Orange Pulley Services
Rather than last out the rather extensive and technicaly boring services Orange Pulley, LLC offers, I will transcribe an actual interview I had with a completely legit and trust-worthy but entirely made up reporter.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did making it up.
(If you really just want to read the one sentence I talk about my services, you can skip to this part.)
MR: So why start a web business?
LR: When my wife and I had baby #3 (we’re up to 4 now, after two we started using numbers) I started looking for a way to make more money. My criteria was simple – what can I do (a) from anywhere, (b) in my underwear 90% of the time, and (c) without taking away too much time from my family.
(Laughing) Did you, at least, have web dev experience?
Yes. Aside from being a computer science graduate from a pretty legit school, I had been setting up WordPress sites for as long as I can remember.
So were you building WordPress sites from the ground up or basically setting up themes?
Oh, I was definitely a theme-setter-upper. It was just a hobby and I didn’t see the value in building ground-up sites when so many beautiful themes were on the market. It was that mentality, actually, that led me to become an Elegant Themes member.
What does Elegant Themes have to do with the Orange Pulley story?
Well, if I hadn’t been an ET member, I’m not sure I would have known about Divi and been an early adopter to the theme builder experience.
And why is that a big deal?
I don’t know if it’s a big deal to everyone, but Divi has become a big deal to me
Well, I don’t know if it’s a big deal to everyone, but Divi has become a big deal to me because it’s part of my workflow. Divi has enabled me to build mockups that go straight into production, bypassing the normal design phase and moving immediately into production, which fits in with modern day software development practices like lean or agile development.
So is that the secret to building good web sites – Divi?
No. There are lots and lots of ways to build good quality web sites, but I think to answer your question you have to qualify what “good” means. If you just mean aesthetics, then Divi is one way to go, but there are really beautiful squarespace and wix solutions, hundreds or thousands of impressive WordPress themes, you could look into Drupal or Twitter+Bootstrap builds or just code up html. “Good”, however, extends way beyond look and feel. You have to consider performance, security, extensibility, budget, etc.
What is your go-to tool box, then?
WordPress for the content management system, Divi for the theme, my own custom child theme (which is really just my core set of plugins and master style sheet), iThemes Security Pro for local site security, SiteGround Cloud Servers for hosting, LetsEncrypt for SSL, iThemes BackupBuddy for backup, WP Rocket for caching, WP Smush Pro for image compression, and SmartCrawl for search engine optimization.
Speaking of SEO, is that something you offer as a service?
Yes. I didn’t for awhile because it’s so expensive for me in time and required subscriptions, but also because I dismissed its importance for so long.
What do you mean? Isn’t SEO important?
Similar to qualifying “good” earlier, we have to quality “important” to answer that. If you have a high margin product or service and exist in a competitive market, then yes, it’s important. But if your website isn’t really driving your business, then no, probably not. It falls into the ‘nice to have’ bucket and not the ‘must have.’
What other services do you offer?
Almost anything related to any digital presence. From general consulting & strategy, to web design and building, to hosting, to SEO or SEM to social media management.
Ok, well, then what services don’t you offer?
Digital content creation; like creating logos or a brochure. To me, folks who create something from nothing with GIMP or Photoshop or Inkscape or whatever are magicians.
Do you seriously build sites in your scivvies?
(Laughing). No, no. I mean, I could, but I don’t.
Really?
Well, ok, ok, yes. Maybe once or twice I’ve knocked out a few tasks in my underpants. My wife actually took a picture of it.