So, Mickey and I are going to talk to you about the process that we take to develop a website. We're not getting nitty-gritty into coding. We're going to say high level and just talk through the phases that we go through. A little bit about us. Mickey and I are the co-owners of Green Melon Media. We're an agency in Marietta. We've got a studio off the square, and most of our team is sitting right there, and I don't see the last member. But we're a team of five, and WordPress development is our core. Outside of that, we do print design, branding, messaging, SEO, some social management strategy as well. So we've been in business about six years now, and we actually host a meet-up called All Things WordPress in Marietta in the library. It's supposed to be the third Thursday. It bounces around a little bit. Lunchtime, the third Thursday of every month. We actually cover a lot of the things we're talking about today in more detail at that meet-up. So we'd love to have you guys. Yes, All Things WordPress. And there's, yeah, you can actually go to allthingswordpress.com and it'll redirect it. So our process that we use for web design isn't one that is necessarily universal. Certainly there's going to be different approaches. We're just going to share what we do. Freelancers might dive in a little bit more high level. Big agencies probably go even deeper. The process involves up to seven people sometimes. So it all depends on who you have on deck to help you out. So first, consider this quote. A well-trained man knows how to answer questions, and an educated man knows what questions are worth asking. So whenever we approach a website design, it's always about educating the client and not diving straight into design or diving straight into, what do you want it to look like? It's about asking the right questions and educating them. So many of you have probably been asked a lot of questions. How many of you are designers? Okay, awesome. Developers, a combination of the two? Awesome, awesome. So you guys are probably presented with a lot of questions from your clients quite often. So things like, you've never heard this. How much do your websites cost? And if you saw Jason Swank history, he has a good answer for that. If you ask them what their budget is and they say, well, we don't really have a budget, they don't want to be able to say, great! We can build a killer website with unlimited funds and new testing, and usually that will hone it back in. The better thing I like to raise is kind of a range. If someone has a budget and budget is their top concern, then GoDaddy has a plan for a dollar a month. You can build a website. So if you want to do a budget all the way down, going the other way you have people, if you were here at WordCamp a couple of years ago, Cody Benson from Georgia State did the keynote. They did their new website on WordPress. It was greater than a million dollars. Other sites, what do we have, B&Q, Home Depot in the UK, did a new website for 88 million dollars. The government built one for like two billion, and it's not any good. So really, the range can be all over. You can look at Wix, the Squarespace, and some of those for four bucks or eight bucks or free, and sometimes that's a good solution, but honing in on budget can be tough, and that question of course is hard to answer because I'm sure if we go around the room, really what we build sites for it varies, depending on what people need. The next question we get a lot, can you include a design prototype with the proposal, or give me a sketch of what we're going to do, and we say, no, we can't. Again, in some cases you can, it comes down to price. Go Daddy, the first thing you do is pick a theme, because you want to go, but back to Ali's quote, if you want to do it right, we believe in taking your time, thinking through the process of it. What needs to happen, what should the customers do, and laying it out, and we're going to walk through some of that. And in general, we feel the quicker you do design, the cheaper the site is, and the less effective, but cheaper too. Again, a Go Daddy for a dollar, you do design, it's cheap, maybe good, less effective. Further down, when we go through our process, design's not until step seven, really thinking through what's going on, another question, I need a website at the end of the month. And that's possible too, and I know some of you guys can do it that fast. In theory we could too, but again, to do it right, the way we want to do it, takes usually 12 weeks, maybe more depending on other features that come in. At times we try to say, okay, they really do need it in a month for this conference, let's just skip some steps and make it happen, and it just never goes as well. Things just aren't thought through, and pieces are missed. Again, there may be cases for it, but we really believe in following the process. We've built it over the years, and we like to trust the process. So we love what we do.  They say, okay, here's what I want it to look like, or here's what I need to sell, here's what I need to put out there to the world. Great, there's certainly a million different ways we can do that, and a website is one of those. So we take those ideas that they come to us with, and we turn it into a strategy. And we're able to turn the conversation around and say, all right, let's start square one. Take it one piece at a time. So that's where we start. We say, okay guys, let's talk about your goals. Let's look at really what the goal of this website is and what we want to accomplish. So like I said, we're going to focus one step at a time and really dive in. The first thing that we do is discovery. How many of you have a discovery meeting with your clients? Yeah, I mean it's kind of a given, right? What questions do you ask? Who's doing the most talking? And that goes back to my quote, a well-educated man knows what questions to ask. So we start, we actually, before we even have a conversation with the client, we send them an online questionnaire. And it gives them a chance to write their thoughts down and really dig deep into what they're looking at executing and accomplishing on the site. So in this form, having this well thought out discussion gives us something to talk about during our discovery meeting to dig in deeper. So we talk about goals. We talk about their target audiences. Sometimes they say our audience is everybody. No, no, it's not. Then it's nobody. So that's a process we can go through as well. Let's narrow down your target audience and that's messaging strategy. Your competition, it's always good to do a competitive audit of other websites in the industry just to stay abreast of what is happening so we can make sure we're that much better. The features of the site are going to be, some people come to us with a wish list of features and that's okay. We'll consider those features and then we kind of step back, think through them and suggest the best execution to make it work. We had a meet-up last two weeks ago now. All things were a press meet-up where we actually dug really deep into these questions and you can go to our website or allthingswordpress.com and get those slides so you can see what questions that we ask. So the next step after we really regroup and Mickey and I parse through our notes and think through what are we going to do to accomplish this goal is we define the project. We really think through those features and spell it out into essentially a scope of work but we make sure the client agrees with us on that scope of work. It's a working document. It's something that we present to them and say this is our suggestion. If you went to Jason Blummer's talk or have read any of his books, he's got a really great suggestion for presenting this proposal of sorts. He always gives three options. One, it makes you your own competition. They're comparing you to you because you've given them options. It also gives them a range. This is our full, most robust solution that we really think is going to work for you. It might be over your budget but consider it because this is what we're suggesting to make it work. The second option might be something that's a little more scaled down and within their comfort zone. Might not be as robust and full featured as the first one. And the last one might be the you really need something. Here's what we can do for you for that baseline. So once we all agree on that project, on that scope, we can move on to actually collecting the assets that we need to do the job right. A lot of companies have a logo, an existing logo, or an existing style guide that we need to make sure we abide by. We like to collect inspiration not because we want to do what the client wants. They might have an idea of what the website looks like but they're going to turn to us for best practices there. But we don't want to disappoint. We want to at least get inside of their heads. So whether it's a magazine cut out that they like the colors on or another website, we want to see that to start really shaping what they see in their head to make sure that we can at least accomplish something and not disappoint. Hosting is another item that we always want to make sure is in place. And Mickey can talk a little bit about our beliefs there. Yeah, so for hosting, I've talked to a lot of you individually this week about how you host sites. Our philosophy personally is to let clients always host their site. We'll help them get it set up and let them pay for it, them own it. We'll take care of all the dirty work. We think that works out best for them. I've talked to some of you that host on behalf of your clients and have very good reasons for doing that. So again, I'm not going to say our way is best necessarily. We like working that way. Mostly we have our clients freedom. You know, we're in the middle of a project with a client right now. We've been a monk just trying to get access to their site because they didn't have control of it. The previous guy did. He has a job now and he's going to get to it eventually. And meanwhile, you know, you can't do anything about it. You know, the hosting, rightfully won't give anyone else access because it's his account. So we don't ever want to be that person. They're stuck with us because of that. But other folks, we talked to a guy last night. He hosts like 400 sites. So it's always on their platform because it's hard to deal with that many. So I mean, there's good reasons there as well. Claudia. Yes, so she's asking, do we walk them through it? Yes, we do. Depending on their needs. And a lot of them will come with hosting already. I already have an account with host gate or click host. Someone decent. I'm going to go with that.  But I've even, like I talked to Carl Becker at Click Host a few years ago and said, hey, clients trying to sign up, but step two is confusing. Go change that a little bit to make it easier. And so now he has a number so I can tell clients, go to Click Host, click on the whatever option, then click number two on the next page and it makes it easier to go through. So yeah, because it is a tricky piece. I don't want to make them do work, but I want it in their name, their control, their credit card. And then I say, after you sign up, you're going to get an email full of gobbledygook you don't know about with FTP and IP addresses. Just send that to us and we'll deal with it. But then if they ever decide they don't like us and want to move on, they have control and can do their own thing. So, kind of our thoughts there. So now that we have everything that we need to really make this stuff start working, we dive into exactly what pages need to be on the site in order to accomplish their goals. And we talked about this a little bit earlier today at 9 a.m. The goal is the main overarching thought that you need to keep in your mind through this entire process. When a user comes to your site, what action needs to happen? What is the call to action? What does conversion mean? So coming up with a site map helps outline exactly what hierarchy of pages and actions are going to happen through the site. We outline these pages in a flow chart. And if you're doing keyword research, this is the phase where it really needs to start. A lot of those keywords need to be in your pages. And if you're able to define that list of keywords that you're going after, we can take that into account when creating the site map. We use a pretty cool tool called Slick Plan to do our site maps. This is an example of a site map. It looks kind of like a flow chart. We explain to our clients each little bubble, each little box is a page. We want to make sure at this point every single page is accounted for before we dig in. So there's no surprises down the road. And this is just part of really strategically thinking through what's going to be on the site. It also helps with content development and copywriting. Once we outline this flow chart, we know exactly where content's missing, what needs to be written, and the copywriter can say, okay, well, I've got 24 pages to write. Let's get started. It also helps the client, if the client's trying to really think through what pages need to be offered, what their services are. This is the time to really dig in and talk about that deeper. Let's see. We used to use Illustrator when doing site maps, just making little boxes and outlining it for them. Slick Plan has some really neat tools. You can add annotations for each page to say exactly what features need to be on that page, or an overview of the content that should be on that page. You can export it as a PDF, and that will keep those little notes in there so the client can approve a PDF rather than having to go and just slick plan and really poke around that way. So content, once the site map is defined, content is our next step. We know what to write now. So this is when we, it's not only, of course, keywords. We want to make sure those keywords are integrated into the content. Jenny Munn talked about that yesterday. She'll tell you every time any page that you write, you want to make sure those keywords are strategically placed through it. So that comes into account right now when we're working on copy. We also want to collect any images. At this point, sometimes people like to make a mood board to help create a catalog of images to use on the site that express that same feeling that communicates visually what the website's trying to accomplish. And video. We need to make sure that if there's any video to be included on the site, we need to know about it now so we can integrate it onto the pages correctly. And, of course, if you need to get video created, let's back up a little bit and get that done. So that's something that we would have talked about in the discovery process. Content is our biggest bottleneck personally. Whenever we're working on a website, if we don't have an experience, or if we don't have a copywriter, and the client's trying to provide content, it's undoubtedly going to be a bottleneck in our process. And we can end up waiting months for content because you think you can take on a full site map of pages and copy, and it ends up taking so much longer than you expect. So I do suggest investing in a good copywriter when doing your website. Jill was asking, how many times that we're asked, can you show me the design first so I can write copy around it? Which, yeah, I know. We could ask it too. A copywriter is really going to be able to work with you on creating that editorial strategy on the website, but when a client wants to see that, it's tough. We try to educate them on how the messaging is really going to impact the design. The headlines, I mean, headlines on each page is just as relevant as the design is itself. So if there's a headline about cats, we want to make sure that the design of the page is, you know, it's going to play off of each other. We love having copywriters in-house or artists right next door to our office because we can collaborate on that and do those internal meetings and kind of get on the same page together. It's tough when it's disjointed. You know, it is a challenge. Then I was going to say one other thing. You'll notice too that we're doing content. We haven't even gotten to design, development, all that stuff because this isn't going to be done now. This is going to start and sort of be going alongside as we work through the rest of the steps because it doesn't take a while. Oh, and one more thing for Jill. The next step is wireframing, right? After. Yeah, our next step is wireframing and that helps as well with content. If a page is going to be more graphically driven and more and more internal pages are not just content, there's going to be a bit of a second home page just to really get some of that information because anybody can land on any page of your site. So we tend to wireframe deeper into the site in order to layout. This is how we're seeing the content being laid out and that might help as well. And we'll get there in a second. So related to content, we picked this up, I think it was a couple of years ago here with Andrew Searles, but we used something called a content collector that we built, which is kind of cool. I know some of you want some more tools to build or to use and this is a neat idea. So what we have, we set up a WordPress multi-site, which in and of itself can be a little tricky. Your host can probably help you with that. In our case, it's greenmelon.cc.  But we build a little multi-site for every client and that's where we can load the content. It's just a simple WordPress, no must, no fuss. They can load content into while we're building the real site. And what's neat is the way it works with SlickPlan. So Ally has her SlickPlan. She's drawing the bubbles in there and making notes. You can take SlickPlan and say export to WordPress, import that into our content collector and it automatically generates all the pages in the menu. It takes the notes from SlickPlan and puts them in the body of the pages. So then when the copywriter goes in, all the pages are laid out. Everyone has the notes and she can say, okay, there were the notes, the keywords. Start building them out. The site's being developed. When the site's done, we're already on a WordPress site, so we can do an export and then import that into the site and all our content is suddenly on the dev site that's about to go live. So... In need of formatting. In need of formatting. Yeah, it still needs to be cleaned up. Because again, it's bare bones there, but at least it saves us a lot of copying and pasting and setting up pages and that kind of stuff. It works pretty well. Is that your own plugin? Well, okay, yeah. It's not our own plugin. SlickPlan.com is the product we use there and they have the export tool to WordPress. WordPress Multi-Site, we had to set up a site for that, but it's a common, it's admittedly a little tricky to set up, but it's a common thing. You can talk to folks about that. So we set up our own WordPress Multi-Site, but there's already a plugin for SlickPlan to do the import into there. And then it's just the normal WordPress export out of one and import into our development site. We typically use Content Collector when we're working with the client to gather the content. A copywriter, we have a bit more of an internal process for accepting their files and everything. Mickey will send a screencast of walking through Content Collector and how to add content to a page. So the client understands, okay, I log in, click on pages, and I go to the page that I want to write content for and I dump my content there. Save, publish. It's not an indexed site, so it can just publish away, and that's just how we ask them to submit content to us. Because one of the issues, of course, we all have is they submit their content and they say, oh, but here's the change, reload it again. Oh, and they change this other word, reload it again. And so this way they can reload it to the heart's content until they say it's done and say good, it's done. Let's move it over, and that saves. Because we always tell people, send us final copy, and we all know that it doesn't happen, but this way they can do that. They can load their final copy and then load their final, final copy, and then final copy version 3, and they can do all that and it doesn't affect us. We can just move it over. Any other questions at this point? Awesome. Oh, yeah. Got you. Okay, so content collector is our word. We call it our content collector. SlickPlan just has it, they call it XML export, into any WordPress site, which happens to be into our content collector multi-site, and then run it over again. That was something we created. But the tools to make that happen are all freely available though. So now that we're kind of behind the scenes, we're working on content, that's going to keep on going behind the scenes. You know, it's not just right it up and it's done. So we're going to move on to architecture. We call it architecture because a lot of our clients don't understand the word wireframes, but this is wireframe. We had it as wireframing for such a long time, and every pitch that we ever did was essentially, well, here's what a wireframe is. So we call it architecture so we can explain that it's the blueprint that we draw before building the house. So you would never just start nailing together boards to build a house without having a plan. So this really helps us with usability and what I was talking about before with the site plan, thinking through the call to action and the best way to get there. So we do this specifically, not only to plan, but also to help the client make decisions without getting distracted by color and pictures and shapes. We just want them to see the bare bones of what we're thinking for the layout of each page so they can approve that and then we can wrap it in design. So we're getting close to design, but we're still planning. This really, the way I think of it, after I have my site plan laid out and I know the main goals and call to action, those are my puzzle pieces. And then I go in and I start arranging them in different ways and sketching and brainstorming, looking at other sites for inspiration until I come up with what I think is going to accomplish some conversion, a call to action. And I usually have two to three options, mostly for the home page and I'll present that first. And then the client can choose, I'm really liking how this one has the big headline at the top, but can we bring the video up too? And I let them kind of say, here's what I'm thinking and we offer our suggestions from there. So it helps them to envision how the site's going to look without completely seeing it in its full form yet. We use Illustrator and you can see an example of this is just our website, a bare bone wireframe of the home page. I use Illustrator, there's a lot of tools out there, there's Balsamic, Glyphy, yeah, there's a few that we've tried. I am very comfortable in Illustrator just with my background in print, so it's just what I go to. And this is what they'll see and we make sure we're getting headlines right. At this point I'd like the copywriter to start giving us some input on headlines and calls to action because I can start integrating them into our wireframe. So once the client chooses the wireframe that they like and we'll actually go on and build an internal wireframe depending on how complex the project is, we've done up to 20 wireframes, we then can start doing design. It's going to be an easier process now that we have the layout of the site. So we essentially color inside the lines or outside the lines or however you want to do it. And now the client knows what to expect. We've set expectations and when they start seeing it come together they get really excited. They see, oh, now I see why we went from here to here to here to design. We give the client a chance to review the design. Of course there's a revision process here just like there is on every other step that we've gone through to make any necessary changes before we move on to development. So yeah, development. So we've gone this far and they still have nothing technically resembling a website at all, just some pictures and layouts and stuff. So it's time to get started digging in. And again, this could be a whole day talk in and of itself and I'm sure you've been to some other presentations on frameworks and development practices and I don't want to get into that too much. Personally, we use the Genesis Framework, StudioPress, those folks. That's more little tech heavy if you want to really design it. There's others like Divi that are more drag and drop, depending where your skills are, that kind of thing. Other frameworks you guys like to use for sites? Nobody? What's that? Thesis, yeah, thesis is a popular one. Other developers might use bootstraps, something like that. But again, that's sort of inconsequential to talk but we've used Genesis for that. Yeah, and get going through there. Once it's developed to a point, we put it up on a staging server. This will depend on whether they already have a site or not. If they haven't had a website before, we'll go ahead and put it on their real site with a coming soon page on it. And I usually let Google go ahead and index that because all Google sees the main home page but can start getting a little bit of juice going there. If they already have an existing site, we'll put it on a test server with a different domain name until Google will stay away. We don't want to mess up their rankings in the meantime. But wherever it is, we go in and start playing. I was going to mention on the coming soon page, we talked about this in the earlier session, but we use a plugin called Ultimate Coming Soon Page, which works well for that. What's it needs? You can build a little coming soon page and if anyone's logged into the site, they don't see it. It's just a normal site with a home page and everything. Anyone that's not logged in, which is everyone else, they just see the coming soon page. So it works well. The client can log in and it just works just like the final site will except no one else can see it. But wherever it is, at that point, it's time to start playing with it. There's a plugin called Viewport Resizer on Chrome that you can use just to kind of test different mobile sizes. Thumbs up in the back for that. It is a good little plugin, Ashley told, shared with us a while ago. You still want to test it on as many mobile devices as you can because the size of an iPhone is not always exactly the same as how an iPhone will treat it. Different browsers. I happen to use Windows, which is very helpful at this point because I have Internet Explorer, which hate it, which we all do. A lot of people still use it, so you have to be able to test on that. Sure. The plugin, I believe, is called Viewport Resizer. It's a Chrome extension. Yeah. Do you use Google Chrome as your browser extension? I don't think it's built into developer tools now. There are some pieces like that, but this one just puts a little bar right at the top so it will click through. There's a Firefox developer edition that has more stuff built in. That could be it. Was there another question? I saw? Yeah. Yeah. And so we kind of work through from there. Again, just testing, trying all the browsers, making it work. Using Genesis, there's a cool plugin called the Genesis Visual Hook Guide. Genesis has lots of hooks. It's kind of a geeky way to insert code different places. And it's hard to tell. They'll have all these hooks. You're like, where on earth will this one, you know, Genesis Afterheader, where does that show up? If you enable this plugin, it just makes your site ugly and puts all the names of the hooks everywhere. It's just going to go perfect. Go add the hook and work it in. But there's a lot of different plugins that can help with testing and development at that point. But that's some of what we've got there. So it's been tested, reviewed, everything's good. It's time to launch. We launch. Again, if this is a new site, we have that coming soon page. It's essentially just turn that off and the site becomes live for everyone. If it's not a staging server and they have an existing site, it's a whole different animal. Essentially what we do is move it on top of the old site and then make sure the redirects set up for all the old pages. If they have about that HTML for their old page and now it's just slash about, you want to make sure Google and visitors get the redirects. There's a plugin called Redirection. Very simply Redirection that works well for that. If you have a small site, what I often will do is as soon as we launch, I'll do a Google search for that site and just open up all the pages which will all say 404 not found and then go to the Redirection plugin and say that one goes there, that one goes there, that one goes there and that one goes there. It takes seconds to do. If you have a site, a more traffic site, you have to build all that stuff ahead of time. You have to take a little more finesse to make it work. But launching our site, we have a checklist. We have slides from that from our meetup back in December. A lot of these were kind of blowing through so we've been using our meetup to kind of cover in-depth some sections of it. Next month is going to be the wireframes and site maps for a longer stretch. But we have slides from December where we walk through our checklist for launching a site. We have 28 steps we go through and they're all pretty easy but make sure if it was on a test server we would say, Google, come on in. A lot of us have seen clients that accidentally left that one little silly check box checked that blocked Google completely from their site which is so bad and so simple but so easy to overlook because it's buried back in the settings. So we have a checklist we go through every time just to say, yeah, it's already cut off and just make sure we don't miss anything. And again, we've shared that checklist online. There's a good book that came out like the best marketing checklist ever that has checklists for all kinds of things. We're big believers in that. We're alive. This is essentially done. The site is up. We still have a few more things we like to go through though. We like to educate and train our clients. We believe in education. We're here in the meetup and that kind of thing. But even clients if they don't care about WordPress we like to train them to the extent at least they know what they have. And only people just to say just we hope it works and if they want us to handle everything for them that's great. We're happy to but I still want to sit them down for a little while and say, here's how it works. Here's how you add pages. Here's how we add posts. They can understand oh, if you want to add a post it's real hard. And so just to get them understanding of what's going on but of course most clients want to just run it themselves afterwards which is great and so we're happy to educate on that and make that happen. Usually we do those in person. We do a lot of screencasts and that kind of thing but majority of our clients are local and so we'll set just some time just to sit down with them and their team to walk through how WordPress works and you know a condensed version of the beginner workshop from Friday with better Wi-Fi hopefully. That was fun. Lastly, our improvements. WordPress has a big update come out every month or so not as much lately but often security updates on top of plugins that aren't always pushed out. We need to make sure people are staying updated somehow. Whether they do it themselves whether they use us whether they use another service it happens so we really stress that with people what do they need going on. We use a tool called Infinite WP to manage a whole bunch of sites at once. It's a pretty cool tool. The main WP folks are here. They have a great tool for that. IThemes has a tool called IThemes Sync. These are all tools if you have a bunch of sites to manage you can kind of look at them in one dashboard and work through instead of having to log in to each one see what's going on. Manage WP is one of the oldest probably one of the best but one of the most expensive. In our case they would have been like 600 bucks a month to use which is a lot to swallow for that but it's easy Infinite WP that we use you have to download it and install it on your own server and set it up it's a little more finicky I have solutions like Code Guard if you need backups backup buddy just make sure all that stuff is in place if you just let a WordPress site sit SEO is going to be not so good if you're not updating regularly but you're going to get hacked at some point we like to make sure people are set one way or another whether it's on their own through us through someone else it's an important piece just not to launch it and walk away then of course we can help with new content and features Google Analytics we always set up Google Analytics I went to this conference and learned about Google Analytics I want to see mine and it's nice to say well we already had that set up here six months and they can dig in and look at data and stuff then talk about other ways they may want to promote their new site social media newsletters lots of different stuff like that so at that point we're essentially done there's a site for the world to see and like I said not all agencies use this process I know that there's larger agencies that do more of a team a pod kind of theory where they literally talk about the size of ours dedicated to a single client you know that's large scale and then there's freelancers that it's just them and you know it's a lot to take on but any adaption of this to really think through the strategy before getting to design and ultimately development is a wise choice so we are at GreenMellonMedia.com and you can find some of those meetup slides that we reference at allthingswordpress.com we're happy to take questions getting license how do you think that gotcha so on some of those like gravity forms we'll have that in their name for them to take care of frankly we have very few that don't have us handling updates and we have the developer license for Genesis we have it indefinitely but yeah to the extent possible if we are going to hand it off as much as we can in their name to take care of you know and a lot of clients we use woofoo for the forms which works well has good and bad if they want to put in there if they want to go somewhere else to save them some cost that's certainly something to be thinking about as you have premium themes and plugins and making sure it's in their name good question all right so standard plugins that we use on all the sites not many I try to keep it as little as possible we usually end up with eight or ten it certainly varies wildly but a Kismet on almost every site because we do encourage people to blog and hopefully take comments on their site that helps block spam there's one called push press I like to use post it immediately notifies Google of it just another way to let Google know doesn't help you rank better per se but when you get yeah hopefully index quicker I'm a big believer not worrying about people stealing your content it is wrong it's unethical I don't recommend you do it but I see people spend way too much time chasing all that down as long as you can be the authoritative copy of a post if people copy it twenty times you still rank first that's cool that plugin helps with that a little bit just to say hey Google help with that we use jetpack most of the time not always but again it has a lot of great features it enhances commenting it has some cool things for people when you receive email notifications of comments as a user I love going on another site to leave a comment having a checkbox that says email me when someone else replies because I'd like to start conversations but I'm not going to remember to go back later and see so as a designer as a building a site I want that checkbox there jetpack has a number of cool features in there that help DM block bots if any of you are in analytics you probably see SE malt and buttons for website and all that stuff that blocks all those things it's a tiny little ten line plugin we added just to block all that kind of stuff from Google analytics WordPress SEO by Yoast there's a talk issue we load that again virtually every time that's probably about it for every time again there's others we'll add often but I don't want to say here's just the blanket plugins unique that vary so much from case to case so hope that helps yeah okay so she's asking project management tools for managing tasks and actually I just wrote a big blog post on our site about this a couple days ago a few years ago we used one called Nozbe and OZBE which I know the click host what's that many years ago I know the click host folks do use it was a great product nothing but good things to say about it we switched to Asana about three years ago and that's where I think a lot of people should be Asana's phenomenal just had a few shortcomings we got a little too big for them and now we're using one called teamwork.com we have killer missing holes recurring tasks is the main one for us somehow at base camp you can't say every Monday do this you have to use external stuff and silly so teamwork.com is what we use and again I have a big post on our site explaining why we like that over Asana and hopefully I tried to write in a way where people would say well that means I still like Asana better because it is the biggest catch I guess Asana is free for pretty much anyone in here I think you have to be over 30 users to pay oh greenmailingmedia.com everything you find on our site yes just go there to the blog we have alley slides I think are the first posts and a few down talking about teamwork yeah okay good question so how do you adapt your process when it's time for a redesign and refresh to a large degree we don't typically if they need a redesign it's been years and it really is time to sit back and think through the whole process again it makes some steps easier they already have a site map in place we usually start with that we'll put that into slick plans and now is the time to let's move this and expand this category but you don't need this page anymore and now we need copywriting done in these new pages and refresh it and we want to give them a fresh layout and so to a large degree it doesn't change much again it can go a little quicker perhaps but we try not to again if we assume all the copy is good from before well maybe maybe not you know SEO might not be good so it's worth taking a whole fresh look at it okay what do we put on our contract for training and maintenance we put in with every site we build two hours of training is included we'll go to them so that can be on their computers with their team and show them depending what they need we may put in four hours instead if we think they want to know more and usually I say that I go there with a list I have a list of what we go through in WordPress but I say this is your time we'll talk about WordPress but if you want to talk about analytics sometimes we get into talking about teamwork in Asana I mean it's really whatever they want to learn from us there and then ongoing and then if they need extra help each month and they get into newsletters and other those are all custom we kind of just talk through it with them and see what needs to happen then they're not our clients I mean because again they don't need us they're not going to pay what they need to pay for a site they need to use a Wix or something else they just want to throw a site up and that's okay people don't always have the time or budget to do it what we consider the right way and so we'll talk to other folks Cliff Seal and Kyle have a product not thinking through everything but we know it's on a good solid platform they use Genesis does a good job there so yeah we just kind of talk through what their other options might be then because that's not what we want to do okay so a Kismet yeah to use a Kismet for anti-spam you need a key and they kind of hide if you go to say I need a key you can get it for free but they say pay five bucks for it and you kind of slide it to free if you want we slid it up like 50 bucks a month we pay just because I want to give back to that and we do use it quite a personal site you can go in when you get the key it's going to say pay for it and you can slide it and make it free but if you're doing a business I certainly encourage you to toss them a couple bucks a month because it is a great plug-in to block spam we just take care of that yeah we just use the one key I believe it's acceptable someone can correct me if I'm wrong but we're paying for the one key I think we're paying enough and we just use it for all our clients you know so other questions design she's you're asking what we use to design the site once the wireframe's done yes still presenting layouts good question we do still use Photoshop to design a lot of people design in the browser that's okay too if you are a designer and developer you might be comfortable doing that we take that wireframe that's I've done an illustrator we move it over to Photoshop and we literally start you know filling it in so yes there's certainly different ways you can do some people who have designed sites an illustrator if it's going to be a very cartoon animated site so different tools right and that's that's more during the testing phase where we'll actually see it all come to life we when we have more complex projects sometimes we overlap design and development a bit so that they can see here's the home page and here's how it would work animation or right yes and we can show that in sometimes we'll explain it sometimes I even put little notations in the PDF say this is going to do this action and the the thing that's what you can actually do a whole document about exactly what actions are going to happen on the website we don't do that but I know agencies that too I was going to say one other piece that once the wireframe is done design begins but really development can start to begin at that point because we know it's going to start getting laid out so once the design is done we can roll it in depending on our workload and stuff but yeah we'll do that sometimes too yeah envision for design okay envision is what he's saying we've not used that I'm not familiar with it but certainly we're looking at cool others okay our philosophy about video on the home page yeah I think the one is I don't like pop ups for the most part there are tasteful ways we heard in the keynote when we pop up or whatever but video I don't like to pop up and I never auto play I mean we have some sites where at the top they have a beautiful video so we feature it right on top of the home page if that's a big call to action but I never like it to auto play mostly for user behavior if someone's at work sneaking around trying to look at your resort or whatever and the music starts they don't look for the pause they just X out of the browser and they're gone maybe never to come back so it's just annoying and I do the same thing you know sure yeah there we go there's a lot of things where clients don't always get in the head of their users they say we want to pop up and annoy them and get them but they hate that when other sites do it you gotta think what would the clients actually want to see and a large video if it's gonna attract attention if people want to play it they will and if they don't want to then you would have annoyed them even more otherwise so did you have a question favorite caching plug-in often is none we don't always cache every site a lot of our clients just don't get that much traffic and caching is gonna break more things there's a number of decent ones out there we'll use on bigger sites but it's more of a case-by-case but not not consistently again especially if a client is gonna be managing it later there's too many things that can blow up Cliff Seals talk yesterday talked about ways to hide a lot of that from them which would help a little bit so they're not playing with the settings and enhancing it for us but yeah again a lot of our clients they'll get 50, 100 visits a day it's not gonna make a big difference it's more more hassle than it's anyone else? I actually want to talk a little bit more about that and the types of customers that are okay so hacking yes so yeah so WordPress being the most popular in the world has hackers always trying to attack it because they can find a hole in they suddenly have a hole to 73 million sites or whatever over Christmas for example there was a revolution slider had a hole in it something where around 150,000 sites got hacked I mean hackers will do their best to get into your site and then usually do their best to disguise that they got in they'll just slip little viagra links in and do things and you'll see your traffic tailing off and not know why but WordPress comes out with updates very frequently to combat that WordPress SEO had a pretty decent security hole last week they fixed we just encourage clients just to keep it secure in our case we keep it secure we keep plugins updated we still do a malware scan every week we still we use iThemes security for an extra security plugin WordPress does a good job security does a good job there's a lot of good security plugins we get something in place to protect it further which theoretically you don't need if you're updated but you never know always an extra layer of defense and then again we do a weekly malware scan InfiniteWP has a feature where it'll scan we can say scan all of our sites it'll run through and tell us what's going on yeah and yeah we keep uptime monitoring on too that was one I didn't mention there's uptime robots you can set that up for free and say check my site every five minutes if it goes down text me or email me or whatever that one's pretty cool I switched away from that one so the site went down just for a second it would text me so I got a lot of text and started to tune them out so we use one now called port-monitor which I can say check it every five minutes if it goes down three times in a row then text me because now there's really a problem so I get far fewer texts but they're much more urgent I know something's going on again it's the kind of thing a host probably is taking care of but you know maybe it's something a plugin update something with sideways and no one noticed so you know I want to know about something down before talking to security that's a whole bigger issue we've talked to any of the hosts out there they can certainly speak more to why they're just the most secure platform and what they do so here's out but enjoy lunch thank you guys


Postpartum depression is extremely common with new mothers. Around 10 to 20% of parents experience symptoms of postpartum depression after the delivery of their new baby. If you feel that you may have postpartum depression, it's extremely important to contact a healthcare provider for diagnosis and treatment. Some of the symptoms of postpartum depression include decreased energy or interest in things that you used to enjoy, feeling disconnected or like you're just going through the motions. Getting angry easily or being overly emotional. Some things that may increase your risk for postpartum depression include twin deliveries, history of postpartum depression, anxiety before pregnancy, relationship problems or unplanned pregnancies. But the good news is there is help. Your healthcare provider may recommend medicines to help with anxiety or depression. Counseling can also help you learn new ways to deal with stress and cope with new and difficult emotions. No matter what causes postpartum depression, it's important for you to get the best help so you can be there to take the best care of your baby possible. Remember, you are not alone. As new parents and parents to be, knowing a bit more about breastfeeding can really help it go smoothly, especially the first 24 hours after giving birth.  It's the beginning of bonding with your newborn and the start to the best breastfeeding experience. Skin to skin helps stimulate your hormones that help milk production and orient your newborn to their new world. It can also help establish a deep and effective breastfeeding latch. Colostrum is the highly nutritious milk you produce before your mature breast milk starts and is very important to your baby in the beginning. Most newborns start breastfeeding within the first hour or two after birth. Even if your baby is sleepy and recovering from delivery, this is the time to encourage breastfeeding and feed the colostrum to your baby. Depending on your baby's feeding ability, you can hand express or pump your breasts with your hands. Be patient. You are both recovering from an incredible life-changing event and how a baby breastfeeds in the first 24 hours may look very different than it does after that. We also recommend avoiding pacifiers in the beginning. Pacifiers can lead to baby's missing early feeding cues and can delay the needed stimulation and removal of colostrum and milk from your breasts. We know that there is a lot of general breastfeeding information available to you on the internet, but you and your baby are unique and may need some support with breastfeeding help that's unique to you and will be there when that time comes. For new parents, feeding your baby is always top of mind. Human milk is the best thing for them and gives them the critical nourishment they need. But a mother's milk doesn't always come in when expected. They may struggle to produce enough milk or they may even end up with an oversupply. That's where donor human milk comes in. At Mother's Milk Bank, we collect donated human milk from parents who have more than they need. We then follow strict guidelines and procedures to ensure the milk is safe before giving it to hospitals and families who need it to feed their babies. If you find yourself in need of supplemental milk, donor milk is the best source of nutrition. If you're in the hospital, ask your care team about donor milk. If you're at home, contact Mother's Milk Bank. On the other hand, if you have more milk than your baby needs, we would love to have you as a donor. Donors are screened to make sure they are healthy and a good fit. Once approved as a donor, we provide supplies to ship or deliver your milk to us. No matter what your feeding journey looks like, please know that you have options if your baby needs it.  It's hard to be a new parent. Babies feed a lot when they're newborns and they don't usually sleep for longer periods until they're three to four months old. So be patient, find time to get some daytime rest. And in the meantime, here are some safe sleep tips to help. For new parents, SIDS or accidental suffocation tops the list of safety issues. There are a few simple things that you can do to help avoid this tragic situation.  It's okay for you to share your room, but do not share your bed with your newborn. Avoid using heavy blankets, pillows, stuffed animals or bumper pads. And also avoid putting your baby to sleep on a couch, sofa or other soft surface. Pacifiers are okay to use if your baby will take one and their feedings are well-established. Swaddling in a thin blanket can also help, but only until they start rolling over. Remember, most babies under three months will need to eat every three to five hours. Once your baby is four months old, talk to their doctor about sleep training. Eventually, your baby will sleep through the night and sleepless nights will be behind you. In the meantime, use these tips to help your baby stay safe and sleep longer. Most toddlers and young children don't need vitamins and supplements, but there are a few that are very important for their growth and development. These are vitamin D and calcium. In today's world, many of our toddlers and young kids are not getting enough vitamin D and calcium. Some good sources include dairy products, fortified foods such as fortified breakfast cereals, eggs, fatty fish, leafy greens and white beans. As you can imagine, these are hard foods to get toddlers to eat. So what does vitamin D do to help your child's body? It's a critical vitamin for absorbing and retaining calcium and phosphorus. Calcium and phosphorus are critical for strong bones and they help your children's bones grow. And they only get one chance to build their bones strong and that's when they're young. Vitamin D and calcium are also important to prevent rickets, which is a bone softening disease that leads to bowed legs and stunted growth, mostly in children. Rickets may seem like an old time condition, but it's starting to happen more often in our modern world. Good bone health in your kids begins by eating foods with enough calcium and vitamin D. But when that may not be happening for a variety of reasons, talk with their doctor about supplements that they may need to grow up healthy and strong. Diaper rash is really common in newborns and toddlers. After all, newborns poop and pee a lot and their skin is not used to being in the outside world. Most diaper rash comes from the poop, the pee, the diapers or the wipes that touch your baby's skin. But it can be prevented by starting to use a thick layer of a strong barrier cream at the first sign of irritation. Normally something like Vaseline, Aquaphor or Desitin is all that is needed. You need to put on a lot of cream. So do it often so that no irritants can touch their rashy skin. When diaper rash does happen, gently wipe with a warm washcloth or put your baby in a bath instead of using wipes. Occasionally babies get used in the diaper area and your doctor may recommend an anti-fungal cream if the rash is bright red or in the creases of the leg. If your baby has blisters or broken skin, discharge your yellow oozing, red streaks or if things are just not improving after three to five days of barrier cream treatment, it's time to call your baby's doctor. Constipation is common in your child's early years. It can be extremely frustrating and scary for you and your child.  If stools are firm, painful or infrequent, your child may be constipated. Getting an early diagnosis and then getting some consistent routines in place are key to improving your child's constipation symptoms. First though, you can try a number of natural remedies for constipation. A simple one is to drink more water.  Keep a 24 ounce water bottle filled up for them to drink out of and refill it at least once per day. Another remedy is to increase the amount of fiber in your child's diet. Foods like bananas or popcorn or even whole grain pasta. Also, adding a daily probiotic or prebiotic supplement or food sources like yogurt can help. And magnesium supplements have also been found to lessen constipation and improve overall gut health. If you've tried several of these natural remedies and your child is still struggling with constipation, it's time to talk to your child's doctor about medicines to soften the stools and help your child. Self soothing is an important piece of your baby's social and emotional development. You may not know it, but you've already started to help your child before they were born. Your pattern during pregnancy for eating, sleeping and being active all influenced your baby. Sometimes they follow your patterns perfectly, sometimes not. When you're responsive to your baby's needs, they begin to learn to self-soothe. Babies rely on you for this support. Helping your baby to calm themselves will lay the groundwork for your baby's ability to calm and focus in the future. It's also important to learn how to read your baby's cues. This is integral to self-organization. If your baby is crying, be a detective to figure out why. Maybe they're hungry, have a wet diaper or want to interact. Figuring out what they need helps you help them.  Sucking creates an organized rhythmic pattern. Swaddling and holding your baby can also calm your baby. It creates boundaries and comfort. Wearing your baby with a carrier or a wrap can also help them calm to your body's rhythms.  At 15 months old, your baby is understanding more and more of their world and expressing their own comments and wants and needs. This is an amazing time. They're learning to talk and it happens by seeing, hearing and playing with you. Use your home language, the one you are most comfortable speaking and keep in touch with your doctor to make sure your child's ears are as healthy as possible so they can hear you loud and clear. Children learn to imitate when we imitate them. When your baby makes a noise or says a word, make it back. Before you know it, you'll be having longer and longer conversations with them. When you're talking with your child, follow what they're interested in and what they're paying attention to. Use words that match their experience like yum yum, ball, go or car. By 15 months, your child is following simple directions. They're using the gestures of lifting arms to be picked up, waving, clapping and pointing at something to call your attention to it. They're also probably imitating a lot and using some sort of jargon or babbling that sounds like they're talking and making meaningful noises like vroom for cars and using a few words often like mama, uh oh, and bah for ball.  You are your child's most important communication partner. If questions or concerns about their development come up, go with your gut and go see an expert.   First, hearing is essential for your child to learn how to speak. If they have ear infections or don't seem to hear things, call your doctor. Infants coo and begin to make sounds as their mouth develops. By six months, babies try to imitate your facial expressions and sounds. At six to 10 months, they're babbling and stringing sounds together. Babbling is one of the first steps to learning how to speak. Your child's first word usually comes around one year. If they're not using about three simple words by 14 months, it's a good time to get an evaluation. From 12 to 15 months, your child begins to understand even more words. They can follow simple directions like, come here and play simple games like, where's the ball? They will follow your point and point themselves. Then around 18 to 20 months, there's what's called a language explosion as toddlers quickly learn more words. If they're not putting words together between 24 and 26 months or have lost any skills, it's time to get a communication evaluation. Whether an evaluation shows your child has a speech or language delay or not, you'll have great information, ideas to help their communication continue to grow and the peace of mind that you sought out help for your child. Your baby at 10 to 12 months old is learning to be with people and exploring the world through their senses and movement. They don't need fancy toys. They need you as a play partner. Take peek-a-boo for example. It's a favorite for a reason. Your baby loves finding you at each boo. It builds their social connection with you. Little songs and finger plays let your baby experience sounds, words and movement and begin to join in. Your one year old relies on you for learning to play and may begin to play by themselves for short periods. They might be interested in looking at other children or playing side by side, but not yet playing with them. Babies are also learning how things work. You can use things in your home for play like bowls and cups or even a box. Babies will bang things together, put things in and dump them out again and again and again. They might also try to do what you do like bringing a cup to their mouth. It's also never too early to read books with your child. Babies may hold and even chew on soft cloth or board books and that's expected. But as they look at books with you for even just a minute or two, they're learning to look at pictures and make connections with the words you say. Remember, you are your baby's first teacher and play partner.  Dental health for your baby starts right away by keeping their gums clean. I like to use a soft cloth to wipe my baby's gums before bed. You could also use a washcloth with water or a clean swaddle blanket. Next, when your baby's first tooth erupts, usually around six months of age, you can start gently brushing with a soft kid's toothbrush and a small uncooked rice grain size bit of fluoride toothpaste. After one year of age, try brushing your child's teeth twice a day, once in the morning and once before bed. If two times is too much some days, just get one good brushing in at night. Dentist visits are recommended to start when the first tooth comes in and no later than one year of age. Then we like to schedule them every six months after that as they get older. Tooth decay can happen.  Weaning off bottles is recommended at 12 months and stopping them all together by 15 months of age. When it comes to pacifiers, wean them off by two years of age. After that, it could start to affect their speech or the position of their teeth and palate. With everything we worry about as parents for our children, it's just easy to forget their teeth. Just remember to shoot for two, two brushings a day and two dentist visits a year. When your baby turns six months old, it's time to introduce solids. Breast milk or formula are critical for initial development. Now you should start complimenting their milk with solid food. Before you get started, your baby needs to have head control, sit with little or no support, weigh at least 13 pounds and show some interest in what you're eating. You'll need a seat that supports your child such as a high chair. You'll also need some baby spoons in either store-bought or homemade baby food. Your baby needs to first learn how to eat off of a spoon. Try putting some breast milk or formula on a spoon and feeding it to them. Make sure you talk to your baby as you feed them. Once they can eat off of a spoon, start introducing a single food every three to five days. This helps with any allergies that might come up. Be prepared, the first few feedings are messy. As your baby learns how to use their lips and tongue in a new way, they will push the food out of their mouth and both of you will wear most of it during the first meals. It's important to get to know when your baby is either hungry or full. If they move forward and open their mouth, they want more. If they turn their head and push away the spoon, they're done. That's it to get your baby started on solid food and don't worry, you'll find out what works for you and them as you go along. Babies naturally build strength in motor skills as they grow. You can help by playing with them every day. Tummy time is the best way to build strength.  It helps strengthening a baby's head, shoulders and body. You can do tummy time on your chest, over your lap or on a blanket on the floor.  When your baby is on their back, giving them a lot of different things to look at and listen to helps them turn their head to look and listen, helping develop head and neck control and even the shape of their head.  Once your baby gains more control, they will begin to reach for things close by. It could be your face, a mirror or a toy hanging from their baby gym. This will develop their shoulder strength. Giving your baby something to kick such as a musical toy or crinkly book can help their big muscles develop and they will get to learn about cause and effect. They kick and get to hear something fun.  This opens up a whole new world for them and strengthens their arms, legs, back and neck.  Either way, it helps build their strength. Enjoy playtime. When is a good time to start toilet training? There is not one answer when it comes to toilet training your toddler. It depends upon your goals for starting and it's important to make sure the timing is right for both your child and your family. If you or your family are going through major life changes or your child is in their defined stage and they will go through this stage, it's usually better to wait for these times to pass.  Start reading children's books about toilet training. Talk about using the potty.  Some signs that your child may be ready to toilet training include they try to do things by themselves. They say no when you offer help. They act uncomfortable when their diaper is wet or dirty. And they can use some signs or words to let you know when they want things. But rest assured, it's not a one size fits all approach and toilet training is not a race. Most importantly, be patient and supportive. Your child will learn how to use the toilet. It just might be more on their timeline than yours. As you know, toddlers are always on the go. They're moving around, exploring the world and this is when they develop their motor skills. They start to use their large muscles for balancing, running and jumping and smaller muscles like the ones in their hands for grabbing things and even feeding themselves. It's up to you to find ways to make it fun like a good obstacle course which every child loves. You can make one with hills, zigzags and curves by climbing over pillows, under tables and around furniture. Then add some simple household items or their toys like little cars and stuffed animals to make an interactive. Try building a road for them to follow using masking tape. Then have them drive their toy cars to the end and park each car on the dot that matches the color of their car. Put it into a small container or sort by size. They'll learn motor skills, thinking skills and how to follow directions. There are all sorts of things you can do.  This builds strength and coordination. Sensory bins are also fun and easy to put together. A box full of sand, uncooked pasta or beans, some cups, spoons and ladles are all interesting items to your toddler and helps them develop tool use.  One of the best tools to let your child know when their behavior is not okay is time out. Timeouts are not only for your child but they also give parents a moment to calm down when they need it most. Timeouts should be reserved for behaviors that are more harmful, destructive or disrespectful and it's very important to be consistent in enforcing them. First, timeouts should be in a safe place that's not scary and removed from the main living area. Also, somewhere where you can keep an eye on them without them seeing you. Timeouts are typically one minute for each year of age and should be used immediately after the bad behavior to be effective. You can set a clock or a cooking timer with a bell and when the bell rings, timeout is over. If your child refuses to stay in timeout, they may need to go to a bedroom without toys or a TV, calm down for a minute or two and then go to the timeout spot. After timeout is over, move on. No more discussion needed. You can say something positive which can help. It could be something simple like you're really playing nicely with your toys. With timeouts, your child quickly learns that bad behavior has consequences and gives you an effective way to correct your child's behavior. You are your child's first and most important relationship. Your child develops trust and learns how to be social by being with you.  Over time, they learn that when you leave, you always come back and that they'll be safe with those you leave them with. At 18 months, children become more curious about others and like to be around other children but they don't know how to share yet and it shouldn't be expected yet. Your child's attention could last three or maybe even up to five minutes. They're busy bodies. They see something, they go for it even when it's in the hands of another child. It's great to have enough toys for everyone but that's not always possible. You can help your child by paying attention to them while their friend or sibling is playing with a toy and help them learn to take a turn. Also at 18 months, your child starts to feel like a separate and powerful little person and they'll want to do things for themselves. You'll probably hear no and mine a lot from them. That's when staying calm and finding a minute to yourself can really help. Sometimes it can get intense with your 18 month old. It's up to you to maintain calm and figure out a solution. This helps you be a wonderful role model for your child and helps them learn these important social skills. When your child is sick or something's wrong, you take them to their pediatrician and we're here to help in those times. But it's also important for us to see them even when they're healthy. Pediatricians recommend regular well visits to check in with your child's growth and development as well as with you, their parent. Well child checks start as a newborn and then at one month, two months, four months and six months. After that, we space out the visits every three months until they're 18 months old. Then at age two, we move to annual checkups. During these visits will mark down your child's growth, talk about important milestones and answer any questions you might have. So between visits, it helps to keep a list of anything that comes up so you don't forget when you come to the appointment. There may also be some standardized screening to do depending on your child's age. During these well visits, we also recommend any vaccinations that your child might need. There are strong opinions about vaccinations out there. So it's good to do your research and have an open discussion with your child's pediatrician about them. We do know vaccinations prevent 2.5 million deaths every year in children under age five. And they are very important to help keep our children healthy. Regularly scheduled well visits will also help create trust and a team approach between you, your child and your pediatrician. All of which helps reassure you as the parent that your child is getting everything they need to be happy, healthy and lead an extraordinary life. Parents often wonder when they should take their child to the emergency room for an illness or injury. The first step, if possible, is to contact your child's doctor's office for advice. There's usually someone on call 24 hours a day. But there are some signs that may let you know it's time to go to the emergency room. One sign is if your child looks like they are having difficulty breathing.  Their lips may also get darker with a purplish color. Another sign to look for is if your child is not responding very well to you and seems more sleepy than normal. This could mean that they have a more serious infection or illness. One symptom parents often ask about is fever. High fevers are common in young children. They can occur with viral infections or may also occur with bacterial infections.  And if you notice that when their fever is lower, they seem to have more energy in play, it may not be a serious infection and you might be able to monitor them at home. Just call your child's doctor to make sure. Injuries from falling more than a few feet and on hard surfaces like concrete or tile are also a reason to head to the emergency room. It's also a good idea to take an infant and child CPR course or first aid course to help you be prepared in case of an emergency. When your little one gets their first cold, it can be hard to deal with. They can't tell you what is bothering them and there really aren't any medicines to help them. There are a few things that you can do to help. Babies have to breathe through their noses, especially when eating.  I recommend that you use some saline that's meant for babies and a suction device. Now be ready for some loud protesting. Babies and toddlers really hate it when you clear their noses, but it's so important for them to be able to eat and breathe properly. Humidifiers can also help them breathe when congested as well as trying to keep them more upright during sleep. It's not unusual for babies and toddlers to get five to seven colds a year, mostly in the winter. As pediatricians, we become concerned when babies or toddlers have a fever lasting more than three or four days or a respiratory symptoms like cough and congestion lasting more than 10 to 14 days. We also are concerned if they're refusing to drink much or they seem to be getting sicker after the first week.   It's a beautiful time for connection which helps your child feel loved and secure. Children actually need 10 to 12 hours of sleep spread across nighttime and naps if they take them. So having your child sleep and wake at nearly the same time each day is important. To make the nighttime as restful as possible, make sure your child gets plenty of physical activity during the day. If they can't go outside some days, you could set up an indoor obstacle course or have a dance party. Start your child's bedtime routine after dinner. Keep the steps of their bedtime routine the same each night. For example, first brush teeth, then choose a book. Say good night, then sleep. Darken the room with softer lights and lower the shades. Some children sleep better with calming music or white noise or a dim nightlight. Also, no screens during their nighttime routine. Your child may do better with some choice in their bedtime routine. They can choose their jammies, get their special blanket or stuffed animal or pick two books they want to read for bedtime. Reading can help them into a dreamy state and your soothing voice is what your child loves to hear.  Learning to fall asleep on their own is an essential skill for children and will make their bedtime routine that much smoother for the years to come. Good night and pleasant dreams.  Positive parenting is about setting boundaries and teaching discipline in a way that will help build your child's self-esteem and create a respectful relationship between you and them. It starts at the beginning with being responsive to your child's needs and helping them begin to trust you.  With positive parenting, discipline doesn't necessarily mean giving in.  If things escalate to a tantrum, then it's time for a timeout. Timeout isn't meant to be a punishment, but rather a way to help your child learn to regulate their emotions and also not reward them for the undesirable behaviors. When your child is following directions or masters a new skill, praise them for their accomplishments. Positive attention almost always wins out over negative attention. Here's some positive parenting websites that can help. And don't worry, it's okay to make mistakes as a parent. We all do. Children are always learning and so are we.  Anxiety is the normal part of your child's growing experience and all kids experience it. To help them deal with it, here are a few tips.  Avoiding foods with artificial coloring or preservatives can help and pick snacks that have less sugar in them. Supplements like multivitamins can help too, especially when your child is a picky eater. What also helps with anxiety is to get your kids moving. Any activities that are aerobic and involve cardio will do the trick. It's even better when you can do it as a family or they can do it with their friends. Once they're done moving and eating some good food, that's when they'll get some good sleep.  This last tip is probably something we can all do better at, which is limiting screen time as much as possible. This will help your child develop good habits in spending time with you and others and not be so focused on the virtual world. These are just a few tips to help with anxiety, but if these aren't enough and your child continues to struggle with anxiety and excessive worry, talk it over with their pediatrician and together you can figure out what's next. One of the biggest challenges parents struggle with is being consistent in setting expectations and following through on rules. As your child grows and develops, they start to gain independence and confidence, something every parent wants. Parents also need to provide boundaries to keep their children safe and give them a sense of security. Simply put, looking out for your children lets them know you love and care for them.  Children are smart and will test your rules.  And of course, when there's two parents, it's even harder to be consistent. Both of you at the earliest stages should talk about what rules you agree on and which you do not. Being on the same page with the most important and bigger issues will make both your lives easier. This might include things such as bedtimes, respectful language, helping out at home, getting ready for school, homework, or limiting screen and video time. Communication and consistency are both keys to setting expectations and enforcing rules, which will help you feel better about being an effective parent. Children have lots to say and want your attention, and that's wonderful. But how can you teach your preschooler to get attention in a respectful way? First, decide what's respectful in your family. Children learn what they see you doing, so model for them. Get their attention respectfully in the way you would like them to do it. Let them see you doing the same with others. We often teach children in preschool to tap a teacher or a friend on the shoulder. If you're expecting your child to wait, it's not easy for them. Let them know when you can give them your attention. Make it concrete for younger children. In a minute is not clear and can seem like forever for your child who doesn't have a concept of time. Try giving them a choice of something to do while they wait. Like, you can draw or play Legos and when I'm done, I will listen. And that last part is so important. Your child will learn to trust that you will follow through, so getting your attention respectfully will get easier over time. Warm weather and longer days mean more time outside, and that means there's a need for sunscreen and insect repellents. Sticks and lotions are better than sprays for young children and can be used safely when you follow the directions. Sunscreen should be put on 15 to 20 minutes before going outside and then reapplied every two hours and after swimming. Most pediatricians are comfortable with you using sunscreen on your baby starting at one to two months old. Before that time, use hats and clothing to protect your baby from the sun as they can burn very quickly. Look for mineral sunscreens with just two ingredients, zinc oxide and titanium dioxide and an SPF of 30 to 50. Bug sprays can also be used starting at two months old. The two types that have been shown to be effective contain deat or picoridein. I usually recommend using one that says children or family on it and not going above 30% deat. The more deat, the longer the product lasts, so it depends on how long you will be outside. Unlike sunscreen, bug spray should not be reapplied often, which is why combination sunscreens and insect repellents are not recommended. I hope you use these tips to enjoy your little ones and the outdoors. Water safety begins when you first bring your baby home from the hospital. It starts with bath time. Bath time is an exciting time, but it can also be dangerous. Babies can drown in as little as one to two inches of water. Here's a few water safety tips that can help as you introduce your child to water for the first time. First, you should always be within arm's reach of your baby. Never leave an infant or young child alone in a bathtub. Avoid distractions.  When you're done with bath time, make sure that you drain the tub immediately. Never leave standing water in any container inside your home. And keep your bathroom doors closed and toilet lids down and locked. When summertime comes around, it's important to remember these tips to keep your child safe around a swimming pool. Make sure the pool has a fence that fully surrounds the pool and a gate with a lock. Always have an adult that is responsible for looking after each child and is fully aware of their responsibilities. Please remember that infant flotation devices do not replace direct parental supervision. As your child grows, consider enrolling them in swim lessons or programs that will help them become safer around the water. Most kids are picky eaters at some time in their lives. It starts around 18 months and is usually over by six years of age. Picky eaters will have times when they will only eat a few specific things like eating PBJ for lunch every day and then switch to grilled cheese every day. What they're doing is looking for some sort of control and it's perfectly normal. There are a few things that you can do to help them during their picky eating phase. Keeping a mealtime routine helps. Routines, such as washing hands and setting the table can help them focus on the meal rather than the TV and other electronic devices which should be off during mealtimes. Let your child help with the meal, planning and preparation. Something simple like letting them tear up lettuce for a salad. Also letting them choose fun items to use at mealtimes such as colorful cups, fun placemats or curly straws can give them a feeling of control. When serving, only put a small amount of food on your child's plate. Sometimes seeing three servings of three different foods can be overwhelming. It's also important to eat with your child. Mealtimes are social, so talk at the table. Stay positive and talk about the color of the food, how you can hear them crunching or what they did on the playground today.  If you have any concerns about your child's growth and picky eating, call their doctor. It's an exciting milestone when your child starts eating solid foods. But when should you introduce known allergy foods or allergens such as nuts, peanuts, shellfish and eggs to your child? The answer is as soon as your child starts eating solid food. This usually happens around four to six months of age. In fact, it's the early exposure to potential allergy foods that can help decrease your child's risk of developing allergies. It's also important to introduce these foods in a safe environment with good adult supervision and during the daytime hours when your doctor is open just in case you have questions. Giving your baby these foods one at a time can also help to see if any possible allergic reactions show up. As always, it's important to talk to your doctor about any food allergy concerns and family history of allergies. Together, you can make a special plan to introduce these foods to your baby. Don't wait. Talk to your doctor at your child's four and six month checkups just to make sure that you're taking the best steps to lower your child's risk of developing allergies. We all want to know what our children do during the time we've spent apart, but when you ask them, what did you do today? It usually doesn't lead to much. It's because children live in the present. So instead of asking, what did you do today? What can you do? Start by creating a routine.  No questions. Once they've settled in a bit, then you can start to talk about their day. Instead of questions, try comments like, you saw your friends in class today or looks like you painted today. I love your paintings. Then let them talk. If you want to ask a question, try starting with I wonder. I wonder if you made something today. Open-ended I wonder statements. Give your child time to think without having to answer right away. Or try starting a routine where you add a special note in their lunch or encourage them to bring home a picture for you. Check with their teacher about what they are learning and talk to them about that after school. Your child may or may not be able to say what happened on a particular day and you may hear about it sometime later. Just take the time to figure out what works and enjoy talking with your child. Helping your child get ready for kindergarten is important, but what does that really mean? Here's some tips. You can start by following a daily routine that helps them get ready for school. Getting up at the same time every day and going to bed at the same time every night helps a child's whole day run smoothly. Also, help your child to be more independent at home. Let them dress themselves, help serve their own snack and wash their hands after using the bathroom. You can help if needed, but the goal is to build their confidence. Teaching them responsibility is important. Give them small tasks to complete like putting napkins on the table for dinner, putting away their toys or putting their pajamas under the pillow after they get dressed. Delayed gratification is another skill your child needs to have for kindergarten. Teach them how to wait for their turn. When they ask for a turn, help them find something else to do while waiting or use a timer to let them know when it is their turn. Another crucial skill is self calming. Help your child to learn to take a deep breath, get a drink of water or ask for a hug when they are feeling upset or frustrated.  Read books, signs, cartoons, even the cereal box. Make reading and learning fun.  Screen time is a challenge for almost every parent out there, especially when it comes to toddlers and preschoolers. What's too much, too little, good screen time, bad screen time, smartphones, tablets, computers, TVs. The list of screen time challenges goes on and on. And none of it's gonna go away anytime soon, probably not ever. So it's never been more important and it's up to you to establish healthy screen habits. The American Academy of Pediatrics doesn't recommend any screen time other than video chat for your child under 18 months of age. Screens are not effective learning tools for this age group and they can replace face to face interactions that are critical for their development. For your children ages 18 months to two years old, one hour per day of screen time is okay. It is recommended that you choose high quality programming like PBS and that you play or watch with your child. A lot of the programs for this age group are designed for you to interact with your children. Another important screen time guideline is to always keep the screens out of the bedroom. Not only is it out of your supervision area but screens can interfere with good sleep which is crucial at this point in their lives. After two years of age, you will find what works best for you and your children. But keep in mind limiting screen time for your children is important for their development. Choosing lots of unstructured play and reading time over screens is always a good first step to managing screen time going forward. Good heart health begins at an early age. Making healthier habits from the start of your child's life helps promote their long-term health. However, for today's busy families making time for being active and moving healthy eating and plenty of sleep can be tough. The good news is that engaging in one positive healthy lifestyle habit often leads to more. For example, engaging in physical activity every day may lead to better sleep. Better sleep may lead to less stress. Less stress may lead to better eating habits and fewer cravings for unhealthy food. Kids often develop similar habits to the adults in their lives. Be a role model for your kids by prioritizing good health for yourself. If necessary, get help quitting nicotine. Set a regular sleep schedule for yourself and involve your kids in decision-making when it comes to choosing which healthy foods to eat or what activities to do as a family. Most of all, rather than focusing on perfection, focus on progress. Celebrate each day that goes well and let go of the days that don't go according to plan. Go ahead and get out, take a walk, take some deep breaths and make every day a good heart health day for you and your family. Did you know that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends all children between the ages of nine and 11 get a cholesterol and blood pressure screening? While signs of heart and vascular disease often show up later in life like chest pain, some symptoms may show up a lot earlier like high blood pressure and cholesterol. Over time, extra cholesterol in the blood can narrow arteries, block blood flow and cause serious emergencies such as heart attacks and stroke. High blood pressure in children can be easily missed since they may not have any symptoms. But it is important to check it out because high blood pressure can damage organs such as the heart and kidneys. It can also lead to high blood pressure in adulthood and is a leading cause of heart attacks and stroke. In many cases, changes to your child's lifestyle habits such as more physical activity, eating healthy foods and getting good sleep can make their cholesterol and blood pressure levels go down. The first step is finding out about your child's high cholesterol and blood pressure early on so their overall health can get better. The screening is simple and gives important information for people of all ages including adolescents. Schedule your child's screening today or look for a UC Health Healthy Hearts and Mind Screening at your child's school.