By Spencer Hill

On the 16th April 2019

Seeking Executive Assistant

We are seeking a part time (2-4 hours a week) executive assistant who will grow into full time. This person must be local to Portland, Oregon, USA and available to work from our Sherwood, Oregon office daily M-F during the training period. But we encourage working remotely, and respect the rights of Oregon 1099 contractors […]

Categories: Company News, Press Releases

By Spencer Hill

On the 4th April 2019

Review of Razer Thresher Ultimate Headphones

As a company, we do professional cinematography, video production and photography. Having excellent headphones when shooting on set is essential for ending up with a great product. Interestingly, premium gaming headphones are often some of the highest quality headphones – especially with a mic – that you can get. So I recently purchased the Razer […]

Categories: Razer

By Spencer Hill

On the 19th October 2018

Roots Issue #13: tee: /etc/exports: Operation not permitted

Context I recently upgraded to MacOS Mojave.   Problem When I ran vagrant up for an existing site (but was new to my machine) I got an error message after entering my password: tee: /etc/exports: Operation not permitted mount.nfs: requested NFS version or transport protocol is not supported There was actually more to the error but […]

Categories: Bash / Shell, Programming, Roots, Tips and Tricks, Trellis

By Spencer Hill

On the 17th October 2018

What Roots should tell you before you use Trellis, Bedrock and Sage

We have a love-hate relationship with Roots. What we’ve learned in the past 18 months of developing WordPress ecosystems with Trellis, Bedrock and Sage is that Roots claims to be a faster way to develop WordPress websites, but that’s not the whole story.   Our experience has been that lack of clarity on what technology, […]

Categories: Bedrock, Roots, Sage Theme, Trellis

By Spencer Hill

On the 30th August 2018

Adobe Illustrator: Creating depth of field with blur, multi-tone coloring and weather

In this video we’ll show you how to create a city scape, with water, and adding depth of field with multi-tone colors, layers and vector elements to create weather. This tutorial copies and deconstructs a design we found on Matt Simons’ website. All credit for the design goes to his design team. Download the Illustrator […]

Categories: 2D Vector Design, Adobe, Illustrator

By Spencer Hill

On the 28th July 2018

A plain text list of all countries in the world and their respective states / provinces / counties

We created a plain text list of all countries in the world and their respective states / provinces / counties. It’s incomplete but that’s the goal. Available on GitHub in raw format.

Categories: Programming, Tips and Tricks, Website Development

By Spencer Hill

On the 10th July 2018

What is a wireframe in website development or application development?

In the context of website development or application development a wireframe black and white, deliberately simplified line drawing of the layout of a website or application. This is sometimes mistakenly synonymous with website prototyping.   Example   How are wireframes used? Wireframing is one step in a professional website design process. It’s a time and […]

Categories: Business Development, New Products or Services, Search Engine Optimization, Search Marketing, Website Development, Website Development

By Spencer Hill

On the 24th June 2018

In Depth Comparison of WordPress vs Laravel (CMS & eCommerce Included)

We developer custom WordPress Themes from scratch and existing platforms like Roots (Trellis, Bedrock and Sage), as well as custom WordPress Plugins. We’ve done so for almost the entire time we’ve been in business (circa 2005). Over time we’ve gradually discovered the limitations with WordPress but ultimately decided that the alternatives were just that: an […]

Categories: Programming, Website Development

By Spencer Hill

On the 30th April 2018

Absolute Beginners Guide to Root’s Trellis + Bedrock + Sage

I have a knack for hitting every possible obstacle. It stems from the early days of my education and is something I’ve had to hobble through life trying to mitigate. Since the internet though, I’ve found that there are many others like me. So when I try a new technology I am in the habit […]

Categories: Uncategorized

By Spencer Hill

On the 13th April 2018

Debunking and Demustifying Bid Adjustments and Max CPC in Google AdWords

A client recently asked us this question: “I was looking over our Google AdWords campaign and noticed we are no longer being charged around $X a click but $X more per click. And then on the ad groups some terms are even more per click. Is there a way to bring down the cost per […]

Categories: AdWords, Pay Per Click Management, Search Marketing