Blog

Be Consistent and Persistent to Ensure a Successful Website

April 30, 2014

Being consistent and persistent is a little maxim I have developed for updating my website. It’s a simple philosophy I apply to my design and content. Like everyone else in business, I’m busy doing the work that makes me money and I can easily let months go by without updating […]

How do websites accidentally go offline and what happens to your rankings?

March 25, 2014

It’s never a good moment when you realise your website has gone off-line, especially if you are not sure how long it’s been down. Most people don’t visit their own website everyday, and unless they have a site monitoring system set up, weeks can go by with the website being […]

A quick fix for when your website is stuck in WordPress maintenance mode

March 11, 2014

Whenever you update your WordPress installation or any of the plugins via the WordPress dashboard, the website goes into ‘maintenance mode’ with a message displayed saying “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” Maintenance mode is fine if it’s just for a minute, but if you’ve upgraded […]

Mobile Friendly Websites – an introduction to responsive website design and why it’s so important

March 5, 2014

If you have ever viewed a traditional website on a smart phone and had to zoom in and out to read the content, then you have been to a website that is not ‘responsive’. If on the other hand, the content displayed perfectly on your smart phone without any need […]

Beware the extra ‘DNS’ management fee with some overseas domain name registries

March 4, 2014

It really is a case of ‘buyer beware’ when purchasing domain names and services online. What can look like a great cost-saving, can in fact end up costing you more money in the long run. This is particularly the case if you use an overseas registration service for your domain […]

My attempt to write a blog post in fifteen minutes

January 13, 2014

As I write this blog post, it is 11.42am. I’ve just completed my morning’s admin, and finished off the final writing and SEO for a website. It occurred to me, that I should spend the next 15 minutes writing a blog post to see just how far I could get […]

How to register a New Zealand Domain Name

November 27, 2013

Though the process of registering a domain name is quite straight forward there are a few things you need to be aware of. These are things that I keep coming across in my day to day working life as a web designer in New Zealand

Some of the search engine optimisation results we’ve acheived for our web design clients

November 29, 2012

In this short video, I talk about search engine optimisation and some of the results I have achieved for my clients. As a web designer, I’m often asked if I ‘do SEO’. The short answer is yes. In fact, I’ve been doing SEO since before we had a name for […]

Celebrant for You, Premium WordPress Theme set up case study

November 28, 2012

Celebrant for You is a new site for Suzanne Teague an Auckland marriage celebrant. Before contacting Web Matters, Suzanne had already decided on WordPress to run her website and had gotten as far as getting the hosting set up, WordPress installed and a WordPress theme purchased and installed. Things got […]

Why ‘keeping it simple’ is sometimes the right decision for your website

June 27, 2012

As business owners we have to weigh up the choices we make about our marketing budgets. Getting a return on the advertising dollar is all important in these tough financial times. So as a small business, can you justify spending 8-10K on a website? Well it depends on what you […]

Your New Year website check list – 20 essential checks you should make on your website for 2012

January 9, 2012

While you’ve been away on a break over the holiday period your website may well have hit a few snags – or you may have been so busy at the end of the year that a few things have been overlooked. The start of a New Year is an excellent time to run some quick checks of your website to make sure everything is in good working order.

How to be prepared for an earthquake or other natural disaster

July 7, 2011

I originally wrote this blog the week following the February 22, 2011 Christchurch earthquake. It was 11 days out from ‘quake day’, and we didn’t have power, running water or sewerage. Many people can’t begin to imagine what that must be like – and I was one of them. Back […]