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In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, the battle between traditional solutions and modern approaches is a constant. One such juxtaposition is JAMstack versus WordPress. In this blog post, we'll delve into the differences between these two frameworks, exploring the advantages and disadvantages of each, and helping you decide which might be the better fit for your next web project.

JAMstack stands for JavaScript, API, and Markup. Unlike traditional content management systems (CMS) or site builders, JAMstack architecture separates the code (JavaScript), the site infrastructure (APIs), and the content (Markup). This decoupled structure ensures a clear distinction between server-side and client-side operations.

This decoupled structure allows for efficient caching and pre-building of pages, contributing to faster website performance.

By serving pre-built markup and assets over a Content Delivery Network (CDN), JAMstack eliminates the need for on-the-fly server assembly, resulting in faster loading times.

With a reduced attack surface due to the separation of client-side and server-side operations, JAMstack inherently enhances website security, mitigating concerns related to server and database vulnerabilities.

JAMstack's modular nature allows for seamless scalability, making it ideal for websites experiencing variable levels of traffic.

WordPress, a household name in the world of content management systems (CMS), has long been the go-to platform for building websites of all sizes and complexities. Known for its user-friendly interface, extensive theme library, and a vast ecosystem of plugins, WordPress empowers users to create and manage content with ease.

WordPress is a monolithic CMS, where everything – code, infrastructure, and content – is traditionally stored on a server.

The vast plugin ecosystem of WordPress allows users to extend functionality easily, providing a wide range of options for customization.

WordPress excels in content management, making it a preferred choice for traditional blogging and content-heavy websites.

Choosing between JAMstack and WordPress depends on the specific needs of your project. If speed, security, and scalability are top priorities, JAMstack may be the way forward. However, for those who prioritize a robust content management system, and a vast ecosystem of plugins, WordPress remains a formidable choice. Other points of consideration include:

For simpler projects with a focus on speed and security, JAMstack may be the ideal choice.

WordPress, with its extensive features and plugins, is better suited for complex websites with advanced content management requirements.

JAMstack offers flexibility in choosing frontend frameworks and APIs, allowing developers to work with the tools they prefer.

WordPress, while customizable, may have limitations in terms of flexibility, especially for those seeking more unconventional solutions.

JAMstack sites typically require less maintenance, as updates are centred around APIs and static files.

WordPress, being a dynamic system, may require more frequent updates, including core updates, theme updates, and plugin updates.

Ultimately, the decision hinges on the unique requirements of your web development project.

A Modern Approach to Web Development

One thing I have learnt over the last three decades in business is that we never stop learning. Nor should we. Our industry like many others is constantly evolving.When I started back in 1992 there was not internet, email or social media. By comparison life was pretty simple.

As JAZ has been going for over 30 years, there is so much I can share with you on how our business has survived the last three decades, but it would take a lot more than a simple blog.

What I would like to share with you are three key learnings that have come from each decade that hopefully will be beneficial to you.

In the first decade the hardest and most challenging thing was to learn to say “NO”.

In the early days we fell into the classic trap that if you had a heartbeat and a cheque book we wanted to do work with you.

It took me nearly 10 years to have the courage to say “NO”, and I still today I remember as clear as anything the day I said “no” to a client. It’s not that we want to be difficult or hard to get along with, rather it’s acknowledging not everyone is right for your business.

Pareto’s principle is that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your clients so it makes sense to focus on this 20% as the other 80% are going to consume a lot of your time for little reward.

Learning to say “no” is just one part of the equation, learning how to say “no”is the other.

In the second decade the most important thing I learnt was to be adaptable.This means accepting and embracing change.Dr Spencer Johnson wrote a great little book called “Who moved my Cheese” which is all about adapting to change.

As I have mentioned our industry has gone through massive change with the web and social media coming into play.I have no doubt more change is on they way.

Covid itself has forced many changes in particular working remotely as many companies incorporate this into daily life.

Business Insights

In this digital age typography is not a word that often springs to mind, yet it is as important now as it was all those centuries ago when it first came into existence. Although we have seen the surgency of video content a lot of content is still consumed through reading

The importance of typography in design relates back to its three main functions. The first and one of the most important functions is to improve readability. The second is to express a design piece’s meaning, tone, and mood. Finally, good typography will establish a strong visual hierarchy guiding the reader.

But before looking at its functions in more detail it’s important to understand what typography is. Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed.

Today typeface and font have become interchangeable, and most people will understand what you mean if you use either, yet they are different. Andrea Hattox explains this well in her article “What Is Typeface and Why Does It Matter?” She says “You can think of the typeface as the family and the font as the individual family members.” On that basis, Times New Roman is a typeface and Times New Roman Bold is a font.

Typography goes beyond the typeface and individual font. It also includes point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), as well as adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). What was once the domain of typesetters or compositors is now available to all and sundry.

This brings us back to the main functions of typography: readability, visual appeal, and hierarchy.

The readability and legibility are heavily influenced by the typeface, spacing and point sizes. Sans serif fonts are considered to have lower readability than serif fonts, therefore aren’t as suited to large amounts of prose. A good test of legibility is how easy it is to differentiate the letters “b” and “h” or the numbers “3” and “8”.

Whilst visual appeal is very subjective used correctly, typography can convey a certain mood or feeling. The audience needs to understand what message you are trying to send and be interested in it.

Finally, establishing hierarchy is one of the most vital principles of typography. Typographical hierarchy aims to create a clear distinction between prominent pieces of content that should be noticed and read first, and standard content. This guides the reader so in an age of short attention spans it allows users to consume the necessary information in a short amount of time.

So the question is, “are you selecting the right type?”

The Right Type

In a world where content is king, businesses are under pressure to keep their content fresh, relevant, and interesting for their audience. What if the answer to doing this is in upcycling?

Upcycling content takes elements of your original content and expands on them to create brand new pieces that can be shared across different platforms, styles, and media. Upcycling is not recycling.

As small to medium size businesses your messaging and service provision often stays the same throughout the year. You need to tap into marketing platforms to share your messaging, most importantly creating consistency by reinforcing your core messaging.

Let’s explore how you can upcycle content to present to your audience, with the right tone of fresh and informative.

Choose one of your core business offerings and elaborate how the service or process unfolds, using the same graphic or linking posts to create activity and notifications for past engagers as well as attracting new.

Give a real-life example, offer a case study on a service offering and make it relatable. This is a creative way to introduce service synergy and showcase what you have to offer. Don’t be road blocked if you can’t think of a recent case study, use hypotheticals or analogies to explain your business in action.

This is a great way to show how your business gets results. Use a service and expose its growth over the year or months. This will look differently for each business, and could touch on physical growth of the business (bums on seats), growth of a product or service diversification, growth of output, growth of knowledge etc. Try piggy backing off past posts, and reshare with your latest update.

Last, but not least, collect testimonials. Testimonials are without a doubt the most valuable pieces of content, they essentially provide word of mouth marketing across digital platforms. Collect and share testimonials, whenever and wherever you can. Use the same graphic or template when posting testimonials to create recognition and consistency. Testimonials require low input in regard to content creation and often yield high attraction.

We can’t wait to see you put these upcycling techniques in use to promote your business in a new light, whilst maintaining core messaging consistency.

Joining the Upcycling Trend

At the risk of showing my age I liken a lot of the current communication on Linkedin to that of my younger days when we would go to pubs and clubs to meet people. There was always one guy then who would spend the night going around the pub and just asking women if they “Fancy a Shag?”.

Statistically the odds were stacked up against him and inevitably he would go home alone. But he would persist on the very remote chance someone was drunk or desperate enough to say “yes”.

Fast forward to today and Linkedin is a sea of people asking me if I “Fancy a Shag?”. Never mind them getting to know me and or me them. Forget about forming a relationship that benefits both of us, it’s just wham! Straight to the sales pitch!

Only the other day I got the usual “Your profile keeps being recommended to me by LinkedIn as one I should connect with. So here goes”. I thought I would give this person the benefit of doubt, connected and replied asking how things were in her part of the world. Then boom! Her reply came, selling me a website and the virtues of her company, never mind getting to know me and my needs or developing a relationship. The crazy thing in all of this is that we offer web development as a service, something she would have seen had she visited our website.

I often say the secret to selling is not to sell. Rather sales are about developing a strong relationship and building trust, the rest will take care of itself. Depending on which customer engagement model you subscribe to there are multiple stages from the initial connection to final engagement that you can’t just skip.

Linkedin is a great way to connect with people, allowing you to interact, and develop a relationship building trust over time, and hopefully creating brand loyalty. It’s from this solid relationship built on trust that sales will come.

Whilst a lot of your competitors will act like the guy in the pub asking at random everyone and anyone if they “Fancy a Shag”. You can instead, focus your attention and energy in developing real relationships and building trust on Linkedin. It will be far more rewarding in the long run.

Fancy a Shag?

At present there is a lot of hype around artificial intelligence (AI) and it’s increasing use in all facets of our life. What has caught my eye recently is the use of AI in design and more creative solutions. I have seen amazing digital images that have been created using AI and have even dabbled with using AI myself for some web design concepts.

But for me, as a designer there is something missing, something that only the human mind can capture.

For years people have been trying to put creativity in a box but with little success. The human mind is very powerful, and it can be even more powerful when in creative mode. The ability to think laterally, sometimes on your feet, and to come up with creative solutions is unique to humans.

Alan Robinson & Sam Stern in their book Corporate Creativity recite many examples of creative solutions. One that stuck in my mind was about Japan Railways East who were having issues with water whilst building tunnels through Mount Tanigawa. The engineers were looking at ways to drain the water when a maintenance worker suggested the water was so good, they should bottle it. This was the inspiration for Japan Railways East move into the beverage market, creating new opportunities, that has now become a multi-million dollar business for them.

There is no denying the role of AI in all aspects of our lives and that it will only get better with increased exposure and learning. So too is the inevitability of the role AI will play in the creative industries.

The one thing we should never under estimate is the power of the human creative mind and the importance of continuing to foster it. By encouraging creative thinking, we can harness solutions that don’t initially present themselves.

Creativity is at the very core of what we do and fuels our passion. While there is no doubting the role AI will play in our future lives, it’s our ability to let our creative minds run free, to find creative solutions for everyday situations, that makes us unique.

Creative Solutions

As we approach Valentine’s Day wading through a sea of promotional emails urging us to declare our love in all sorts of ways, It has me thinking that love is definitely in the air.

As a business owner how much of that love is directed to your website?

For most business owners that would be very little if any at all, which is surprising given 80% of customers will look up a business online before working with them. If a potential customer can’t find you, can’t access your site or even worse have a negative experience your website will do you a disservice rather than help you gain business and get a return on your investment.

Like all investments websites need nurturing, updating and maintenance. In short, they need some love! What websites need basically falls into two categories: content and structure.

Structurally If your website uses a framework such as WordPress it’s vital that your WordPress and any plug-ins used are up to date. In addition, it is necessary to ensure that all security updates have been installed and you are running the latest version of PHP. If not, a site will become vulnerable and open to attacks that include malware and ransomware, which will have all sorts of ramifications including being potentially blacklisted by Google.

One misconception of website owners is that the web hosting will cover this which, unless specifically requested, it won’t. Most web providers will offer some sort of maintenance package, usually for not a lot more for regular monitoring and updating. You can log into your WordPress dashboard to see what’s out of date. If you’re not sure what to do, then get in touch with your web provider/developer or reach out to us.

Equally important to structural updates are content updates. In the digital age content is king and the best way to engage with potential customers is through your content. Keeping your content up to date helps to build trust with your customers as they rely on the information provided to make buying decisions. Regular updates to your content also help with your SEO and domain authority or more simply put, your Google ranking. Blogs such as this are another great way to have regular fresh content.

So, with a little love you can improve the performance of your website and reap the rewards.

If you are Unsure of how or where to start, please get in touch.

Love is in the Air

One of the top reasons for website maintenance is security. When using an open source CMS like WordPress, there are changes being made to the platform on a daily basis to protect your site and ensure it remains secure and free from hackers.

Website body updates are essential to both engaging new customers and retaining existing customers. Your business is continually changing with the times, it’s important to keep your clients updated with your business movements, not to mention it will help improve your Google ranking.

Site updates provide new features and functionality to your website. Think of your website as your phone, your always making updates to your phone to get the latest and greatest features. Why wouldn’t you want that for your website? These features often result in better website speeds, user experience and overall improvement on your Google ranking.

Maintenance is a vital part of any website, keeping it secure, healthy and performing well. Just hosting your website isn’t enough, it’s all about keeping up with security updates, keeping your body fresh and encouraging traffic growth.

A poorly maintained and neglected website will become vulnerable to hackers and potentially loose you customers.

Show your website some regular love and reap the rewards by keeping on top of updates and keeping the body fresh. Get in touch if you want to find out more about our website maintenance packages.

Top three reasons why you should maintain your website

Now more than ever your customers want to hear from you! They want to know how you are, how your business is and how they can help. Communicate with them regularly, present ways in which they can support an engage with you. Use mail chimp, social media or pick up the phone and have a chat.

On that matter, as we all need to adapt to WFM (Working from home) here are some handy tools for staying connected to your team when you’re working remotely…

Businesses have been forced to make critical decisions for their survival and identify new opportunities maintain income. Can you deliver your products and services in a different manner? Are their more online opportunities for your business? Can you extend your product offering or make it adaptable to the current climate?

Many small businesses have lost a large portion of their regular profit. In light of that prepare for the next few months by forecasting and investigating assistance available to you. The 

Government has announced several rounds of stimulus packages

 to prop up business through this economic downturn.

Get in contact with your Accountant to help you navigate your way through what is on offer and what you are entitled to.

Use this experience to write new policies around workplace health and safety, preventing the spread of disease.

How often have you said “I am too busy running my business to have time to work ON my business”? – be careful what you wish for, forced downtime is the perfect opportunity to revisit your business plan and put in place strategies for future growth.

With such a large portion of the population in lockdown, it is a great opportunity to reach your customer base on social media and connect with potential new customers.

Now is a great time to enrol in online training programs and courses, up-skill, learn what you can, and share knowledge.

There are a number of things you can do to help out other businesses throughout this period…

Online reviews – go online and leave a positive review for other businesses, doesn’t cost you anything – just your honesty and good vibes

Use your social media channels to give other businesses a shout-out

Buy gift vouchers – purchase vouchers now for services you can’t use now but will use later – will help businesses get some cashflow while they’re unable to trade

Order a home delivery or takeaway with restaurants and cafes only able to offer takeaways and deliveries, take a night off cooking for your family and order out.

Social Isolation “To do” list

You login to your WordPress dashboard and see all of those little red numbers in circles in your menu, what do they mean?

Those little numbers indicate that there is a new version of Wordpress available, or a plugin that you have installed has a newer release ready to be activated.

The REAL question however is should you go ahead and run these updates?

This question doesn’t have a straight-forward answer, hence this article. In theory there should be no issue with you going ahead and running these updates yourself. In reality, there are many factors to take into consideration before running updates:

What PHP version is running on the server?

What other plugins are installed on your site and what is their compatibility with the available updates?

What WordPress theme are you using and is it compatible with the available updates?

Have any customisations been applied to the theme, plugin or core files that will be overridden by the updates?

Everything could go right, or everything could go wrong. Most commonly when a conflict occurs you will get a white screen or error message instead of seeing your website or WordPress dashboard. Particular functions of your site can stop working or the pages just not look as they should.

Updates are released as a response to the performance demands of technologies, platforms and potential security threats that may have been exposed. Whilst your site may be operating as it should, by running the latest updates, you can ensure the performance of your site and make sure you are in the safest position to ward off hackers.

Should you run your own updates or is it best to hire a professional to do so?

You can run the updates yourself if you are prepared to troubleshoot when conflicts occur. If you are comfortable with taking backups, rolling back updates and debugging, then by all means do the updates yourself. If you didn’t understand that sentence, then probably best not attempt to run the updates yourself.

Check out our WordPress Maintenance programs here