Phillip Dews

Hello Friends. I have written a couple of blog posts on website speed recently. The first one on WEBP and how to set it up with WordPress. The second one on StackPathCDN and how to set it up with your site and how to get a grade A on PageSpeed and YSlow. I am going to be writing a third roundup post within a few weeks and would love for you to leave me a sentence or two about what you do to get your site loading fast, your suggestions, gripes, ideas and recommendations. In return I will include a DoFollow link back to any post you want it pointing too 😁. Let them roll. Phillip

Welcome to the mad house.

Alright FunkyCoder, Welcome, I feel your pain as well. I myself have only been developing bespoke themes with WordPress for about six years now and started out over a decade ago now. I'm currently taking a PWA course on Udemy that is awesome so I would suggest that you start there as you can fine loads of courses and rather good prices. I cut my teeth in this trade from a few other sites like W3Schools, PHP.net and DevelopPHP.com. I hope that these will help. Best of luck.

Hi Paulos99, Welcome. you have started an interesting threat here. As a freelance web developer my advice is always the same. Never rush into this and breath. Ask yourself a few questions before starting out and looking for a web developer. what do I want to achieve with the website? Who is my main competition? What does success look like in a years time? Will I need a bespoke site or a build your own like Wix? What is my budget and what am I comfortably prepared to spend? I suspect that you will need a fast loading and bespoke website that can be easily be scaled up as your business grows. Wix, SquareSpace and others are good for people wanting to start a very small business and not wanting to grow it. Yes they do look awesome compared with others but you may find in time they can be restrictive and extending them to your needs may become a problem in the future as your business grows. Finding a good freelancer with a reputation can be quite a minefield as the competition is so great amongst us. But getting one to work with you can be a godsend and finding one that will not abandon you after the site launch is what you want to go for. Do a search for freelancer web developers near me Read over their website/blog Check out their portfolio and contact the site owners for their experience Ask if you will get a bespoke site that's easily extended and not a over-bloated downloadable theme. Search for reviews on Trustpilot, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Clutch.co, Yell and others There is a lot more you can do but I recommend that you first decide what it is you want to achieve. Find out your competition by searching google for the keywords and phases you want to rank for. Come up with an initial budget and marketing plan for the site that your happy with and be honest with the freelancer about it. After choosing the Freelancer, get in touch with the owners of the sites he/she has built and ask them questions about what they thought about said freelancer. The list can go on and on but I hope that I have given you some food for thought here. Best of luck. Phillip Dews

Welcome Sue, I have just joined myself as well. Good here aint it? Phillip

Hello everyone here, I have just joined the Web Designer Forum and thought it would be worth my time introducing myself. I'm Phillip happily married to Louise and a freelance website developer, blogger and designer from Birmingham. I am self taught and over the past decade I have build a number of bespoke and unique websites fro clients all across the globe. Up until very recently I was running a site called The Web Engineer which was my main company.. I am no longer Ltd and have consolidated that site into my main freelance web design blog Phill dot Blog. I hope that with my years of experience and knowledge I am able to help a few of you out with answers to questions on here. Cheerio for now. Phillip