SEO

SSL – Eight Reasons to Implement SSL Encryption Now

This is the logo for Hannah West Design, web designer to artists, logo designed by Hannah West © 2000-2016 Hannah WestSSL padlock icon

Hannah West Design Now Secure!

Hannah West Design is now secured with a brand new SSL certificate! On January 14, we migrated www.hannahwestdesign.com to a new hosting service. This is NameCheap hosting, which we want to try out on behalf of our starving artist clients to find out if hosting service compares well to other hosts who don’t have the same affordable pricing.

In addition, Google is now promoting sites that are protected with SSL encryption and demoting those without it by placing an “Unsecured Site” flag (similar to the “This site might be hacked” flag we sometimes see) next to any website which does not have SSL. This is part of a widespread movement to encrypt the web (Learn more at Let’sEncrypt.org). With that in mind, we decided to make the switch to SSL encryption at the same time. As a result, our updated address is https://www.hannahwestdesign.com. We’re proud of that beautiful green padlock displaying in the address bar now!

What is SSL?

SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. A correctly installed SSL certificate encrypts all information transmitted to and from your website. This protects your private information when visiting the site, from which pages you visit to sharing to submitting contact forms to purchasing online. Websites with contact forms, login pages, online shops, etc. can all benefit from the added security provided by this encryption. Visitors will feel more secure interacting with your site, which is a huge bonus. Importantly, each certificate comes with a guarantee, so if a malicious entity subjects you to liability for damage to a visitor, you will receive a settlement form the certificate issuer. This amount varies with the level of certificate used, but starts at $10,000.

There was a time when conventional wisdom said that applying SSL to an entire website would make its pages load more slowly. However, recent advice from numerous experts in the field now assures us that the opposite is now true. And we are seeing our website load with a bit more spring in its step today…the ultimate proof.

Implementing SSL

The process of implementing SSL can be simple and painless, but it can also be rather harrowing. For me it was somewhere in between those extremes. I have been through this before on client sites as well. While some need extra attention for various reasons, most of the time it’s complete—including all the content tweaks needed for that lovely green padlock to display—in 2–4 hours.

To increase your standing with the search engines, additional tasks are necessary. Once the SSL is in place, we need to make adjustments in Google Webmaster Tools so they can direct traffic to the secure version of your site. We also need to adjust your Google Analytics account so traffic stats will continue to be collected accurately.

Pricing and Other Requirements

Many things related to SSL certificates have changed in the last couple of years. For one thing, they used to be very expensive. While prices for certificates to protect sites that don’t involve e-commerce have become quite affordable, there are now free certificates available from Let’s Encrypt. The catch is that not all hosts have a quick and easy way to install them and the process of doing it manually can take a good deal of time. Furthermore, some hosts—like Ipower—refuse to allow third-party certificates to be installed on their servers. While we could have used Cloudflare on our site, we opted for a Comodo Positive SSL certificate, which NameCheap offers for only $1.99 the first year. Renewals are a very reasonable $9.00/year with discounts for advance purchase up to three years. That’s a big discount from the same certificate on Ipower ($31.99) and Bluehost’s for $4.17/month. What’s the catch? You have to have your website hosted with NameCheap too. Also very inexpensive, so definitely worth considering.

Previously you had to have a dedicated IP address (the numerical equivalent of your web address) for an SSL certificate. This meant you had to have private hosting (expensive) or pay a monthly fee of $4.99-6.99 PER MONTH to have a dedicated IP added to your otherwise reasonably-priced shared hosting. Because unique IP addresses have become more and more rare, this prerequisite has been lifted by many certificate issuers and hosts. Instead, they tie the certificate identity to the domain instead of the server IP. All this has made SSL encryption more affordable to the average website owner. The benefits are greater now too.

Benefits of SSL Encryption

Some hosts provide free SSL certificates, but most do not. These free certificates may have downsides you’d rather not deal with. We found that Bluehost’s free SSL, issued by Comodo, only covers the root domain (https://your-domain.com) and NOT the www version. Big problem for sites installed with www.your-domain.com addresses. We can avoid this with the use of Cloudflare. Though it’s a completely different setup, their free certificate will cover both the bare domain and the www version. Entry-level SSL certificates have become much more affordable than they once were, too.

I’m ready to begin helping others to make this important change as well. I’ve learned the ins and outs of what is possible and what is not on several hosts. I can inform you of your options and advise you on which is the best choice for the money.

If you’re not sure you even want to deal with this undertaking or not, please consider the benefits:

  1. Receive payments through your ecommerce website – Most payment gateways now require SSL, even PayPal
  2. Give your visitors greater confidence in the security of their transactions, interactions with your site, and personal information
  3. Limit liability for identity theft
  4. Boost page load times
  5. Greater protection from hackers
  6. Prevent unknown people snooping on activity to and from your website
  7. Boost your SEO
  8. Participate in the movement to encrypt the entire web

Are you ready to apply SSL to your own website and enjoy these benefits? Please contact me!

Client Websites

If you need a new website or another online service, please use the links below to visit some of the client websites I have designed. I’ve been doing this long enough now that some of the sites I’ve designed and redesigned are offline due to retirement and other reasons. Many of them are also represented on my Portfolio page, where you can read my comments about the project. While I’m always happy to start from scratch when building new sites, any one of the sites below could be reproduced and updated with your own content to save on costs.

Oh, it’s SO embarrassing! As they say, the cobbler’s kids go barefoot…and the web designer’s website chronically needs updating! I am currently managing maintenance and content updates for over 70 websites, and the list continues to grow. I’ve updated this list of client websites as of July 30, 2022.

I experienced some important life changes in 2022. As a result, I now work from a new location in Talent, Oregon. New websites and redesign projects are underway, with more waiting in the wings, so I anticipate further updates to this page before long.

**   E-Commerce examples

*** Custom websites I’m exceptionally proud to have created, redesigned, and/or customized.

Web Design Client Website Links:

Small Business Client Websites

  • Transcend Healing – NEW! 2022 New Website. Kate Huckert of MetaPhysical Therapy & Pilates decided to go into life coaching in partnership with her Canadian friend, Lisa, an established spiritual healer and coach. Initially, we combined all their information into a new page on Kate’s existing website, but their accountants objected. Therefore we separated the content, creating a new website for Lisa in the process. She was meticulous with every detail and the end result is a beautiful site that could be adapted for just about any solopreneur. We launched in January 2022, and she keeps me on for regular maintenance and adding occasional blog posts.
  •  ThermeshadeInspired by the work I had done for a close friend of hers, Diana Eastman hired me to help her bring her own website up to speed in time for a large convention for her industry. We combed through the site, element by element, cleaning up the layout of each page and updating the content as we went. It was a thoroughly effective project, completed in April 2022—in time for her to prepare for her convention and inspiring her to refer me to others in her industry.
  • Beck Physical Therapy – NEW! 2022 redesign. I had been maintaining the website of this New York physical therapist for some time when the unthinkable happened. It crashed and crashed hard. The site was originally created nearly two decades prior by another designer and the theme’s code had become so outdated that it wasn’t playing nice with the plugins. There was simply nothing I could do to rescue it but to abandon the theme and recreate the site with a new one. They consented to my suggestion that we convert the site to Divi and took advantage of the opportunity to update the content and restore some lost content in the process. It’s now happy and easy to maintain, causing the owners no problems and serving their business effectively.
  • Nancy F ClarkNEW! Late 2021 launch. A former rocket scientist with JPL, Director of Forbes WomensMedia for 8 years, artist, and author of the book, Positivity Daily, Nancy hid her fascination with channeling from friends and colleagues for many years. Then she decided that she wanted to share the information she had gained from sifting through many channelers and determining which were legit and which were not bothering with and why. Her courses educate the public about discerning between channelers, which channelers she respects and why, and more about channeling in general. this was an on-again-off-again project that took years to complete, but the streamlined result is working for her.
  • ** ***The Glass Forge2020 new website. An established client referred The Glass Forge, a long-running and successful Grants Pass business, to me for a complete redesign of their website from the ground up. In addition, e-commerce was added to it using WooCommerce to power their online shop. It was slow to get off the ground, but once we built up some steam, it went smoothly. Their artistic glass products are so beautiful that it was a joy to create. They had apparently done a remarkable job promoting their business prior to this because they received orders through the website within a day of its launch—something I had never seen before! The owner told me he felt the website came out a lot better—both as far as esthetics and functionality— than he had expected. That is one of the side benefits of the work I do…the big smiles such compliments put on my face and the long, productive relationships that arise from doing solid work! The gorgeous glass items in the shop are a must-see when you check out their website.
  • Jacksonville Tax Lady2020 website conversion to WordPress and Redesign. We based the new design on another website that the co-owner I worked with had been involve din and this worked out very well. It was so easy to work with her and she was so happy with her rejuvenated site once it was done!
  • ** ***DriFlower™ The Original HangHarvesting™ System – 2020 new ecommerce website. The site went live on Saturday, August 1, after starting work on June 3. Many grateful thanks to DriFlower founder and CEO Jay Larkins for the opportunity! Kudos to Marketing Director Jon Griffin for a productive working partnership on the site design and content. (side note: Jon also hired me to maintain two websites he has for his own businesses, MrJonGriffin.com and Lunazen.com.) #DriFlower makes #hangharvesting equipment that reduces harvest time and cost while preserving precious flower from harvest to trim. Revolutionizing the cannabis and hemp industries with game-changing harvest equipment! Learn more about this client’s website project here.
  • *** Giclée Yoshimatsu 2019 new website. A dear friend of another client of mine, the proprietor of Giclée Yoshimatsu decided it was time for a website to complement his flourishing fine art printing business. I’m grateful that he chose me to do the work, as it’s a lovely, minimalist site with certain traits that set it apart from the rest. Yoshimatsu offers fine art printing both in Arkansas where he’s based and throughout the West. He also does his own fine art photography, which you can see on the site. He has connections to places where West Coast artists can show in the Southwest, making him a doubly valuable ally. Artist Genie Talbott, mentioned below in the Websites for Artists section, has used him for her fine art prints for years. Artist Brenda Mills Brannan, mentioned below in the Websites for Artists section, liked the layout of his new website so much that we used it for her new website, too. Thanks for the referral, Genie!
  • *** Tachi Skin Care 2019 HTML to WordPress conversion and hosting migration for an aesthetician who started her practice in southern Oregon but needed a fresh online presentation after moving to Portland. We preserved the design of her existing website while converting it to the WordPress platform, adding new content and features, and hooking her up with a blog and Mailchimp newsletters. Thanks for the referral, John!
  • ***Spa Jacksonville 2018 HTML to WordPress conversion and hosting migration for a long-established and beloved local business. We largely preserved the minimalist, clean and spare design while adding new content and features, including bios for each of the professionals on staff. Look for a new e-commerce feature (Square) with Spa’s custom skincare products AND for the therapists of Spa to begin blogging soon! Thanks for the referral, Mary!
  • ** ***American Memorycraft 2018 New website for American MemoryCraft in Grants Pass. Owner Eli Beard (also known locally as the owner of Rogue Art Glass) employs 12 master glass blowers to create the company’s gorgeous cremation urns. Photographs of their work made creating a beautiful website a delight, and Eli’s desire to include plenty of interesting historical information and more made it a well-rounded site as far as content, too. The WooCommerce catalog that becomes a full-featured online shop when a member (limited to his wholesale national distributors, which include Forest Lawn and more industry-wide stars) logs in was a complex undertaking, but it’s working beautifully and has prepared me to do more sites along these lines.
  • Ryan’s Outpost 2017 New website, SEO, maintenance, and content updates for the iconic Applegate Valley business.
  • ** *** Carpe Diem Papers 2017 Redesigned website and massive overhaul for an Ashland, Oregon greeting card designer with newly added eCommerce capabilities and Mailchimp integration; ongoing maintenance and content updates.
  • *** Mountain Sun Botanicals – 2016 Southern Oregon medical marijuana grower site conversion from html to WordPress, preserving home page design and redesigning subpages, setting up custom Google Suite business emails, SSL. We partially updated the website in mid-2021 but were not able to complete this task by year’s end. They’re super busy and have a small child. Some projects just don’t have to set new land speed records! We hope to be back on track with a more professional design sometime in late 2022.
  • *** Meta Physical Therapy & Pilates – 2016 New website, ongoing maintenance. I just love the new website created for H. Kate Huckert, DPT, in 2016. Her fondness for the Oriental aesthetic is expressed beautifully in this layout and design. I have the same soft spot for Asian design so this was particularly rewarding for me.
  • *** Ruch Hardware – 2016 New website, SEO, maintenance, and content updates. This site has personality plus, like its owner, and is quite the community hub in the Ruch/Applegate Valley area. Tiffany updates her blog regularly, so it’s a great community resource. See more details about this project.
  • Iris Colored Dreams – 2016 New website, SEO, and maintenance for Silhouette, a woman practicing in the blind psychic tradition. In 2020 we added an e-commerce feature so people could subscribe to read her “Tales That Told Themselves” as she releases them. Some of these Tales are in prose form while others are videos. All are fascinating and add a wonderful new dimension to her website.
  • C St Bistro – 2015 Website redesign with WordPress conversion, SEO, and ongoing maintenance and content updates for a local casual gourmet restaurant. More details about this project here.
  • *** Markwood Heavenly Strings & Cases 2014 Site redesign/conversion to WordPress and content updates for a Talent, OR woman who creates custom harp strings and more. A nicely streamlined site with great graphics-to-text balance. Click to see more about the conversion project. There is more here, too.
  • ** *** Dodero Studio Ceramics – For the past few years I have mostly worked with John Dodero on search engine optimization for his Raku pottery e-commerce (WooCommerce) website. Eventually, this emphasis on SEO demanded that we merge his HTML site with his blog in 2014 and convert it from an outdated theme to a modern one that is mobile-friendly while preserving the site’s original design in 2015early 2016. We continue to work together to add new content, and new products, and keep the search engine optimization…optimized.
  • Shosha Yoga – 2011 New website.

Community, Non-Profit & Association Client Websites

  • Art Presence Art Center – In 2022, I completed a massive redesign of the original site I designed for this local nonprofit art gallery in 2012. Updated branding and an overhaul of their online “look” and content, this redesign has been a modernization of their online presence. Our ongoing work includes maintenance, social media support, and monthly content updates. I continue to write a monthly article for Art Presence which has been published in the Jacksonville Review since 2010.
  • Pastel Artists of Oregon – After hiring me to update content and maintain her website, artist Judy Richardson referred the Pastel Artists of Oregon organization to me for maintenance and periodic content updates. Their original volunteer designer was terrific, but with a young and growing family and a day job, he needed to step aside, leaving them with no support for their online presence. In late 2021 the president of the organization contacted me and in 2022 I started work. We wound up doing more to update and streamline the content than I originally expected, and they have complimented me on how easy I am to collaborate with and the efficiency of my work.
  • Miss Cindy’s Neighborhood Nursery School – Referred to me in February 2021 by a former web designer who now runs a successful tech business, Miss Cindy’s website was very dated and had lost/was losing its functionality in many areas. It badly needed a current theme as the old one could not be updated, causing the WordPress core and other elements to be stuck in the same situation. This creates a security risk as well as lost or intermittent functions…not a good look for a very mature nursery school! Cindy was happy with the design, so we migrated the site to her own hosting service. Then I converted it to a modern, supported theme while preserving most of its design and updating other elements, as well as some of the content. She was delighted with the outcome and I’m delighted to have such a wonderful new client!
  • Aircraft Design Guide 2020 New website. My client, Don Chapin, who gave me the redesign/WordPress conversion jobs for buddha-consciousness.org, light-path-resources.org, and militarytruth.org, was a military man and an aerospace engineer earlier in his life. There was a particular project he had been closely involved with over the course of many years. This involved researching materials and creating design recommendations for more effective windshields for military aircraft that would withstand the impact of hitting a bird at jet speeds. When trying to find the extensive research he and his colleague had written up during that time in online military libraries he couldn’t find one thing. It turned out that the lone copy he had of the aircraft windshield design guide they had written was the only one in existence! So he handed me the 2000-page book and asked me to first scan the entire book into a searchable pdf file (a monumental task in itself!) and then create a simple website to share the book with interested parties who might be searching for such a resource. It’s not complex or extensive, but a pride and joy website nonetheless. How often does one get called in to help preserve information gained at great cost that would otherwise be lost forever? I’m honored to have been entrusted with this task. Thank you, Don!
  • *** Lithia Artisans Market 2018 New website for the Lithia Artisans Market (LAMA), in Ashland, Oregon. The volunteers who manage the group’s online presence had been using a free site at WordPress.com for years and decided it was finally time to go for their own self-hosted website. Having access to numerous resources, including their own designer and photographer, made building this site a joy, and the final result sent us all over the moon. We may be adding more features and content to it in the future…if the coronavirus lets this popular outdoor market come back in 2021, that is.
  • *** The Buddha Consciousness2017 Website migration to new host and redesign for the first of three sites owned by an online free church, Light Path Resources. Ongoing maintenance and content updates, including an entire section on books written and published by the owner and his late wife. In 2021, we are adding content related to the site owner’s new book and an e-commerce feature so he can sell his books directly from his website. I’ll let you know when the new features are fully launched… and you’ll see a couple of extra asterisks in front of the site title here once the shop is online!
  • *** Light Path Resources2017 Website migration to new host and redesign for the second of three sites owned by an online free church, Light Path Resources. Ongoing maintenance and very frequent content updates.
  • *** Military Truth – 2017 Website migration to new host and redesign for a nonprofit seeking to educate people considering enlisting in the Armed Forces so they know what they’re getting into. Ongoing maintenance and very frequent content updates.
  • *** Jennifer Faith – 2014 Design, SEO, and maintenance for a site that supports victims of domestic violence and abuse. Best for a blogger with great featured images, as the Home page depends on excerpts for the design. Click here to read more about the project.
  • *** Southern Oregon Artists Resource – Launched 1/1/2010, currently being redesigned behind the scenes and will ultimately merge with the blog. This is an example of a successful, large, and very complex project which I created from scratch. I’m eager to get the new site completed and launched!
  • Southern Oregon Artists Resource Companion Blog, Art Matters – Launched 3/2010, currently being redesigned behind the scenes and will be merged with the directory site above. Watch for the completion of this enormous project!

Artist Client Websites

  • Janet E Higgins NEW! Grants Pass sculptor, Janet Higgins, asked me to create a new, minimalist website showcasing her uniquely creative and powerful sculptures in time for the opening of an important show of her work at the Grants Pass Museum of Art in July 2022. We finished by the deadline and she was delighted with the results!
  • *** Stefan Baumann, Plein Air Artist – In 2020, we completely redesigned Stefan’s website. His response to the new look was “when I go to my website it feels like landing on a big, soft pillow…exactly the feel I was hoping for!” More work to streamline the content is ongoing. This was originally a massive search engine optimization (SEO) project that required reorganizing the entire site’s content and pointing two no longer used, but very SEO-important, domains to his new website. Stefan recently dubbed me the SEO Queen for the success of my work, which enabled him to establish a global artist coaching service. Working with his assistant Kris Baxter, I have also designed and formatted a catalog for a large art show of Stefan’s work in southern California as well as the free e-book he gives to everyone who signs up for his email list.
  • Oregon Backroads Author WebsiteIn 2020, Jacksonville author Ed McBee contacted me to redesign his website and update the content upon the publishing of his second book about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, A Twisting Journey Continues. A fairly simple project that was completed quickly and for a very reasonable price.
  • Judy Richardson Fine ArtIn 2020, Jacksonville fine artist Judy Richardson contacted me because she had lost her previous web designer and needed to update the paintings on her website. Hers was a fairly simple project that was completed quickly for a very reasonable price, and now I maintain the site, standing ready for new content updates whenever she’s ready with new paintings.
  • EA Leutkemeyer, AuthorIn 2019, Jacksonville author Gene Leutkemeyer contacted me to update the content of his website upon the publishing of his second book, Penitentiary Tales: A Love Story. We didn’t completely redesign it, but did update the look with a new logo, rearranged the content, and added a new page for his new book. We usually do a little something each year to add to the content. His books are fascinating – check him out!
  • *** Marie’s Baskets2019 New website. Marie contacted me to convert her old website to WordPress and freshen the content. It wound up being a bigger job than we anticipated, and the new baskets we added to the site are stunners! The site is lovely, uncluttered, and clean, and the wares are well worth visiting to see!
  • *** Glenn J Hill, Author2019 New website. I had worked on Glenn’s harp website and his wife’s harp string website for several years when he wrote a book, got it published, and asked me to build a website for it. This was a super fun website to create and it came out really lovely. You might like his book, too, the first in a series of three with more to come soon. Check it out!
  • *** Sculptor Jay Warren2019 New website. Jay’s Warren Sculpture website had gotten quite dated and he no longer had time to update the content himself, so he approached me to redesign it, moving to the WordPress platform. Jay’s work is no joke – his magnificent life-size bronze statues and monuments have been commissioned by top players, as well as local and state governments across the country. His work is amazing, and his website is now a wonderful setting in which to showcase it. You really must visit to see his bronzes!
  • *** Brenda Mills Brannan2019 New website. Brenda had just moved to the area and her website had been down for over a year as she and her husband built their new home. I was delighted that she contacted me when she was ready to get back online with a new website! Her art is so beautiful and she chose a design format for her site that’s a departure from the usual. Please check it out and see for yourself!
  • *** Indigenous Spirit2019 New website. Blindish artist Silhouette created some amazing art as she was losing her eyesight to Graves disease. Check out the amazing videos she made and posted online just for people to enjoy. Thanks for the second website assignment, Silhouette!
  • *** Wing Tips HA! 2018 New website. Artist Leslie Dwyer started this site but quickly found herself out of time, so I took it from the bare bones start she had accomplished to completion. Her goal for this website was to establish the value of her Wing Tips — humorous and uniquely rendered single-frame advice “comics” — prior to presenting the idea to publishers so she can print a gift book containing them. Once I had the site completed, Leslie scheduled a years’ worth of Wing Tips to publish one or two every week. She is quickly gaining a devoted following, myself included, which I truly hope ends up in a successful publishing deal for her. Once you’ve seen this one, check out her Design4Peace.com website, with loads of terrific social justice poster designs! Leslie is amazing.
  • *** Ray Pague – 2017 New artist website. You must see Ray’s beautiful work and unique style of painting! He and his wife contacted me to create his new website as soon as they moved to southern Oregon from North Carolina, where he is well known for his art. Another artist website of which I’m especially proud.
  • ** *** Carpe Diem Papers 2017 Redesigned website and massive overhaul for an Ashland, Oregon greeting card designer with newly added eCommerce capabilities and newsletter integration; ongoing maintenance and content updates. I can’t begin to say how fun it is to work with Mindy Carpenter. She has (always very circumspectly to be respectful of my time and willingness to take on side projects) asked me to do numerous non-website-related things for her, from knocking out the backgrounds of some of her paintings so she can make them into stickers and other specialty products to reformatting the images of a selection of her greeting card designs so they can be included in the online shop of a very ritzy MoMA. It’s such a pleasure to be a small part of her well-deserved success!
  • Carla J Griffin – 2016 New Website, maintenance, and content updates for an award-winning artist in Grants Pass, Oregon.
  • *** Catherine Anderson, AWS -2015 Massive overhaul including redesign, SEO, and security measures. One of my pride and joy website designs!  Be sure to visit and see her award-winning watercolors!
  • ** *** Linda Abblett Watercolors – 2015 HTML to WordPress conversion with redesign and added e-commerce (WooCommerce), maintenance and content updates, SSL added 2017. Another beautiful custom site I’m proud to have been chosen to create. See more details about this project here.
  • *** Michael Carpenter, OPA – 2015 New website, maintenance. A very handsome website for an exceptionally talented and experienced artist. More details about this project hereand here.
  • *** Pat Moore Photography 2015 New website, maintenance, SEO services for a fabulous photographer.
  • ** *** Kim Novak – 2014 New website with e-commerce (PayPal), maintenance and content updates, SSL added 2017. A conservative site that showcases this beloved actress’ incredibly creative pastel and oil paintings, accompanied by her original poetry. We have worked closely together over the years and the new paintings and poetry we have added just keep making it better and better as time goes on. I also managed her business selling prints of her original paintings for years. She has now decided that she would rather enjoy the time she has left on Earth by painting and riding her horses than deal with the obligations the print sales business laid upon her, so we modified the website to remove all that content and it’s now a showcase for all her paintings. I also manage her Facebook page, KimNovakActress. Read more about the creation of her new website here.
  • *** Pegi Smith – 2014 Migration to new host, massive website redesign and SEO, ongoing maintenance and content updates, added SSL in 2016. A complex and extensive artist website of which I’m especially proud. Pegi’s dreamy paintings are amazing to work with and make the site especially stunning visually. See more details about this client’s website here.
  • Lori Garfield, Animal Artist – 2014 New website, maintenance and content updates. Everything went smoothly throughout this project, and when it was completed in November 2014, Lori wrote,”YIPPEE SKIPPEE Great job Hannah…Ohhh happy girl. Thank you!” Click for more details about her website project…and there’s more here, as well.
  • *** Mountain Glen Harps – 2014 New website, SEO, maintenance. Click to read more about this project hereand here.
  • Eve Margo Withrow – 2014 New Website, maintenance and content updates. Read more about this project here.
  • Elaine Frenett Watercolors – 2014 New Website, maintenance and content updates, completely redesigned in 2020. Click here to read more about the original 2014 project. Visit her website to see the beautiful redesign!
  • ** Wendy Gell Jewelry & Art – 2014 Massive website redesign plus e-commerce (WooCommerce) and ongoing maintenance. More details about this project hereand here, too.
  • Joan Pechanec – 2013 New Website, maintenance, and annual content updates. Joan needed a budget solution for her site and I worked with her to display the maximum number of paintings (40) possible while keeping costs to a minimum. The new site landed Joan her first solo show at the Orlando Art Center the same year it was launched! After painting for nearly a year to have enough work to fill the space, she sold nearly all of the works on display. A super rewarding outcome, for sure, and now she contacts me once every year to add new paintings to the site. Read more about the creation of her original site here. Visit her website to see the beautiful new 2021 redesign we launched in September 2021!
  • Catie Faryl – 2012 New Website. Click to see more details about this project.
  • Rio Querencia Fine Art Images –  2010 New custom HTML website for a wonderful fine art photographer. Check out my post about this project here and here.

SSL Installation, Search Engine Optimization, Troubleshooting and Repair, Maintenance, and Hosting Migration Client Websites

  • McCully House Inn – The McCully House Inn changed hands in July 2021, and another client referred them to me to help with the migration of the website and connected services (such as email) into their full ownership and control. This doesn’t sound like a huge undertaking, but because the site is older and hadn’t been actively maintained in at least a full year, it turned out to be very complex, with lots of moving parts and many other professionals involved in various roles. Thankfully, I was able to successfully navigate this challenging task, and the site is now in the process of receiving its brand new reservation system. The new owners plan a redesign later in 2022 when they’ve adjusted to recent changes in their personal lives.
  • Jefferson Farm Kitchen I just love it when I can get behind someone’s business, and this is one of them! Unfortunately, her website was suffering from numerous errors that made things tricky, erratic, and therefore difficult to diagnose when customers showed up to place their weekly food orders. Another client whom I had helped through a similar situation referred her to me in early 2021, and her skepticism was soon turned to joy when one by one the problems started to disappear. Soon, we plan a major content update directed by her marketing director.
  • Springerhaven – This couple has been breeding beautiful, sound, and well-behaved Springer Spaniels that have found homes with families across the nation for over 25 years. They have an amazing following, many of whom have purchased more than one dog from them over the years They were referred to me for help with reviews, which we moved from their Facebook page to their website. We also migrated their site to a new host, sorted out email issues, and updated most of the content. The site had been neglected, but once updated it performed well, so now I do ongoing maintenance and content updates when there are new reviews from their many happy customers to add. We did wind up running into problems down the road, however, so in 2022, I converted the site to Divi and freshened up the look and the content in the process. It’s beautiful, the code is modernized and the content up to date and trouble-free now.
  • Elan Guest SuitesThe owner of this Jacksonville, Oregon boutique guest suites and gallery business contacted me for help in mid-2019 because she’d had years of trouble working with more than one web developer trying to get her redesigned Squarespace website functioning properly so she could launch it. There were many complex issues that took time to work out. However, I was successful at eliminating the problems and customizing the reservations integration, and the website has been successful ever since its launch just a few months after we began working together! I love to hear from the owner-turned-friend, but since it’s rare that anything goes wrong on her website, I don’t hear from her often.
  • Joy Hosey, Relationship Coach – This is one of those relationships in which I am simply there for Joy…since 2013! I’ve migrated her website, implemented new features, fixed problems and maintain the site in between special requests and content updates. Another small business owner whom I’m happy to get behind!
  • Angela Meer, Author and Writing Coach – I migrated Angela’s very complex website to a new host and extended her existing SSL certificate to cover the entire website in 2016.
  • Romancing the West I’ve been maintaining this website for singer/songwriter and producer of Romancing the West® since 2012 with both content updates and site maintenance. During that time, I’ve restored it from a hack attack, migrated it to new hosting, installed its SSL certificate, and posted dozens and dozens of tour dates, as well as a few client-directed experiments. I also formatted/edited a children’s book for them in 2017 and design/update the new concert posters for their biannual tours.
  • Talbott Studios – A wonderful artist who specializes in animals (particularly horses and equine art). Genie also designs gorgeous wine labels and more. I began with search engine optimization and content updates for her existing website, and have been working together for several years…even after she moved back East!

More exciting projects are in the works and others are lined up. It will be so fun to complete them and share the links here. If you are currently in need of a website, contact me today to get your project underway!

Help Your Website Help You

Help Your Website Help You - thumbnail image for document for 2-233-2015 SOSA presentationI’m very grateful to have been invited by the Southern Oregon Association of Artists (SOSA) to give a presentation at their February 2015 members meeting on Monday! I will discuss ways to help your website help you, including ways to work with social media to promote your art, as well as website maintenance and security to protect your site and your visitors – all to improve your search engine visibility and bring more visitors to your website.

Just before the meeting, I will be posting a presentation document, “Help Your Website Help You,” so those who attend can download it to their computers for reference. Anyone who is interested or who couldn’t make the meeting is free to view and download this document, too. SOSA invites all artists to attend their monthly meetings, so I hope I will see you at the Medford Public Library this Monday, February 23, 2015. The meeting starts at 7pm and the library locks the doors at the same time, so be sure to arrive a few minutes early! If you have a mobile device, please bring it along.

New Website Launch! WendyGell.com

I am delighted to announce a new website launch for renowned fashion jewelry designer Wendy Gell at wendygell.com!

Wendy’s previous website was beautiful, but the infrastructure needed updating and she wanted a fresh new look that was unpretentious, yet highlighted her past accomplishments, with modern ecommerce features that would enable her to sell her incredibly sparkling and beautiful fashion jewelry designs. We began by streamlining her email newsletter and creating temporary pages with several new pieces of jewelry not previously seen on her website. Then, behind the scenes, we created a new site on the WordPress platform, using the flexible and responsive Divi theme by Elegant Themes so it would display nicely on mobile devices. Then we added a WooCommerce shopping cart with PayPal as the primary payment gateway. Optimized the site and products using the highly respected SEO for WordPress plugin by Yoast and added BulletProof Security to protect her investment in the site and to protect her visitors from malware. Once all the products were added to the shop and everything was ready to go, we migrated the development site to its permanent home at wendygell.com.

What we wound up with is a beautiful site that highlights Wendy’s fashion, bridal, and holiday jewelry designs (along with some gorgeous tiaras for princesses big and little!) as well as her fabulous Gelastic Art, with a beautiful shop that displays subcategories nicely with the modestly priced Nested Categories extension by WooThemes. She made a sale almost immediately! We also included features that will help her continue to grow her following, with social follow and sharing tools by AddThis and a newsletter signup form.

We invite you to visit Wendy’s site and feast your eyes on glittering pop art fashion jewelry to your heart’s desire! Wendy plans to continue adding to her new online shop, so there will be new jewelry items and artwork to see on a regular basis, and there is much to learn about this talented designer whose jewelry has appeared on the Oprah show, been worn & collected by household name movie, television and pop art culture celebrities – even royalty! – and featured in fashion magazines around the world for decades. I am so honored to be working with this amazing woman and her enduring talent, and equally proud of her new website. See how beautifully we can display the items you want to offer for sale online and contact us to discuss what we can do to help you accomplish your own online business objectives.

New Website for Jacksonville Chiropractic!

Jacksonville Chiropractic Clinic, Dr. Jason Williams,  Jacksonville, OregonI would like to thank Jacqueline Williams for entrusting me with the ground-up redesign of the website for Jacksonville Chiropractic Clinic, featuring Jacque’s husband, chiropractor Dr. Jason Williams, and the licensed massage therapists who practice alongside him!

Jacque was lovely to work with, and when she had to step aside for a couple of weeks for unrelated reasons, I felt I had enough information from our very productive first meeting to forge ahead on my own. When she returned, she was delighted to find the site ready for her review. We made a few adjustments, I did some housekeeping on the technical end, notified the search engines that the site had been revamped, and it was ready to go! Afterward, she said to me “Thank you so much, Hannah. I’m not very good about delegating, it’s just so much more efficient to do things myself most of the time. But I was really impressed with what you were able to accomplish without any input or participation from me while I was away. I thought it was going to be much more work on my part, but you made it so easy and painless! The site is beautiful, functional and easy to navigate, and I can’t wait to share it with our patients and the community!”

I am particularly proud of how this website came out in the end, and feel the layout and design is flexible enough to use for a number of different types of business. It even looks great on mobile devices!

We were careful to observe the new search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and hope it will be favored by the search engines as a result. You can help by leaving a comment on the blog post announcing the new site, by searching for Jville Chiropractic on Google or Bing and clicking through to the website, then lingering there or browsing the site for a little while, or by sharing the site with your favorite social network. 8.24.14 UPDATE: One of the things we did to boost Jacksonville Chiropractic’s SEO rating was to invest in a paid plugin by Yoast called Local SEO. Previously when we searched for “Jacksonville Chiropractic,” we saw mostly sites in Jacksonville, Florida in the search results. Now, and in record time, Jacksonville Chiropractic’s Oregon site dominates page one of the search results! Alternative searches have it either as #1 in the page one list, or lower on the page, but still on page 1. Even a search for “jason williams dc“, which predictably pulls up results with Jason Williamses from many walks of life, has OUR Jason Williams’ bio page at position #6, and the link to jacksonvillechiropracticclinic.com in position #7! Your help in lickcing the links you found in the search results made a huge difference in the amount of time this usually takes, too…Thank you!!

Please visit the site and take a look around. There is a lot of additional information, new patients can download patient registration forms to fill out and bring to their first visit, and the visual comparison between the previous site and this one…well, there’s no comparison! We would be very grateful if you would share their new site with anyone in the Jacksonville area who needs help from a chiropractor and/or therapeutic massage specialist, or travelers who have found themselves in need while visiting friends and family here. If you are a patient of Dr. Williams or one of his associates, please send them an email with a testimonial via their Contact page. We need current testimonials to make the site complete.

I can vouch for Mira, the resident therapeutic massage and Rolfing specialist. After one hour under Mira’s skilled and sensitive hands, I found a huge amount of pain relief that has remained with me since last November! Yes, sitting in front of a computer all day every day does have its drawbacks, but in no time she put me back in the saddle and ready to build more and better websites. I have a feeling Mira may become active on the blog, sharing information and special announcements.

Last but not least, we set up an online shop for the Clinic. It’s still under construction, but we hope to have it fully functional soon, and then you will be able to purchase the health products they use and recommend to their patients – either for shipment to your home or for local pickup!

We also set up the template for Jacksonville Chiropractic’s first newsletter. It’s pretty clean and simple – they do not plan to do a lot of emailing, but they are co-sponsoring Jacksonville’s First Annual Health Fair in October and would like to share the details with the community as the festival takes shape. In the near future we will set it up so that occasional news and announcements from their new blog can be delivered to your inbox.

I welcome your feedback, and if you would be interested in a quote on a website similar to this one, please send me an email via my Contact page.

More announcements to come soon, and hopefully a catch-up post with the many projects I’ve successfully completed this year but haven’t had time to write about, too.

Latest updates…

It’s so hard to keep this site updated when there are so many interesting (and challenging!) projects to tend to, so here’s a quick recap of a few of the things I’ve been working on.

"Master Wave," oil on canvas painting of a large wave breaking on the shore by Boni de Laire
“Master Wave,” oil on canvas by Boni de Laire
"Still Life with Red Oriental Poppies," oil on canvas by Billye Woodford
“Still Life with Red Oriental Poppies,” oil on canvas by Billye Woodford

 

Just after I finished the restoration of a site for Medford artist Boni de Laire, she referred another wonderful painter to me, Billye Woodford from Rogue River, Oregon. I have just finished her site, too. They’re both beautiful, and filled with lovely artwork – representational landscapes are Boni’s focus, and while Billye creates beautiful landscapes as well, she also ventures into florals, portraits and more. Please visit www.bonidelaire.net and www.billyewoodford.com today!

While I was finishing up Billye’s site, another interesting job came my way – a website for a contestant in the upcoming Miss Oregon pageant, Priyanka Samra. Born in Canada and raised in Medford Oregon, Priyanka is a college student in California majoring in pre-med. She’ll gradute at the end of the current school year. She’s also incredibly beautiful and has been modeling since she was 14 – with a special love for the runway. She’s going to be teaching runway lessons to other models to raise funds for her favorite charities – Unique Home for Girls in India, where girls who have been abandoned are given a home, education and a future under the loving guardianship of

Model Priyanka Samra
Model Priyanka Samra

their adopted mother Prakash Kaur, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), specifically for their important work on depression. Please visit www.priyankasamra.com to learn more and see the modeling shots in her portfolio gallery…and root for her to win Miss Oregon 2014! She wanted a site based on her friend Mabelynn’s. Mabelynn won the Miss California pageant in 2012 and her site is pretty sleek, so I went for it. As pretty as Mabelynn is, I think Priyanka’s exotic East Indian look, movie-star glamorous yet not excessively sexy, makes her site the winner. Follow her for news on the Miss Oregon pageant, which happens in November.

"Sunrise on the Rhine," mixed media on canvas by artist Christina Madden depicting a castle on the Rhine River in Europe
“Sunrise on the Rhine,” mixed media on canvas by artist Christina Madden

A couple of my artist clients have added new paintings to their websites recently.

Christina Madden paints in oil, acrylic and mixed media; her range of style and subject is quite broad, but recently she’s been refining her style to make it all her own. And is it ever! Her colorful abstract impressionist landscapes are so vibrant and full of life, like nothing else I’ve seen. We’ve also been working to improve the SEO value of her site and making progress. Help her gain better online visibility! Visit her website and feast your eyes on artist Christina Madden‘s colorful world! If you find yourself in Ashland, Oregon during October 2013, stop in at Art & Soul gallery to see a major show of her paintings. She sold ten paintings in recent months, so she had to work very hard to paint new pieces so she would have enough for her show, and they’re magnificent! Meet the artist at a reception on Friday, October 4 during the Ashland First Friday Art Walk.

"Boss," oil on wood by Eugenia Talbott of Talbott Studios
“Boss,” oil on wood by Eugenia Talbott of Talbott Studios

Artist Eugenia Talbot is an amazing woman, and she just had two shows here in southern Oregon – one at the Berryman Gallery (above the Craterian Theater in Medford) in conjunction with the production of Tarzan there in early September. At the same time I had her work hanging at the GoodBean Cafe in Jacksonville for a one month exhibition that got huge numbers of compliments! I didn’t design her site, but she brought me on for maintenance and updates, as well as to upgrade its SEO value. Once again I appeal to what readers I may have to help increase her online visibility by visiting her Talbott Studios website and take some time to look around. You won’t be disappointed – African wildlife, horses and pet portraits, portraits of people and more await you there!

Susan DeRosa art show card for South Stage Cellars show, September 2013
Susan DeRosa art show card for South Stage Cellars show, September 2013

Oh, and you must see the art show card that Jacksonville artist Susan DeRosa had me make for her debut southern Oregon show (she moved here recently from Arkansas, where she lived for a time after retiring from her career as an art educator in California universities). She is such an amazing talent, I’m glad she now has time to continue refining her own work rather now that she’s done her time teaching others! Her show at South Stage Cellars was such a success, she sold a painting at the opening reception and so many people came that she started crying with gratitude when telling me how she felt about it.

This reminds me of the art show catalog I did recently, but I haven’t had a chance to scan it so I’ll have to post that later.

Apologies to the awesome folks at GMO Free Jackson County for not having time to have them with a project they contacted me about. Please visit their website and lend your support – they working hard to protect Oregon’s organic agriculture legacy. It’s like swimming upstream, there’s so much to do and so much resistance from the likes of Monsanto and Syngenta.

Well, there’s still more, but I’ve run out of time and have to get back to work, so please return another time to see if I’ve had a chance to write more about the fabulous projects I’m involved in now, and what my wonderful clients have for me next! Spoiler alert…looks like a new site and SEO help for Daljit Samra (Name sounds familiar? Yes, that’s Priyanka’s mom!) of the Rogue Valley Inn and possibly some modifications to a fantastic high end fashion site in New York, as well as adding video content to singer/songwriter Christina Duane’s nonprofit websites, Romancing the West and Oh Oregon Frontier Park when she returns from her current tour! Oh, right, I haven’t written about the pleasure of starting to work with Christina yet, have I? Well, we’ll have to tackle that next time…Thanks for stopping by and come back again soon!

 

Site Update for Artist Christina Madden!

I’m so grateful to have had artist Christina Madden come to me for help bringing more visitors to her website!

La Casa, oil painting by Christina Madden
La Casa, oil painting by Christina Madden

The first thing we did was to add metadata to all the images of her art, both for security’s sake and to help promote her art. While the metadata contained within an image is not readable by search engines, it’s essential to have it in place in the event that it, through resharing, it becomes separated from any link to the artist’s website or other contact information. It’s always an option to lock down an image so it cannot be separated from the website where it appears, but then people can’t help you promote your work by sharing, so this way anyone can open the image in Photoshop, access the File Info, and see the artist’s website address so they can see more of their work, find their email and other contact information, and learn more about the artist. Christina’s choice was to allow her images to be shared, so the metadata was a must. This also saves time when adding images to social networks, as the most critical of the meta information – the artist’s copyright – will now be “exposed”, along with the title and description so it does not have to be retyped in. This also makes the metadata available to the search engines, an added bonus and a good reason to take the time to place this information in each image. And What a joy to work with the images of her beautiful oil paintings!

Next we added metadata keywords and descriptions to her pages for the search engines to gobble up, and AddThis sharing tools to her website to encourage visitors to share her pages. We also added a sitemap and Google analytics tracking code to her site and, though the site has been online for some time, submitted it to the search engines as this had not been done previously. In the process I saw that the code on her site was very outdated, and began the process of bringing it a bit more up to speed so it will be more search engine friendly. Completing this task for the entire site will take longer and we plan to take it a little at a time; we also will add proper text with keywords to the “Alt” field in her images.

Morning at Touvelle Park, oil painting by Christina Madden
Morning at Touvelle Park, oil painting by Christina Madden

Christina had started a professional artist page on Facebook but hadn’t completed the setup, so we added a selection of paintings to her page and began promoting it. While working on this, she completed two new paintings, which we added to her website and Facebook page. Boy did they get a lot of attention! Over 200 views for one painting and almost 350 for the other, plus lots of wonderful comments! She’s up to 38 likes now, but it still needs some love, so why not visit and add your own like to her page?! https://www.facebook.com/artistchristinamadden

We began working on March 5 and completed this round on April 21. Currently Christina’s site is appearing in search results on Bing/Yahoo 94% more frequently than it did before, with a 200% increase in clicks from those search result pages, and all but 5 of her pages have been properly indexed by Google. Christina can now view traffic analytics for her site through her Google account and sharing analytics through her new AddThis account. In the past month (April 8 – May 8), she has welcomed 55 visitors to her site, who viewed 266 pages, and average of nearly 5 pages per visit! This represents an 89.66% increase in visitors over the previous month, a 48.6% increase in page views, and, though the total number of pages per visit is down a little, and increase in time spent on her website of 79.5%!

In addition we can see that , although most of her visitors are coming from her home territory of southern Oregon, people from 8 different countries have come to visit since we began working. Sharing has not been intense, nor has anything gone viral just yet, but 5 shares, up from zero ability to share, is promising,  and we can see that all the shares so far have been to Facebook. As these results show, search engine optimization, even if not complete, can immediately and dramatically change the visitor frequency and patterns to your website, and the ability to view and analyze these stats is very helpful to gauge how much the work you have put into optimizing your site is helping to increase traffic and sharing.