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Our thoughts

Okay, real talk, blogging often is hard shit. We care so much about you and your time. We don’t write posts for the sake of writing posts. If we have a passionate topic, you’ll see it here. Otherwise trust we are probably just busy making something great for the citizens of the interwebs.

Your websites roommates are the worst

What Goldilocks and the three bears can teach us about hosting You know how the story goes. A little girl lost in the woods, stumbles into a world she doesn’t belong in, and tries all the options for herself. She learns from her mistakes along the way, but really doesn’t enjoy the process. Cold soup,…

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Domain scams to watch out for

I own a lot of domain names. Not just for Factor1 projects, but for some client work as well. So basically my name is the public owner of more domains than I care to admit. Daily, i get 25+ emails and about 2x a week I get physical mail spam (is that still spam?) about…

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Choosing that perfect domain name

Choosing a domain name is almost as hard as naming your business or child. I have honestly had easier times naming pets. Nobody really cares about branding, memorability or if it’s a dot com or not. Pet names are easy. Kid names aren’t too hard either. So what makes a good domain name? Let’s cover…

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WordPress and SSL images in WPv4.4

Responsive images became the new standard in WordPress 4.4, released in December 2015. One major issue is sites that run SSL full time. Having that green secure lock in the browser bar is important. It’s good for security, required for online transactions, and adds a great deal of credibility to the site. With WP 4.4…

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Trusting your site to WordPress

We often get asked about how secure WordPress is. I can tell you hands down, at the core, it is as secure as anything can be. We recently found a site we made a custom theme for 8 years ago. It was still running WP version 2.5. It has never been updated. This site had…

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What is a WordPress strategic partner and why you need one

So it’s the new year, and you are working on a new site. Maybe it’s for your company, or maybe it’s something you are working on for a client and you are shaping the content and creative for them. We all know WordPress is amazing, powers 50% of the websites out there today, and offers…

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Down with the rockstars and ninjas

Every day I see or hear companies touting they are design rockstars, or only hire WordPress ninjas. Can we stop with that as a work culture in general. I know I for one do not want to hire a rockstar accountant, or a plumbing ninja. It’s just not the kind of people I like to…

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Mobile friendly for better SEO

While we have been long pushing mobile responsive sites for our projects over the last few years, google is making much bolder moves. We here at factor1 think the user experience on all devices adds up to a positive interaction with your brand. We see the reports that more and more people every month use…

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Our take on site speed metrics

So there is a large focus on sites being fast. Google rewards sites that load quickly and meet their speed criteria. Go ahead, run your site through googles page insight tool. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ What grade did you get? Was it under 50/100 on desktop? You won’t be alone. That’s actually pretty normal. We have had this…

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10 years

If feels like just yesterday I convinced my very supportive wife I should quit a well paying easy job to start something new. Feels like yesterday, but it was actually 10 years ago. Oh I should also mention what a leap of faith factor1 was. At the time she had been laid off from a…

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