New WP Website in the Works

[Zack Ward]

Hello all, new member here! =)

I just wanted to add my two cents and share a resource. Google PageSpeed Insights can give you a good idea of things to put on your to-do list when it comes to optimizing your website. You can check your results at this URL: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftanglewoodhall.com%2Fnew%2F
It looks like one of your main culprits for the long load time is large images. I recommend the EWWW Image Optimizer for WordPress plugin (link below). It makes it very easy to slim down those images and make the whole site load faster. According to PageSpeed Insights, you could potentially save 650kb from every page load.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/
Oh, I forgot to mention, your PageSpeed score affects your Google page rank, so it's pretty important to get that as high as possible. =)
Zack

 

[EmptyNest]

Hello all, new member here! =)

I just wanted to add my two cents and share a resource. Google PageSpeed Insights can give you a good idea of things to put on your to-do list when it comes to optimizing your website. You can check your results at this URL: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftanglewoodhall.com%2Fnew%2F
It looks like one of your main culprits for the long load time is large images. I recommend the EWWW Image Optimizer for WordPress plugin (link below). It makes it very easy to slim down those images and make the whole site load faster. According to PageSpeed Insights, you could potentially save 650kb from every page load.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/
Oh, I forgot to mention, your PageSpeed score affects your Google page rank, so it's pretty important to get that as high as possible. =)
Zack.

Welcome! Thanks for joining us. But...if folks already have say photoshop to optimize images and they do it right...no need for another plugin.

 

[Zack Ward]

Hello all, new member here! =)

I just wanted to add my two cents and share a resource. Google PageSpeed Insights can give you a good idea of things to put on your to-do list when it comes to optimizing your website. You can check your results at this URL: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftanglewoodhall.com%2Fnew%2F
It looks like one of your main culprits for the long load time is large images. I recommend the EWWW Image Optimizer for WordPress plugin (link below). It makes it very easy to slim down those images and make the whole site load faster. According to PageSpeed Insights, you could potentially save 650kb from every page load.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/
Oh, I forgot to mention, your PageSpeed score affects your Google page rank, so it's pretty important to get that as high as possible. =)
Zack.

Welcome! Thanks for joining us. But...if folks already have say photoshop to optimize images and they do it right...no need for another plugin.
.

That's true! =) I only suggested EWWW because the images are not currently optimized according to Google PageSpeed Insight, and the EWWW plugin can fix that problem for free.

 

[Generic]

Hello all, new member here! =)

I just wanted to add my two cents and share a resource. Google PageSpeed Insights can give you a good idea of things to put on your to-do list when it comes to optimizing your website. You can check your results at this URL: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftanglewoodhall.com%2Fnew%2F
It looks like one of your main culprits for the long load time is large images. I recommend the EWWW Image Optimizer for WordPress plugin (link below). It makes it very easy to slim down those images and make the whole site load faster. According to PageSpeed Insights, you could potentially save 650kb from every page load.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/
Oh, I forgot to mention, your PageSpeed score affects your Google page rank, so it's pretty important to get that as high as possible. =)
Zack.

Welcome! Thanks for joining us. But...if folks already have say photoshop to optimize images and they do it right...no need for another plugin.
.

Actually, glad that he did mention the other tool... https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ which is very useful.

 

[Zack Ward]

Were my posts deleted?

 

[Morticia]

Were my posts deleted?.

Were my posts deleted?

It does look like your posts are gone. The site moderator can fix that. If your posts were marked as spam he'll get a report and review the posts.

 

[JBloggs]

Were my posts deleted?.

Were my posts deleted?

If they were flagged as self promotion/spam then they went into a holding cell to be reviewed. We had one person on here who replied to every thread, so their business website with hyperlink could be seen a few dozen times. Perhaps that was a warning shot across the bow that you had?
Re Wordpress there are many who are easing themselves into the water on this one, as this innkeeper has finally created a new website after many years. Plenty can tech-speak, but are not, so that the non-tech person gets user friendly advice and feedback. FYI we have calls, emails, contacts every week from professional web designers, just so you know and understand the dynamics of this forum "Where innkeepers belong" as the header states.

 

[Momma Smurf]

Not sure what the deleted posts were, but as of 4 PM today, I went live. To access new link, drop the New directory. Am also happy to say that I figured out how to ditch the old site and transition to the new site all on my own. Methinks the Redirection plugin is working too! Thanks again for all the input. And yay, the Christmas tree and all the other holiday hoopla is up too! Time for The Smurfs to chill!

 

[Morticia]

Not sure what the deleted posts were, but as of 4 PM today, I went live. To access new link, drop the New directory. Am also happy to say that I figured out how to ditch the old site and transition to the new site all on my own. Methinks the Redirection plugin is working too! Thanks again for all the input. And yay, the Christmas tree and all the other holiday hoopla is up too! Time for The Smurfs to chill!.

Congrats! Took me months to transition my site. Good for you!

 

[Zack Ward]

I'm not sure what happened, by a previous post that I made isn't available anymore. I did include a link to my business site in my signature, so perhaps that was the problem. In any case, my intention is to offer a helpful suggestion. =)

The resource that I linked earlier (and will avoid re-linking to, just in case the spam bot misconstrued it) is called Google PageSpeed Insights. If you put in your web site address, it will give you a score out of 100 that reflects how quickly your page loads. Google considers this important because their goal is to deliver the pages that people are looking for, and if a page takes more than about 3 seconds to load, most searchers will return to the search results page and try another site. Basically, the faster your page loads, the better it will do when it comes to Google page rank.

Running your site through PageSpeed Insights revealed that one of the ways that you can improve your page loading speed would be to optimize your images. This is low hanging fruit when it comes to making your page load faster. As EmptyNest pointed out, you could of course use Photoshop or another image editing program to optimize the images yourself. There are plenty of guides online as to how to do that. Another option would be to use a WordPress plugin to do the job automatically for you. There is a free plugin in the WordPress.org repository called EWWW Image Optimizer ( I am not affiliated with this plugin in any way, other than using it myself) that will solve this problem and help your site load much faster.
According to PageSpeed Insights, your image sizes could be reduced by 36%. That would make a huge improvement to your page loading speed.
The following link is an interesting article that talks about how important a quick-loading website is. Interestingly, one study found that a web page that took 6 seconds to load suffered a 50% decrease in conversion rate.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101-important-site-speed-2014/111924/
Anyway, just trying to be helpful in the spirit of the OP's question.

 

[Zack Ward]

Not sure what the deleted posts were, but as of 4 PM today, I went live. To access new link, drop the New directory. Am also happy to say that I figured out how to ditch the old site and transition to the new site all on my own. Methinks the Redirection plugin is working too! Thanks again for all the input. And yay, the Christmas tree and all the other holiday hoopla is up too! Time for The Smurfs to chill!.

Congrats, the site looks great!

 

[Momma Smurf]

I'm not sure what happened, by a previous post that I made isn't available anymore. I did include a link to my business site in my signature, so perhaps that was the problem. In any case, my intention is to offer a helpful suggestion. =)

The resource that I linked earlier (and will avoid re-linking to, just in case the spam bot misconstrued it) is called Google PageSpeed Insights. If you put in your web site address, it will give you a score out of 100 that reflects how quickly your page loads. Google considers this important because their goal is to deliver the pages that people are looking for, and if a page takes more than about 3 seconds to load, most searchers will return to the search results page and try another site. Basically, the faster your page loads, the better it will do when it comes to Google page rank.

Running your site through PageSpeed Insights revealed that one of the ways that you can improve your page loading speed would be to optimize your images. This is low hanging fruit when it comes to making your page load faster. As EmptyNest pointed out, you could of course use Photoshop or another image editing program to optimize the images yourself. There are plenty of guides online as to how to do that. Another option would be to use a WordPress plugin to do the job automatically for you. There is a free plugin in the WordPress.org repository called EWWW Image Optimizer ( I am not affiliated with this plugin in any way, other than using it myself) that will solve this problem and help your site load much faster.
According to PageSpeed Insights, your image sizes could be reduced by 36%. That would make a huge improvement to your page loading speed.
The following link is an interesting article that talks about how important a quick-loading website is. Interestingly, one study found that a web page that took 6 seconds to load suffered a 50% decrease in conversion rate.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101-important-site-speed-2014/111924/
Anyway, just trying to be helpful in the spirit of the OP's question. .

Thanks for sharing this. I did use the JPEG Optimizer compression tool on a lot of the pix. Still need to sort them out and exchange/upload.

 

[Arks]

Yes you've done very well to pick WP up so quickly and yes the website is ready for prime time! There are still things to be done. Really, no website is ever done. But with the heavy lifting behind you, small tweaks every few days will be easy, and they will keep you refreshed on how you did it all.
Congratulations!

 

[CafeMae]

First impression.. heading in the right direction
i would like to see a more compatible color background. this is pretty dark.
do not center text. makes it hard for eyes to follow
do not use all upper case for text. very hard to read.
i will look closer and comment further later.

EN: Switched background back to current website. Maddie: Sailboat has been our print background for years now. EN: by centering text, you mean do NOT Justify it?
Thanks
.

NO..that is worse. Green background with blue text area...clashes. I would go with a plain color darker blues rather than pattern. Gosh..there is so much more you can do with striking but I don't have time to share with you now. If you are going to change you need to go BIG. I can't share one I have been working on now but maybe he will in a few days. And will email to you.
But look at this one
.

See, I look at from my artist's point of view and see the green background picking up the green tones in all my pics... more contrast than clash, not so monochromatic. I have co-ordinating green fonts on my current page. Could change back.
Added green text font back in along with blue. Land and Sea... 'tis who we be!
.

Just want to agree with empty nest here - the dark green background was the ONLY thing that bothered me with your lovely website. I think it looks depressing and old fashioned where as the blue looks so light and airy and beach like. I even was thinking to myself, this person chose the perfect shade of blue for their site...it goes so well with the blue in the photos...did they not know how to change the back wallpaper color? How am I going mention it?
Why not try going lighter than the blue. A very very light beige with a subtle texture, a cream...
.

Please go to back and look now! EN has convinced me to give in... lots of other tweaks too! I was a bit concerned cause our competition has an ALL blue theme...
.

Congrats on a beautiful looking site!

 

[EmptyNest]

Not sure what the deleted posts were, but as of 4 PM today, I went live. To access new link, drop the New directory. Am also happy to say that I figured out how to ditch the old site and transition to the new site all on my own. Methinks the Redirection plugin is working too! Thanks again for all the input. And yay, the Christmas tree and all the other holiday hoopla is up too! Time for The Smurfs to chill!.

Yeah...
you know what I have told you..but maybe later. For now Congrats on mastering wp. And for moving it all by yourself...Something I screwed up in the beginning...so I never mess with the hosting stuff. I just let the hosting company do it.
One small thing on the home page...no space between VISITINGNEWENGLAND
And, there is nothing evident on how to contact you unless you scroll to the bottom of the page. I suggest you put that contact widget in sidebar and also put the reservation widget in the side bar and get rid of the clunky looking image.
Happy Holidays!

 

[Momma Smurf]

Not sure what the deleted posts were, but as of 4 PM today, I went live. To access new link, drop the New directory. Am also happy to say that I figured out how to ditch the old site and transition to the new site all on my own. Methinks the Redirection plugin is working too! Thanks again for all the input. And yay, the Christmas tree and all the other holiday hoopla is up too! Time for The Smurfs to chill!.

Yeah...
you know what I have told you..but maybe later. For now Congrats on mastering wp. And for moving it all by yourself...Something I screwed up in the beginning...so I never mess with the hosting stuff. I just let the hosting company do it.
One small thing on the home page...no space between VISITINGNEWENGLAND
And, there is nothing evident on how to contact you unless you scroll to the bottom of the page. I suggest you put that contact widget in sidebar and also put the reservation widget in the side bar and get rid of the clunky looking image.
Happy Holidays!
.

The site calls themselves VISITINGNEWENGLAND. They don't ever separate the words.

 

[EmptyNest]

Not sure what the deleted posts were, but as of 4 PM today, I went live. To access new link, drop the New directory. Am also happy to say that I figured out how to ditch the old site and transition to the new site all on my own. Methinks the Redirection plugin is working too! Thanks again for all the input. And yay, the Christmas tree and all the other holiday hoopla is up too! Time for The Smurfs to chill!.

Yeah...
you know what I have told you..but maybe later. For now Congrats on mastering wp. And for moving it all by yourself...Something I screwed up in the beginning...so I never mess with the hosting stuff. I just let the hosting company do it.
One small thing on the home page...no space between VISITINGNEWENGLAND
And, there is nothing evident on how to contact you unless you scroll to the bottom of the page. I suggest you put that contact widget in sidebar and also put the reservation widget in the side bar and get rid of the clunky looking image.
Happy Holidays!
.

The site calls themselves VISITINGNEWENGLAND. They don't ever separate the words.
.

Oh...well that answers that. Still looks strange.
You can have the same widget in more than one place at a time.

 

[Momma Smurf]

Not sure what the deleted posts were, but as of 4 PM today, I went live. To access new link, drop the New directory. Am also happy to say that I figured out how to ditch the old site and transition to the new site all on my own. Methinks the Redirection plugin is working too! Thanks again for all the input. And yay, the Christmas tree and all the other holiday hoopla is up too! Time for The Smurfs to chill!.

Yeah...
you know what I have told you..but maybe later. For now Congrats on mastering wp. And for moving it all by yourself...Something I screwed up in the beginning...so I never mess with the hosting stuff. I just let the hosting company do it.
One small thing on the home page...no space between VISITINGNEWENGLAND
And, there is nothing evident on how to contact you unless you scroll to the bottom of the page. I suggest you put that contact widget in sidebar and also put the reservation widget in the side bar and get rid of the clunky looking image.
Happy Holidays!
.

The site calls themselves VISITINGNEWENGLAND. They don't ever separate the words.
.

Oh...well that answers that. Still looks strange.
You can have the same widget in more than one place at a time.
.

Yes, but then it looks redundant in tablet or mobile formats. Too cluttered for me.

 

[Country Girl]

Momma Smurf, this is my first time viewing your website and it looks fantastic! Well done!

 

[EmptyNest]

Not sure what the deleted posts were, but as of 4 PM today, I went live. To access new link, drop the New directory. Am also happy to say that I figured out how to ditch the old site and transition to the new site all on my own. Methinks the Redirection plugin is working too! Thanks again for all the input. And yay, the Christmas tree and all the other holiday hoopla is up too! Time for The Smurfs to chill!.

Yeah...
you know what I have told you..but maybe later. For now Congrats on mastering wp. And for moving it all by yourself...Something I screwed up in the beginning...so I never mess with the hosting stuff. I just let the hosting company do it.
One small thing on the home page...no space between VISITINGNEWENGLAND
And, there is nothing evident on how to contact you unless you scroll to the bottom of the page. I suggest you put that contact widget in sidebar and also put the reservation widget in the side bar and get rid of the clunky looking image.
Happy Holidays!
.

The site calls themselves VISITINGNEWENGLAND. They don't ever separate the words.
.

Oh...well that answers that. Still looks strange.
You can have the same widget in more than one place at a time.
.

Yes, but then it looks redundant in tablet or mobile formats. Too cluttered for me.
.

Then I would move the reservation widget to the sidebar and the graphic one to the bottom. The reservation widget looks more like something someone would know to use.