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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.

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.

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.

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.

When your product or service has to be vetted by a C-class audience (the “C” stands for Chief), such as a manager, director, VP, or CEO, before procurement is allowed, your website’s content must cater to several audiences. The audiences are the people in the organization that will use or benefit in some way directly from your offer, their managers, and their manager’s boss.

Cheap web hosting plans are not necessarily bad. The only criterion for a “good” web hosting package is that it fits your organization’s web hosting needs. And what should those needs be? Cost is certainly a valid concern, especially if you’re not getting what you need. In that case, any cost is too much. Here are a few critical things to consider.

For WordPress website owners, the frequent system updates are opportunities for something to go wrong. The same is true when it comes time to enhance some aspect of the website visually or through code. In these situations, performing changes on a clone of the website first lets you confront problems in a test environment. This clone is called the staging website. Once any issues are resolved, you can then repeat that success on the live website.

Different audiences expect different approaches regarding the tone of written web copy. A children’s museum might use exciting language (“Check out this rock, it’s over 2 billion years old!”) to take the tedium out of technical subjects, while a website about a muscle stimulation machine for physical therapy might take a more formal tone.

These tips have helped me in my own business writing on the web, and I hope they help you too!

Not all graphic designers are great at creating logos. So, while I may be good at designing for a website or creating technical diagrams for a white paper, that doesn’t translate at all into being a solid logo designer. For that I defer to other colleagues. It really is a business art form unto itself.