but it will take time and money to do so.

This pertains to domain related email accounts not 3rd party like Gmail or Yahoo.

The IP Way

The other way to point your domain to your website is with an IP address. This is a series of numbers with three dots that look like this: 30.209.112.216. Again, if you can not locate the IP address for your website, contact support at your web hosting.

In order to point your domain with an IP address you need to get into the DNS settings for your domain. This is really geeky stuff so you might want to consider calling support to help you out. If you are feeling brave, start looking for buttons or links that have to do with DNS management. You should come across a table of records with first one on top being an “A” record. Different registrars and hosting outfits will have different displays and editors. The main thing is to be able to edit the “A” type record. There are four values in an “A” record; Type, which will be A, Name, which could be a sudomain like “mail” or “ftp” (in this case it should be the @ symbol), Value, this is where you stick your new IP address and then TTL, this is where you enter how long you want it to take for the server to update. TTL stands for Time To Live. The number you put there is in seconds. For example 1800 seconds equals 30 minutes. Some will have a dropdown to select the time you want and others may error until you put the excepted time allotment. Minimum time allotments vary. The ideas is to find the fastest they will allow you to update. You might be lucky to find ones that will update in 10 or 15 minutes.

The nice thing about using the “A” record is that it only points the domain to the website and does not change any settings with the pre-existing email accounts if there are any.

When you make this change it may take awhile for the change to propagate on the web. I’ve seen IP address updates resolve almost immediately while Name Server updates can take as little as 15 minutes to three days. It’s nice to have an expert in your corner to ferret out all this geeky stuff. You can rely on Site Mechanix to help you when you are ready.

In the early days it was a hassle getting SSL signing certificates installed. It was very user unfriendly. However, now SSL is included with most webhosting plans. For the most part, all one has to do is click on the “Activate SSL” button in the web hosting control panel. It will activate in a few minutes. If you have had a website online for a long time and you are not using SSL (the https protocol) you might want to login into your hosting account for your website and see if you can turn it on. It may not have been available when you started your website. Please note: that going from http to https can break some links on your website. Usually what happens is your logo and some images may not load. This is because they used the entire address for their location instead of a relative address. If you are familiar with editing your website, just finding the http string and inserting and “s” will complete the link.

Sometimes when you turn on SSL you will notice that on some browsers there is an indication that the site or a particular page is not secure. That is because, for example, an image still uses the http protocol while the rest of the componants use https. It will take some hunting and pecking to sew up all the loose ends.

Many web hosting account offer SSL as part of the hosting package for free. They might be using the free Lets Encrypt software. However beware of shared SSL offers. They are offered on some hosting plans, but are not going to represent your domain of your website and these can cause some problems with some eCommerce configurations. Lets Encrypt generally just verifies your domain and nothing else. For some applications, you may need more verification that your website is trusted. These higher end SSL certificates and trust seals can cost between $50 and $300 a year ,but will show who owns the site and their contact information, of course all verified.

While it is easier to secure a website with SSL, there are some minor issue that you might find havinig an experinced web person helpful. Got an old WordPress website? Contact Site Mechanix for help.