" I've designed websites, created content, and helped my clients achieve their online goals since 2004. "
∴ What My Clients Say ∴
Michael Is Fantastic To Work With
Yes, Michael is a highly skilled website designer - the site he built for our nonprofit looks fantastic, and the navigation is logical for the visitors to our site. Just as important as his web designer skills, however, are his skills in working and communicating with you on building a site that works and looks great. Michael spoke to us in non-technical terms (or explained the technical terms to us when we needed to know them), and is just a great communicator in general - something you don't find every day. If you're looking for someone to help you build a great site and to enjoy the process, look no further.
— Gerald Schneider, Visalia Rotary Community Foundation
The Thought of Building a Website Is Daunting...
...but, it is not so if you work with Michael. Under the guidance of Michael, we were able to take little steps and we reached the goal line with an amazing site. Michael is a great communicator and was able to take the geek language out of our conversations and made it very easy for us to follow his lead. He is very organized, and articulate. He would follow up with great notes and met our deadlines and fulfilled his commitment to us to give us a site that was easy for us to manage and maintain. Thank you very much for the learning experience and for our great website.
— Dru Quesnoy, Visalia Rotary Community Foundation
Michael Is Experienced And Dependable
I have had an excellent experience using Michael Penner of FlexTech Media in both the development and maintenance of my company’s website. He has been very dependable and continues to be a valuable resource in our online activity. I would highly recommend his services.
— John Ellsworth, President, Success Strategies, Inc.
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Websites Designed For People
FlexTech Media provides Content Management System (CMS) training for content managers, personalized technical support, and proactive security approaches for keeping your website safe. FlexTech Media is here to help long after the web design work is over.
Articles and News
Sparechange.systems
Sparechange.systems is a custom designed website built for blogging and e-commerce. The website’s product offering are PDF downloads that contain financial guidance content. The brainchild of John and Judy Ellsworth, this website divides its content across three major categories of time, money, and energy.
The design came out of numerous conversations and ideas I had while consulting with the Ellsworths, and it was clear they wanted a fiscally conservative look with a modern edge.
Animated Logo Lessons Learned
Recently I accepted a request from my client to animate her logo. You can see the result at the website https://minddivers.com. This is a WordPress website built with the Divi theme by someone else. My role is to maintain and improve it. Here are a few of the challenges I faced and how I solved them, from creation to display.
Best WordPress Web Hosting Experiences
Many web hosting companies have innovated over the past few years in order to offer their customers a great technological and customer service experience. But even more have not put in such efforts, choosing instead to outsource overseas customer-facing aspects such as tech support. Here I’ll list out what I consider to be the best web hosting companies based on my direct experience. They are in no particular order. All are fantastic.
What Does Good Customer Service Look Like?
Most people know lousy customer service when they encounter it. In the world of website ownership, where you are largely at the mercy of technologists such as web developers and web hosting providers, the question of good customer service becomes as important as the technology used. In fact, it should be the number one question…
What Midjourney’s AI Can Already Do
Midjourney is an AI that focuses on generating images from text prompts. There are a few others out there that do this, but I’ve decided to spend some time with Midjourney simply based on its reputation. This AI, like all AI, is growing in capability as it continues to learn through human interaction. As I gain expertise at how to craft my text prompts to get the image I’m imagining, here’s what I’m learning.
Designing Websites For Client Usability
Learning the technical steps for managing the content on your own website can be frustrating and tedious, even if you are a little technically inclined. Web designers can ease this pain by considering what their clients must learn to take control of content, including images and video. While a content management system (CMS) promises to make this as easy as possible, the web designer’s build approach ultimately makes all the difference.
How To Onboard New WordPress Plugins
You’ve decided to install a plugin to get a new feature into your WordPress website. Welcome to Pandora’s Box. Let’s be careful how we open it.
Do You Really Need To Worry About PHP 8.x?
Most WordPress website owners are business people and won’t know what “PHP 8.x” even means. That’s perfectly understandable, but when you choose self-hosted WordPress as your website platform, you are also choosing to deal with keeping PHP up to date along with all plugins and themes that run your website. PHP is a code library that WordPress relies on to run properly. Security support of PHP 7.4, which is still used by many WordPress websites as of this writing, ceased in November of 2022. The shiny new version of PHP is 8.1, and yes, it can break your WordPress website if your plugins and themes are not up to date.