Category Archives: Web Design & Development

Practical guides on web design, user experience, site performance, and technical SEO to help you build and rank modern, high-performing websites.

GoDaddy Storefront Disaster: Why a Forced Update Is Scrambling E-Commerce Sites

GoDaddy E-commerce, Storefront issues after Websites and Marketing forced update

If you are currently running an online shop on GoDaddy’s all-in-one website builder, you might want to log into your dashboard and check your active inventory right now.

Over the last few days, a massive wave of store owners have taken to community forums and subreddits to report what is being called a complete "storefront disaster." GoDaddy has been quietly executing a massive, mandatory overhaul to the commerce backend of their Websites + Marketing platform.

This wasn't an optional migration

Posted in Compare Website Builders, E-commerce, Technology in the News | Tagged bloat, bugs, clear browser cache, data corruption, e-commerce, forced updates, godaddy, godaddy alternative, godaddy storefront disaster, google merchant center, hosted website builder, incognito, inventory, third-party plugins, WordPress | Leave a comment

How to Bulk Add WordPress Posts to a Category Using PHP (No Plugin Required)

WordPress dashboard, Post > Categories, with Edit link option to get the category id

Plugins are often unnecessary overhead for simple bulk database tasks. If you need to assign existing WordPress posts to a new category based on an existing tag, installing a bulk-edit plugin is overkill.

You can handle it directly with a short PHP script using WordPress core functions - then delete it once the task is complete.

This keeps your site lightweight and avoids adding permanent dependencies for one-time administrative work. Read on for how to do it quickly and easily

Posted in WordPress Customization | Tagged bulk-edit plugin, bulk-edit plugin alternative, database, database edits, php, php script, plugin alternative, WordPress, wordpress category, wordpress core functions, wordpress script | Leave a comment

The Danger of Premature Site Pruning

Putting webpages in the trash can or adding noindex to them is stunting vs building a flourishing website that has quality, like a growing plant with healthy roots

One of the biggest mistakes new website owners make is assuming that fewer pages automatically means higher quality.

They open Google Search Console, see warnings, discover that some SEO influencer recommends deleting "low-value" pages, and suddenly they're on a mission to clean house. Tag pages disappear. Archives vanish. They slap noindex tags across entire sections of their site.

The result is often the exact opposite of what they intended.

Instead of improving rankings, they erase the very signals that

Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Tagged 301 redirect, authority, backlinks, build authority, canonical tags, crawl paths, duplicate content, engagement, Google Search Console, Googlebot, internal links, long-tail traffic, low-value pages, noindex, search engine ranking, seo, site pruning, stability, topical authority, topical relevance, trust signals, user experience, visibility | Leave a comment

Do Images and Alt Text Actually Help SEO?

UltimateWB CMS, Page Editor Box, setting the alt text (alternative description) field for the image

UltimateWB CMS, the Page Editor Box with the Edit Image box where you can set the Alt text - i.e. the Alternative Description

If you’re looking for ways to improve your website’s search engine visibility, you’ve likely come across advice telling you to focus on image optimization. Some case studies frame missing alt text and default file names like IMG_0012.jpg - the universal output from iPhones, screenshots, and most cameras - as a serious SEO oversight.

They present image optimization

Posted in Accessibility, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Tagged accessibility, alt, alt tag, alt text, clarity, file names, google images, google lens, image file name, image optimization, search engine ranking, search traffic, seo, usability, visibility | Leave a comment

Why Does Google Search Console Say My Page Is Indexed, But It Won’t Show Up in Google Search?

Google Search Console, URL Inspection tool, Page crawled and indexed successfully

“Ask David!” question:

I just submitted a new page URL to the Google Search Console URL inspection tool. Pretty fast, within 10 minutes or so, when I checked again, it says that the page is indexed. But if I search for the article in Google - even if I search for the exact URL - it says not found. What is up with that?

David’s Answer:

First of all - good job! You must have written some great content that

Posted in Ask David!, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Tagged canonical URL, data center sync, discovered vs ranked, duplicate content, google algorithm, Google Search Console, indexed, search engine ranking, search results, sitemap, url inspection tool | Leave a comment

Stop Staring at a Blank Screen: How to Turn Industry News into High-Traffic Website Content

Turning industry news into high traffic website content

Any kind of website owner can eventually hit this same wall.

You build your site, launch a blog, publish a few posts about your company or product updates - and then the ideas dry up. From that point on, the blog slowly turns into a digital ghost town.

The problem usually isn’t effort. It’s direction.

When you treat your blog like an internal company diary, you limit it to content almost nobody outside your organization is searching for. To generate

Posted in Web Content | Tagged authority, authority building, bloat, blog content, blog content strategy, blogging for business, blogging tips, business blog tips, content marketing, domain authority, evergreen, google algorithm, google discover, organic traffic, seo, seo copywriting, website traffic | Leave a comment

Why Your Domain Rating (DR) Is Still 0 After Building 100+ Backlinks

Exploring why the domain rating is 0, with 100+ backlinks, low quality links involved

Imagine dedicating months to an initial SEO outreach campaign, securing over 100 backlinks, and eagerly opening a metric tool like Ahrefs or Semrush only to find a flatline: Domain Rating (DR): 0.

It is an incredibly frustrating scenario that leaves many new website owners convinced that their site is broken or that the system is rigged. But when a site accumulates a steady stream of links without shifting its baseline authority metrics, it is usually caught in a predictable

Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Tagged ahrefs, authority, backlinks, bloat, domain authority, domain rating, dr, fast website, indexed pages, logarithmic scale, no-follow, organic authority, performance, plugin bloat, search engine visibility, semrush, seo, trustworthiness, ugc, user experience, user-generated content | Leave a comment

When Google Search Console “Black-Holes” a Single URL (While New Posts Index Perfectly)

Google Search Console, URL Inspection tool, page is unknown, not crawled yet, and not discovered yet.

If you log into Google Search Console (GSC) and see that a specific, brand-new blog post is stuck in a ghost state - showing completely undetected, not in the sitemap, and not crawled - it is incredibly frustrating. It feels even more bizarre when you publish a subsequent post right after it, and that newer post indexes completely normally within hours.

If your website layout is clean, fast, and optimized with server-side code (like the UltimateWB integrated WordPress blog system),

Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Tagged 301 redirect, crawl, crawl errors, data synchronization glitch, Google Search Console, gsc, GSC Queue Glitch, indexing, indexing issues, internal links, sitemap, url inspection tool, xml | Leave a comment

Why Is Google Indexing New Blog Posts So Much Slower in 2026?

Google Search Console, showing ULR is not on Google and the page has not been indexed yet.

“Ask David!” question: "Google used to index my new blog posts faster, what happened?"

If you logged into your Google Search Console this week and saw your brand-new posts sitting in that annoying "Discovered - currently not indexed" status, don't panic. Most likely your website isn't broken, you haven't been blacklisted, and you didn't accidentally flip a "hide from Google" switch.

What you are feeling is a very real, intentional shift in how Google handles the web.

Here is exactly

Posted in Ask David!, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Tagged ai slop, authority, bloat, crawl budget, crawlability, Google Search Console, google search engine ranking, high-quality content, indexing, plugins, sitemap, url inspection tool | Leave a comment

What Happened to Reddit? API Changes, Shadowbans, Bots, and Community Decline

“Ask David!” Question:

“First it was Quora, and now it's Reddit. It just sucks and feels dead. Why?? It seems like real human interaction has been totally replaced by bots, heavy moderation, and shadowbans. Is there any real alternative left for building an online community where you actually control your content and culture?” -Ex-Redditor

You're not imagining it, and you definitely aren't the only person saying it.

Spend five minutes browsing tech forums, creator communities, or independent discussion boards and

Posted in AI, Ask David!, Social Networking, Technology in the News | Tagged ai, Alexis Ohanian, bots, building online community, community management, me we too, organic discovery, quora, Quora alternatives, reddit, reddit alternatives, reddit sucks, shadowban, social network, spam filters, Steve Huffman | Leave a comment

Category Archives: Web Design & Development

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“Ask David!” question: "Google used to index my new blog posts faster, what happened?"

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