PSPINC Official Company Blog

Permalinks are the URLs to your pages and posts on your WordPress website. These are permanent links search engines and web visitors see when they go to your site. For these reasons, it’s important to customize your WordPress permalinks for better SEO and visibility.

WordPress Permalinks Default Settings

This is not very user-friendly, because the address does not tell the users what the page is about. Search engines will also associate your pages with a number, which is not good for SEO. The URLs to your pages and posts should contain relevant keywords that reflect your content.

Changing WordPress Permalinks

Changing permalinks will affect existing pages and posts you have already created. If you have existing pages with good search engine performance, you should create 301 redirects to preserve your traffic. Install 301 Redirects – Easy Redirect Manager plugin to setup 301 redirects to prevent a loss of search ranking on your existing pages.

Ideal Settings for WordPress Permalinks

Customizing Permalinks

You can customize your permalinks further under “Custom Structure”. A popular custom structure uses /%category%/%postname%/, this would include the category name in the URL address. For an example, if you were to create a how to customize wordpress permalinks blog under the category “Better SEO”, the URL would come out as:

You see how this might improve page rankings, as the URL includes several relevant keywords that users might search for on Google.

Why Not Day and Month

Putting a date on your content URL tends to make your content seem outdated very quickly. When people are searching for answers, they are less likely to click on something dated 5 years ago. People want to know the content they click on is up-to-date and relevant.

However, there are times when putting a date in the URL makes sense. If you are a magazine publication, putting dates in the URLs will allow your users to search for specific content they want to read. High traffic news websites will also benefit from having proper date structure in their addresses.

In Summary

WordPress default permalink setting is not user-friendly, and it’s bad for SEO. Having the proper permalink setting configured from the start is ideal. Utilize a 301 redirect plugin if you have existing content and you want to preserve their traffic when making permalink updates.

Looking for reliable cPanel WordPress hosting? Check out Parcom’s 60% off promotion for only $2.90/month and get a free domain name. Launch your own WordPress website today! Need technical support or web design assistance? Call 800-232-3989.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Common mistakes people make

Too Many Pages

Too Few Pages

Bloated Top-level Navigation

Multi-level Dropdown Navigation

Tips for designing your navigation

• While there is no minimum or maximum for top level navigation items, if you have more than 7 top level nav items, especially with a horizontal navigation, it is starting to get a bit busy.

• Avoid extremely lengthy page/navigation names

• Your site should be responsive (read a previous article for just some of the reasons) and when you are on a mobile device, your navigation should collapse into a hidden hamburger menu to make it easy for users to use your website.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

What is responsive design?

Why is responsive design important?

Is your website mobile-friendly?

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Choosing the right typeface.

First of all, yes it’s called a typeface, not a font. Without getting into too many details, Helvetica is a typeface, 18pt Helvetica Light is a font. Moving on. Generally, when choosing a typeface for your website, the choice often comes down to serif vs sans-serif. There’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer here, but some people feel very strongly one way or the other. Recent studies have found that sans-serif may be slightly more readable than serif, but the margin is very slim and ultimately comes down to preference, and what you’re used to reading. Display fonts are fine for headers, but avoid using anything other than a basic serif or sans-serif for your body copy.

Font size and line-height.

The next step is deciding the right size and spacing for your chosen type. These values will need to change based on device type and screen size (see image below), but in regards to font sizing for a desktop the common rule is to choose something in the 16-21px range. Your line spacing (line-height) should be in the range of 130%-170% of your font size. For instance, if you have a font size of 16px, a line-height of 150% would equal 24px.

Line Length for maximum readability.

Another important aspect to typography for the web is setting a reasonable line length. There have been many studies on this, which all find that the ideal line length for maximum readability is somewhere in the range of 45-80 characters. This is probably one of the most easily overlooked topics of typography, but critical to retaining user attention. See the image below for examples of various character lengths.

A couple more things.

Anyone who has ever tried to read yellow text on a white background has experienced the importance of a proper contrast between your type and background color. A general rule is to shoot for a contrast of at least 4.5:1 between type and background, but this varies depending on the weight of your font. Finally, make sure to establish an appropriate visual hierarchy between headers and body copy. This will allow users to scan your content as needed to find what they’re looking for.

If you’d like some help figuring out the perfect way to reach your users by creating a beautiful, easily readable and scannable website, don’t hesitate to reach out. Let our design team help you out with that.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Enter "Responsive Design"

More than one way to build a responsive website

1. Mobile-first: It’s the idea of first building a website for the lowest browser size (mobile). This version should display the most basic functions and features. Anything that is perhaps unnecessary is hidden or pushed further down the page. As you advance to tablets and PC’s, additional interactions, effects, and complex layouts are slowly added over time.
2. Graceful degradation: This is the opposite, you start with the design at the most advanced end (desktop computers). As you scale down you start to limit functions, reduce the number of columns, and deliver a beautiful single-column mobile experience.

A few important considerations when building a responsive website

• As your website scales down to mobile, your navigation should be contained within a ‘hamburger menu’. It is a fairly universal practice to manage your navigation, users can click to expand a full list of navigation items. This will save you space and make your nav links more manageable.

• Previously mentioned, but as you scale down to mobile it is best to utilize a single column layout and stack everything to make it easy to read.

• Make sure to utilize proper line height, spacing, and size for your typography as your screen size decreases.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Using your logo

For this blog we’re assuming you already have a logo (if not that’s an entirely separate conversation). Do you have a brand guide? If so, there are probably specifications within that guide to let you know how your logo should and should not be displayed. If not, here are some basics:

• Sizing - what is the native size of your logo? Do you have a vector or is it a fixed size? Take some time to figure out how small you can make it without looking bad or losing readability, this will be especially important when developing your mobile site.

• Transparency - make sure you’re using a transparent file type, nobody wants to see a logo sitting in a white box on top of a gray background. Which brings up one more point:

• File Type - the most popular file type for a logo is a PNG as it supports transparency while retaining image quality. SVG’s are a great option as well. Avoid using JPEG as it is a non-transparent file type.

Using your colors

Chances are you already have a color scheme for your business which may be reflected in your logo. How you integrate these colors into your website depends on what your company’s colors are, but here are some tips:

• Use the darkest color for your text. If your logo/color scheme doesn’t include a dark color, then use black or something close to it.

• Use your most eye catching color for your “Call to Action” buttons, or other areas that need a pop of color or that you want to draw attention to. Reds, blues, greens, whatever your brightest and most eye catching color is.

• If your color scheme includes a light or muted color this may be a good choice for a background color for areas that need to be separated from other content.

Using your font

Another good way to extend your brand into your website is by utilizing your company’s chosen font:

• The first thing you need to do is make sure you are allowed to use your font online. For certain fonts you can only use them with the right license, so check to see if your font is copyrighted and if so, what type of license you have to use it.

• Ideally your company is using a web font, such as one found on Google fonts. If so then including your font will be as easy as adding a single line of code to your markup.

• In the even that your font is not web based, but you do have a liscense to use it online, then you’ll likely need to use an online web font converter tool - such as the one found on Font Squirrel - to create .woff files which you can upload and call by way of the @font-face rule in your CSS.

Need some help with all of this? The PSPinc design team would love to help you create a stunning business website which showcases your brand.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Take the time to understand your users.

Determine your end goal.

Create and organize your content.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

Commonly used passwords

• 123456

• password

• 123456789

• 12345

• 12345678

• qwerty

• 1234567

• 111111

• 1234567890

• 123123

• abc123

• 1234

• password1

• iloveyou

• 1q2w3e4r

Best password practices

In conclusion

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

When should you change your password

• You receive notices of data breach from stores you shop from, social media accounts you use, or financial institutions such as your credit card or bank.

• You detect malware on your computer.

• You’ve accessed your account using a public computer, as the computer could be infected with malware or keylogger.

• Your email account receives tons of bounce-back emails and spam, it’s indicative your email account might be compromised.

Do not reuse passwords

Join us next time

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. 1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.