Small Business Archives - The Rough Diamond Academy

The Rough Diamond Community

Supporting Small Business Websites

I have been working with small businesses for the better part of 2 decades, building, maintaining and supporting their web presences. As part of that support I have been developing The Rough Diamond Academy. The academy will consist of a course portal and a community to support the course material. The courses will cover the exact process I use to develop sites for customers; the plugins, the themes, etc. A step by step to building a website from scratch. When launched later this year it will be a subscription based program. It is my hope that this will bring the knowledge and processes I have developed over the years to a wider audience. As a small business owner myself I understand first hand how hard it can be to get the help needed to get a business seen.

That said, from the outset I also created The Rough Diamond Community. This is a Facebook group that is free to join for any small business owner. It's a great place to ask questions and get assistance to a wide range of topics related to web presence. It is my hope that this community grows and brings value to its members. So if you aren't already a member you can join the community here: The Rough Diamond Community. If you are already a member, please reach out to your fellow small business owners and send them an invite.

"Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied."
Robert Noyce, Intel Co-Founder

If you're interested in getting in on the Academy at the early stages, and take advantage of early bird deals you can register uyour interest here: Register interest in The Rough Diamond Academy. There's no obligation, just opportunity!

David Fuller

CEO - Rough Diamond Academy

For over 21 years David has been building websites for clients. In 2013 he pivoted from running a web design agency to working hands on with clients to help them build their businesses by reaching their ideal clients. Going beyond the website. The experience of working at the coal face is the foundation of The Rough Diamond Academy. Real life experience for real life businesses. It starts with building a site, but that's only the beginning!

WordPress Website Security

Getting Your Website Hacked Sucks!

How seriously do you take your website security? What steps are you taking to protect your site from nefarious actors looking to hijack your site for devious doings? I've heard clients in the past shrug off the possibility of being hacked with the erroneous belief that their site is too small and of no value to a hacker. But that is simply not true. Sites of all sizes and reputation are prey to hackers for various reasons. If you have a site, you are a target.

So, what can you do to protect yourself?

Hosting

First up, pay for good quality hosting! This is one of those scenarios where going cheap can cost you a lot in the long run! Use a quality hosting company that provides prompt and excellent customer service. Good service includes keeping servers updated with the latest security patches! Don't go cheap, go good!

Update Your Software

I've touched on this a few times in previous posts. Make sure you have a regular maintenance cycle for updating your WordPress software, plugins and themes. Outdated software is a common reason sites are compromised. Keeping them patched mitigates that possibility. I have two processes for achieving this.

Every time I log into a site, for whatever reason, I run all the updates that need running
I use an automated system to do this on a weekly basis. Part of this process is a daily offsite backup, just in case! Backups go back 90 days.

Remove the admin user

I don't mean have no admin, that'd be dumb, I mean don't use the default user name 'admin' as your admin user. That's just giving hackers a leg up, and we don't want to do that. Use something obscure that can't be seen anywhere on the site.

Use Strong Passwords

I can't emphasis this enough! I cringe when people tell me their passwords. Firstly, don't give anyone your password! If you need to give someone access to your site, setup a temporary user that you can remove. Only give them the access level they need, and nothing more! Secondly, use string passwords. Really strong! And make them unique! Don't be lazy here, it might cost you!

By strong I mean long, 12+ characters and use a combination of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters. (!#$%^, etc)

Again, I repeat, don't be lazt with this. Using the same, weak password everywhere is a recipe for disaster!

SSL

If your site doesn't have an SSL certificate, time to get one. This ensures any data input into forms on your site are encrypted. It also gives visitors to your site peace of mind when they see that little padlock as opposed to 'this site is insecure' messages. Just sayin!

Get Help

If this stuff is just too hard for you, consider getting assistance from a website professional. Your website is just too important to leave to chance!

David Fuller

CEO - Rough Diamond Academy

Page Builders & WordPress Themes

Photo by sempre dilunedi on Unsplash

Themes and Page Builders

If you're a business owner and you're building or maintaining your own website in WordPress, you should take a moment to consider how best to get a flexible, light weight and easy to use theme and page builder combination. What you say?! A page builder, what the?!

A Quick Recap

WordPress uses a combination of core code, plugins and a theme to create a website. You can read more about that structure in this post. For now its enough to know that every site has these elements. Every site has a theme.

So, What's The Best Way To Build A WordPress Website?

Ask a room full of WordPress developers and you'll probably get a whole raft of opinions about the best way to build a WordPress site. Some will say that you should build you own theme, others will say page builders are the way to go, and so on... But I'm not talking to a room full of developers. I'm talking to a business owner that is building their own site for whatever reason. And so, for me there are only two ways forward in this situation:

Buy a ready designed theme
Build your own

Buy a Ready Designed Theme

There are a myriad of ready to go themes available for WordPress, ranging from free to relatively inexpensive. The upside is that you just plug it in and fill out the available customisation options and you are good to go! It's fast and a good option if you need to get a site up quickly. The downside is that you are limited to the structure that the theme imposes on you. You can work around some of this with a good page builder, we'll come back to these, but even then you can't really change the layout dramatically. Another downside is that you aren't the only person with that theme. It's not exactly unique. In addition to this most of these themes come with a lot of code that is never going to be used if you don't use those options. This makes for bloated code and this can impact the speed of your site. It can also be a tad frustrating when you are forced to fit into the box you are given!

Build Your Own

In reality, you are unlikely to have the skills required to code your own theme. And personally, I haven't built a theme for years. It takes too long, and I would not generally be able to charge enough to make it a profitable option. But, there is a way to have the best of both worlds, ie a flexible, lightweight theme with the ability to design your own layout without code. Do I have your attention?

A Light Weight, Practical Approach

This is the exact approach I use when building sites. I want a site to be as lightweight as possible, that is not bloated with a bunch of unnecessary code, but I also need to be able to design with freedom. I use a specific theme with two specific plugins to achieve this.

Page Builders

I've already mentioned page builders, and this is the first of the plugins I use. My choice of page builder is Beaver Builder. I've used it for years now, and I've built some enormous sites using this method, including a recent site in excess of 500 pages. But there's a couple of others you might like to look at; Elementor and Divi.

Do your own research to decide what works for you best. For me Divi is out of the question because it leaves behind a mess of code in the content in the event you ever decide to move away from it and use a different builder. I have been in the position of rebuilding more than a few Divi sites, and quite frankly I hate it! There, I've said it! But I know many developers that love it. Then again, it's not their problem if it leaves behind a trail of rubbish code, is it?!

Elementor by all accounts is an excellent builder, however, I have been put off by a history of security issues with this plugin, and that's enough reason for me to give it a wide birth. So, it's Beaver for me all the way!

But Beaver Builder is only part of the story. The second plugin is Beaver Themer. To really create the full design experience I need the ability to design more than on page content. I need to be able to design and build every element of a site, eg headers, footers, etc. And so, Beaver Themer is a must! It's developed by the same people that developed Beaver Builder and they work brilliantly together.

Now, like I said, the choice of builder is up to you, and you can get a idea of comparison here: Elementor vs Divi vs Beaver Builder

Theme

Every WordPress site has a theme and the variety is huge! The builders I have mentioned will work on just about any theme, but for me, my go to theme is GeneratePress. I've used this as my base theme for years and it would take a lot to move me away from it. It's lightweight and well supported. In and of itself it has little in the way of design, it's just a framework that supports the builders I use. And thats great, because the last thing I want is a bunch of bloat in my theme. I don't want a theme telling me how my design has to look or define a structure that I can't alter easily. GeneratePress, no issues!

Another theme that gets a good mention in the forums is Astra theme. It along with GeneratePress are both amongst the recommended themes by Elementor. Beaver Builder also has their own theme and so does Divi. You might need to experiment a bit to work out what's best for you.

So my setup is Beaver Builder, Beaver Themer with GeneratePress. As part of the coming Rough Diamond Academy courses I will be building a website from scratch with this structure. If you are interested in being one of the first to join the Academy and benefit from the courses and support community that comes with them, you can register your interest here.

David Fuller

CEO - Rough Diamond Academy

Cheap Is Often Very Expensive

Photo by kerry rawlinson on Unsplash

Cheap vs Value

If you are working with a sub contract web developer, how do you know you are getting value? Value can be a difficult thing to define, but value and cheap are quite often very different things, and cheap is often very expensive in the long term. Have a look at the image below. The Cheap/Fast/Good triangle. For me it's the simplest way to explain the cheap versus value equation. When faced with someone looking for a bargain, it's easier to point at the triangle and say, of the three options here, you can only pick two!

So:

Cheap and Fast ≠ Good
Cheap and Good ≠ Fast
Good and Fast ≠Cheap

So, it's possible to get cheap and good, you just won't get it quickly! The question for you is always going to be what matters the most. The issues, or disappointments, come with the expectation that you can have it all!

Hourly Rates

Value and hourly rates is another area that is difficult to define. I gave up using hourly rate years ago. I don't do piece meal work, and I only do project work occasionally. By and large I work with my clients on an ongoing basis. The issue for me is that an hourly rate doesn't really account for value. What ZI can achieve in an hour doesn't necessarily equate to the what other people can achieve in an hour. So, if you are always looking for the cheapest hourly rate you may actually end up paying more in the long run. I've seen jobs I can do in a few hours take days, or longer, by others. They may have a cheaper rate, but they charge more!

If you are going to use contractors on an hourly rate basis it pays to get a considered estimate of the time it is likely to take to complete the work. At least you will get a rough ideas in advance of what you are likely to pay.

And hourly rates definitely don't tell you anything about quality. What someone charges for an hours work doesn't really tell you how good they'll be. It that triangle again. Good, cheap and fast.

And this is the dilemma. Going for cheap can end up costing you a lot more in the long run if the quality is poor or the job never gets finished. Look for developers with a portfolio of quality work and happy customers to refer to. Ask them for the expected delivery time and expected cost, and keep your expectation realistic.

David Fuller

CEO - Rough Diamond Academy

Web Skills for Small Business Owners

Can Anyone Learn How To Build A Website?

The Rough Diamond Academy was created for a single purpose; to help small business owners develop the skills they need to manage their web presence. Specifically its aim is to teach small business how to build a website and then leverage that site to build their business.

Take a good look at the image above that accompanies this article. There's a bunch of skills outlines in what appears to be lines of code. That gives the impression that it's complex or requires a special set of skills like coding to create a website. But that is an illusion.

About eight years ago I moved away from project based web development and started focusing on working with clients to work their web presence. There are many reasons for that decision, but one of them was that I could see that website development was becoming commoditised and that the true skill lay in what you did with the site, not in building it. That may piss a bunch of web developers off, but it is no less true today.

During the last eight years or so I have made it a point to teach as I go along. I want to impart the skills to my clients so they can make informed decisions or, should they decide to, go it alone at some point. If you know the basic skills, and can speak the lingo, you are far better placed to use the tools and contractors to your advantage. That's why The Rough Diamond Academy exists. To teach the skills and empower small business owners to take control. You can definitely do it! You can learn the skills to build a website and leverage it to build you business. And here's the thing: you can do it without knowing a single line of code! There are others skills you will need, but you can learn those!

That's not to say you shouldn't work with developers on your site. But with the right knowledge you'll be able to choose the right people to work with. And of course if you're not in a position to outsource in the early days, you can do it yourself.

A great place to start is by joining our FREE Facebook community. We're in the process of building course material that will be available down the track, but for now the community is a great place to ask questions and get assistance.

We want to empower you and we know you can totally do it! You can build a website form scratch. Yes, you! And you won't be alone; we're here to help!