My name is Steven Lerner. I started a Web project in the late 1990s called Albino Blacksheep that changed the course of the Internet[1].
Here’s what I do for a hand-coded custom Website I build today.
A Website for the 2020s
High resolution everything
With all new phones, tablets, televisions and computer monitors having retina screens, every logo, photograph and icon should be as sharp and crisp as possible.
Using SVG for graphics allows for infinite resolution with less bandwidth wasted than raster graphics. That means a faster loading website. Any JPEG photos should be processed in both high and low resolution and served the correct one depending on the device. This way, low resolution devices don’t needlessly waste time loading data it cannot make use of.
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Responsive layout
& great user experience
My sites have the same full experience on the phone as they do on the desktop.
Unfortunately, most websites are built for the desktop, and then extra code is added to make things fit on a phone, including just hiding incompatible areas. Those phone sites are a second-tier experience.
I use a mobile-first approach. My sites feel like they are made for your phone, because they are. For every web page element, I plan ahead of time how it will simultaneously work on phone screens and on large monitors. Mobile is not an afterthought.
My sites scale upward for the desktop, and even bigscreen televisions. They can also scale downward onto a watch by request. Everything fits just right with no need to squint, tap extra carefully, or sidescroll. The reason for this is that I obsess with margins and clickspace whereas others overlook these details of design.
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Security
Open source third-party platforms like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal and hacked on a daily basis, as well as an array of third-party services people often plug into sites.
Once these installations are compromised, Google will block navigation to your site from their search engine. McAfee will warn their antivirus users as well. Both companies notify your potential visitors and call you out as if you are the hacker trying to harm them.
Some Web companies gouge you for the resubmission process to get your site in good standing even after it’s long been fixed.
My insistence to not use a content management system or use third-party tools is a preventative measure. In addition your site will be set up with monitoring in Google Console and I keep a safe backup is ready to go.
No third party reliance
Remember Google+? Gone. How about WordPress? Hacked. Flickr? Shutdown. Flash? Disabled. Your Website should not be sourcing software from another company in order to operate.
Be free from any platform or service. Your site can and should exist as its own entity. It only requires itself to run. No other company.
SSL
You can host your site anywhere or with me. My hosting offers SSL certificates to encrypt your site. Now that SSL is standard, many public WiFi spots are taking advantage of sites that are not encrypted, by using them as redirects to their own sites or placing their own ads inside your site.
HTML sanitization
In addition, good website security requires that HTML input fields are sanitized from malicious users, and anti-spam measures are in place for contact forms.
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Speed-focused SEO
The truth is that most SEO companies only edited your meta tags, and charged you an arm and a leg for that. Editing a meta tag takes 2-minutes, and doesn’t even make a difference anymore compared to the 200 other SEO signals.
If you’ve got good relevant content, Google wants it easily consumable on the Web. Not bogged down.
Waiting time, even an extra half-second, will affect your rankings. Google is always running speed tests on your site.
If you require, I can make sure every element is as micro-optimized as possible. Any graphic, photo, font file, video, and script is compacted and compressed. For example, I have increased speed by subsetting fonts—like removing unused special accented foreign characters and symbols. I apply performance tweaks to the Web server as well such as compression and caching.
Micro-optimizations take a lot of extra time initially to prepare your Website, but the up-front preparation pays off for the time your visitors will continually save loading your site, and search engines reward you for it.
If you pay for bandwidth, like I did when I had 10 servers running one site, optimization saves money.
Good code
Clean and efficient coding is important for two main reasons.
A faster site
Good code is light for your visitors. Bad code can lag your visitors’ devices at the expense of making the Web coder’s job easier. Relying on JavaScript to load page elements, puts extra processing on your visitors’ browsers, giving them a laggy experience.
Maintenance
Good code helps your site evolve in the long-run. It’s easier to make major changes, and have new additions. Sites should alter and grow with the business it represents.
With bad code, you have to buy a brand new site every few years just to keep up with technological changes and to reflect changes in your business. You don’t want to be stuck with the choice between redoing everything at a big expense or keeping things outdated for free. You can easily evolve instead.
I hand-code HTML5 for the frontend markup.
I hand-code CSS3 for the frontend styling and animation.
For the backend programming, I code with the latest version of PHP.
For interactivity I use JavaScript only when necessary, and make sure pages can operate with it disabled. When I do use JavaScript, I use what is called Vanilla JavaScript. That means the JavaScript code is true syntax JavaScript, and does not rely on loading a third-party installation in the background like JQuery in order to perform.
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Tons of features
Let’s get a little technical.
- 100/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights for Mobile Speed, Mobile Usability, and Desktop Speed.
- Optimized loading of retina logo, icons, and photos.
- All images optimized for filesize and PNGs losslessly compressed.
- Custom Google Map API integration.
- Schema.org LocalBusiness Rich Text markup for Google.
- Custom installed backwards and future-compatible Web font.
- HTML5 Valid with no errors or warnings.
- HTML Web forms with error validation, placeholders, custom keyboard input.
- No HTML issues in Google Webmaster tools.
- Scalable relative-sizing design to increase sizing for extra large screens.
- Mobile compatibility throughout.
- Watch compatibility.
- Custom CSS3 animated SVGs.
- 30+ sizes of Web app icon, favicons, Windows tiles, and pins, including Manifest file.
- Backwards compatibility of layout, scripts, and form placeholders (IE8, iOS4, etc).
- Server configuration for gzip of all pages, scripts, stylesheets, and other text resources.
- Server configuration for file caching.
- Server configuration for 301 redirects from old site pages to new ones.
- Integrated Twitter cards.
- Integrated Open Graph for Facebook social sharing.
- Site validation for Facebook site admin and Facebook insights, Pinterest, Google Search console, Google APIs.
- Social validation for YouTube, Facebook, Yelp, and Google Business Listings.
- Sitemap.xml file.
- Robots.txt file and humans.txt file.
- Smooth Scrolling script.
- Touch and mobile compatible photo gallery with alternate text for Google Image Search optimization.
- Custom Vimeo/YouTube video embed script for optimal loading time.
- Subset Web font.
My Philosophy
I am a minimalist, organized and detailed. I apply this to my work.
I go through my emails one by one in order. I work efficiently, and avoid mistakes by focusing and not rushing. I communicate directly with my clients. I apply a mutual respect for time, and I adopt your business goals as my own, so that my efforts help you succeed.
If you’re even thinking of considering having a new Website contact me now about availability.