I‘ve been in Santa Cruz County since 1981, designing and maintaining websites since 2002. You can be confident of my skills (yes, I’m delighted that your nephew builds websites, too!) because as a business owner myself, I want to help you grow your business. Melody Sharp Web Design has developed hundreds of websites—from standard HTML to WordPress CMS—but specializes in collaborating with smaller clients and nonprofits to give them a unique and successful online presence.
Melody Sharp Web Design is small enough to give you one-on-one service, yet well-connected enough to recommend other local professionals for larger projects, including project managers, marketing people, logo designers, programmers and search engine optimization gurus. We collaborate to offer content creation, blogging, SEO, SEM, e-mail marketing, Web analytics and social media.
Why I Use Divi Builder
A Myriad of FeaturesSo today I added a new plugin for developing cool tabs and other clever ways to increase visitor pleasure. Hundreds of third-party developers make plugins for Divi, my go-to Builder. Builders make it easy to add images, multiple columns, custom...
New SEO Steps for Success
Things Are Always Changing ...on the web, and Search Engine Optimization is no different. Google has developed a WordPress plugin call Site Kit. The idea is to make it easy for us to set up and configure key Google products, giving you authoritative and up-to-date...
You Should Verify Your Website With Google
Google wants to know that you are you, or that you are a legitimate representative of your organization. This is as important for you as it is for Google – they want to have the most correct information, and you want to be able to have a say in what Google displays...
How Much Does a WordPress Website Really Cost?
You might find this post from Elegant Themes really helpful As they say: Despite being advertised as a free platform, WordPress pricing isn’t quite that simple. Sure, you can set up a free account on WordPress.com, however, the site comes with limitations that many...
WordPress Website Hosting Nightmares
I'm updating this post because I want potential clients to understand the downside of using their "usual" hosting company. They often offer you cheap hosting to continue and that seems like a good deal. Here's the problem: I've just built two websites where I...
Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Understanding analytics is important to any SEO strategy and there are resources that will help. Google Webmasters Tools (GWT) is a valuable (and free!) resource that helps users uncover information about their site and those who visit it. Within GWT are two...
Why do I need to update PHP?
Your WordPress site will be faster and more secure. I recommend my clients be sure to host their WordPress sites with "Managed Wordpress," an upgrade that offers better security and automatic updates. Your hosting company doesn't offer it? Then get new hosting. In...
Yes, You Gotta Have an SSL certificate
Time is precious...so who wants to burn through hours of drudgery making websites more secure? Well, in this case, we have no choice. Starting July, 2019, Google marks all sites that haven't adopted HTTPS as not secure. To make matters worse, eventually those sites...
SEO: What should you do first?
I first encountered Joost de Valk at one of the early WordCamps in San Francisco. He struck me as a smart, good guy; willing to provide plenty of insights. During the ensuing years, I've seen his free plugins grow into a whole set of various free and pro...