Welcome to Notes on the Internet, a blog where I share my thoughts on a range of issues related to Wordpress in particular, and to the internet in general. My goal is to introduce topics that may be of interest to you, without going into too many technical details or using jargon. My hope is to begin a dialog that we can continue as we work together.

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If you have recently upgraded WordPress to 5, also known as Gutenberg, you’ll see that creating and editing pages and posts is a new experience. Instead of the WordPress visual editor you’re used to, you are now working with WordPress blocks. It is a completely different interface, and a completely different paradigm. For a real-world… Read on…

One of the goals of website development is to ensure that a website loads as quickly as possible. The speed is dependent on many variables, some of which have to do with the website itself, and some of which have to do with the server that the website lives on. This article addresses two of… Read on…

Back in July, I published a note discussing how Google indexes and ranks your website. Here’s an important addition to that information. When I develop a new website for a client, I also set up a (free) Google Search Console account linked to the new website. This alerts Google that there is a new website… Read on…

Does working in WordPress ever make you feel like Alice from Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll? Here‘s Alice, after the White Knight offers to sing her a song: “The name of the song is called ‘Haddocks’ Eyes’.” “Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested. “No,… Read on…

If you have a website or send out an email newsletter, how many times have you viewed it on a phone or tablet? Is it easy to read and navigate? To find the information you’re looking for? To browse? Does it take a long time to load? Those of us who started businesses before the… Read on…

If you want your website to appear high in Google search results, here are some things that may be helpful to know, that you might not be aware of: Google displays different results for different people. It monitors your searches over time and shows you personalized results. So if you and I both search for… Read on…

Coming later in 2018, you’ll be able to forget everything I said in How’s your website’s back-end? Part 1. WordPress is about to undergo a change in the way the visual editor works. The new system is called Gutenberg. Here’s a preview of what the WordPress editor will look like when Gutenberg arrives: For one… Read on…

When you edit your content in WordPress, you are primarily working with the WordPress visual editor. The visual editor looks much what you would find in Microsoft Word or another word processing program. There’s a large area where you can type and edit your content, and a row of icons above that for formatting. Here’s… Read on…