Businesses like mine were hit quite hard during the pandemic. Few new projects, and fortunate to have ongoing website maintenance to keep me busy. I decided that I would redesign my website given issues that presented with the UDesign theme and my goal of meeting WCAG2.1 AA compliance.
So what happened with UDesign? Without notice, the UDesign theme stopped updating on any websites where installed (quite a few of my client sites as well as my own). During a session where I manually uploaded the latest version, I discovered that the theme had been completely rewritten – everything changed and it broke my site. There were numerous complaints, the developers had eradicated their previous excellent support forum, and made no apologies for how they mismanaged this massive rollout. Without going into a ton of details, my frustration led to changing my previous 5-star reviews to 1-star (that would have been zero if I could have done it). I vowed to never use their theme again. The changes they put in place were acknowledged to likely break most sites and force complete rebuilds. So, my brain says that if I have to rebuild, I’ll do it with another theme. From that point forward, I decided that Divi would be my predominant choice. Water under the bridge. Stuff happens, but they lost many loyal followers.
I have had a membership at Elegant Themes pre-dating Divi development. Initially, I did not care for the Divi theme, but its power has become apparent over the past two years. Changes to the Divi Theme Builder and Library, as well as the addition of new plugins have been transformational. I decided to convert all my clients eventually from non-updatable UDesign to retheme to Divi. And I chose Divi for my new site, too.
My partner, Karen Sullivan at Sullivan Solutions, and I also agreed that, barring specific project requirements, we would place a priority on using Divi for new projects moving forward. I converted a few of her client projects to Divi, too.
In addition to the Divi theme, I have made it a mission to make the website WCAG2.1 AA compliant. Almost there! Pages certify without error with online and digital testing, but I hope to get the new site User tested shortly so I can proudly add the compliance seal.
My new website provides a primary focus on my WordPress Services: Design, Development, and Maintenance. I have added pricing tables for budgetary estimates only. Any actual project cost will be determined after securing more information about the scope, client budget, business goals, and schedule. I explain what is included in a Maintenance Care Plan and how it differs from Content Management. Again, I provide pricing guidelines.
Working closely with Sullivan Solutions, I don’t always do much with WordPress Design these days since I work from their designs and develop a site to match their specs. Those projects are displayed mostly under WordPress Development. Yet, I’ve added all types of projects to Case & Use (mostly anonymized) Studies and Portfolios.