Video Transcript
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I was trying to tell you to unmute. There you are. All right. We’re in a completely different area and away from each other. We’re on the other side of the house. I’m on the back. Reina’s on the front because we had microphone problems and we have to figure this out.
Yeah, it’s a beautiful day. So we wanted to come outside. And now I’m looking at my computer and I’m like, oh no, I forgot to charge.
Oh no. All right. We’ll make this a quick one. We don’t need to go too much into No Scrubs.
22%. So, yeah, I think that’s enough.
I have 100, so I’m here all day. Tune in for the all-day live stream. We’re going to break that record of 624 hours consecutive. Let’s get a charger out here. So thanks for tuning in, everybody. I’m Tony, and this is Reina. I’m the web developer for 3Tone Digital. Reina, want to introduce yourself?
Hi everyone, my name is Reina. I am the website designer. And today we have a pretty quick live for you, but we want to go over a few things when it comes to providing some useful tips and understanding of some techniques for whether you should do a redesign or if you should just do a facelift on your website.
Yeah. You can keep going.
All right. Well, first, I just want to say happy Juneteenth. It is a federal holiday, and maybe some of you guys are at work today. But Tony, if you want to Google it, there’s a really cool interactive feature that if you want to share the screen to see it.
I’m going to do that now. Share screen. It looks like it’s crazy on Google. It’s like a whole party going on.
I know. That’s why I was like, oh, yeah. I’ve never seen this. Usually, they do the Google image and things like that, but now it goes all through the screen. There’s confetti and things like that. So it’s very interactive and really giving users more for those holidays.
Yeah. You know what I saw the other day, too? I’m going to put it on my screen. So I looked up on the Celtics. Remember the Celtics one?
Yeah. You see it?
Yeah, I see it. It’s like fireworks going off and stuff. So I guess that’s their new thing. That’s pretty cool. They interact with these important holidays and events.
So I want to talk about Juneteenth. What is Juneteenth?
Summarized. In a nutshell, Black Independence Day and usually we have fun community events and great god. I know. I know, damn trying to do this like this. How about we jump into the office? I pause our screens and we continue this back in.
Okay, all right. Thank you. Thank you. We’re back. Oh, man. That was wild. It didn’t work. We tried to do something different. And as the title of the livestream says, to scrub or not to scrub. So we decided not to scrub and just go forth and handle our technical errors in smooth fashion.
Yeah, you know, that just goes to show not every idea is a good idea.
Yeah. We had good intentions going outside, enjoying the weather out there, having a live out there. But there’s just there wasn’t a strong enough connection. And we just figured, sometimes you gotta pivot. So we’re back in the office.
Yeah, I think next time we’ll bring out the ARO Wi-Fi extender to the backyard. Test it out. So anyways, where were we? Juneteenth. Happy Juneteenth, everybody. This is Independence Day for African Americans. It’s commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States, which is a great thing. Obviously. But my beautiful wife is Black and Puerto Rican. And this would not have been possible without independence in general and freedoms. So thanks, Juneteenth. Cheers. Here’s to Juneteenth. The ending of slavery.
Let me get us back on the screen. So anyways, to scrub or not to scrub, this is the question that we are faced with sometimes as web developers and web designers. A client will come to us and say…
Do we need a new website?
Yeah, sometimes they don’t even say it out front, or either they think they don’t need a new website or they think they need a new website, and sometimes it’s the opposite. So we’re just here to talk about one of the cases that you do need a new website and one of the cases that some TLC is just what you need.
And the band and the actual TLC stands for case anybody doesn’t know tender loving care or is it tender love and care what does TLC stand for the band their names
Yeah, their names. T-Boz, Left Eye, and wait.
Chili.
Chili, yeah.
I’m like, how did I forget Chili? That’s the only one I know.
Yeah. Yeah, so we saw TLC at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and that was a really good concert.
Yeah, that was for my birthday when I turned 37. So that was a really, really great concert.
Yeah. TLC in general has some good history with us, and we did a… what was it like a karaoke thing at our at our job where we met and uh she did TLC No Scrubs and I was in love so TLC No Scrubs for the win let’s play it again it’s like the beauty version too like the Portugal lo-fi jazz
No words. Anyways, do you want to start this off, or do you want me to start mentioning some things about sites?
Yeah, let’s just have it. You can start off, and then I’ll jump in.
Yeah. So I mean, just off the top of my head, some things that require new sites are a big mess. If you jump in the back end, if I jump in the back end of a site, and I see 10 page builders installed and pages are using different page builders on top of that. 60 something plugins, a big mess of stuff that just isn’t fixable.
I wouldn’t say it isn’t fixable, but it isn’t fixable in terms of, is it worth it? Like does the fixing of say, just giving a ballpark of 20 hours here, does that really compete with doing a whole new website over for double that? You’re still stuck with that bad website in general, even though it’s fixed and improved, but you can go the other route of… getting a new website for a little more, but at least you’re at a better place and more future proofed for the future of the website. So I think going in the back of the website for me and seeing exactly what it’s made out of is probably the big knowledge for me whether or not it’s going to be give it some TLC or start it over and call it a scrub.
Yeah, and a lot of the times, it might be already decided for us. Because if there are builders like Divi or some other ones that you try to switch off, all your content turns into code, really. So it’s not an easy progression off of those builders. And if the issue that they’re having has to do with the framework of taking too many resources and slowing down the site, then the solution would be to create the website on a new foundation that is more sustainable to create the end result of a faster site. So if it’s something like that, then we’ll always say we have to restart it because the foundation is rocky just like a house if the foundation is is there’s cracks in the foundation you have to rebuild
Yeah first to decide that yep knocked down the house um on the other side of it, too, is somebody thinks they need a new website when really all they probably need are fixes, which is not, you know, the projects. We like big projects personally. Like, here’s a new website. It gives us the creative control over it. But sometimes, just like yesterday when we were looking at that guy’s website in front of him, they’ll slide to the right on mobile and there’ll be extra space or there’s not enough padding between things. Or as Zaid said, are you here?
Yeah, you did say this about the content touching the sides of the screen. Like that’s a noob. I mistake, obviously. So when you get a website from somebody and things are touching the side of the screen, especially mobile or desktop, God help us. That’s just a bad thing. So when you go on these sites and there’s just little things like that, we’re able to, with enough access, at least admin access, if it’s a WordPress site or FTP access, if it’s some other thing or cPanel, we’re able to go in and just fix things. And I like to call it the power hour.
But I didn’t go to college. And Reina informed me that a power hour is actually something different in college and has to do with hardcore drinking. So that’s not what we’re going for. Unless it’s shots of water.
It is showing our Wi-Fi is unstable too. This is like one of those…
This is a scrub livestream.
Yeah. I think this connection, I don’t know what’s going on out there in server connections. If you’re in upstate New York, there’s a whole outage happening. Yesterday 911 alert or power outage was down so you couldn’t even contact 911 which was pretty scary yeah um it’s back on now but I know I hit Massachusetts and the connections have been weird like even our phone connections we’ve been getting like sos and places we usually get um service and now even now like I’m seeing a connection issue with our wi-fi so who knows if that’s a spectrum thing or what but
Yeah, even after that 911 thing, our phones are in SOS mode yesterday.
Yeah, which is pretty scary.
Yeah, we were checking out pools yesterday. Community pools which sound gross, but they’re actually – especially the first one was really beautiful clean like an Olympic pool so we got on our passes not to change the subject
No, yeah, I’m excited the community pools in our area are beautiful, you know and they have ones with slides they even have a separate pool for the kids and it’s just I’m looking forward to taking the kids there because I think they’ll have fun.
I’m looking forward. I can’t swim, which I’ve said before, but maybe I will go in there. I just sink to the bottom.
I’m a swimmer. I taught myself how to swim. I used to go to a pool called Beaches Pool in Trumbull, Connecticut. And I think I was in middle school when I saw my cousins, they were swimming and I was like, I need to, I need to figure this out. And then I just, I just got confident when it comes to the water. And then also I was in camp too, as a kid, and they just kind of threw you in there. And I remember being like sink or swim. And that’s, I figured out how to swim. I just forced myself.
Yeah, that’s good. I’m glad she swims, and I can’t. Now we’re trying to teach Landon how to swim.
Yeah, I think he’ll be good. He likes the water.
I like to be in the water. I can go from one side of the pool to the other, but only if I know I can touch the bottom. When I know I can’t touch the bottom… forget it. Drowning.
Yeah, I think because you suffer from the panic of the water, like your reaction to not, if you accept that you won’t be able to touch it and to keep on going and be okay with that.
And once a psychic told me that I would die by drowning. That was even after, I mean, I didn’t spend my whole life, so she’s probably right. So I stay away from learning.
Yeah. That’s when I’m going to drown to death. When I try to learn, be like, Oh, I’m here. Like now is the time to prove the psychic wrong. She was right about other things though.
All right. Back to our topic at hand though. Band TLC you believe in psychics?
I keep trying to get Reina to go to psychic but she will not.
I’m not really a psychic. I do think people can, uh, some people have a gift of, um, premonition and stuff like that, but when they commercialize it and do this whole thing pay me I I don’t think I don’t know I’m not a huge fan of psychics, and there’s some danger zone there, I think, spiritually. But that’s a whole other conversation.
I know. We’ll save that for tomorrow’s livestream. Now we’re going into the dark side. Psychics, real or not, live on 3tone Digital’s livestreams. Real versus AI, psychics.
I know. So they’ll have those. So all right, let’s get back to the thing, though. You know the thing. So if a website is too far gone, even in terms of age, we’ll get sites that haven’t been updated or even built in over 10 years. A lot of times, to upgrade that site is a pain because it doesn’t work on the new PHP 8, which is the standard right now because the other PHP, which is pretty much a language that or a server language that runs websites like WordPress. If a site is too old, a lot of times it’ll just not work. There’ll be errors.
Oh, we got a comment. Can you read my tarot cards? See, Alex wants to keep with the psychic conversation.
I’ll pull up my tarot cards and do a reading for you. That’ll be the next one. We’ll do tarot cards on your website.
Yeah, I’ll wear one of those things on my head. Chloe. Was her name Chloe?
Cleo.
Cleo, can I do the voice?
No. On Juneteenth.
We watched a whole documentary on Miss Cleo. It was pretty interesting. If you haven’t seen the documentary, you should check it out. I thought it was really interesting.
Especially growing up in that area. Not in the area. In that time where she just… I was not in her area. In the time where she became so popular. I remember seeing the commercials and stuff. It was a really interesting life.
Show us your real accent. Where are you really from, Reina?
Yeah. We’re not doing tarot card readings. We’re doing website readings. So your website reading, we should do that, actually, like a psychic. We go in and we pretend that we’re, we see a website failing in the future because it doesn’t work on PHP 8. So just to go back to that. A lot of old websites are built on old, obviously, frameworks and even just the old WordPress that we come across sometimes. I’ve seen recently one that was on WordPress 4 or 5. And obviously, that can’t be upgraded. You can’t just press a button and the site’s there. That’s sad. And they’ve gotten way better now with upgrades, meaning the newest WordPress 6 and I’m sure WordPress 7 whenever that is released and probably a couple years will still be backwards compatible where you can just kind of upgrade and it’s still going to work on PHP 8. I don’t know but in the future 10 years from now when PHP 10 or WordPress 8 is out there you know but if a website is very old and a website can’t be upgraded we usually suggest to just scrap it and we can use the design there’s been a couple sites I’ll
What was that?
It was a loss site, which we can talk about other lawyer sites too, but a loss that I will, they just wanted a replication of their old Drupal site into WordPress. And it was old Drupal site. And the only reason they really wanted to upgrade, cause it wouldn’t go on the new server. It was just too far behind. It was like Drupal 5 or 6. And pretty much we… I wasn’t me on this one. This is like pre-3tone digital I think or just took the old design and then recreated it made it better in WordPress and now the sites new so they did need a new site But in the other side of it, they didn’t really need any design or anything They just they like the design it worked for them. So that’s also it’s almost like a hybrid where I You can redo your site. You don’t need to redo the design, although sometimes it is a best decision to make. Or you could just completely scrap it. Or you just do little edits here and there, which I like the little edits. I do feel like there’s a lot of websites out there and businesses that can benefit from that because the things are so small. The little things are so small that they’re taking away user experience.
And just to jump on that is header image itself, even just refreshing that out. I think the biggest pitfalls that businesses do is they’ll have the same images on their site and not create any fresh look to their site. And even just making header adjustments and testing out new CTAs in the header and refreshing an image can really give your website a new look and feel.
Yeah, that goes right into the whole growth-driven design methodology, which we do with our site. And we do tell people, even when we do a site, I think, and you agree, I’m sure, that the site is never done. You can just put it there, and that old saying says, if you build it, they will come. But it’s not the same with… websites, if you build it, they’re not going to come. You have to keep improving and seeing where you can improve and go back to it and make these little adjustments. Doesn’t mean you need a whole new site, even though as a web developer or designer, I want to do sites over constantly, but it takes a lot of time and effort. So sometimes most time, actually, if the foundation is not broken, if you’re not in a broken house, then the best thing is to just fix the little pieces. Fix the heater. Fix the furnace. Get some new curtains.
Yeah, and the design. Get some new curtains. Fix the window. Paint the walls. Paint the house.
I know. Paint itself does a lot for a room. You can be in a room that looks so dreary, and you get a bright color, and it can really liven it up. Same thing for a website. It’s just making the choices that can add to really complement your brand more better than it is now.
Yeah, it’s a good metaphor, too. Because there are things around the house where maybe the house is… would it be like completely infested with cockroaches and bugs and termites and sometimes those houses do need to be knocked down because they haven’t been visited in years they’ve been abandoned squatters are living there those are the hackers that’s like the metaphor for hackers so we’re the pest control so we come in there yeah that’s actually one service we offer is just pest control and renovations really and then the other one would be like completely come in with a excavator I’m an excavator shout out to blippy and just knock down the house and or even just start next door and build a new house and then you guys just move in to the new house after we knock down the other house
Or we move the house. We migrate the house to another location on a new server.
That’s true. We move it on a truck.
Because sometimes where the house is is in the middle of a pest infestation that you can’t control.
Yeah, that’s true. You have to actually move. And similar to a website, you can be on a server that can’t support your site, and then you have to move it to a better foundation and server that can… um create a fast loading site and things like that so it’s a lot of similarities similarities she should be so good at this stuff these metaphors, sometimes she drops them in the middle of the day not even I don’t know why I’m holding this just ignore this she’ll drop some kind of like thought in the middle of the day I’ll be thinking about it for hours like that’s really good right now
But yeah, I like the idea of the house being, and if it’s completely infested and there’s moles under the ground and stuff, kind of like where we live. We’re not going to knock down our house, but we do have a mole problem. But it is similar to a server because sometimes things are unfixable unless you move, get out, or even the neighborhood. Because some of these are shared servers. I’m just going on and on. Shared servers mean you’re on a website with no limit. But on SiteGround, there’s hundreds of sites on your server. If you’re living in that neighborhood, you want to move. You want to get out of there and save a little money and put a down payment on the next place. So we handle migrations. That’s a big part of services that we provide. And a lot of times, if we have a new website, and we assess whether they’re happy with their current server and hosting provider. And I would say eight out of 10, they want to move because of reasons that we just talked about. So migrations are a big part.
Yeah, I think 8 out of 10 is because for a while in the tech space, there were a lot of hosting options out there. And it’s been trimming down. The bad ones have been going away, and the good ones have been moving up. So a lot of these sites that we get are on crazy, old, weird, we’ve seen some weird ones where you’re only able to access very very certain things and they’re usually on shared servers which is again, that’s that’s we’re on server and other sites are on that server so they also take up resources if they’re a popular site they’re gonna take up more resources than your site and your site’s gonna suffer, you know so We always suggest things like WP Engine. I was gonna say WordPress Engine. God and Kinsta. And there’s a few others that are out there, but those are managed WordPress. They designate resources to the site when it’s needed. And they’re not, most of them are not, unless you get a cheap plan, are not on shared, this type of shared server that we’re talking about at least. So you can get a dedicated server, which are, this is your site, and those are fast, but they’re also expensive. Some of them are I’ve seen them for like $5.99 a month. But companies that can afford it, and if the need is there, then I think it’s a great thing.
And I would say another pitfall that people do when they’re embarking into a new website project is the, oh, I want it to be perfect. I want being able to look at the site and saying, oh, this needs to be like this, like that, like this, and overcomplicating the approvals of the design process. is something that we see sometimes. And it really slows down getting the new site out there. I’m not saying release a site if things are broken. Obviously, don’t do that. But spending too much thought on something that you’re not sure how it’s going to land when it launches. is kind of a waste of time and resources because you really don’t know how it’s going to interact. So the sooner you can launch it in, you know, the site is working in the sense of like all the links, everything is in place. But to be stuck on specific little nitpicking of things can really prolong the process and prolong the ability to get it out there and be able to analyze if how users are interacting with it. So that’s why we always recommend to let’s have a starting point, let’s launch it, and then test from there. Because there is a whole testing that is required after you launch a site. You don’t know how users are going to interact with it. And the best way to do it is to just hit the launch button, launch it, and then see what happens. So sometimes you have to take that leap of faith and say, okay, we’re ready to go. We did our due diligence. We created a new design. We did X, Y, and Z. And now the only way to do is to launch it and test it from there. So that’s something that we work on and is a common struggle for a lot of new clients and people in general when they – are in that between point of oh we need to launch this new site but it has to be perfect it’s never gonna be perfect um but get it to a certain point and then modify from there
Yeah, and I think what Reina said, if things are not broken and things look good, I think that is a fair sign to launch right away. Because especially if you’re replacing an old or broken site, it’s like, it can’t be worse. So might as well just go forth. And then that gives you the opportunity to index the site. So to tell Google it’s there and to look at stuff if you’re doing A and B testing. And you said that it’s necessary to do stuff after. It’s not, but it’s definitely the best thing that you can do. Like going back to that, if you build a site and just leave it there and just hope that it works, it depends on the industry and depends on the audience, of course, but in our experience, usually that doesn’t work. I’m just leaving some.
Yeah, never set it and forget it. Like that’s the worst thing that you can do for your website. Oh, we launched it. That’s it. And there are people that do that and just want brochure sites and say, okay, I’m online. That’s a different, that’s a goal of some people and they achieve that and that’s it. But is it really right if you want to have a sustainable website? growing business and want your website to work for you. No, but there are people out there that just want a brochure site and say, you know, just create it. I’m never touching it again.
It happens very often, but I have had clients that say, I just want people to search. And when I give them my website, it’s there.
Yeah, I think that’s the thing. If they’re just on a local basis where they’re saying, just go to our website, and they’re not trying to grow or advertise or anything like that, just kind of stick with, I just want something there, which is fine. You know, it depends on the person and what their goals are, of course. But if you’re actually trying to grow, yeah, you can just leave it there. And just little updates, like Reina was saying, those little painting the room kind of stuff or adding a new header or adding a new section that does something more and opening things up with more white space here and there and testing things on mobile. Does this work? Does this look weird? Does the text side to side? So there’s all these things you can do that just improve it over time and don’t involve a whole new website. Scrubby website.
To evolve with time because there’s a lot of sites that we see in specific industries. For me, I’ve seen hair salons really outdated, like outdated designs. You can tell they haven’t updated hair. The sections of their site to match the current design standards. I’m just talking from just locally looking up certain hair salons and things like that and realizing that I haven’t found any really great websites.
Yeah, a lot of them build it on whatever, Wix and Squarespace.
Yeah, and then also even event planners and things like that. Just looking up certain examples of websites event planners in the area, you can tell they’re all by website builders and things like that, that aren’t like evolving with today’s standards and time and it’s kind of a little bit behind. So just noticing that it is a common thing that people do. And sometimes they’re just busy with the day to day and don’t have the time or have a team. Or web developer to help update so just have an open mind and maybe take the time to kind of refresh your site or reach out to people like us I guess
Yeah we want we like event planning sites we’ve done a few and we see bad ones and Reina is a great event planner for our local, you know, our family kind of things, hostess with the mostess. But there’s so many things that these event planning websites can do, like have calendars and schedule a booking and look at the consultation, better pictures, interactive stuff, video, drone footage.
Yeah, and we’re working on one right now that’s currently in staging, so we’ll make sure to… share that once it’s ready, but it is exciting. I do have preferences for certain industries and event planning is definitely one of them.
So, yeah, I like the fun stuff too. Serious stuff is okay. Medical sites, you know, but it’s very like, but you can have fun with the design and the functionality of a event planner or party planners or anything like that.
Yeah. And who doesn’t love a party?
That’s true. So you want to have that fun vibe to be shown within the website. So that’s a little bit easier, I think, on the creativity side.
Yeah, that’s true. A lot of them look so dreary when you go to their homes.
Yeah, like, are you a party planner? Fun times event planning is like a slide that has no air in it. Dirty food, bugs on it. Maybe not that far. That’s an exaggeration. But that’s kind of the vibe you get when you’re not looking and… You’re somebody like me and probably like 100% of people who have lower attention spans. When we go to websites, we’re looking at it. We ain’t. We ain’t looking.
What happened to you?
We’re looking at pictures over there.
Can you stop with that accent?
It’s my real accent.
Come back, Tony. Come back.
We’re getting the first impression, and first impressions are everything.
It is. Very true. All right. Well, we’re going to have to, I think we covered everything, right? Is there anything else?
Not really. I don’t think so. I’m only saying that we have to bring our cat, our beloved cat, Belle, to get groomed today. So that’s very exciting. We’ll take a before and after picture and share it in our next live.
Yeah. Are you finding the picture? They’re not doing a lion cut.
I know. I had this post a while ago. I said, get a lion cut, they said. Your cat will be cute, they said. And then our cat came back like this.
Oh, you’re breaking up. Oh, the Wi-Fi connection. You’re like, Oh, yeah. Oh, it was so horrifying. Everybody was scared. He’s a cat, you know, so he’s just walking around. Kids are running away from him. It’s horrifying.
We’re gonna fix this Wi-Fi. I think it’s just pretty good. The last few.
Am I breaking up too?
You look like you are two pixels with eyeballs.
Oh, so it’s happening to me.
Yeah.
Same. All right. Good place to end it.
Good place to end it. Exactly. Play us out with some Portuguese.
Yeah. Thank you.
fin
