ABF Designs has been hosting web sites for nearly 20 years with site5.com with some minor glitches along the way and for more than reasonable prices so kudos to site5.com! This article is not about knocking site5.com but to focus on the important parameters when deciding on what works best for your hosting needs. Let’s begin!

Approximately 20 years ago around 2005 is when we came across site5.com and for just $20/month they were offering a reseller account which is basically an unlimited amount of websites that we could sell to customers. Wow! Those days were amazing, the technology was cutting edge! We earned a fair profit for years until Covid when we lost 90% of our customers not just from Covid but it was around the time Google also updated their algorithms a couple of times in a short period of time. Up until this point, site5 seemed to be a fairly solid and reputable company, there were a few glitches along the way and prices added up but they were justifiable.

Some of the issues were related to their migrations, they only occurred a couple of times, perhaps once every 3 to 5 years but they were painful. There was at least one migration that was not communicated to us that involved an updated to a major version of PHP which broke ever single website that we were hosting with them. 100% expected right? But where were the notifications that should have went out to us asking us to test and to be aware that listed the dates? This was one of the more painful experiences that we had, but again, completely understood that these things should be expected, *if only we were notified!*, right?

We were concerned, more for our clients of course but we quickly attributed these events to “this is life and life happens”, even though we knew that in “todays world with computers” should prevent these scenarios, we knew that “life is imperfect”, right?

Over the years, we saw the industry change, especially with Google algorithms which at one point, and still today, give websites “juice” when configured with SSL. We did extensive analysis and loved the fact that Google worked out a Free SSL solution for everyone, before changing their algorithm. Long story short, the free version of SSL required manual intervention to renew it every 90 days. Great! Right? In “todays” world, it’s easy to automate something like this and this is what Google pushed. Otherwise to pay for an SSL Certificate costed upwards of $200/year depending on the type of certificate you wanted to use. There are plenty of other fees that site5 added over the years such as payment for unique IP address for each SSL protected site but again, these were nominal fees so we never questioned it.

Fast forward to late 2024, we’re still very happy with site5.com’s services, still reasonably priced even though we’re paying a lot more than $20/month when you factor in all of the SSL certificates (approx. $200/year each and a fee for each unique IP address) but again, all of this sounded reasonable and justified and these really are nominal fees which are mostly passed onto the client anyway, right?

Thanks Goodness! that web.com took over site5.com and doubled their prices! We could not be more happy that this happened. We received a notice late in 2024 that our $20/month plan was doubled which was going to basically quadruple our costs as compared to when we first opened our account way back around 2005. As a result, we did our homework and boy did we wish we did it a few years sooner! We stumbled across hostinger.com on several reviews and made it part of our final analysis and boy we were happy.. and honestly, we are soo much more happy since we migrated to them.

We won’t try to hide any details here, since Google change their algorithms around 2019 we made a significant shift towards WordPress sites because it was just too much effort to maintain LAMP sites which require custom programming for highly customizable sites. As a small design shop, this was by far the best decision we have ever made. So with this in mind, it literally took us less than 2 hours to migrate 20 custom sites from site5.com to Hostinger.com. Hostinger has proven to execute automation 1000%.. Not only are we paying cheaper rates then when we started with site5.com 20 years ago but we no longer pay for IP addresses or SSL certificates, they have 100% automated the free solutions that Google put in place before updating their algorithms! In effect, we are able to save $100’s per year and also pass on a similar savings to our customers.. not only that but we no longer have to build in additional charges (such as per unique IP address) AND we now advertise “Free SSL” which is a huge benefit for our small business clients that are frequently weighing costs vs. benefit and $200/year for SSL vs. free SSL allows us to keep our hosting charges to $5 or less which ends up in a quick sale!!!

The moral of this story? Site5.com served it’s purpose but their 2005 technology was too embedded into their Operations to allow them to pivot with technology, why would they want to offer Free SSL and IP addresses when it makes up a good portion of their profits? They already proved that they are not good at communicating their migrations! In fact, during one of their migrations they completely lost one of my clients sites and it was a “you say” “we say” “it never existed” conversation where we just accepted that “this is reality, sometimes you lose things in life”. Since migrating to hostinger.com early in 2025 we have yet never needed to contact someone to speak to, their automation/migration technology is simply cutting edge. The WordPress migration process is absurdly easy and literally takes less than 10 clicks to download/export and upload/import a file and voila, done.

Not only has Hostinger automated Free SSL and the migration process, they offer a 4 year deal for just over $100 total which brings the monthly cost of reseller hosting to just under $5/month for 4 years! I’ll dig up the link and post it here soon but we (ABF Designs) highly encourage you to at least check out Hostinger for a free trial.. It will more than likely exceed your expectations by a mile! I’m sorry but web.com is a clear loser by taking over site5.com and doubling prices without bringing new technology. If they have new technology and are planning on rolling it out then they should have “communicated!”, but they didn’t! And prices should have gone up based on new services that should have been “communicated”! so it’s either an endless loop of poor business management or simply, greed!

It’s not about 5G or GBps or Roku vs. Firestick or if “all of my other tvs are working” or deleting/reloading apps… If you’re not semi-technical then yes, you’re going to go through major pain trying to get your streaming services to an acceptable level of stability. Trust me, I’ve suffered through all of these issues but my goal was to understand WTF I was doing by doing lots of research and tons of testing. If you’re just going to complain then cutting the cord is definitely not for you. I have some blog entries specifically on how to troubleshoot streaming issues but it’s clear that there aren’t many resources to the new cord cutters so here are some tips to check first:

1. Everyone’s home network is different. Some houses are wood, some are brick, some are plaster and lathe with metal mesh.. Wifi is not great at getting through any of them but it’s very simple to test the signal. You must test at your tv/device – and the result with be either poor, good, or strong .. If it’s not at least “good” then start there. Go to youtube and search on how to test your signal strength. To improve it at that tv, you’ll find yourself playing with the antenna/ears on your router .. yes – technology hasn’t advanced that far where this no longer applies.

2. 5G sucks! Yes, I said it. The 2.4G band covers my entire house.. The 5G band will not even reach outside of my office where my router sits. Always try the 2.4G band before anything else that you do!

3. All devices, including your router should be rebooted once per week. If not, don’t ask why you are having problems.

4. Other devices interfere with your wifi, whether it’s a neighbors router, your own cordless phone, a tv antenna etc. Go to youtube and search on Wifi analyzer, walk through the steps to see if your wifi network is configured on the best Channel to avoid interference.

5. Make sure that you have enough memory on your streaming device. If you use a Smart TV and you are having problems then buy a Firestick or Roku. Smart TV’s suck for many reasons, I won’t go into more details here but you can learn more on Google about this topic. Make sure that your streaming device has at least 25% free memory. Go to youtube and learn how to check, if you don’t know how.

6. Clear the cache on your streaming device and locally installed apps.

If you follow the steps above (over and over) it should address your problems almost every time. If you don’t follow the steps above and you ask why you are having problems then you should go back to cable. If you do follow the steps above and you are still having issues then there are a few other steps that you can follow but it will be more making sure that your device has the latest updates or about buying new hardware and or moving/testing devices closer to your router. Please contact us if these steps do not help you make your streaming service much better – and please contact us with any comments, good or bad!

To start, there are some really good routers on the market, and some really bad ones. I’m not going to go into or endorse any specific manufacturers but in general, if you stick with a name brand (linksys, netgear, D-Link etc.) and a recent router (<5 yrs old), you should be okay unless you actually live in a mansion (>2,000 sqft house).

It is important to understand the benefits of mesh routers and the pros and cons of different technologies but we’ll save that for a future article. The average user will be fine with a current name brand router as mentioned above, this article will focus on maximizing any routers coverage.

Regardless of your router, there are 3 key conceps to understand and configurations that you need to master:

1. Antenna placement – yes, the placement of your antennas will make a difference. I recommend that you locate the furthest tv from your router and run a basic wifi strength test from your cell phone, make sure your cell phone is closest to the tv antenna or the Roku/Firestick that connects to your wifi. Have someone monitor the app via their phone while you move your router antennas around, you will be surprised to see how much gain you can achieve!
2. Download and run a wifi signal analyzer. Make sure that your router is configured for the right wifi band, to avoid interference from other local devices.
3. Don’t forget to reboot your router periocially (weekly or monthly) as this will definitely make a big difference.

Please comment below and if you provide details of your own issue I will try to offer some tips and tricks to make your connection better.

As of early 2021, it is safe to assume that 25Mbps is more than enough for a single user to stream a tv show via their laptop, tablet or pc with Roku or Firestick, as well as connect to their job (via virtual desktop) and run a zoom conference call. Throw in some cellphone wifi usage, perhaps a quick youtube stream or sports game on the phone (tv & zoom running concurrently in the background) and you should still be fine. Multiply the number of people in your household by 25Mbps and the average family will experience even better performance since 25Mbps is at the upper end of what most users will need. My family plan is 200Mbps and I have up to 6 people (myself, wife + 4 kids in school) concurrently streaming zoom while on school applications with a tv or 2 or 3 streaming in the background, with myself logged into work, on a zoom conference and no issues at all. Don’t get me wrong, once a month or so I do need to reset my router but that’a non-issue once you realize the importance of rebooting your router periodically.

So, you might ask, what is the benefit of 1Gbps? To start, you need the proper hardware to work with 1Gbps and you will need technical expertise to configure it properly. For the most part, 1Gbps is for gamers and or those of you that need to download huge files (graphic/video editors in general).. you know, those crazy colored pc’s (with keyboards that light up) that look futuristic in the stores, that cost $2K+ and you really never understood why? You’re talking the fastest of the fast, intended for cutting edge FAST graphics and communications for the ‘experience’.. For most families, it’s more than acceptable to stick to the 25Mbps per person rule and if you’re into gaming then you probably won’t be reading this article to begin with.

But my ISP (Internet Service Provider) told me that my connection would be faster with a 1Gbps plan, what gives? Well, yes the would be correct in general, but to tak full advantage you would need the right hardware and understand how to configure it. Let me ask you this, did your ISP (marketer, aka non-technical sales-person) even ask you about your hardware when they were selling you (and trying to earn a commission) what brand your pc was? what your network card specs were? what applications you run? I’ll bet my bank account that the answer is no, 99.99% of the time. Did they recommend running a speed test before and after? Of course not, because that would be the same a pulling their mask off in front of you.

What is your best option? No matter what anyone tells you, always, ALWAYS start with the minimum plan (or 25Mbps/person) to see how that works for you. And always pay attention to the details of your wifi testing. I’ll go into the following topics in a future article but here is a reference list:

1. 5Ghz has way less coverage than 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz performance starts to diminish just 10 ft away from your router. Connect to 2.4Ghz for longer range
2. Download a wifi analyzer and watch youtube videos on how to select the best wifi channel for your home network
3. Download a wifi signal app to measure the strength of your wifi network at various locations in your home. If you’re having an issue with streaming to your tv, then place your phone next to your streaming device when testing signal strength.

Comments and feedback welcomed, below. I will try to assist you if you provide enough details.

What exactly does cutting the cord mean? It used to mean saving a lot of money by cutting your cable tv and in most cases your phone service. The ideas is to only pay for Internet access and cheap streaming services or simply wathing OTA (Over the Air) TV along with free services such as Hulu, Crackle and the likes. Nowadays, cutting the cord can still save you a good amount of money but most streaming services are increasing their prices even faster than I’ve ever seen cable companies. Don’t worry though, I’ll try to ease some of your concerns by going into some questions that I faced, along with the multitude of options that I found to be great solutions.

To start, most streaming services are still cheaper than most cable services but if you are paying for your settop boxes there is more than likely a significant monthly cost savings even if you max out on the best streaming services. In my case, my Triple Play package from Verizon Fios cost me $214.00 the last month before I cancelled, while my current bill since cutting the cord is around $75, still a huge savings and I’m considering other streaming services that are even cheaper and potentially cancelling paid streaming services to bring my monthly cost below $50/month. This includes my home phone, Internet access and TV services (free + paid).

My guess is that 50% of people can easily save a lot of money while being just as happy with streaming services as they are with their current setup. People who need every channel including all sports channels and movies etc. probably make up around 25% of the population, in my opinion, have the least to gain by cutting the cord. There really is no single Streaming TV service that will give you everything, at least not without paying well beyond their advertised price plans so the frustration vs. minimal savings won’t lead to a pleasant overall experience for that group. The remaining 25% of people probably don’t like their current setup and will likely not be happy with a cheaper setup so you really need to figure out which group you consider yourself to be in and then weigh the pros and cons of cutting the cord. Here are some things to consider:

Pros to cutting the cord:

1. No montly fees for hardware (unless if you rent your router)
2. Faster Internet speeds (upgrade your current plan to the next level for a minimal fee)
3. Tons of free TV shows and Movies (think Pluto TV, Airy.tv, Crackle, Hulu, YouTube etc.)

Cons to cutting the cord:

1. To do it effectively, you need to get rid of your triple play package (assuming you’re paying for Phone/Internet/TV at a discounted rate) – what do you do with your phone?
2. Channels are all over the place, no central Guide or Channel selection if you use multiple streaming services
3. Some Streaming Service interfaces/channel guides simply suck

If you’re not sure if cutting the cord is for you, make sure that you do your research, then do more research, and finally, do more research. Here are some quick tips on what to think about:

1. One of my biggest concerns is that I didn’t want ot lose my home phone number and after a decent amount of research and talking with friends who already cut the cord, I ended up migrating my landline to a mobile SIM card and eventually to Google Voice and now I don’t pay a dime for a land line but I still maintain my original home phone number using a device called ObiTalk, along with Google Voice, and did I mention – it’s 100% free! (minimal fees apply to support 911 calls)
2. Once you sort out your non-cable concerns, it’s time to really think about what channels you absolutely must have and the channels that are high on the list as ‘really want to haves’. Take into consideration sports channels or networks that have multiple shows that you really need or want. Then google Streaming Services TV Channel comparison guides and start ranking each service by price, channels offered and percentage of channels that you really want, that each Service provides. At this point you should have strong sense of whether or not cutting the cord is really worth it.
3. Once you think you are ready to cut the cord, or maybe you really have no idea what ‘streaming tv services’ is, take a deep breath, and simply signup for the top streaming services 1 or 2 weeks at a time. They all offer a free week or 2 week trial period. I suggest that you turn off your settop box and force yourself to only watch streaming services durin gthe trial period. This should help solidify your decision of whether or not to cut the cord. Be warned though, when signing up for trial periods they also usually give you 1 month of free stations. I couldn’t beleive how fantastic Sling TV was the first month, until all of the new shows that I found expired after just a few weeks. Very disappointing but a great educational moment by going through the process.

Comment below on your experiences and whether or not anything in this post was helpful. There is so much more to write about cutting the cord so I’ll try to do a deep dive on narrower topics soon.

I’ll say up front, media-queries have nothing to do with the recent Google update (as of this writing, 2/22/2020) but there have been enough Google updates since I last rewrote my site (6 years ago?) that it warrants a complete rewrite and anyone designing a new website knows how media-queries impact responsive design. I’m not going to get into the advantages of respnsive designs, media-queries are only a part of it – in this article I will share my thoughts on how to minimize media queries to keep your CSS rules in control, but by all means – if you have an opinion on how to do it better, I’m all ears!

In today’s world (or at least my world), there are 3 types of screens and I really don’t care about anything in between. You have your mobile at all times, your tablet for when you want to lay back and relax, maybe read a book or watch a video without having to squint at your phone. And finally, your laptop or desktop pc, for those at work or simply those who want a larger screen for extended use or any other reason.

Next comes the complexity of portrait vs. landscape, and perhaps my most selfish preference and reason for my decision. My experience has always been about viewing readable content in any view, primarily in portrait view – AND – any time that something was hard to read on my phone or table, my mind is trained to rotate the device to landscape mode.. There is no other logic to follow here. My expectation is that content that I view in portrait view should be ‘blown up’ or easier to read in landscape mode. There is NOTHING WORSE, than trying to view something in portrait mode that is smalle, and when you rotate to landscape mode – it’s either the same size or smaller becuase an extra column was added on the right side!

With this frustration, I’ve firmly decided that only 3 media queries are needed, all content on a cell phone (portrate or landscape) should be 1 column, with landscape being a ‘blown up’ version of the content, easier to read. For the same concerns, the fact that tablets have wider screens, they should have 2 columns (when applicable (header and menus should still span only 1 column) so that the main content takes up say 70% of the screen but it’s acceptable to put links or ads on either side. For laptops or Desktop PC’s, you can go with a 3 column approach (or more) depending on the content, whatever looks best.

The key theme here being, the content on any device should always have the same CSS layout (whether its 1, 2 or 3+ columns). Users should expect a larger size of the content when they rotate their screen to landscape for easier reading. However, the real problem to solve is the min-width breakpoints. I won’t go into why I’m talking about min-width CSS right now and I don’t have an article to link you to so if you’re wondering why, you should Google “mobile first CSS design”.

With this said, the pixels on the screen to pixel ratio almost daily as new phones come out so it’s impossible to be absolute day to day. And I won’t even get into device pixel ratio other than with my next comment. Nowadays you will find smartphones with move pixels than a tablet, and yes, I’m talking CSS pixels AND physically. It’s just the nature of technology. SO – designing for mobile friendly (min-width CSS) and the assertion that I will only design for 3 “platforms” (mobile, tablet, pc/laptop), tells me that I should error on the side of new technology, so my mid-width should include the latest devices available “today”.

What does that mean? The 3 major min-width recommenations today are:

Mobile Landscape: up to 812px

Tablet Portrait: up to 768px

Laptop Displays from 1366px and up

Tablet Landscape up to 1168px

There are many other breakpoints but I’m trying keep the logic simple.

In my opinion, all cellphones should display a website in 1 column. My Samsung S8+, 3 years old now, is considerd 798px wide in portrate mode. So based on the industry recommendation sabove, do I go with 768 as a max so that tablets can display 2 columns or with 812 so that most cell phones (and some tablets) display in 1 column? My thought is that 1 column works much better on smaller tablet screens than 2 columns on mobile screens. So with this logic – I’ve decided to implement the following:

Default CSS: mobile first (anything less than 820px for most cell phones, display content in single column as of this writing)

@media only screen and (min-width: 820px) and (max-width: 1199px) (smaller tablets, display content in 2 columns)

@media only screen and (min-width: 1200px) (larger tablets, laptops and pcs’s, display in 3+ columns)

Again, minimizing your media-queries minimizes your CSS code, but more importantly, in most cases, when your users rotate from portrait to landscale (mobile or tablet view), they will have a positive experience!

I hope this made sense and wasn’t overly complicated to figure out. I will try to simplify/rewrite when I have time but I hope that this helps you in some form.

Le’ts move on.. As I write this blog entry, take a look at PortableWirelessChargers.com, I chose to go with the Bootstrap framework, a free and very powerful HTML5 solution for many reasons. The primary reason is that Bootstrap has basically become an industry standard, it is widely used with tons of ability, and even better, it’s free!

I was really looking to build a basic website, I would be happy with 1 and 2 column sections that are basically laid on top of each other. Luckily, Bootstrap was the perfect solution for this. If you look at the site as-is today, you will notice that it’s basically the following sections laid out on top of each other: Header, Banner, List of suggested Portable Wireless Chargers, Informational Paragraphs, Footer.

I quickly realized that I put everything in my head down on paper, which translated to a long web page and I ran out of content for other pages. For a real brochure type website, this would be fine. But for an informational page that is supposed to be “relative” and have lot’s of specialized information on it, it is clearly to your advantage to break of larger informational paragraphs into separate pages. Why, you might ask? This might sound silly but, the more web pages that you have, the more realistic it will look to the spiders that crawl the internet which in turn determines your Search Enginge Ranking. Another example is, if you have content on multiple pages with links between them, the same spiders will index those links to determine your ‘authority score’ on the topic that you are building on. In general, the more specific the topic is for a page on your site, the better for your SEO Results, the more general the topics it will only hurt you as you will not stand out from your competitors.

One last thing to notice on the site as it is today, notice the 2 charger sections under the top banner area. They both link to Amazon products, at this point in your design you definitely want to make sure that you have an Amazon affiliate account and a small handful of products in mind. It’s really important to come up with a single consistent look and feel. Even more important though is to offer unique and valuable information so that people trust your site. If you’re not telling them something that the want to know, then they will not click on your links.

Stay tuned for Part III of this article which will describe how I split the current website (single page) into multiple pages with links between the pages. It will also have at least 5 recommended products and the site should be 90% complete.

I intend to have a Part IV of this series which will include tips on how to finalize the page. I will also briefly touch on some advanced tips which will not be for most readers, however – if you are into scripting/coding, you will clearly have an advantage over your competitors from an SEO perspective.

Post your questions and comments below and we’ll try to help you out.

Google

Many of you who are familiar with my Blog posts know that I touch on all kinds of topics, from creating graphics to understanding key concepts in Social Media. My blogs can be all over the place depending on what I’m working on at that time. I’ve been thinking about how to create something more interesting, more exciting and engaging for a while now and I think I found it.

I’ve decided to build a brochure type website from scratch, from the layout through to earning money using Amazons affiliate program, walking you through every step, highlighting tips as well as nuances learned along the way. Keep in mind, the goal here is to design a brochure type website that atracts as many free visitors as possible while displaying Ads on the page so that your visitors click on the Ads which turn into affiliate money for you.

As of this writing (September 18th, 2019), I have the name of the website and an initial, poorly designed Draft of the layout. The idea is simple, find an area of interest, create a website and earn money. Well, it’s not nearly that simple but these are the key milestones that I will be hitting along the way, so if you’re wondering how to come up with an area of interest, build a website and earn money, you’re in the right place, keep reading.

In this blog entry, I’m only going to cover the initial step of how I identified an area of interest and then barely touch on how to go about creating the website. I will try to write a blog entry weekly for the next 6 weeks or so until the site is built 100% along with monthly updates so that you can see how things progress monetarily. If you’re still reading then chances are you know that this is going to be a fun read and experience to remember. Feel free to contact me with questions along the way.

The Idea! The idea can be anything, the more unique the better, the more keywords and phrases that you can associate to your idea, the better. Finding an idea should be fun, you should ask people that you know for general ideas on your thoughts without exposing the details. In my experience for this exercise I went with my gut, but remember – I’ve made money on the internet in various forms so I have some experience when judging potential in this area. To give you an example, if you wanted to sell gold jewelry on the internet – you have to be able to source that jewelery at wholesale pricing just to be somewhat competetive. You also better have a marketing budget and you should have a high quality site, all of which costs alot of money. However, if you decided to sell hand made or high quality toe rings it would be much easier to capture a market with little or no marketing budget because the market isn’t as saturated for this product.

With this in mind, I decided to go with PortableWirelessCharger.com. You might ask why? Yes, the Portable Charger market is over saturated, however new Qi (ie. Wireless) technology is upon us and there really aren’t many products available – so although the market may become saturated, I felt that it’s early enough for me to jump in and get a head start. Plus, it’s a very good domain name that I was surprised was available when I found out. Another thing that helped me with this idea is the fact that my Samsung S8 charging port on my cell phone is broken, so I was forced to find a Wireless Charger and soon after, a Portable Wireless Charger and a light bulb went off in my head!

On to the next step, I had a decent idea along with a good domain name – now I needed a website. From my prevoius blog entries, you might be aware that I have a fairly extensive background in HTML development, however – I’ve been out of the loop on the latest HTML5 and CSS solutions. I used to design websites by hand but since it has been a few years I figured that I’d check out some of those sites that sell templates. I checked out bootstrap themes, html templates, code snippets and a dozen or so other pre-designed solutions to see if it was easy and cheap enough for me to pay a small fee to expedite results. Afer a short amount of time, I quickly realized that if I truly wanted to be the best site out there for my topic and have the ability to update whenever I needed to that it would be most efficient to design it from scratch. This is a blessing and a curse.. A blessing because I would have to learn the latest HTML5/CSS syntax – which believe me isn’t easy .. and a curse because I would have to learn HTML5/CSS. Wait, What? Yes, although I was going ot have to put some time and energy into learning HTML5/CSS – at least I would be learning something new and have the ability to update on the fly, but most importantly, I would be able to design as many new websites as I wanted to. And as a bonus, I could get back to my $100+/hr side jobs, if I wanted to. But I digress. I will go into some of the basics to consider when choosing your website design solution next.

Whether you chose a predesigned template or go with your own design, if you want to maximize your SEO rankings with the search engines you need to consider the following, but more importantly SEO rules change all the time. You need to be able to modify the source code of your design from time to time so if you decide to buy a template and lay the files down while simply adding content. your website will quickly become out of date. More importantly, you will want a responsive design and from my experience – depending on the idea that you are trying to market, it’s very difficult to find a good solution that looks great on phones, tablets and pc’s for any particular area of interest which is another reason why I decided to design on my own. I have to admin, if you’re not an HTML5/CSS designer, the future steps may be very challenging for some.

I’m currently in the process of still learning how to code HTML5/CSS but you can see my latest updates on my Portable Wirelss Charger.

Follow my blog and stay tuned for my next entry. A free HTML, CSS design and SEO Tutorial guide to making money: Part II

Social Media today means different things to different people. Some people are followers on Facebook or Instagram; some people are influencers on the same platforms or perhaps SnapChat or TicToc and others. If I had to try to “define” Social Media today according to say, Webster Dictionary standards, I would have to go with:

Social Media (So shul Mee Dee Uh) : a platform that enables influencers and people that are receptive to influence. Whether it be a clothing fad or religious believe, such platforms enable the connection between publishers and consumers to varying degrees.

more to come soon….!

Google

I will start this blog entry off with a few comments to put things in perspective. I have been a programmer/designer/scripter (C, HTML, Perl, LAMP, ksh and more) for over 20 years. The purpose of this post is to highlight the struggles of an experienced HTML designer over the years while capturing the benefits of the pain. You are not going to learn anyting technical in this post, however; you may learn a new mindset that may increase your learning/ability exponentially. This post is geared toward the pure HTML5/CSS developer, if you are only familiar with UI/WYSIWYG tools such as Dreamweaver or other interfaces then you might not appreciate the full extent of the details explained below, however; I encourage to you to read on!

I’ve built well over 100 websites in the past 20 years with varying degress of success, but to be honest, I’ve never gotten a full grip of HTML5 and CSS, until now, and man, is it complicated! Follow me for future updates.

First, I have to give you a high level of the way HTML design used to be.. and then try to compare it to the new standards of today. 20 years ago it was all about tables (or boxes), you could draw anything you wanted as long as you understood tables and columns. Think of an excel sheet, if you wanted something on the left, you had to type in the box on the left side – something on the bottom then move down and fill in a row below. It wasn’t that easy, but it wasn’t much more complicated than that in order to be an HTML designer. It was pretty much a 2 dimentional drawing.

Nowadays, “fuggedaboutit”.. you need to be an expert in 3 dimentional drawing, think of AutoCAD or Vector drawing.. it’s actually not that bad, but almost as complicated. Think of having a single page design, on a pc it is a menu bar but the same items on a phone are a dropdown menu – 100% controlled by CSS. Is it complicated? Yes. Is it easy to learn? With some practice, yes.

What is the biggest challenge in learning CSS? In my opintion, syntax! I can’t tell you how many hours of video that I’ve watched and how many additional hours that I practiced the techniques, trying to learn. As with any new “language” (loosely interpreted as: HTML, Perl, PHP, CSS, VB. etc.) the initial stages in learning include getting the syntax (or format of commands) down correctly. I’ve spent hours trying to figure out why my code doesn’t display my expected results; and for the most part – it was because I forgot about the required semi-colon, or I added one where I shouldn’t have, or I put a declaration above another declaration which took precedence. Out of 100 tries, I would be lucky if 1 of them yielded expected results. So in my experience, the primary pain is learning, or memorizing syntax – before you can beging to understand the basics.

The key to success? Repeat and prove your errors. Tear the code apart when it doesn’t work out the way that you expect it to. Don’t “accept” something that you don’t understand. Master it at every level possible! Remember that “coding” is a neverending process of learning. Until you can take any website on the internet, from the simplest to the most complcated – and tear it apart manually (ie. using source code) and make any minor change successfully that meets your expected results; you will know that you have a long road of learning ahead of you.

I will say that, the more I learn about HTML5 and CSS, the more complicated it is; however, the more I learn, the more I learn how powerful this new “language” is. As an example, if you were to look at any of my website designs 15 years ago they still look pretty good on a PC, but if you looked at them on a cell phone or tablet they would look horrible.. If you were to look at one of my current designs, they would look okay… okay on all platforms. This goes to show you how much further that I have to go to be a good designer.