Why Is Your Website Slow Only on the First Visit?
Find out why a first visit drags while a reload feels quick. Use a small comparison test to distinguish caching, connection setup and server delays.
Guides
Website Upgrade Guides
Practical, dated guidance on keeping a website fast, secure and findable as AI changes how people search — speed, security, SEO, platforms, and refresh-vs-rebuild decisions.
Speed & Core Web Vitals
The 200 KB Image Rule: Why Your Photos Are Your Biggest Speed Problem
Oversized photos quietly dominate page weight on small sites. A 200 KB-per-image rule, the right formats, and a ten-minute export habit fix most of it.
Self-Hosting Fonts: The 30-Minute Upgrade That Removes a Third-Party Request
The one-line Google Fonts <link> hides a two-host connection chain. Self-hosting the woff2 files takes about 30 minutes and removes a whole third-party dependency.
Our Website Takes 6 Seconds to Load — What Do We Fix First?
Six seconds feels like 'rebuild everything', but it usually is not. A triage order that finds the dominant cause before you spend money.
Security & Maintenance
Your Host Says It Has Backups: Can You Actually Restore?
Turn a vague backup promise into a recovery plan. Check coverage, retention, independent access and a safe restore test before your next upgrade.
Paying for Website Maintenance: What Should You Get?
Compare maintenance plans by deliverables and recovery coverage. Separate hosting, updates, edits and emergency support before deciding whether the fee is fair.
Contact Form Spam: Turnstile, Honeypots, and Why reCAPTCHA Is No Longer the Default
Contact form spam is a bot problem, not a visitor problem — so don't solve it by challenging visitors. Honeypots, Turnstile, and server-side verification, explained.
Security Headers Explained for Non-Developers: CSP, HSTS and Friends
Security headers are the cheapest hardening a small site can buy. Here are the five worth setting, the safe values, and the one to deploy carefully.
Is Your Website Running an End-of-Life PHP or CMS? How to Check and What It Costs to Fix
An end-of-life PHP or CMS does not break your site — it just stops getting security fixes. Ten-minute check, the 2026 EOL dates, and realistic CAD cost ranges.
SEO-Safe Changes
New Pages Missing From Google? Check Discovery Before SEO
Separate discovery problems from indexing decisions. Use sitemaps, Search Console and IndexNow with a checklist that avoids instant-indexing promises.
AI Search Is Changing Where Your Traffic Comes From — What a Small Site Should Do About It
AI Overviews, ChatGPT search and Perplexity cite sources differently — here is what each vendor documents versus what is guesswork, and what is actually worth doing.
AI Crawlers, robots.txt and llms.txt: What to Allow on Your Site and Why
Blocking 'AI' wholesale usually blocks the bots that cite you while doing nothing about the ones that fetch on a user's behalf. Decide per-bot instead.
Changing Your URLs Without Losing Google Rankings: The Redirect Checklist
Most ranking losses after a URL change come from missed redirects and unchanged internal links, not from the move itself. A checklist that closes both.
Redesign vs Refresh
Your Website Works on a Laptop but Fails on a Phone
Prioritise the mobile problems that block customers. Check reflow, controls, overlays and forms before deciding that the whole website needs rebuilding.
Your Homepage Gets Visits but No Enquiries: What to Change
A homepage cannot answer every service question at once. Plan clear routes, focused service pages and a measurable next step before paying for a redesign.
The Accessibility Baseline: 12 Fixes That Cover Most Complaints
You do not need a WCAG certification to fix most of what visitors complain about. Twelve concrete fixes — contrast, focus, labels, alt text, headings, motion — each with a five-minute test.
What a Website Upgrade Actually Costs in 2026 (Ranges, Not Quotes)
Refresh, partial rebuild, full rebuild, migration — the four cost bands for a small-business website upgrade in 2026, plus the ongoing line items quotes leave out and the brief that makes quotes comparable.
Refresh or Rebuild? A 10-Question Test for Your Aging Website
A scored 10-question test that turns 'should we rebuild?' into a decision you can defend — plus the cost and timeline bands for each outcome.
Platforms & Hosting
Your Website Is Sometimes Down: What to Check First
Build a useful incident record when your site works for some visitors and fails for others. Identify which service needs investigation before buying new hosting.
Your Developer Disappeared: How to Regain Site Access
Find the registrar, hosting and CMS accounts behind your site. Recover authorised access without accidentally interrupting email or replacing useful evidence.
Leaving Joomla? What to Export Before You Rebuild
List what must survive before choosing a replacement. This Joomla exit plan covers backups, content exports, extensions, redirects and a tested rollback.
Cloudflare in Front of a Shared Host: What It Fixes and What It Doesn't
Cloudflare's free plan genuinely fixes DNS, TLS, DDoS, and edge caching for a shared-hosted site — and genuinely cannot fix a slow server or a compromised CMS. A map of which problem lands on which side.
Do You Still Need WordPress? When a Static Site Is the Better Upgrade
WordPress runs 40% of the web — and still requires updates, PHP, and a database forever. A generated static site trades the admin panel for speed and near-zero maintenance. Here is how to choose.
Case Study
Case Study: A 12-Year-Old Joomla Store Rebuilt as a Static Site
A real rebuild, not a showcase: a ~2014 Joomla/VirtueMart store became a Markdown-and-templates static site with CI deploys to cheap shared hosting. What the pipeline enforces, what broke, and whether it was worth it.