Why is My Website Slow?

There are many reasons that can cause your website to load slowly. While your visitor’s internet connection can contribute, here are the main reasons your website is slow that can be fixed:

1. Bloated Website Theme: Many themes sold today for WordPress are built to be able to do everything. You can have your navigation bar be stuck to the top of the screen, or remain in place. You can have a Image Gallery Slider or text that slides in from the side of the screen as you scroll down the page. These are all great features, but each one comes with the code that is needed for them to work. If your website does not specifically use these features, the code is often still included in the website just in case you want to turn on that feature in the future. A recent client came to us with a website that is 10MB, while this page you’re reading now is less than 1MB.
2. Large Images and Video: There is often a very important reason to display videos or large images on your business website, like being a videographer or photographer, but if not careful, it’s very easy to accidentally end up with very large files on your website getting in the way of the rest of your website loading smoothly. Videos especially can easily be 40MB or even 500MB if not compressed or sized correctly for websites.
3. Slow Server: Very cheap website hosting with old and over-crowded servers are no longer as common as it was a few years ago, but it is still possible to end up with a website server that can’t handle the normal load of a simple personal website, let alone a busy business or e-commerce website.

How to Fix My Slow Website?

Each problem listed above has it’s own individual solution, but here are the primary solutions we recommend

1. Optimize Your Theme: One of our website services is to reprogram a WordPress Theme from the ground up to reduce the size of the page load while retaining the look and feel of the website. We can make any design changes requested during this time as well, but often times, our clients like their website, but want it to load in 1/2 or even 1/4 the time.
2. Compress and Resize your images: It takes some attention to detail, but it’s very important that all images and videos displayed on your website only load at the size they are needed to display. Videos need to be compressed and played at a quality that makes sense for the website while still being as small as possible.
3. Upgrade Your Server: One of the simplest options to improve how fast your website loads is to just switch servers to a newer and faster server. This often can have positive results for how simple it often is for your hosting company.
4. Install a Server Cache like Cloudflare. Cloudflare, which is a CDN (Content Delivery Network) technically, will save a copy of your website and the files that is loaded by visitors. This makes each part of your website content load faster in a few different ways.

No matter which direction you take to improve your website speed. It’s very important to keep your website loading quickly and running smoothly for your visitors.

The post Slow Website: How to Fix and Prevent (An Expert Guide) first appeared on Websites in a Flash.

Short for Secure Sockets Layer, SSL certificates are a crucial part of website security, but many people aren’t sure how they work or why they’re necessary. In this article, we’ll explore what SSL certificates are and how they work to secure websites, as well as explore the issues that could prevent you from getting one yourself (especially if you’re not in the US). Then we’ll take a look at one of the most important questions concerning website security: whether or not SSL certificates actually help to secure your site and keep it safe from hackers, malware and other problems.

What is SSL?

The acronym SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, a technology for securing communications over computer networks. The name originally meant Secure Socket Layer but it has become common practice to drop Layer from the nomenclature. It was developed by Netscape Communications in 1994 as an upgrade to their earlier security protocol, SOCKS. Today, SSL is used worldwide on web browsers and servers to encrypt data sent via HTTPS (not HTTP). A website secured with SSL (HTTPS) will appear with a green (or grey) padlock icon in your browser’s address bar:

SSL, SEO, & HTTPS: What’s the Difference?

HTTPS isn’t a concept that was invented because of search engines. HTTPS is an encryption standard that’s used by all major browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Opera. To put it simply: HTTPS creates a secure connection between you (the user) and your web server, ensuring your communications are protected from outside interference or spying. Search engines such as Google are now factoring in HTTPS as part of their ranking algorithm—meaning if you have correctly secured your website, you will get a boost in rankings over other sites that are not secure when someone searches for keywords related to your site.

Do I need an SSL Certificate on My Site?

An SSL Certificate is important because it helps provide website security and keep your customers secure while they’re on your site. If you collect any personal information or payment information on your site, you’ll want to use an SSL Certificate. In fact, Google has said that having an SSL Certificate will help improve a website’s ranking in search results—and if your business handles any sensitive data (like banking information), you’ll also be forced by regulation to get one. So yes, an SSL Certificate can be quite helpful for site security—but there are some things that aren’t so secure with these certificates. Read on!

Is Buying an SSL Certificate Worth It for My Business?

As you’re probably aware, SSL certification is a security measure for websites. It protects credit card information and other important data that users enter onto your site by encrypting it so that hackers can’t view or access it. But buying an SSL certificate is still something many businesses don’t do, whether because they aren’t sure of what an SSL does or because they think they’re too expensive.

Is it really worth it? Yes!

How Do I Buy an SSL Certificate for My Website?

An SSL certificate is a great first step for any website owner serious about establishing trust with potential customers. There are two types of SSL certificates: Domain Validated (DV) and Organization Validated (OV). For most website owners, DV is enough, but OV certificates provide better security. Understanding when each type of certificate makes sense will help you choose which one is right for your website. Here’s how to buy an SSL certificate for your website in just a few simple steps: First, determine whether or not you need it.

How Does an SSL Actually Work?

Here’s a great video explaining the exact details of how an SSL works both theoretically and technically:

Is it Safe to Install an SSL Certificate on My Domain Name Right Now?

As an internet business, it’s important to have a secure website. After all, your business is based on trust—and if someone has a question about whether or not you’re actually legit, your brand could suffer. So why do so many website owners avoid installing SSL certificates? The answer: fear of downtime. Most SSL providers warn against installing a certificate during times of high traffic—so many people wait until their sites are under-utilized to install one. But that means you’re putting your customers at risk for fraud and identity theft—which doesn’t make any sense!

How can I set up my own self-signed certificate?

To set up your own self-signed certificate, you’ll need a CSR file, a private key, and some tools. The CSR is basically an encryption request generated by your computer or device. You’ll also need to generate a public/private key pair that corresponds with your CSR. This video breaks down the details:

Hopefully, this gives you a great understanding of the importance of security certificates and how to install a Security Certificate on your website. Leave a comment if you have any questions about this

The post What You Need to Know about SSL Certificates and Website Security first appeared on Websites in a Flash.

How different is a website designer’s job compared to a graphic designer’s job? It sounds like 2 very different jobs, and it technically is, but the line is very blurry. As a website design company, we often get asked if we design logos, and the answer is yes. But that is because we have evolved to become a full-service website design company. Can you have a website design company without an experienced graphic designer? Maybe you can, but we don’t recommend it. Let’s explore the differences and how they have merged over the years.

A Graphic Designer is a Problem Solver

Our creative director graduated with a degree in graphic design in 2000, and wow, things have changed a lot since then! 2000 seems like a long long time ago. At this time graphic designers mostly worked on print projects, obviously,  which included logo design, posters, product packaging, billboards, book covers, magazines, direct mailers, and much much more. The keyword here is print, but let’s face it, how often do we see printed materials? And if we do, most of it must translate well to digital, and not just print. 

The Evolving Job of a Graphic Designer 

Websites, social media, and digital marketing have quickly taken over, and I think we can safely say, we love that! But that doesn’t mean the profession of graphic design is dead, it’s just evolved, in a great way! If you aren’t evolving, you aren’t going anywhere, right? The job of a graphic designer, very simply explained is to tell a message by combining an image or graphic plus text. And if you are a successful graphic designer, your message involves the audience. Meaning your text shouldn’t just say what the image is, it should add to the graphic to create the message. The audience gets to make the connection and it’s much more interesting. Or you can go easy and just make it big, read and just use the words “sale”. But solving the problem and creating the design is just part of the job. And really, that is the same as a website designer, the goal is to quickly convey the message.

How Does a Graphic Designer Become a Website Designer?

At first, the thought of transitioning to a website designer seems easy, doing the same work without the stress of getting it printed properly. But it’s not that simple. As website designers and developers you have to understand a whole new set of parameters and applications. Website designers have to consider what the website is being designed for. It might just be an informative website like a blog, or it could be an eCommerce website with thousands of products. As soon as a visitor arrives at a website they must quickly be able to understand what the website does, who the business is, and what they offer. And the overall look should be on-brand, powerful, and yet easy on the eyes. Then the designer has to consider how the website will work, how will it navigate, and where do you want your visitors to end up? Do you want them to take an action quickly, or stay and read? It’s sounding a lot more complicated, right?

Can The Company You Hired for your Business Do Both?

Often times businesses and professionals want the website design company to create their logo, overall brand, and a whole new website. Or the website designer has to take an existing logo no matter how good or bad and design a site that will complement it and elevate it. And what about sizing and responsiveness? The design has to look good on desktop computers, laptops, phones, and even large TVs! So when it shrinks, the text size and image need to coordinate to keep the message. And how large do you want the text to be? You have pixels, image compression, screen brightness, various file formats, and more to understand and learn. Not only do you have to consider the design for the visitor, but you must be in sync with the website developer. Can they code the design that you created? Their jobs are pretty complicated too and that’s a whole new story to tell.

Making the Brand Message Last

But the core problem is the same, a visual, plus text must create a dynamic message or it will be forgotten. And the better the design, the longer a visitor will stay. Bounce rates, and how quickly the visitor stays on your website are extremely important, not only to your business but to Google. And that can create a whole new set of problems. With printed materials, they have the ability to hang around. If you get a printed magazine in the mail, how quickly do you throw it away? It might stick around on your countertop for a few days. And if it’s a well-designed message, it’s going to attract the attention of your audience a little more. And then you have the wonderful world of social media. This can be a designer’s dream or nightmare depending on how they look at it and take advantage of it. You have to get the message across as fast as possible before your audience swipes or scrolls. Ack, the pressure!

Hire Full-Service Website Design Company

We are proud to say that our Creative Director can successfully do both. And even more importantly they are in sync with our lead developer who understands design and how websites need to be built. We at Websites in a Flash are now a full-service company, meaning we create powerful graphic design solutions, and innovative websites. We also provide website marketing, including SEO, google analytics, social media profiles, and advertising. Our team of developers understands design, and our graphics experts understand websites. When you are looking to hire a website development company, you should make sure that they are full service as well. Even if you don’t require a logo, business cards, or other printed materials, you want your website designers to understand them. We often get logos that are low res or file formats that won’t translate well on digital screens. We are able to redraw the logo so that it looks beautiful on your website. A website developer might not be able to do that. And you don’t want a fuzzy logo at the top of your homepage.

Learn More About a Website Designers Job in Part 2

We could go on and on about this subject and the importance of both, and we will, so please stay tuned for Part 2! Just remember to hire a web design firm that understands all aspects of design, branding, print, and the digital world.

The post The Differences Between a Website Designer and a Graphic Designer first appeared on Websites in a Flash.

We’ve been designing and developing websites and applications for almost 20 years, and in that time, we’ve heard of many horror stories of how our clients had been treated by their previous website developers.

We’ve compiled a few major tell-tale signs of red flags to look for when hiring a local website agency.

Research Your Web Companies

Even before you do your first interview with the website designer, I highly recommend you do your homework. For each developer you’re considering, you should definitely look into these aspects of each of them:

• Their Company Website: This is their primary business card and is a great representation of the quality of developer they are. Does the site look good to you? Does it work on a mobile device? Do they catch their misspelled words?
• Company Age: This is more important than most people think it is. Yes, every website business has to start at some time, but the longer they’ve been around, the more likely they are to stay around in future. The older the web businesses is, the less likely they will stop responding, and more likely they will have the knowledge and skills to get your project completed successfully.
• Completed websites: You want to see how many websites they’ve designed. Look at how their completed applications look on your computer and your phone. Do you like any of their designs?
• References and Reviews: Look at their reviews, and ask for references of their clients you can speak with. You can read the reviews they put on their on website, but you definitely want to look at their Google, Facebook and Yelp reviews. While not always perfectly accurate of the percentage of happy clients, as those with negative experiences are much more likely to leave a review, it should give you some idea of whether or not they are qualified for your project.

If you’ve done that, and you’re still interested in working with this company, here are 4 questions you should ask any new website designer before you hire them to make sure they will provide the best services for you:

1) Do You Design for Marketing or User Experience?

Websites are made to be used by humans. It’s important that your website be designed with them in mind. This includes creating your website and your website design to communicate to your potential clients and help turn them into successful clients. You can have the prettiest design on the Internet, but if your website doesn’t help your business market and meet its goals, it will not be worth the time and money spent on it.

2) What is the Timeline?

It’s important to know from the start what to expect for your website development timeframe. There should be exact dates written down for when certain information is due, and when portions of the website will be completed. This will also give you a good understanding of weather these developers are interested in working with you through the development process, or only plan on “the grand reveal” without consulting you for changes during design or development stages.

3) How do we Contact You?

One of the most common complaints we’ve heard about other website companies is that they would stop responding to calls or emails. When a project is new, it’s easy for the developers to keep in touch and making progress, but when a web project gets challenging, some website companies will become difficult to contact. Knowing the best ways to reach them

One way to test how responsive the local business is to give them a call during business hours. See if they answer, and/or how long it takes for them to get back to you.

4) What System Will You Build the Website With?

There are hundreds of systems and frameworks to build websites on today. Long gone are the days where developers have to program your entire website by hand from scratch. This speeds up development time by 10x, and allows for quicker customizations, but it’s important to know what system your developer plans to build with and why.

Some of these systems have additional and/or recurring costs. Each framework has its pros and cons, which is good to know about before development begins.

Here’s another good video on this topic

There are many things to be aware of when picking out which web designer to build your website, but I think these are the most important. Web design and development is still a fairly new industry with many possible pitfalls if you’re not careful. With a little bit of research and asking the right questions you can help ensure you find the right developer to build your website project.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to test this out on us.

The post 4 Things to Ask Before You Hire a Website Designer first appeared on Websites in a Flash.

Affordable Website Prices

Large Design Agency Costs

If you’re looking for an online marketing agency or website designer, it can be tempting to go with one of those huge corporations that can afford to spend $2 million on an ad campaign during Sunday’s Super Bowl. But as many have found out, because a business can afford one expensive ad doesn’t mean they will get good results for your business. There is a lot of value and success to be found by working with the right local web designer.

Large agencies have to pay for those large advertisements, buildings, and much more overhead than smaller businesses. Large Agencies will need to cover these costs by charging a much more exorbitant price while often producing a less-personalized product. We can’t advocate for paying exorbitant prices.

Small Design Businesses Focus on Quality, Not Quantity

Smaller businesses work directly with clients and have more control over their business, which is better for both parties. Local website designers can tailor their approach to your specific industry, so they can focus on quality over quantity—and that makes it easier to get what you want. Local businesses will take as much time as needed for a project because they don’t have to meet client demands from all over. A local website designer will also be able to provide personal recommendations on other aspects of your business plan.

Large Companies Are Slow-to-Change and Impersonal

When you’re choosing a local website designer, it means you can more easily build rapport with your new business partner. Local agencies are usually smaller and more agile; as such, they move much faster than their larger counterparts. A local agency will be quicker to turn around revisions on design projects for clients or even on a small website for your business. And because they likely have fewer clients and less project-based work to keep up with, they’ll also be able to put more focus on your site.

Small Business Owners Listen Better

Large corporations and agencies might have amazing technologies at their disposal, but with that comes a stifling amount of bureaucratic red tape. At a local website design agency, you’ll find service providers who are eager to get to know your business. They want to understand your business goals and mission, so they can tailor every element of your site’s design accordingly. This attention makes them better equipped to help you succeed online.

A Local Design Agency Will Give You Personal Attention

If you choose to work with a large agency, you’ll likely get lost in their sea of clients. This means that your business and design will not receive any special attention. Instead, you’ll be one of hundreds—if not thousands—of businesses they work with. A small local agency, on the other hand, won’t have as many clients as their larger counterparts, which means they can give each business and design project that comes through their door more attention.

Personal Attention Results in Good Communication

When you choose to hire a local website design company, you are going to get personal attention. It’s just not practical for larger companies to spend time educating new clients on things they might not understand yet. A smaller agency is going to sit down with you and go over everything step by step so that you can clearly see how your business is going to benefit from each element of your website.

Clients Report Higher Satisfaction with Smaller Firms

A client’s choice of web design agency is not just about whether or not you like working with them. It’s about your client liking working with you. Numerous studies have found that smaller agencies, on average, score higher than their larger counterparts on client satisfaction surveys. This might be because they tend to offer more personalized service and spend more time getting to know each client before taking on a project. But it could also be because they are better at listening to what clients want and need, since they don’t work with as many clients as larger firms do.

Speed, Price and Quality

These are the three most important aspects that most business professionals need in their new website or application. With some careful research you can find the best local agency to develop your web project. Local agencies are often more affordable, readily available for customization, better at communicating and provide you with better, more-personal advice for your website project. Local website companies often got the extra mile to help make the best website they can for their client.

The post Why You Should Choose a Local Website Designer first appeared on Websites in a Flash.

As the Internet has evolved and changed over the years, businesses have had to keep on top of the many new places online to promote themselves and to find new customers. Even business websites continue to evolve. Now there are more and more options available to create a website. There are many do-it-yourself options and even more website development companies. It is difficult to decide whether you want to find a company to build a website for you or to purchase a pre-built website template and build the website yourself. These articles will help you make a more-informed decision.

Here is the second article discussing the pros and cons of creating a completely custom website design compared to building your site with a pre-made website template.

A Designer Will Understand Business Requirements Better

A custom website designer can build a site specifically for your business. A web design agency has experience creating sites for different businesses, which means they’ll know what elements are necessary for your site to succeed. They will discuss with you the goals of your business and your website and help create a design that will help you reach those goals. It’s often best to have guidance from an expert who knows how to make your business thrive online. This includes knowing what type of website is best for your industry—do you need ecommerce capabilities?

There Are Numerous Benefits To Selecting a Web Designer

When you’re choosing between purchasing a pre-made website template or having an experienced web designer design your site from scratch, there are some things to consider. It can be hard to decide which is better; however, using one of these two options will be less stressful than trying to tackle it all yourself. Working with a professional web designer can save you time and stress in many different ways.

What Should I Expect During the Process?

The process for working with an agency to develop your website will vary depending on the agency you choose. Less expensive website agencies will allow very few meetings, and may be less willing to explain how your website will work well for you. If you work with one of our designers, we have a unique three-step process to understand your needs, create a design that matches your business branding, and work with you to perfect the vision. We do everything possible to ensure that your site looks exactly as it does in our demos. We schedule regular meetings with our clients to make sure all needs are met and you understand the direction of the website design.

Click here if you missed Part 1: Pre-Made Website Templates

The post The Pros and Cons of a Custom Web Design vs a Pre-made Website Template first appeared on Websites in a Flash.

The internet has helped businesses gain more traction and visibility than ever before, but in order to compete with the other companies on the web, your business needs a website that both looks professional and functions properly. It can be hard to decide whether you want to hire an agency to build you a custom web design or if you should use a pre-made template instead; there are pros and cons to each approach. This is the first of two articles discussing these pros and cons so that you can make an informed decision about which path to take.

Choosing Between Pre-Made Templates and Coding From Scratch

If you’re looking to save time and money, pre-made website templates are probably for you. These packages allow you to create your own custom designs without having to learn code or shell out money for a web design agency. That said, most templates don’t allow for much customization; what may have worked for someone else may not be a perfect fit for your business. For example, is that baby blue really going to draw in customers?

Creating Your Own Design

While it is takes less time and is easier to just throw money at a professional web design agency and have them handle everything, creating your own website design is actually a great way to save money. By doing it yourself, you can spend some time making sure every detail on your site is exactly how you want it. You’ll also have much more freedom when it comes to customizing everything from fonts to button sizes.

Customization in a Pre-Made Template

When you use a pre-made template like for your WordPress theme, there’s generally a decent amount of customization options available. You will be able to make cosmetic changes like choosing your own colors and fonts for your site. You’ll also be able to upload your business logo and pictures. The pages may come with pre-built templates as well that you can fill in with your images and text. Every template and theme builder has its own workflow and system, which can be easy or difficult to learn to use. This may make customizing your website template difficult, but it will be much easier than learning HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to code it all from scratch yourself.

Pre-Made Templates Can Be Easy to Use

Although it may take some time to find one that fits your company’s brand, you can usually pick up a pre-made template for free or for a small fee. Just remember to check out all of its features before choosing your template, as most templates offer at least some customization options. Many WordPress templates built today are overloaded with customization options. These templates are often designed by professional web design agencies, so you know they look good and work well. Be sure to read reviews about any template you download before downloading it!

Are Website Templates slow loading?

Every website template should be optimized to load quickly, unfortunately, those templates with the most features and available customization, will often also have the largest file size and require the most bandwidth to load. As you probably know, research has shown that visitors to your website will leave within seconds of loading the website, so if your website takes 10 seconds to load because it’s loading a lot of large files for your template, your visitors will be unlikely to stay.

Are there any other benefits?

Sometimes going with a pre-made template is just easier. If you don’t have experience in web design, or if your business doesn’t generate enough revenue to pay for someone else to make it for you, then going with a pre-made template might be your best bet. A lot of designs these days are mobile friendly, search engine optimized (for organic search results), and easily customizable.

Stay tuned for Part 2: Custom Web Design

The post The Pros and Cons of a Pre-made Website Template vs a Custom Web Design first appeared on Websites in a Flash.

There are a lot of great reasons to have a WordPress Website. Whether it’s the easy of use for the end user, or customization options available to seasoned developers like us. These reasons are why WordPress is by far the most popular website builder on the internet.

WordPress has a massive open source community helping to develop and maintain it, and they have done a great job of keeping WordPress aligned with it’s client base and users.

Is WordPress Secure?

They also have a very important job to keep the website platform secure from potential attacks. As WordPress is such a popular platform, it is a target for attacks. The WordPress community of developers do an amazing job of monitoring and correcting every new security flaw as they are found or exploited. The last thing we want is for some external source to get the ability to change your website. Common attacks will try to change your website content to add links to unfavorable websites or trick your users into downloading viruses. This is not good for your visitors and will also tank your Google Rankings.

“But I heard WordPress sites are always getting hacked”

I’ve heard this from one or two clients who weren’t very familiar with Website Security. The best way to keep WordPress from getting hacked is to keep it up to date, and use the best security plugins available. Out of the box, WordPress is very secure, but if you don’t keep the core up to date (or use an insecure plugin), your WordPress site is opening itself up to be hacked. As long as your site is up to date and is using regularly updated and secured plugins, it is very difficult to hack WordPress.

We include WordPress Management in all of our hosting options, so not only will you get a top-of-the-line Dedicated WordPress Hosting Server with Security Certificate, we’ll keep your WordPress website backed up, up-to-date and secured. (We also can test your website functions and contact forms to ensure your website is always working at 100%!)

We have never had a website in your WordPress Management program be hacked because we always keep them up to date.

The post What Upkeep is Need for a WordPress Website? first appeared on Websites in a Flash.

WordPress category pages don’t have any customization in the normal WordPress admin dashboard, but through the template files, we’re able to customize to our heart’s content. This client had a very unique situation where they had a custom post type with two different custom taxonomies (City and Category). When we load the a category page, they wanted to group all of the posts by city. There are a few ways to program this, but we found this code was reliable and did not require much more resources to run.

WordPress Category Code Example

Here’s how I did it:

// IN THIS EXAMPLE, WE HAVE POSTS INSIDE THE CUSTOM TAXONOMY CALLED "cities"
// THIS CODE WILL GROUP ALL POSTS BY THEIR CITY

if (have_posts()) : 

  //GET ALL THE TERMS/CATEGORIES WE WANT TO GROUP POSTS BY
  $allcities = get_terms('cities');

  //LOOP THROUGH EACH CATEGORY
  foreach ($allcities as $citygroup) {

    //LOOP THROUGH ALL POSTS OR ENTIRE CUSTOM POST TYPE
    while (have_posts()) : the_post(); 

      //GAB THIS POSTS CATEGORY
      $thiscity = wp_get_post_terms( $post->ID, 'cities');  

      //ONLY DISPLAY POSTS IN THE SELECTED CATEGORY/CITY
      if($citygroup->name == $thiscity[0]->name) {

        //IF THIS IS THE FIRST POST OF THE CATEGORY, DISPLAY THE CATEGORY NAME
      	if($thiscity[0]->name != $lastcity) {
      	   echo '<h2 class="citytitle">' . $citygroup->name . '</h2>';
      	}
      	$lastcity = $thiscity[0]->name;


        [NORMAL POST LOOP]


      } // END IF
    endwhile;
  } //END CATEGORY LOOP
  
endif; // END have_posts

This will require some custom coding for this code to work with your posts and your custom taxonomies. Feel free to reach out to us if you need help to program this for your WordPress website.

The post WordPress – Order/Group Posts by Category or Taxonomy first appeared on Websites in a Flash.

Many browsers cache the stylesheets of websites they visit as they rarely change. But what do you do if you update a WordPress Stylesheet and need visitors to grab the latest version?

The easiest way to force all browsers to get the latest version of CSS without a hard refresh is to change the URL of the file, so that browser thinks it’s a brand new file.

$theme = wp_get_theme();
wp_enqueue_style( 'child-style', get_stylesheet_uri(),
    array(),
    $theme->get('Version') 
);

This code to enqueue WordPress Stylesheet into your site will grab the version from your WordPress stylesheet and add it to your URL, so every time you update your Theme version number in your WordPress css file, you’ll force refresh of all visitors!

My CSS file’s header file says:

 Version:      1.0.1

So my theme code now says:

<link rel='stylesheet' id='child-style-css'  href='/wp-content/themes/theme-name/style.css?ver=1.0.1' type='text/css' media='all' />

Enjoy,
Ashton

The post Force a CSS Refresh in WordPress first appeared on Websites in a Flash.