Category Archives: Development

Developer or development related news

Don’t Hide Your WordPress Love

I was reading this thread on reddit the other day which asked the question, “Why do people hide the fact that they use WordPress as their sites backend/framework?”

There’s some prettying interesting conversation there, but one comment stood out. It was from a design firm in Kingston, NY called Catskill Design. They put together a blog post answering the age old question, “If WordPress is so easy, why don’t I just buy a theme and do it myself?”.

I’ll let you read it yourself, but the conversation around hiring someone vs. doing it yourself seems to pop up in the community from time to time. A a business owner or writer just starting out WordPress can seem quite daunting.

I think hiring vs. doing-it-yourself depends on how much time you want to spend learning the ecosystem around WordPress and web technology in general. If you’d rather focus on your business, then hire someone. If you have the time and attention, then dig in. The important thing is to use what you learn to better yourself and your business.

Like my dad use to say, “If it costs $100 for someone to fix your car, you’re paying $1 to turn the bolt and $99 to know which is the right bolt to turn.” Of course my dad also said, “It’s important to know how to take care of your own car.”

Parents are confusing.

Photo by Adriano Gasparri – licensed under Creative Commons

Facebook ≠ a Website

I’ve worked with a few clients that have a well established social media presence with Facebook who would ask, “Why do I need my own website? We already communicate and engage with our audience with Facebook.”

My counter, more often than not, is that you don’t control Facebook and are beholden to their whims when it comes to the experience of interacting with your business. If they want to change the way your page looks or works, they will do so for their benefit, not yours. Now, most times these changes are aligned as Facebook wants people to use their service, but recently there’s been some concern over how Facebook is handling the reach of pages.

From an article on PetaPixel regarding the decline in reach with Facebook pages:

“Back in December, the company acknowledged that the reach per post — in other words, how many of your followers see your post in their News Feeds — has declined. Various studies have confirmed this, one showing a drop in reach from 12% of all followers to 6% over the course of 4 months. And, another blog is reporting that reach will decline to just 1% of your total followers eventually.”

While you might have an active and growing population of ‘likes’, it doesn’t mean that you are actually reaching all of those fans. Do you know what you could do to ensure all of your content is reaching your audience?

Start your own website. 🙂

(via PetaPixel)