Resources

Ten things to do with your website this month. None of them require a developer.

1. Find out where your website lives.
   Look up your domain at ICANN Lookup to see where it's registered and when it expires. Check WhatCMS or BuiltWith to see your platform and hosting.
2. Make sure the domain is in your company's name.
   Not a former employee's or a past agency's. Turn on auto-renew.
3. Build your key list.
   For each account, note the owner, login email and renewal date: domain, hosting, platform, DNS, email, Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Search Console.
4. Check your email delivery settings.
   Run your domain through MXToolbox. Missing settings are a common reason emails land in spam.
5. Test your own contact form.
   Submit it, then make sure it arrives, in the right inbox and not in spam.
6. Give your homepage the 5 second test.
   Ask someone new: What is this? Who is it for? What should I do next?
7. Look at your site on your phone.
   Try the menu, buttons and forms. Fix what's hard to tap or read.
8. Ask Google and AI about yourself.
   Search your business name, then ask ChatGPT or Gemini to describe your business. Is it accurate?
9. Run a free accessibility check.
   Paste your homepage into WAVE and share the results with your developer.
10. Book a check-in with your developer.
    Ask: Who owns our domain and DNS? What's our maintenance plan and yearly cost? When is our next major upgrade due?

Domain registrar: Namecheap Clear pricing, free privacy protection and a checkout without a maze of upsells.

Business email: Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace Both work on Mac and Windows. Choose by the tools your team already uses: Word, Excel and Teams, or Docs, Sheets and Meet.

Squarespace
Simple sites you’ll update yourself: a menu, hours, a portfolio (think food trucks and solo services). It’s live fast.
The trade-off is limited control over search, accessibility and custom features, and moving off it later can be time-consuming or costly.

Wordpress
Content-heavy sites: blogs, news and writers publishing often. Built for publishing. Best kept lean, with a well-built theme and only the plug-ins you truly need.

Webflow
Small brochure-style marketing sites and landing pages. Precise design control, clean code and hosting included.
Steep learning curve when it comes to editing content.

Craft
Growing organizations with specific content needs. Content is organized around how you work, secure, editor-friendly and needs fewer plug-ins.

Sanity
Growing teams publishing across several channels. Headless and flexible: One source of content feeds your website, app and more, and it scales to enterprise when you need it.

Contentstack
Enterprise organizations. Built for approval workflows, multiple languages, multiple brands and strict security controls.

Shopify
Built for selling, with hosting, secure checkout and payment security included. Watch for app and transaction fees as you grow. Selling just a few products? Squarespace's built-in store may be enough.

Squarespace, Webflow, Shopify
Included with the platform

WordPress
Your choice a managed WordPress host (ex. WP Engine)

Craft
Fortrabbit, or Fortrabbit + Vercel for headless sites

Sanity, Contentstack
The content system is hosted by the platform; the website is hosted on Vercel

Analytics: Google Analytics
The scoreboard: who visits and what they do.

Search Health: Google Search Console
Google’s report card on your site.

Accessibility Check: WAVE
A free, quick scan for common issues.

For deeper tracking, reporting and full accessibility audits, I team up with trusted specialists.

I don't earn a commission from any of the tools listed here. The right choice depends on your business and where you see it in 2–5 years.