{"id":165,"date":"2026-05-15T09:14:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T09:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/?p=165"},"modified":"2026-05-15T09:14:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T09:14:35","slug":"small-business-website-revisited-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/small-business-website-revisited-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Business Website: Revisited Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For lack of a more accurate phrase, looking back on my original site gave me the ick. I was thinking about everything I needed to add, and I couldn&#8217;t visualize a way to do it using my original design that wouldn&#8217;t be overcrowded or hard to read with the Steelfish font. So a major overhaul was in order, which was annoying but a good exercise to dust off those skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I looked at other brick-and-mortar outdoors sites to inspire my new design, since I needed it to be able to shoulder plenty of content like a real shop&#8217;s site would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Inspiration:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.badgerclothing.co.uk\/\">Badger<\/a> <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nordicoutdoor.co.uk\/\">Nordic Outdoor<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebrokedownpalace.com\/\">The Brokedown Palace<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Things I added to my new design:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A small bit of JavaScript to show when the shop is open<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>php includes for &lt;head>, header\/nav, footer, hours strip, and the &#8220;find us&#8221; section that I included on most pages<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>More lightweight versions of all images<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Font Awesome svg icons for a bit of visual flair <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A cute themed 404 error page<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A sitemap which I have submitted to Google Search Console<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A robots.txt file<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A &lt;meta> description for each page using SEO-friendly keywords<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>More &lt;meta> info to inform search engines about location<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A .visually-hidden class applied to &lt;h1> and other screen-reader-friendly details on some pages for screen readers<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>ARIA-labels to add context to visual elements<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>WCAG compliant color contrast and keyboard navigation<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Accessibility statement page linked in the footer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If this was a real site, I would have spent more time on the &#8220;brands&#8221; page, adding more brands, information about latest restocks, and display some broader categories (fleeces, water bottles, etc) of things the shop carries. However, for this instance I just added enough images to refresh and reflect on my responsive grid skills and then moved on to other pages where I could experiment with other interesting elements (for example, lovely balanced tables like the pricing on the repairs page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Claude was especially useful for some visual elements I haven&#8217;t had as much practice with, such as creating the small colorful on\/off pip for the &#8220;open\/closed&#8221; JavaScript. It also assisted me in developing the robots.txt and sitemap files. However, I felt it actively hindered me in other respects, like trying to ask it to make some grids. It kept adding lots of unnecessary aspects and trying to change my overall design, so just doing it myself ended up being much faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Overall, very pleased with what I was able to put together, and it made me eager to have an actual client with actual needs so I could refine it further!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For lack of a more accurate phrase, looking back on my original site gave me the ick. I was thinking about everything I needed to add, and I couldn&#8217;t visualize a way to do it using my original design that wouldn&#8217;t be overcrowded or hard to read with the Steelfish font. So a major overhaul [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assignments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madebymolly.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}