When I began (2001ish) it was all Dreamweaver and what was called coding, people still code but I don't much as I now use WordPress and very rarely do I have to write line after line of code, although I still can if the need arises. The platform WordPress comes in 2 flavors, both are "free" but one has ads all over it and one is installed on a server so that it is more robust, more secure and just better looking, this portion of WordPress powers about 44% of the internet at last check. USWebworx powers about 35 sites all on WordPress except 1.

This would also be a good time for me to say that this is one time that Number 1 on Google should be avoided when searching for a designer, host or advertiser as 90% of the #1 positions are taken over by large corporations that don't care about you they just care about your money going into their pockets! I don't even advertise on Google and I am there - not doing the marketing here as it's about website design!

Writing code was fun and I fought against using WordPress from about 2012-2013 but then I had prospective customers demanding WordPress so I adapted and I began growing my business larger than I anticipated (Thank You God for the Knowledge and Wisdom), God is the reason I do what I do so all the Glory to Him!

In 2013 I was hearing and reading about how to use a mobile phone on the internet and how sites were hard to navigate so someone came up with a .mobi in place of the .com for phones to browse this meant I had to build 2 websites for the price of one which no one wanted to do but had to to stay competitive.

In 2014 started hearing about Responsive design and it looked promising and the more I read the more excited I became. Responsive Design took the code written and made it fit on ALL Screen Sizes, I was like yeah right how will it work, well read about 2015 below!

In 2015 everything changed for what a website was and was to do! So we will begin there, Responsive as Mandatory

Responsive web design has been a hot topic for the past few years, but this past year it was scalding. Responsive design is of course making your website look great on all screen sizes without having to make a separate mobile site. This helps your SEO and makes it easier to update when anything needs to be changed. More and more websites are now responsive, and designers and coders alike are many times thinking “mobile first.” 

Webdesign from 2016 until now - Responsive will now be a mandatory feature that should be included on all websites. There is no longer the option to make a site responsive, that feature will automatically be included on any design and build. With smartphone usage higher than ever, websites absolutely need to look as great on mobile as it does desktop.

Minimalism has always been a “thing” and a theory designers have followed, but its popularity has skyrocketed over the past year. Apple’s iOS 7 and other platforms helped give minimalism a boost because of their wide spread reach. This technique also plays well with responsive web design, helping make desktop and mobile experiences almost seamless.

Simple colors, less gradients, shadows, and a vast increase in white space are trademarks of a minimalist design. We’ll also see one, singular image dominate a web page, fly out menus instead of traditional navigation, and less copy on websites. Designers will get back to basics, but the ability to design for the modern web has become increasingly difficult. With trends and capabilities consistently changing, designers must always be familiar with how a website works alongside with how it looks.

2021 I do not follow the minimalism to a tee because I believe in sites being divided based on the sites content but I do shy away from pictures as backgrounds, unless the customer asks for it, I will explain why it shouldn't but go ahead and do it and wait for them to ask for it to be changed, if they do that is fine and if they don't that is fine as well.

Fast forward we do not know what the future holds for us Web Designers but I do predict that the Free Sites will disappear soon as they will become embedded with ads hidden to gain income for the hosts offering them because nothing in this world is free!

I didn't get into E-Commerce or Online selling until about 2006 with a few sites that were about auto parts - from my Mazda B3000 truck days when I was a member of a forum and some thread was about what you did for a living and I didn't want to tell anyone I was a delivery driver for Steak-Out or Pizza Hut so I said I was a website designer, which technically it was a profitable hobby at the time, it paid for vacations and those auto parts!

In 2007 I built a store for a friend who is still on my server except not with a store but with the only non WordPress site I host, his son built it and it went live about 3 months before he died so its a memory site that I maintain for them still. The store was Underdog Performance and it was built using Zen-Cart this was before mobile devices so it was desktop/laptop accessible and want to talk about a learning curve...........wow! Later building his I built a couple more and if you were ever into Mustangs or Ford vehicles you may remember BamaChips.com who was bought by American Muscle and is still a live site now but not under my namesake. He does have a new store with me now as well through WooCommerce which is the E-Commerce side of WordPress its a small store www.BamaLSwiring.com for all you Chevy Guys! WooCommerce is so much easier than Zen-Cart was however there is the competition of Shopify, Shopify "looks nice" but really deep down very few people make good money from it because of all the fees and the need to pay for every freaking module needed to make the store work properly, no I am not a fan of them at all and I may be loosing money by not offering them but I am not stressing over my customers being ripped off either.

E-Commerce is probably the most expensive type of website you can have built but still not as bad as some think. WooCommerce takes in the simplistic approach not a really flashy looking store but the functionality of it helps make it my go to platform for stores. The main thing to look at with stores online is the security of the store but also of the Hosting Company - see below tab for what a hosting company is and does and again don't go with #1 on Google for these either!

In a nutshell, web hosting is the process of renting or buying space to house a website on the World Wide Web. Website content such as HTML, CSS, Email and images has to be housed on a server to be viewable online.

What exactly is a server? A server is a computer that connects other web users to your site from anywhere in the world. As the name implies, web hosting service providers have the servers, connectivity, and associated services to host websites. By offering a variety of hosting plans, they cover the spectrum of hosting needs, from small blogs and large organizations.

If you’re planning on creating an online presence, reliable web hosting is essential. There are literally hundreds of web hosts available today providing thousands of varieties of web hosting services. Plans range from free with limited options to expensive web hosting services specialized for business. The plan you choose will depend primarily on how you plan to use your website and how much you have budgeted for hosting.

DO NOT USE #1 listed on Google, I can't stress this enough but as you read through my other tabs I hope and pray it becomes clearer to you, I do not like to bash other companies but after doing this type of work for more than 10 years professionally I have learned a few things and security is the biggest issue with CHEAP or FREE hosting services, its simply not worth it. Plus it gives good hosts like myself a bad name because when you are burned or taken advantage of by someone else it makes you weary of others - its human nature!

I, USWEBWORX, LLC, will not host a site I haven't built or don't maintain, I do this for the safety of my other customers and for my sanity as to not have to look around for who uploaded a virus - in 15+ years I have not had a site hacked!

Why is reliable hosting a must for any website, not just a business site and even more important for a store?
Choosing the right hosting plan will mean having access to the right allocation of resources to keep your website loading quickly and reliably for your visitors. Think about how many businesses these days operate primarily online; their sales and business leads come from their website. If someone lands on a website and there's a problem — it takes too long to load or doesn't appear at all — potential customers won't wait around. They'll bounce off that site in search of a one that works correctly and can deliver what they are looking for, seamlessly. This is why I only host what I build!

If you’re new to operating a website, web hosting and related lingo can be a puzzling topic. Many a novice website owner has used the cheapest option or anything bundled with their domain name purchase under the mistaken belief that all hosting options are essentially the same.

This can be a costly mistake.

This article includes everything you need to know about web hosting and how choosing the right one is important to the success of your website, all in simplified manner you will understand.

What is a domain name?

A domain name—like uswebworx.com, for example—is the internet address where people can find your website. But when your customers type your domain name into their browser, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes.

Every website on the internet is hosted on a server. Each of those servers has an internet protocol (IP) address—a set of 4 numbers between 0 and 255, separated by periods, that tells the computer exactly how to reach it. IP addresses, while useful for computers, aren’t exactly human friendly, and that’s where domain names come into play.

Domain names are an easy-to-remember substitute for IP addresses. When a server receives a request from your customer’s browser, a domain name system (DNS) is used to translate the domain name into a computer-friendly IP address. That way the browser knows exactly where it needs to go to find your website.

Top-level domains

Each domain name has to be registered with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Once registered, it gets a suffix to indicate which top-level domain (TLD) it belongs to. Sometimes this is also called the “parent domain.” Some common TLDs include:

• .gov for government websites (whitehouse.gov)
• .mil for military websites (af.mil)
• .com for commercial businesses (google.com)
• .edu for educational institutions (harvard.edu)
• .ca for sites in Canada (cbc.ca)
• .org for organizations (wikipedia.org)

Most American websites use three-letter TLDs, while other places around the world, such as the European Union and Canada, typically use two-letter TLDs.

Domain name structure

A complete domain name has a three-part structure. It starts with the machine or host name (such as “www” to indicate “world wide web”), followed by the name of the website itself, and finally the TLD (like .com or .gov). Each part of the domain is separated by a dot, creating a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) like www.uswebworx.com.

Note: A domain name isn’t the same thing as a uniform resource locator (URL). A URL is the full web address of a site, and while it does contain the domain name, it contains other information, too. Each URL includes the internet protocol (most commonly HTTP or HTTPS) being used to call up the page. URLs can also help point browsers to a specific file or folder being hosted on a web server (like https://www.uswebworx.com/contact-us/, for example).

Registering a domain name

Registering a domain name is a lot like copyrighting the name of your business: You're staking out your own piece of online real estate that no other business can use. Once you’ve registered a domain name, you can then create a website to live at that address and host it on any server you’d like.The copyrighting is a bit misleading, just because your web host or developer

(uswebworx.com) registers it for you doesn't mean you don't own the name, I register all my clients so that we both manage them and to insure it gets renewed on time and I will release it to you after you have paid for services we agreed upon, this is covered in my Terms of Service (TOS).

Here are a few tips to remember when selecting a domain name for your business:

• Include either your business name or some relevant keywords. Make sure folks know exactly who you are or what type of products you offer. Plus, the use of keywords makes it likely to rank higher in search.
• Include your location. Adding a location to your business’s domain name—especially if you only operate in one particular market—can help you rank higher in search results.
• Avoid numbers, dashes, or hyphens. Simple names are easier to remember and can spread more quickly via word of mouth.
• Make sure you’re the owner and the administrative contact for your domain*. Domain names are like property—you can only transfer them if they belong to you. Make sure you’re the primary contact for the site so no one else can claim ownership without your knowledge. If not the owner make sure you are at least a manager of it - as I said above I register names for my clients and I cover this in my TOS.
• Renew the registration on your domain name every year. When domain names expire, they can be claimed by anyone. This can be a big problem—especially if you’ve already spent years building your business around that domain. To avoid this, consider paying up front for multiple years of registration and setting your account to renew automatically.

Have you ever seen the above? Have you ever had it happen to your site? This is where using unsavory developers and hosts come into play along with the freebie sites that a lot of companies offer and this is why you shouldn't go with them. I know this falls on blind eyes and deaf ears but I have seen friends hacked and its not a pretty site, pun intended.
I will do a Blog Post on this since it is so long and in depth but I have a proven track record and zero hacked sites in 15 years.

Maybe its just me but when I look up a business and am browsing the site and see a Blurb that says email me for more and it is @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, @outlook.com it turns me away because to me it is so unprofessional looking especially in this day when a domain name is less than $30 a year most places and email hosting can be had for a reasonable price it is just more professional to have sales@uswebworx than uswebworx@yahoo or uswebworx@gmail it just irks me. Also it is usually a sign they are using those free services for websites and email is extra or not even included - call or message me and I will happily help you get everything up and going or just email for now then a website later - be professional its 2024!