The UK has updated their content design guidelines in major way, and I suspect similar guidelines will find their way to the US before too long. Specifically, they now say: If you publish a PDF or other non-HTML document without an accessible version, you may be breaking the law. The reason for this is pretty […]
Websites
Seriously, start your own blog
While I’d love to see some kind of open-source, distributed social network start up, nothing is on the immediate horizon. However, we already have the tools in place to mostly do it ourselves. Here’s some thoughts about how we could make a better social network by starting our own blogs. If you need help getting […]
Sharpen before you chop
When we’re building a website at GreenMellen, it’s typically around a six month process. Despite a website being largely a visual creation, the design doesn’t begin until we’re roughly two months into the project. How is that possible? When it comes to websites, or any kind of marketing, the message is what’s most important. Wrapping […]
Who is that feature really for?
I was in an interesting Twitter discussion recently where the idea of having website links open in new tabs came up. You know what I mean; sometimes when you click a link on a website, the new site replaces what you’re viewing, but sometimes instead they automatically open up in a new browser tab. So […]
Some quick tips for an ADA-compliant website
While a website can’t technically be “ADA-compliant”, as they have no specific rules for websites, following the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) will get you a long way toward it. I’m certainly not a lawyer, and you can dig much deeper than what I present here, but these tips will easily put you in the […]
What happens if Section 230 is repealed?
Donald Trump has been pushing hard for Section 230 (part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act) to be repealed, but what happens if is it? For starters, it’d make things much worse for Trump. The bulk of Section 230 is this statement: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as […]
Five stars isn’t perfect
When looking at the rating for your business on Google or your product on Amazon, what’s the ideal score you should have? Most think that a 5.0 rating is the goal, but it probably shouldn’t be. When consumers see a score of a perfect 5.0 on a product or business, they instantly become skeptical of […]
They didn’t ask for that feature
I recent had an interesting conversation with a developer from another web agency. He was showing me a site they had just launched, and it looked great! However, I quickly noticed there was no SSL on the site, so it was showing “not secure” at the top. It’s a pretty important thing to have these […]
Keep control of your digital business assets
We’ve long been believers that our GreenMellen clients should keep control of their digital assets. Among other things, their domain name and website hosting should always be something that they own and that they pay for. There are a lot of tricky technical pieces that we handle for them on a daily basis, but in […]
The SSL checklist
Having an SSL certificate on your website (making the address start with “https” and include that little green padlock) has always been important for eCommerce sites, but never very much for any other site. However, Google is now pushing that as an increasingly important ranking signal, so if you want your website to show up […]