Insights & playbooks
The Journal
Practical, jargon-free advice on web design, SEO, maintenance and automation — written for busy business owners.
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Agency, Freelancer or DIY: What Website Upkeep Really Costs
Once a website is live, someone has to keep it running: updates, backups, the occasional fix when something breaks. The agency vs freelancer website maintenance question…
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When to Redesign a Website (and When to Just Keep Fixing It)
“Should we redesign the website?” comes up in a lot of businesses at least once a year, usually right after someone compares their site…
Website as a Service vs a One-Time Build
Every website conversation eventually comes down to one question: do you pay once, or do you pay every month? That’s the real difference behind…
Why We Rebuilt the Hexweb Brand After Eight Years
For eight years, Hexweb was two blue hexagons and a wordmark that ended in a capital B. That logo was drawn when we were…
What a Law Firm Website Actually Costs in 2026
Ask three web companies for a quote and you can get three very different numbers. That’s not because one of them is lying. Law…
WordPress Uptime Monitoring: What It Actually Catches
Most maintenance plans list “uptime monitoring.” Few explain what it watches, and what it doesn’t. WordPress uptime monitoring is useful, but a basic check…
How to Check If AI Assistants Can Find Your Business
More customers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for a recommendation before they ever open Google. So it’s fair to wonder what those tools…
Is Your Maintenance Plan Actually Being Done?
You pay for maintenance every month. The site looks fine. But “looks fine” is also exactly what a site looks like when nobody has…
What a Website Actually Costs Per Year (Not Per Build)
Most owners know what their website cost to build. Far fewer know what it costs to keep. When people ask me about website cost…
Local LLM Without a GPU: What Actually Runs on a CPU-Only Laptop
There is a particular thrill the first time a language model answers you from your own machine. No account. No network. No meter running.…