What We’re All About
Sierra Web Solutions, LLC works exclusively with the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to develop websites to our client’s specifications. We have experience with personal blogs, business brochure sites, membership sites with protected content, Learning Management Systems (LMS) and fully-capable eCommerce websites.
Visit Your Own Website
Every Day
Make it a habit to visit your own website every day. Look at it through the eyes of one of your visitors or clients. Ask yourself what could make it better, what information is missing or not easy enough to find and what new information should be added.
If you do not regularly add new, interesting and relevant content to your website, why would you expect anyone to revisit your site?
Tracy Rhodes
Founder
“It is impossible for a person to learn what they think they already know.”
Epictetus, Discourses, Book II, Ch.17
Who We Are
Sierra Web Solutions, LLC was founded in 2012 at the urging of several individuals whose websites I had either designed or worked on. At that time I had just retired from full employment as a pilot by a major airline, flying primarily international routes.
Three or four years prior to my retirement, a friend had decided to start a home-based business and had asked if I could build a website for them to display to site visitors the items they had for sale. I had never designed a website and wasn’t even sure how to start. The academic courses I had taken many years prior did include computer programming but they all used the Fortran programming language. I knew nothing about HTML, CSS or Javascript. But I was about to learn.
The length of the flights when flying internationally (to the west and east from the U.S.) results in a layover (time between flights) of 24-36 hours and flight frequency to a particular destination can sometimes stretch that time to 72 hours. After visiting the same destinations for 15 years you are pretty much burned out on the tourist locations. Luckily this was at a time when hotels were providing Internet access to their visitors. None provided it free and some charged ridiculous amounts per day but it was available.
My friend’s request gave me something to do on those long layovers. I took website programming language courses, learned how to set up a development environment on my notebook computer and practiced. And studied. And practiced. Then I learned about hosting accounts, domains, servers, FTP (file transfer protocol), how to put website files into a hosting account and have a domain name lead a visitor the website. After I thought I could build a website and have it appear on the internet I then learned a bit about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how people actually find a website after it is published on the Internet.
Around 2009 I came across WordPress (at that time, version 2.8) and software they call Content Management Systems and I learned about Open Source, software licensing, plugins and themes. WordPress seemed to have a lot of the capabilities that I was looking for when building a website and appeared to provide a relatively easy way for a website owner to maintain and update their own site. So I directed my learning energies toward WordPress and it’s growing ecosystem.
Now, more than 12 years later I work only with WordPress and it’s many software packages. WordPress has evolved from it’s beginning as a blogging system called B2 to a multi-faceted, extremely powerful CMS that is the basis for over 40% of the websites on the Internet. I chose wisely. While WordPress isn’t the solution to all website challenges, it is a versatile solution that can solve the vast majority.
WordPress is used by 64.8% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 41.1% of all websites.
W3Techs, Web Technology Surveys, May 2021.