Paulius K.

I appreciate Damir’s business ethics, eagerness to do a great job instead of complete a project asap, responsiveness at any time, and willingness to help. I highly recommend Damir and I will personally higher him for the future projects. 10/10

Excellent service!!! From start to finish Damir was professional, kept to time frame suggested, work work excellent, so happy with the price and he went above and beyond my expectations, even re-designing my logo to fit the new design of my site. Highly recommend!

Damir is surprisingly proactive. And is the kind of person that you can trust with your eyes closed. He’s very detail-oriented, has very good communication skills, and is a problem solver that takes into account the budget of their managers. Really appreciate your work Damir, thanks for putting all the effort in our projects.

Great freelancer. Strong communication both in reaching out as in English skills. Will definitely work again with Damir!

Damir did an excellent job. Communication was superb and he was often faster than the deadline. We could quickly eliminate every problem and move the project forward. Would 110% recommend him!

Damir, has been the most professional and cooperative freelancer we have worked with. His communication skills and adherence to timelines were excellent through the project. we loved his work and we would definitely love to work with him on the future projects too.

Damir is unique in that he has the technical, design, and communication skills necessary to execute quickly and correctly the first time. I consistently felt that he comprehended our goals and considered him an asset to the department.

We are living in a fast world and fast living requires a fast website. Did you know that 80% of visitors that are not satisfied with the speed of the website would never buy from that website? This fact shows you the importance of the website’s speed.

Google algorithm is organized in that way to check for the website’s speed, and if this is not satisfactory, your website will stay hidden in the dark corners of the internet.

So, it’s obvious – the speed of your website matters! That’s why we are offering you a couple of tricks that might help you to speed up your WordPress website.

speed-up-your-wordpress-website

Minimize HTTP requests

Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP request is nothing more than the content of your website sent to the visitor’s browser. This includes images, text, and different multimedia that you have on your webpage. Of course, HTTP request takes time and you can arrange it to improve your website’s speed.

So, what can you do? A good and complex website requires a lot of elements so violent reducing of HTTP material is not the solution. However, you also shouldn’t have more than 30 files on your website. In order to speed up your WordPress website, you will need to know the exact number of HTTP files.

Eliminating all the unnecessary files is the next step. Be sure to use high-quality images that you can compress to a suitable file size. Websites such as Pingdom can help you check the speed of your website and see if you made any progress.

Good caching plugin is a must!

If you use CSS and Javascript for your website, there will be some elements that don’t change at all. That’s why we will introduce another useful term – caching. Caching is a process where these unchangeable elements load only once, which speeds up your WordPress website. This is especially convenient for your regular visitors and buyers.

There is a great number of cache plugins and some of them can improve the speed up to 10 times! W3 Total Cache is one of the first that we need to mention. This plugin can improve the overall performance of your website and also the conversion rates.

WP Super Cache is another plugin that you should have in mind. It deals with static HTML files and delivers them to almost every visitor (even to the visitors that are not logged in). WP Rocket is probably one of the fastest caching plugins but you will have to spend a couple of bucks to get it. However, it can be a wise investment.

Minify, minify, minify …

If you want to increase the speed of your website, you should know that minification of CSS, Javascript, and HTML is very important. What is minification? It is a process where all removable white space from your code gets erased. White space helps us read the content more easily but it doesn’t play any important role in browsers or Google algorithm.

There are many high-quality plugins that you can use to solve this problem. WP Minify is probably a plugin that will first come to your mind. It compresses your Javascript and CSS files and gives you the ability to manipulate particular files that you choose. Autoptimize is another great plugin that you should try out as it has over 200.000 downloads from WP repository, and with so many people using it-you cant go wrong! It chains different styles and scripts, minifies them, compresses them, and also deals with HTML files.

Database Table Optimization

A good website maintenance requires regular updates. However, updates will create a great database of files that can affect the speed of your website. At the moment, WordPress offers 11 tables and most of the websites will use a good number of them. Add saved plugin settings and you will get a great amount of data that lowers the performance of your website. Database optimization is a convenient way to remove all this unused data.

One of the basic ways to organize your database is with phpMyAdmin. This is a free software that you can use to deal with your databases, columns, indexes, etc, and you can find it in every shared hosting account. Plugins are a faster way to solve this issue. WP Optimize will allow you to clean your database quickly and without any manual interventions. After arranging your data, you can try GTmetrix to measure the speed of your WordPress website.

Image Compressing

The last but not least – images can notably slow you down. They are probably the biggest files that you have on your website so there is a great amount of plugins that can help you improve the speed of your website.

Tiny PNG and WP Smush.it are the first on our list. The first plugin reduces the size of PNG files on your website. WP Smush.it reduces the size but keeps the quality, which makes it an essential tool for the website maintenance. This plugin removes the unimportant data of your images and then adds them to your library.

Another term that you might find useful is lazy loading. This concept loads the images only when the visitor scrolls down your webpage. A good plugin that enables this is Lazy Load.

Bottom line

Regular maintenance of a website is essential. If you want to keep up with popular trends and achievements, you need to take some steps that will position your website on the first page of Google search. As we already mentioned, the speed of your website is one of the main factors here. Maybe these tips given above will provide you with that small boost you need to gain more visitors and customers.

Pay attention to your HTTP requests and see if you can minify CSS and Javascript files. Arrange the images and their size and find a good plugin to deal with databases. Don’t forget a proper caching plugin. When you are sure that every possible measure has been taken, check the speed of your website. If the results are in order, smile and wait for the visitors to come.

Dealing with a slow website?

Contact us for a free consult!

We know how frustrating it can be to deal with the slow website! Ask yourself how much money are you leaving at the table and how many potential leads you missed!

Generally, web development is working on the website’s technical aspects. A web designer is the person that is in charge of the visual layout and design of the site, taking that vision and design from a static design into a completely working site, which is online and available to the world. It is important to emphasize that lots of web designers are also developers building websites that they design. Furthermore, occasionally, self-identified web designers are also going to offer design services. This is not a must, but is very common.

How will you know if the web design career is right for you? What qualities and skills are necessary in building a successful career as a web designer? A great starting point is to have a strong interest in computers – the web and the internet, and even if you have not learned to program yet. You will also need a strong measurement of patience, as well as have an inquisitive mind. Even though it is not important, if you have an eye for what looks good on the web, it is sure to stand you in good stead as well.

how-to-become-a-web-designer

Useful learning resources

In terms of skills, a good place to begin is with learning CSS and HTML. It is the basic building blocks of pages on the web. Even though the “What You See Is What You Get” or WYSIWYG programs will make it possible for the web designers in order to bypass the necessity in learning these core skills, most of the web designers would be expected to be able to code through just a simple text editor. Another well worth mastering language is JavaScript. It is not just useful for adding functionality to the web pages, but it will also be able to be used in applications beyond the web.

Ajax will also be able to complement your CSS and HTML skills, and there are many different programming languages, from ASP to Perl, which can be effective and great additions to your web designer toolkit. To develop your understanding about web standards and about how various browsers could render pages in different ways, is another element that can help you troubleshoot sites more effectively.

Here is a list for some of the most useful websites where you can learn various programing languages:

CodeCademy (FREE)
W3 Schools (FREE)
Tuts+ (Payed, offer a 10 trial)
CSS Tricks (FREE)

There are a number online tutorials available out there this is just a tip of the iceberg and once you go into HTML and more programing languages you will find more and more resources online.

As a web designer, it is going to be useful keeping an eye on several other technologies, which rises in popularity. Multimedia content is being used increasingly on all types of sites, so to understand something the technology behind this can be useful. Furthermore, the use of tablet and mobile web computing has been exploding. There are more and more companies, which would want to make sure their website content, will show properly on these new platforms, and have a necessity in developing specialist applications for new devices.

Other than the technical knowledge, having proper soft skills will be able to make the difference, which will transform you from being just a geek to offering a valuable service. To be able to explain technical issues into a non-technical audience needs to be near the top of the list, as have listening skills in order to understand the needs of your clients, and the capability of working with others, such as other designers, developers, and account managers.

Use a proper text editor when going into programing

When starting to program make sure to use a proper text editor when you write. These are some of the most popular:

Notepad++ (Windows)
Sublime Text (Windows, OS X, and Linux)
Atom (Windows, OS X, and Linux)
Emacs (Windows, OS X, and Linux)

Whether you’re an advanced developer or you’re just learning that a “string” isn’t just a piece of thread, there’s one word that doesn’t always come to mind when you’re thinking about software engineering: community. Web development communities, though, are the backbone of programming. They’re places where developers can learn new methods, get some advice on debugging, and stay up to date with the latest trends in tech. It can be difficult to navigate the world of web development communities, since there are hundreds out there, each with their own flavor and target audience. We definitely recommend that you do some surfing of your own and see what sorts of communities might fit your particular interests. That said, we suggest you check out some of the communities below: they cover a range of topics and levels, and there are good odds that at least one will help you, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Check them out!

 

web developers

Reddit’s Webdev

Anyone familiar with Reddit knows they have threads about pretty much every single thing in the world, so it’s not surprising that they have a thread dedicated to web development. The thread has anything you could want as a budding developer: opportunities for meetups, how-to’s for debugging, and job postings. While Webdev doesn’t have as much information as some other communities, it’s a great way to get started.

Toptal

Toptal is the best place for learning about employment as a developer. Whether you’re looking to hire or get hired, it has what you need. Check out their sample interview questions: if you’re an employer, it’ll help you figure out what sorts of answers you should look for, and if you’re a developer, it’ll give you an idea of what you should be saying in an interview. The Toptal Engineering Blog is also an incredibly helpful resource. It covers everything from how to make it as a remote freelancer to the latest tech advances, and all the articles are written by Toptal engineers. Toptal has a super intense screening process that weeds out all but the top 3% of applicants to its network, so you can bet that these resources are pure gold when it comes to developing your own expertise.

 

Webdev Forums

While developers are extraordinarily creative with coding, they’re a bit less creative when it comes to names. Still, Webdev Forums is another great resource whether you’re a budding programmer or John McAfee. You’ll need to create an account and read their terms of service before using the forums, but it’s definitely worth it. You’ll have access to a wealth of information from some of the best coding minds out there. Threads are organized by topic, which range from search engine optimization to monetizing websites. Anything you need will probably be here — you just need to do a bit of digging.

 

Meetups

The above link directs you to an NYC meetup, but whatever city you’re in, there are good odds there’s a meetup by you. While you can generally get information you’re looking for online, sometimes it’s a good idea to get a nice stretch of the legs and interact with some people in real-good-old-fashioned life. Being able to have a dynamic discussion with like-minded developers will get your neurons firing, and is a great way to get motivated for your next project!

 

Dev Shed Forums

Dev Shed Forums is a lot like Webdev, except that the threads are organized by what you’re trying to program (generally language and platform). To give you an idea of the sheer size, here are some numbers: there are nearly 120,000 threads about PHP development alone. The website boasts nearly one million threads in total. That’s insane. While sometimes having so much information can be daunting, it also means that you’re pretty much guaranteed an answer when you’re looking to fix a pesky bug.

 

IBM developerWorks

The downside of developerWorks is that you have to pay for the full service. The upside is that it has tons of resources for advanced developers, as well as plenty of free demos. It also has articles and information on all sorts of interesting topics ranging from internet security to cloud computing.

 

The above communities are just a small sample of what’s waiting for you online; as we said, there are hundreds more communities out there for you to check out. It’s important that you get an idea of the range of communities available to you, so do some googling of your own to see where you fit in best. Before you get sidetracked, though, make sure to check out some of the ones we mentioned. They’re a great jumping off point for most people. Most importantly, don’t forget that just because you’re working behind a screen doesn’t mean you can’t be social and find a supportive network! Web development communities are vibrant, cheerful, and friendly networks of developers who all love what they do. There’s nothing more exciting than realizing that there are millions of people out there who are just as passionate about coding as you are. Go find them!