Hi ClientName,

Food for thought… 

Further to the conversation this morning, an upgrade to the [Pofo Plugin] itself I think would work wonders, but again, on the new WordPress version. It upgrades the [Slider Rev 6] Plug-In non-compatabilities. See [Pofo v1.1.11] below. It’s a couple of hundred bucks. Also see upgrade options below, to save time and heartache in the future…

+

Current Version Numbers below of upgrades that need to be done in the future (if not now)…

[Pofo v1.1.11]: https://pofo.themezaa.com/documentation/changelog/

Design theme, the look as you know.

+

[Slider Rev v6.1.2]: : https://www.sliderrevolution.com/sr7-velocity-frontend-engine-update/

Home page slider for the Ken Burns effect on the hero image.

+

[WPBakery Page Builder v6.05]: https://wpbakery.com/

WPBakery is the CMS itself, the builder, the website’s platform, the design (Front-End) and mini-Back-End tool that needs the Plug-Ins and Theme to be up-to-date, otherwise it will run unpredictably.

+

[Other Plug-Ins (PIs)]…

There’s a lot of extraneous PIs in the current website like [Regenerate Thumbnails, ShortPixel, WebP Express etc], (all working – probably battling each other – who knows?) on the images of the site to convert them on the fly (SLOWLY!) to serve a more optimised image, for a faster display time. [See the screenshot]. In the past someone has just loaded unoptimised JPG images (max size), into the site and used these PIs to convert the images to more optimised formats to what they should have been loaded in at the beginning. I call it lazy image dumping. From a Design point-of-view that’s a very lazy and detrimental way of doing things, where loading times are very much slower for the website to display to the public! Hence back-ups were amazingly slow with super large images to back up. Google hates slow loading websites, it penalises your rankings.

From an SEO point-of-view (getting found faster and getting more business), all those images are unnamed, therefor no SEO, therefor you won’t get found on Google Images (the other part of Google Search that is 20%-30%, sometimes depending on the site, 40% of what people use – searching by images, the images tab of Google Search Engine Results Pages). In an ideal world, to really get the website SEO humming, a big job of optimising the whole site would work amazingly. The result is the same design and adjusted content from the Front-End, but speedier to present (Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) they call it), more Google- and User-friendly, and Google will rank it higher, therefor more clicks back in the future in return. There is a formula I use to adhere to Google’s ever-changing best practices. That’s why it is recommended in all cases to have SEO changes added/done on a monthly basis. New content is good, but not normally optimised and basic SEO added, so that Google Search happens nicely. Remember 65% of the action is on Google’s Page 1! In terms of scores for Largest Contentful Paint on a website: Under 2.5 seconds is considered “good”. Between 2.5 seconds and 4 seconds is considered “in need of improvement”. Over 4 seconds is considered “poor”. There are a variety of website checkers out there, this is just one vital metric of SEO.

+

Moving forward there are a few options…

+

1- Leave as is (v1): Hope it goes OK when adding new content in the future. We cannot change the Blue image (it’s there hidden from the front end). We can change the Red image (current website), but no Ken Burns effect on the image. The PIs are all out of date [except Yoast] and may cause content not to display as intended etc when resaving the site with new content. Site speed is a really big issue as before-mentioned. Basically, it’s not acting as intended and not making it easy to change content and add new design and [Pofo Theme] Template items. A lot of time-consuming workarounds doubling and tripling the time needed to make simple design changes. A lot of wasted time at $100+GST per hour in a real world. There is a lot of hope and touching wood involved every time when I hit the save button. I see why my WP Developer business partner does not want to touch this sort of work unless he has made the site initially, to his best standards, and future-proofing ways of coding. Transferring the website as a whole to our speedy local server will work wonders too ($500+GST once-only, then plus new hosting). Wherever it is at the moment, it’s slow!

+

2- Upgrade the PIs and WP versioning to the latest standards to make a v2 site: 5-10 hours maybe, and all PIs and WordPress compatibility issues will go away! Update the site, put all the PIs on Auto-Upgrade, set and forget. We need to upgrade to the latest WP and new [Pofo template], plus the new [Slider Rev 6]. Maybe $1K with all the new purchases, licencing and setups? Result, we can do what we want for design and content. Still looks the same/similar, but editing is a breeze! Maybe a way of pitching that to the client is a monthly of $100+GST to sort it out over time, not neglect the website making it static which Google penalises you for. Like our small job was a lucky save, but hugely un-billable to all. If all versioning is updated it will be a speed-hump in the beginning checking what has changed, but worth it. After that, incremental auto updating is the way to go in terms of future-proofing a WP website you want to essentially stay the same design and add new content to.

+

3- Move to Wix (v3): Remake the whole site and optimise it as we go, to new modern standards, a new design maybe. Maybe $2.5K? Result: Future-proof. No more PIs! More functionality and more compatibility, like for [MailChimp (MC4WP)] I see as a current PI. Wix is a way better CMS, for email marketing and SEO (to name a few), all in one place. I cannot rate Wix high enough. Check out my piece on a comparison of them all against each other here: https://xdc.nz/wordpress-v-wix-v-squarespace-v-hostinger-v-weebly/

+

4-: SEO v2 of the upgraded site or new v3 site: Maybe $2.5K. This is an additional add-on if Google AdWords (GAW) is getting too expensive, and for what?! What does GAW actually give you, does it last? In most cases, just impressions, these are not clicks to the website. GAW makes it all look nice and shiny by saying you have X-number of Impressions. I use this swap time wisely and put good solid SEO into the new site instead of paying GAW to essentially do it the lazy expensive way for you. Remember SEO lasts for the life of the site and generates far more Organic Traffic. Organic Traffic is the best type of traffic to your website. Paid traffic, meh. Still traffic, but it costs you! Then it’s up to the Calls to action on-site to get the phone calls happening! This can be made a monthly thing also. Smaller upgrades over time resulting in a far better performing website, hence more business. In a WP site, it’s a game-changing rankings booster.

Don’t get me wrong, WordPress is the best, best for SEO, best for integrations, best from the BACK END (the bit we don’t have access to), YET it’s extremely complicated as each thing effects each other. Most of the time it’s better to start a whole new website from scratch if you don’t know the site. All WP builds are completely different from each other, where there is half the time involved in working out what the previous person has done.

+

Recommendation [yourwebsite.co.nz]:

Hold tight, see how the client is placed in the future for spending. Get them to work into their budget the website’s cost for adding new content for each new project/job they have, as you want to showcase the latest and greatest project right! Google will love you for it (the changes). BUT, if something breaks, and we cannot fix it, or when we can fix it with un-billable time, it will need to be updated to the same unpredictable state. And something will break – I see it all the time – sorry to be a grinch. WP is like that. For an up-to-date website, that’s modern and optimised to the latest standards will save you and me heaps of fix-it time, and all that un-billable mucking around. Changes can be made swiftly and effortlessly for more return with a modern website. For SEO, seed the idea of more business in return with an upgrade that lasts the life of the site, unlike Google AdWords for example. Turn off GAW and your rankings go away, put SEO into your website and organic traffic follows your updated website and you rank even higher on Google Search (Text and Images of the website content) and Maps. I have a lot of good stories like taking away the GAW costs and putting them into their website for a once-only initial cost to boost future rankings. A switch in spending in one year, GAW to SEO. That whole cost saved on the following years end-on-end can be a huge cost-saver for essentially more traffic, free traffic! This can be put on a monthly budget too! See here for SEO plans.

+

Give me a call anytime to clarify how these things will save time and money in the long run.

I hope that simplifies matters for you?

+

Regards,
Clint@XDC.NZ

+

Saving time and money on a WordPress Website Build or Website Changes on a current website