Technology chosen for a reason

You do not need to know how your website is built, any more than you need to know how your car's engine works. What you do need to know is that it starts every morning. Every tool and service we use was chosen because of what it does for you and your visitors, not because it is fashionable. Here is what we use, grouped by the benefit you get from it.

Speed

A slow website loses visitors before they have read a word, and search engines rank slow websites lower.

• Cloudflare caching: Your website is copied to Cloudflare's global network, including data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Visitors receive pages from the server nearest to them, rather than from the hosting server every time. The difference in loading time is immediately noticeable.
• Hand-written HTML: We do not use WordPress, Wix, or similar platforms. A hand-coded page has no database to query and no stack of plugins to load, so there is simply less for the browser to do.
• Modern image formats: Images are converted to WebP and sized for the space they fill, so a phone on a mobile data connection does not download a photo meant for a large monitor.

When we took over and rebuilt the Chamo Dance website in plain HTML, its SEObility score went from 70% to 91%.

Reliability and local support

• Afrihost hosting: Afrihost is our preferred service provider. It is a South African company with local support you can actually phone, and billing in Rand. If something goes wrong, the people who can fix it are in the same time zone as you.
• Cloudflare as a safety net: Because Cloudflare keeps a cached copy of your pages, visitors can often still see your website during a brief hosting interruption. [ Read more about why websites become unavailable. ]
• Monthly SSL checks: We check that your SSL certificate is valid every month, as not every provider renews it automatically. An expired certificate makes browsers warn your visitors away.

Security

• Nothing to exploit: Most hacked websites are compromised through an outdated plugin or theme. A hand-written website has no plugins, so that door is never opened.
• Cloudflare protection: Cloudflare filters out malicious traffic and automated attacks before they reach your hosting server.
• HTTPS everywhere: Every page is served over an encrypted connection.
• Secured contact forms: Every field is validated, so spam and senseless submissions are blocked before they reach your inbox. [ More about our contact forms. ]
• Properly configured domain email: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are set up correctly, so that your email lands in your client's inbox and not in their spam folder, and nobody can easily send email pretending to be you. [ Why you need a domain-based email address. ]

Visibility

A website nobody can find is a brochure in a drawer.

• Google Search Console: We submit your website to Google and monitor it for indexing problems, broken links, and pages that cannot be found.
• Google Analytics: You can see how many people visit your website, where they come from, and which pages they read.
• Google Business Profile and Apple Maps: For local businesses, being on the map is as important as the website itself. We help you set up and link your listings.
• Structured data: Behind the scenes, your website tells search engines in their own language who you are, where you are, and what you do.
• Validated code: Every page is checked with the W3C Validator, and the website is audited with SEObility to find problems before search engines do. [ More about our SEO services. ]

Behind the scenes

For many years we wrote every website in Brackets, an excellent code editor. When Adobe ended support for Brackets in 2021, we moved to Visual Studio Code. We did so reluctantly, because Brackets suited the way we work, but an editor that no longer receives updates is a risk we were not prepared to take with client work.

We apply the same principle to your website: we do not leave it running on technology that is no longer supported. We also use AI assistance to work faster, with every line of code checked by an experienced developer. [ Read more about how we use AI the right way. ]

What this means for you

You get a website that loads quickly, stays up, is hard to break into, and can be found by the people looking for you. You do not need to manage any of these services yourself, as we set them up and look after them for you.

Would you like to know how your current website measures up? Contact us for an objective assessment.