Melody Sharp Web Designer and Developer

I‘ve been in Santa Cruz County since 1981, designing and maintaining websites since 1996. 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.

Introductory Offers

WordPress Website Hosting Nightmares

Unfortunately, most small, reliable hosting companies are getting swallowed up by the big guys. These boutique companies start out with great service and tiny monthly fees. Then they get bought out, enter into greedy price wars, and things start to fall...

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...

Why I believe in net neutrality

Getting Set Up With Google Local

Google has been working to make things easier for people who want to verify a local business on Google but that doesn't mean it isn't time consuming and frustrating! Add to that, when trying to help a client set up their local business, Google sets up all kinds of...

Study of SEO Ranking Factors

I use a software called SemRush when working with my business partners on Search Engine Optimization projects. They just did a survey and revealed some interesting new insights into how Google rates one website higher than another. The main goal of the study was to...

WordPress Just Gets More Popular

Grousing with a colleague recently, as web developers often do, about all the "you'll have a website up and running in a few minutes" ads on TV (not really true, frankly). Those "hosted" solutions can be the right choice for, say, a photographer who just wants to...

Why WordPress Sites Need Maintenance

One of the reasons I attended a recent WordCamp in Sacramento was to find out how WordPress as a Content Management Solution is faring and whether other "hosted" solutions are gaining traction. When WordPress got started in 2003, it was hailed as a minor miracle for...

Wordcamp Sacramento 2016

Spending the weekend at WordCamp. Lots of good stuff but here is one presentation that is valuable for anybody who wants and/or builds websites. Profitable Website Development: The Oreo Cookie Strategy WordPress is a complicated application software. It's a CMS....

Santa Cruz in 1955

So sweet..yet somewhat frightening, too. Yes, things have changed here since 1955.

The Latest Big Idea

Bloated Servers Hurt Your Business

Many hosting company are getting bought out by big corporations and/or are just getting greedy. Add to that, it takes me three times as long to develop a WordPress site on GoDaddy because I have to wait for their bloated servers to respond. Yes, their customer service...

Getting Mobile Friendly

Yes, we all need to be mobile friendly since people are moving from desktops to doing everything on their phone. And, of course, Google says your site won't show up in searches on mobile devices if it's not built for mobile. Nice article link that explains the...

What’s all this about Google+ Authorship?

Perhaps you've heard that authorship is a big deal and Google Plus authorship is even more important? Like many things for WordPress clients, "There's a plugin for that!" But, you do need to setup up a Google+ profile and plugin WP-Buddy author (wp-buddy) has given...

Latest Website Launches

Having so much fun this month, starting with helping local police chief John Weiss with his cartoon website. Current projects include building a new WordPress website for the Santa Cruz Veterans as they re-open their building in January and a new WordPress site for...

What’s all this about mobile (Responsive) websites?

You can install this plugin in an effort to make your site visible on Mobile Devices. But, if you are developing a new site, it needs to be mobile friendly. Below is a great infographic from Kirsti Scott at HotDesign. Bottom line is that Business mobile use in 2016...