Website Growth Insights
The insights hub is written by Rod Fernandez Design, a web design studio in Lake Macquarie, covering websites, service pages and AEO for business owners, plus build and debugging notes for developers.
How website structure affects AI search and visibility
WebMCP: The Next Step in Building Websites for AI Agents
A plain-English look at WebMCP, the proposed standard that lets AI agents use websites instead of just reading them, and what it means for local businesses.
Read articleWhat's AEO and Why Does It Matter for Local Businesses?
A plain-English explanation of Answer Engine Optimisation for local businesses that want their websites to be clearer, more useful, and better positioned for AI-assisted search.
Read articleAI SEO vs Traditional SEO: What's the Difference?
A practical comparison for local business owners who want to understand how AI-led search changes the job of a business website.
Read articleHow to Get Found in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews
More local buyers are starting their search in AI tools rather than Google. The businesses that get recommended aren't necessarily the biggest. They're the clearest.
Read articleClearer structure, stronger local relevance, better foundations
Custom-coded vs WordPress: a real-world speed comparison
The same local business, the same services, one website replaced by another, both measured with Google PageSpeed Insights on the same day. Not a laboratory test, but the closest the real world gets.
Read articleWhy Your Central Coast Website Isn't Showing Up in Google
A practical guide for Central Coast businesses that have a website online but are still hard to find when local buyers search for their services.
Read articleWhy I don't start with WordPress (and where it's still the right call)
A first-person case for choosing the platform last, with the one comparison I've measured and five questions to ask before you agree to any platform.
Read articleWhat the latest WordPress and PHP security warnings mean for your website
Three WordPress core flaws have evidence of real attacks, and PHP fixed two critical flaws on 21 October. What's confirmed, what isn't, and the question to put to whoever hosts your site.
Read articleWhat to know if your WordPress site has been hacked
A plain-English report of what WordPress, Google and the Australian Cyber Security Centre say about a hacked site: the signs, what's hard, and who to call.
Read articleHow Many Pages Does a Local Business Website Need?
The answer isn't a number. It's a set of pages that each do a specific job. Most local businesses need fewer pages than they think, but those pages need to work much harder.
Read articleWebsite Redesign Central Coast: When Is It Time to Rebuild?
Most Central Coast business owners know their website isn't working well enough. The question is whether the answer is a quick improvement, a redesign, or a full rebuild. The difference matters a lot.
Read articleWhat makes a website generate leads
Six questions I ask of a local service website, what they can't see, and how I sort a fix from a rebuild.
Read articleBetter sites for trades and local service businesses
AI Websites vs Normal Websites: What Actually Changes?
A practical guide to the difference between a normal business website and one that's built to support AI tools, automation, cleaner lead handling, and future search changes.
Read articleWhy Brochure Websites Don't Work for Competitive Trades
A practical guide for tradies and trade-style local businesses that need more than a basic online brochure to win calls and quote requests.
Read articleCase study: Lux Coastal Electrical website rebuild
What the live Lux Coastal Electrical website has after its rebuild, using only things on the live site, with a PageSpeed median of three.
Read articleBuild stories, debugging write-ups and measured results. Written for developers and technical teams rather than for business owners.
Astro or Next.js for a business website?
My rule for choosing between Astro and Next.js, and what two of my own sites send on first load, measured with PageSpeed Insights on 25 October and 5 November 2026.
Read articleWill Safari repaint your light website in dark mode?
Safari 27.3 beta can repaint light websites as dark, and sites can't detect it. What I found on 24 pages, what happened when I tested the light dark tag in Chrome, and what's still unknown.
Read articleGoogle's shared AI training control is a 2027 plan, not a setting yet
Google plans to support a shared AI training control in robots.txt and aims for 2027. I explain what its post says and doesn't, using my own robots.txt as the worked example.
Read articleHow much of my Next.js article pages' JavaScript is my own code?
On 5 November 2026 I ran the Next.js bundle analyser on a copy of my site. On an article page, about 81 percent of the JavaScript loaded up front is Next.js and about 3 percent is code I wrote.
Read articleOne container-type line changed six of the seven layouts I tested
In Chrome 157 on 5 November 2026, one container line shrank a 154.3px-wide box to 28px, stopped a card's margins merging and moved another card beside a float. A modest replication of a case Smashing Magazine described.
Read articleA VST3 plugin opened as a black window, and the bug was in neither the plugin nor my code
One hosted plugin drew its editor. Another opened a window with nothing in it. The variable was the UI toolkit, and the fault was in the host library both of them sat behind.
Read articleTwo numbers came out of the same run. I published the worse one
Precision was about 90%. Exact agreement was 27%. Both describe the same evaluation, and only one of them tells you whether the thing is any good.
Read articleWhen something needs doing this week
The insights above are the long view. Security notices are the short one: when a website vulnerability is serious enough to matter to a small business, that section explains in plain English whether it affects your site and what to do about it.
If the site isn't clear or trustworthy, start here
These articles are designed to help you understand the gaps. A free review helps you decide which gap matters most right now.