Background
When creating a website, developers often face restrictions imposed by client requirements, such as budget constraints, time limits, specific hosting providers, and the use of predetermined themes and plugins. These limitations can impede the optimization process, making it challenging to achieve the ideal balance between functionality, performance, and aesthetics. In contrast, when developing your own site – BlogOnYourOwn.com is our blog site, you have the opportunity to exercise complete creative and technical control. This allows for thorough customization and optimization based on specific needs and goals.
Objectives
- Provide a platform to share expertise through a blog.
- Showcase and document free themes made by us.
- Experiment with Progressive Web App (PWA) technology.
- Create a highly optimized, light, and fast website that could serve multiple purposes effectively.
Approach
Given our extensive experience in WordPress theme and plugin development, we decided to build the website from the ground up. This approach included several key steps:
Key Implementations
- Custom Website Design & Development: Building a custom WordPress site that is tailored to the specific content and functional requirements of blogonyourown.com.
- Custom Theme and Plugins Development: Developing a unique custom theme tailored to perfectly embody the aesthetic that suits our needs. Then Developing a custom plugins to enhance functionality and ensure seamless integration with the website’s structure and PWA features. Creating a custom plugin allowed us avoid adding too many plugins that could slow down the site.
- Performance Optimization: Implementing advanced techniques for optimizing site speed to improve load times and overall performance. For optimizing the speed of our website, we implemented CDN, caching solutions, Image optimization and other performance optimization techniques.
- Mobile and UX Optimization: Ensuring the site is mobile-friendly and designed with user experience in mind, to facilitate ease of use and engagement. We knew how mobile and UX optimization is a need of time, that is why we created the website which is responsive to all screen sizes and is cross browser compatible. Our site structure is simple and easy to navigate.
- SEO and On-page Optimization: Applying technical SEO strategies and on-page optimization to boost visibility and performance in search engines. We implemented On Page SEO strategies like meta tags and image optimization and Technical SEO like proper sitemap, schema markups and robots.txt file.
- Integration and Automation: Utilizing APIs for integrating external services (like WordPress.org for theme statistics) and automating processes using tools like Git/GitHub and GitHub Actions.
- Maintenance and Security: Regular updates to WordPress core, themes, and plugins, along with continuous security monitoring and hardening to prevent vulnerabilities.
Results
Launched in November 2018, the Blog On Your Own website has been effectively serving its purpose with only minor updates needed over the years. It was built using best practices that have allowed it to consistently meet the benchmarks set by Google’s Core Web Vitals, introduced in May 2020, demonstrating its sustainability and forward-compatibility. The website not only continues to fulfill its initial purposes but also stands as a testament to the advantages of having full control over website development and maintenance.
The success of Blog On Your Own underscores the benefits of custom website development, particularly when developers can implement their full range of skills without external constraints. This approach not only leads to high-performance outcomes but also allows for ongoing experimentation and improvements, crucial for staying ahead in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
