Archives for December 2024

Back End Maintenance

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Maintenance
The back end needs to be regularly maintained.

After you’ve set up your website, there are a few things required to keep your website running smoothly.

Domain Registration:

As explained here, your registration should always stay current, whether you have this registered separately or bundled together with your hosting.

Hosting:

Support & updates to your hosting account is automatically included in your purchase. This includes things you want to do ON your server. Such as turn your http to https, update your MySQL, Php compatibility, and such like.

Website Back End:

Like cars need regular tune ups, the vehicle of your choice also needs to be constantly kept up to date and maintained lest hackers find a way in. This is the responsibility of whoever’s running your car – your website developer usually.

All these these things and more need to be kept constantly up to date:

  • WordPress Core CMS files
  • WordPress Theme
  • Plugins
  • Site security
  • Contact form security

Updates are constantly being released, and if they are not kept up with, your website may break. . . when it gets out of compliance and outdated; and worse, your site becomes much more susceptible to hacking and phishing attempts.

All Together:

I take care of the techy stuff so you don’t have to. I am happy when I see you focused on your business and your actual web content.

When you purchase hosting with us, and are using WordPress; all of the above routine backend tasks are bundled together as one low price in your yearly Hosting & Maintenance renewal.

Or not:

However, if you prefer to purchase hosting only, and deal with your website’s backups, updates, maintenance, security, etc on your own- you may. I’m happy to teach you (or your designated web person) how to keep up with all of this.

More from the car metaphor series:

Pikes Peak USA Dance

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On the Pikes Peak USA Dance Board for 6 years (2012 – 2018), I first started out as webmaster, converting the static, single html webpage into an attractive, user-friendly, and informative multi-paged website. Using a Content Management System allowed the non-technical board members to more easily keep the website updated.

Eventually I shifted to designing the monthly event flyers, coordinating the overall look with their website and email campaigns.

“These flyers are our primary means of attracting new members, so having eye-catching ones was certainly a help and we did in fact begin to see more new faces.

Successful design also gets out there. Simple as making sure the flyers get distributed, the event info is submitted to local publications, and tending to ppusadance’s online presence, which soon included a more active social media platform in addition to the website.

“For 6 years Anna was an invaluable help when it comes to the chapter’s visual branding, design, marketing, & promotion.” 

Enjoy these flyers, representative of the images + text blending that I enjoy doing. Long-time dancers in town may remember some of these.

Valentine’s Dances
Spring & Summer Dances
Fall & Halloween Dances

Definitely always popular.

Winter Dances

The traditional Winter Dances evolved over the year from Christmas to Holiday to Winter.

Lesson Days

Rarely did I get to work with the spacious 1/2-page format. These coordinate with their corresponding dance flyers shown above.

Social Media

Making a design work for multi-purpose: cropping to the featured top part of these flyers above easily gave the right dimensions for use as masthead banners on Facebook.

Save the Date

Business cards not only told where to find more information about Pikes Peak USA Dances but also served as “Save these Dates” reminders on the backsides.

Vouchers

Offering incentives helps improve attendance.

Hrid Akasha Wellness

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Hrid Akasha Wellness, with pinks & purples, supports women in ayurvedic-based healing and meditation. The goddess Lakshami, often represented as an elephant, conveys the atmosphere of Deahna’s practice.

During the Covid-19 season, Deahna needed a functional and simple website for easy contact and appointment scheduling to continue running her yoga, meditation, and massage business.

Egghead

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Once upon a time, I touched up Egghead for a neighbor whose young visitor some years earlier had contributed a face onto it.

They weren’t able to undo the damage, and to look at their Egghead had by then became a source of … discontentment, and so it’d been sitting high up in a dark, obscure corner.

Egghead, before

One day, they asked if I’d fix it up with a new face. Although painting faces is not the sort of thing I usually do, I was happy to give something different a try.

Egghead, with a new face

Oh! They love their Egghead now, and it sits in a much more prominent place than before — right on the fireplace mantel!

And… I love the Egghead too because it reminds me that deep down we are all just like this Egghead.

We’ve all got good qualities, content, and abilities, just the same as this Egghead had and still has. And yet even tho we may be especially good at what we do, busy doing what we do best, we might even still sit, and sit… all lackluster, not attracting attention, and feeling sad.

I gave Egghead a new face, and for it, it was a new life. It even gets involved in conversations now.

All this to say of course, is just a metaphor: what I am especially good at is bringing out your talent, highlighting your achievements, and showcasing your skills.

“… Once I thought I was done with the details of some project- Anna swoops in and makes it even better! …”

Making you look good, better, yea even the best. To see you hitting your goals, ever moving your target. That’s something I enjoy doing.

What is it that you do best?

If you need help with looking good while doin’ it, check out my website, send me a pm, inquire via email, and/or schedule a free discovery call to see how I can help with the ideas you’ve got.

The Website

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Now let’s put the basic parts of a website together:

The Back End

is the technical aspects: your registered domain name plus a hosting space with a CMS (content management system (ie WordPress)) installed on it.

& the Front End

is what the public sees. It is the information you put on it. And typically, the visual aspects of your new website has been customized to look like you.

Frontend
The front end is what people see.
This is often up to you, and/or your communication specialist.

 

Your website is your hosting space,
+ your registered domain name,
car with WordPress colors
loaded with a WordPress content management system.
Yay! Now you have a website!

Once you have a website up — congratulations! Your next step now is to customize it, keep it current, attract and engage visitors.

Stay tuned by signing up for Anna Blueberry Digital Media’s newsletter below/in the column. We’re also on social platform, check out the links in the footer.

More from the car metaphor series:

McKenna Shooting Sports

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McKenna was fun to work with; Shawn had distinct ideas how his branding ought to go– with a literal hole in its logo.

I especially liked the dual use of his business cards. Frustrated with the body-measuring errors so often encountered, Shawn uses the backside of his business card to jot down measurements for shooting outfits– anywhere, wherever, and whenever the opportunity arose.

Measuring people at shooting tournaments, whether they might be ordering a suit or not, allowed prospective customers to have the time to go home and have a think about it, and then later order, by phone or online, with their precisely-taken measurements already ready on the backside of the contact info.