We like to develop sites that are technically responsive to today’s needs, competitive with other sites and ready to function correctly, quickly and securely.
Although these principles are not applicable to all cases, since there are many different types of projects, they guide us to make decisions during development that result in a quality outcome. If you have doubts about any of these principles and if they can be applicable to a specific development, please contact us.
WordPress and WooCommerce #
We use the WordPress platform because it has positioned itself as the leading platform for creating content-based websites. It is a free software project with a large community that has developed a large amount of functionalities that in general are easily integrated into the system. The platform is very well maintained, growing with improvements and is backward compatible. It is also designed to provide ease of use for developers and stability for the code that is created around it.
We use WooCommerce as our e-commerce platform, this platform has had a spectacular growth and its versatility and integrations make it the ideal platform for a wide variety of cases.
For everything to work well with these platforms we take into account:
- Development using the tools, functions, hooks, APIs and abstractions provided by these platforms.
- Appropriate use of elements that add functionality, such as plugins, choosing those that show greater community support, avoiding those that could create dependency and avoiding overloading the site with them.
- Follow good development practices.
- Proper system configuration.
Development #
We use our training and experience to develop and test the development on current technologies:
- Development on current web technologies: HTML5, CSS3, PHP8.
- Use of open source standards, libraries and modules.
- Tests on the latest versions of the most widespread browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and different devices (computers, mobiles and tablets).
- We deliver the website with all the source code open and licensed to be edited later by third parties.
Security #
Any website is exposed to attacks, and in fact attacks are occurring all the time. Many of these attacks are automated and travel from website to website looking for vulnerabilities, where they find a vulnerability they stay. Fortunately a well configured WordPress system is very resistant to these attacks, in fact the Casablanca website(whitehouse.gov) has been using WordPress since 2018.
- Configuration of the included security systems (such as Salt Keys)
- HTTPS protocol
- Filtering of requests to the server with text strings commonly used in attacks.
- Limiting the number of failed connection attempts from the same IP (to avoid brute force attacks).
- Use of validation, sanitization and data escaping functions.
- Verification of nonces in forms.
SEO #
Search engine optimization encompasses a series of strategies so that search engines “read” and “understand” our website correctly and acquire content of interest and aligned with our objectives to show it in the search engine to potential interested parties.
We do not create content, so we focus on technical SEO, which allows search engines to read and understand the site correctly.
- Development avoiding excessive and redundant use of HTML, JS and CSS inline.
- Search engine and social network oriented tags (title, description, featured image, language, etc.)
- Use of alternative text attributes on images and links without text.
- Proper structure of HTML elements: Header, footer, article, menu, additional elements and correct use of headers (h1, h2, etc.)
- Conscious use of internal links, avoiding large numbers of links per page or more than one link to the same content.
- Permalinks and semantic (“friendly”) URLs
- Sitemap and robots.txt configuration
WPO #
Site efficiency optimization encompasses a series of strategies aimed at getting the site up and running quickly. Every day the demands in this regard are greater due to the extensive use of mobile devices, and these strategies have become very important.
When we develop we do it thinking about efficiency among other factors, we want our code to have a balance between efficiency, functionality and intelligibility.
- Conscious use of scripts, fonts, images and videos that may involve high load both in downloading and rendering.
- Review of elements that block the initial rendering of the page.
- Improved performance through the use of the internal cache system and API transients.
- Improved website loading speed using caching, minification and compression.
- Review of hosting efficiency, configuration, suggestions for improvement and/or use of CDN.
Privacy and other legal terms #
We cannot collect or use personal data without the user’s express consent. This principle emerged on the Internet through the European legislation, but then progressively transposed to other legislations, and it marks how some elements of a website should work. But legislation also obliges websites, for example, to identify themselves through a legal notice.
- Creation of pages for “Legal Notice”, “Privacy Policy” and “Cookies Policy”.
- Implementation of the cookie warning with blocking the loading of third party scripts that may affect the user’s privacy until the user has not accepted.
- Implementation of a Privacy Policy acceptance check in forms that collect personal data.
Clarification: We at GIGA4 are not legal professionals. The texts of these sections and other details must be created and verified by a professional.
Web site deployment #
Whether we are making changes to an existing site or publishing a new site, we perform a deployment to minimize website downtime (if it existed previously) and analyze the hosting and domain configuration so that everything works correctly.