Well, things are ramping up again now that people are back at work after the holiday break.

This week saw the set up of a new client website, that is still in build phase. (See my go-to plugin installs for a new WordPress websites in one of my previous posts, here).

Some other highlights of the week were…

Disabling Christmas hours popups on a number of websites, see example.

My go-to popup builder is WP Popup Maker and whilst there are others with more bells and whistles, I especially like this one because it’s easy to configure and design professional looking popups. And easy means less time configuring the popups.

Clients like that!

A client brought on new staff members during the break so we added the new staff member images and bios to the client’s website.

Tip 1: when adding images be sure to crop them just a little larger than the size of the placeholder in which the image will be contained.

The reason for doing that is that both client-supplied and stock images are usually huge in both dimensions and in file size, which is initially a good thing because they’re high quality, but… a good rule of thumb is to, again, reduce the image dimensions to fit the placeholder and most importantly, compress the image to reduce it’s file size. This really helps to prevent slow web-page loading.

My go-to size image file size is 100kb or less, where possible.

Notice how the file size reduces significantly when reducing the image size?

This image was 1200px wide, now its 500px wide and it was 5.3mb and now only 43kb.

Press Image To Enlarge

Sometimes it’s not possible to reduce dimensions and file size too much, especially in large header hero sections at the top of a website, due to the full width dimensions of the placeholder, so if compressed too much the image will pixelate. In that case use your discretion but still compress the image as much as possible without losing image clarity.

Tip 2: The larger the image file size the longer it takes to load – and THAT, my friend, is a BIG NO-NO! 😉

To compress images on my Mac I use either Pixelmator Pro, (USD$49.99 at time of publication), or just the inbuilt (my preferred and free) Preview app. Both work well.

See Mac Preview App guide

See Microsoft Windows tutorial

Tip 3: check your website page load speed free at → Google’s Page Speed Insights ← site.

Just type your website URL (eg; www.yourwebsite.com) at the top where it says Enter a web page URL then wait for the results, (see example image).

A good page load speed is 90 or above, on both Mobile and Desktop. If it’s below 90, click here to get a free quote to speed up your website.

These are just a few of the various projects from the past week and I hope the overview and tips prove to be useful to you.

If you have any questions be sure to get in touch here and don’t forget to subscribe to get my weekly updates with free tips, like these, and more.