Paula Sageser Designs and Projects

Author: Web Design

New Year New Theme

It is 2025, so I decided to switch my site theme to the latest default WordPress theme Twenty-TwentyFive. This switch was a lot smoother than past years. So far the only thing I need to update is the default navigation in the site footer.

Exploring a few of the blocks and patterns to see if anything exciting has been added. There are quite a few new blocks and integrations. I’m not fond of AI being in ALL THE THINGS, and it has been added to WP blocks now too. (Have fun with your planet killing and privacy destroying overlords…)

There are quite a few built in image options now that are great. A slider block (nice, no extra plugin for that anymore!), image compare (very nifty!), story block, smart frame, GIF and a lot more intgration embeds from 3rd party services.

I like the before/after block a lot.

I’m glad the theme swap was non-destructive this time around (other than my footer I suppose). We live in “interesting times” these days so I’ll just say that I hope I will be writing one of these posts for a 2026 theme next year.

January 8, 2025
Switching Themes Again

It is time to test out the latest WordPress theme, Twenty Twenty-Four, that released with version 6.4 of WordPress. Since I never fully fixed all of the problems that came with the switch to the previous theme, I’m not hoping for backwards compatibility or widget compatibility. I’ll just go with the flow and see what shakes out.

So far the main changes I’ve noticed are in the footer where it built an example set of menu options even though none of those pages exist on my site. You will need to change or remove those.

It also changed up the page I had designated as my blog page, inserting a templated page instead of showing my most recent blog posts. That is a pretty big different from the prior theme. Hopefully it doesn’t throw too many people for a loop.

Hero image sections have also changed and the images are now smaller. So this looks like another theme that will require some redesign and quite a few tweaks to fit it to existing content.

November 8, 2023
Another Messy Theme Swap

I activated the 2023 theme and I must say, there are default behaviors that I’m not happy about. The blog page put in their “placeholder” title instead of keeping my own. It also threw in an unstyled, disconnected CTA at the bottom.

The Home page had an ugly “home” at the top and it wasn’t easy to just hide the page title. Editing the templates in the beta editor has been buggy. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stand the default themes.

November 16, 2022
Don’t go from the 2021 to the 2022 theme!

Seriously, what a mess. Widgets changed up a lot between the two versions and rather than TRY to keep existing footer settings, WordPress just decided to make those widgets inactive. No problem if you can find the inactive widgets and copy them to new blocks or the template, but no… you suddenly see this “Editor (beta)” option instead. Something that had been a consistent part of the appearance options is just nowhere to be found. I’m glad I’m doing this as a side project.

February 11, 2022
Switching It Up

Today saw the release of WordPress 5.8.

Since this is my site to give WordPress default options a try, I’ve taken the plunge and updated on day one of the new release. I never do day 1 updates on my client sites or my other business sites to give the bugs some time to show up and be squished. But on this site I can be brave and try it out. I’m also running very lean on plugins, so there are fewer things to come into conflict.

I’ve already run across one bug or at least frustration in the default footer section. When I convert the legacy widgets to the new blocks, it does odd things with the layout and headers.

I also updated to the Twenty Twenty-One theme to try out the new patterns options. The top very large text is one of the patterns available. I’ve also got some contact info patterns that I’ll try out below and some image layouts that could be nice. And they’ve promised to give the sidebar some new options, so I’ll see what I can add after this post.

Here we have overlapping text with two images. There is also an overlapping images pattern.

(Beautiful gardens painted by Berthe Morisot in the late 1800s)

Let’s Connect.

Twitter / Instagram / Dribbble

example@example.com

I’d like to figure out how to delete these full patterns without going into code view, if you can remove a pattern as easily as you add one… and you can, just like removing a block. I do find it odd that the “let’s connect” block above has Dribble as one of the defaults.

July 20, 2021
WordPress Safety and You

One of the posts I often make to my business Facebook page is about high-threat, zero-day, plugin vulnerabilities that WordFence discovers. It is a bit more trouble to post those through my website, but I still want to keep my followers updated about them. So here you go: If you are one of the 700,000+ users with the File Manager plugin, you should pay attention and update. Read the details on the WordFence Blog. This is actively being exploited as I post this.

Source: WordFence Blog https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/09/700000-wordpress-users-affected-by-zero-day-vulnerability-in-file-manager-plugin

Personally, I avoid using utility plugins like this on the sites I manage. They grant too much access and pose too big of a risk to make them worth it to me.

September 1, 2020
Looking for Alternatives

Today was something of a breaking point (well, ANOTHER breaking point to be honest), for me and my ability to cope with the flood of rage inducing muck that I wade through every day. It is time to find alternatives to Facebook. I started out innocently enough, trying to learn about how people fared overnight when a major hurricane hit. I started reading about people who refused to evacuate and just assumed that rescuers would come save them from themselves. I was practically screaming at my computer about how selfish and terrible those people were. Pretty unpleasant way to feel at 8:00 a.m. Sadly, it isn’t the first early morning sense of rage or existential dread I’ve felt lately.

I stopped checking the weather news and moved on to catching up on my social media mentions on Facebook, not realizing that I was still hopped up on stress and rage. All of the rest of the utter shit-show that our world has become was plastered over my feed. I found myself boiling and angry because of the signal boosts that horrifying “news” pundit with the initials of TC was getting because people were sharing his picture while being (justifiably!) upset over his attitude toward violence and murder. Disgusted over the latest DT BS and having to see his face plastered over it. I get unreasonably angry just seeing pictures of certain politicians. I felt soiled by participating in a platform that has been misused in so many ways, that lies and manipulates and facilitates hate groups.

Convenience… it leads us to accept so many compromises when it comes to what we consume and share online. We give up so much control, share so much of our data, we enrich so many people who don’t deserve it, all because we “need” to be where everyone else is. We’ve become addicted to platforms that are not good for us. Facebook (among other corporate media sites) has become a very unhealthy place for us to be. Not only do we give them all the content that lets them exist and grow, businesses pay them for the privilege of doing so, waiting for the scraps of visibility and exposure they give up in return because it gets us more eyeballs on OUR stuff. I spend a lot of time on Facebook on behalf of my business and my networks, but I have to cut back. I need to find alternatives to Facebook that don’t require me to post or read things there as often (or at all?!).

today’s search history is very interesting

Today, I started down the path of researching alternatives to Facebook. I found something really interesting while reading one of the sites I have on Feedly. An article on Smashing Magazine about Autonomy Online. It was very timely. The IndieWeb, the idea that everyone should have their own website, post their content on what they own, and then if they choose to do so, syndicate it out to the social media world. I visited the IndieWeb wiki page, I read up on some of the tools mentioned in the article, I watched a really interesting video about it from Webstock. In the course of learning and listening, I found my rage slowly fade, my stress levels drop, and I started to think about positive change.

Whether I manage to bring enough of the people in my world along with me that I can delete Facebook remains to be seen, but I’m looking forward to giving it a try. At the very least, if I syndicate my content automatically from my site to their platform, I won’t have to spend as much time being exposed to the rage inducing, mind-bending, signal boosted garbage that makes me doubt my sanity and lose faith in humanity on a daily basis. Wouldn’t it be nice to not feel rage first thing in the morning. I can promise you this, I refuse to spend another dime on Facebook ads.

Have you researched the IndieWeb yet? I’m glad I did. It gave me a path to finding some sanity in a sea of horrible content. Now I plan to syndicate content from where I own it, rather than post directly. Less time spent posting on someone else’s platform, more time owning my own stuff.

Want to learn more about me? You can read my About page.

August 27, 2020
Side Hustles
I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking about ways to earn some extra money right now. I’ve seen a few people working on some side hustles to get them by and pivoting their businesses. In fact, a post by WebinarNinja gave me some inspiration to update my resources page. I recommend favorite tools and services by adding options to my affiliate recommendations on my business site. I’m not willing to turn my site into a wasteland of ad banners like many of the bloggers I know have done in order to monetize their content. Those ad blocks make me twitchy. Times like these call for a little out of the box thinking and creativity. Creativity…

Bring on Adobe’s Design to Print

I got a little bit punchy last week while the stress levels ramped up, and I started to experiment with a new option in Photoshop that integrates with Zazzle. I started up a Zazzle store and turned some of my favorite puppy pictures into t-shirt and mug designs. I don’t expect to get rich, but maybe I’ll earn a buck or two from my family and friends. I learned a new tool, created something that made me smile, and stopped brooding about the economy for a few hours.
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Added Service Ideas

Next on my list of out of the box thinking was what I could do to drum up some business or bring on some additional projects. I started thinking about the tools and services that I use for my own business, and how I might employ those on behalf of paying customers. Rather than mope, I wrote and I created. I blogged about my UpDraft Plus cloned website service which is something I do for existing clients, but could do as a standalone service. I also updated my Square Appointments site to make it easier for people to sign up for new services. I now have a way to sign up and pay for a WordPress security review and tuneup. Prevention is really important and there are millions of sites at risk within the past month alone from vulnerabilities.

Selling knowledge/courses/content is a big deal these days. For some people these are side hustles, but for others it is how they’ve built their entire business. You can ask people to become members and pay for access to exclusive content, which is especially important in our current remote world. To easily lock your content behind a membership site with several payment methods, I’ve got a great deal for setting up WishList Member for WordPress sites.

Today, thanks to AppSumo, I have added another tool to my arsenal. One of the biggest complaints I get from my clients (and see for myself when I fill out forms and never hear back from a business), is that website forms end up in a black hole somewhere. Not the spam folder (although a lot of them do end up there), but lost in hosting limbo. This is especially frustrating for people who use WooCommerce on their websites, or have booking plugins and other registration or contact forms. Enter MailPoet, a plugin and delivery service that is designed to solve email form limbo. I’ll be testing this service for how well it delivers, how it prevents bot spam, and what the delivered emails look like. Once I’m sure it delivers on promised inbox rates, I’ll add it as another service offering.

Bit by bit, those “side hustles” can add up. At the very least, I’m DOING something with my stress that could pay off in the long run. Feel free to reach out if you want to learn more or do something like this for yourself. Hope > Giving Up…
May 19, 2020
Working From Home (sort of?)

I’ve been working from home for at least 14 (wow really?!) years now, and I’ve gotten into a routine with it. When my hubby was between jobs, that routine was completely disrupted. Suddenly I had someone in the room with me playing computer games, sitting in a robe, and reminding me of life outside of work. It was distracting. I get it, a lot of you who are new to this working-from-home thing are struggling. How can those of us doing it for so long even like it? How do we get anything done?! Let me tell you, for the past many days, we haven’t been either.

I want normalcy in the midst of chaos, and for me that is being productive and getting work done during working hours. Suddenly, I’m in a situation where major clients and projects have been put on hold and I’m worried about buying basic normal things from the grocery store, not for lack of money yet, but because normal things aren’t there. Throw in an early morning earthquake shake up call this week, and my focus is wrecked. I am going to talk about a few tips for making it easier to work from home, but first I want to say that I give myself (and you should give yourself), permission to be distracted, to not get work done, to accept that productivity requires a state of mind that allows me to focus, and that just isn’t my state of mind this week.

Okay, so on to my recommendations for those of you who are new to this. First, REVEL in the freedom from the daily commute. I know that some of you have turned that into a time to learn, listen to music, listen to podcasts, and turn up the music really loudly to decompress after your work day. If you have, kudos, do all of those things at the beginning and end of your day, without the stress of traffic. This is your reward for giving up the office life. Eat breakfast and do a morning routine before you start your work. Sit in your car and turn up the music really loudly (don’t run the engine!) if your day has been stressful. The added distraction of kids at home is pretty much a guarantee that you’re going to need some serious head-banging tunes, or the zen of smooth jazz, whatever your jam is.

Second, keep normal working hours. If your office job was 8-5, with a few breaks and a lunch break, then your home office job is 8-5 too. Don’t think that you’ll just make up work during the evening, or on the weekend, because suddenly you CAN. Unless you like the feeling that you are always working, I recommend not blurring the lines as much as possible. Keep boundaries in place between being on the job and being at home chilling. If you want to do laundry, start a load during your lunch break.

Third, give yourself reasons to dress in regular work clothes. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t enjoy the sweatpants and t-shirts and slippers options you have now, but if you have a meeting, put on meeting appropriate clothes. It helps keep you in a more professional mindset and feel normal. In my early days of working from home, I put on work clothes. Now that this is my new normal, I don’t need that as much as I did, but early on it helped me create boundaries between work and home when I could change into comfy clothes at the end of my working hours.

Fourth, set up a space in your home that will be your new office. Don’t just work from the kitchen table, then the couch, then your bed, your backyard, etc. Sure, it can be a nice perk to work from anywhere, but when you do that, you might start to feel like you are always working, and it will be harder to focus and tune out distractions. If you have the space in your house to set up a room to work from, I recommend doing it. Go to that room to work, then leave work behind in that room when you want to be home.

Boundaries, that is what helps me be productive and not feel like I’m always working. I need to figure out how I can set boundaries between being distracted by the chaos of the world and all of the added little worries that are nibbling at me now. But not today, today I’m going to skitter around and TRY to get some work done, but recognize that my mind is still reeling. We’re all distracted, and stressed out, and unfocused, and that’s okay. The ripples of chaos will settle, the aftershocks will stop, and we’ll adapt and hopefully thrive.

I love this post by WebinarNinja that has some similar tips, but is a lot more fun than mine and has a great download. Work From Home Without Losing Your Sh*t: Guide + Download

March 20, 2020
Hello I’m Paula Sageser

Welcome to this experiment in trying out the default WordPress themes. This one (as I type) is their 2019 theme released with the initial iteration of Gutenberg, their block editor. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either. I’m sure it will grow on me, until I decide to swap out for 2020 (which I also don’t love… sorry?). Hello, I’m Paula Sageser, and I have opinions about web design.

Most of my time I’m branded to my company, PCS Creative Services LLC, where I design and troubleshoot websites for Utah Small Businesses. But while sometimes I think my business owns me, not the other way around, we are all the sum of many parts. I teach workshops, I do email marketing, I mentor and volunteer, I play games, walk my dog, have a family and a life that I often keep separate from my business. This site will serve a few purposes. Primarily I use it to send out project proposals, but I’ve decided it is also a great opportunity for me to stretch a little bit, let my hair down, and be about more than just my business. It should be an interesting experiment not only in default WordPress, but in sharing a less formal version of myself.

May 17, 2018