Website Work in West Fargo

West Fargo has grown substantially over the past couple of decades. That growth brought more businesses, and with those businesses came the usual problems: websites that were built quickly and never quite worked right, hosting situations that made sense at the time but don't anymore, and email setups that break whenever something changes.

I've helped a handful of West Fargo businesses sort out these kinds of issues. Usually they're smaller operations that don't fit neatly into what larger web design firms want to take on. They need someone who can handle the technical details without overcomplicating the process.

Common Problems I See

Slow websites are probably the most frequent issue. A site was built five or eight years ago, features kept getting added, and nobody ever went back to clean things up. The result is a site that takes too long to load, especially on phones. In rural areas where internet speed isn't always great, that's a real problem.

Another common situation is confusion about who handles what. The domain is registered with one company, hosting is through another, email is somewhere else entirely. When something breaks, the business owner spends half a day on the phone trying to figure out who's responsible. Consolidating those services makes life much simpler.

I've also worked with businesses that were paying far too much for hosting. A hundred or two hundred dollars a month for a basic website doesn't make sense, but it happens when someone sells a package that includes services the business doesn't need. Moving to straightforward VPS hosting usually cuts costs significantly without sacrificing performance.

Building for Reliability

When I build a website, the priority is that it works consistently. That means clean code, fast loading times, and a structure that doesn't require constant updates or maintenance. For most small businesses, a semi-static site handles those requirements better than WordPress.

Semi-static doesn't mean old-fashioned. It means the site is built with efficiency in mind. You still get modern design, contact forms, and all the features a typical business needs. What you don't get is the overhead of database queries on every page load or plugins that need updating every few weeks.

For businesses that actually need WordPress, whether for e-commerce or content management, I build those too. The difference is I only recommend it when the functionality justifies the added complexity.

Hosting and Uptime

Good hosting should be something you don't think about. The site should load quickly, stay online, and handle traffic spikes without problems. Backups should happen automatically, SSL certificates should renew on their own, and security updates should be managed without requiring constant attention.

When I host a site, all of that is included. If something does go wrong, I handle it. There's no confusion about responsibility or back-and-forth with multiple vendors. That kind of accountability matters when your website is part of how customers find and contact you.

Email That Works

Email reliability is more important than most people realize until it stops working. Messages going to spam, getting rejected by certain providers, or just disappearing are all problems I've fixed for businesses in the area.

The usual culprit is DNS configuration. Records like SPF and DKIM need to be set up correctly for email to be reliable, but they're often missing or configured wrong. Fixing that isn't complicated if you know what you're doing, but it can be baffling if you don't.

Working Across North Dakota

Most of my clients are in trades, agriculture, or small service businesses scattered across North Dakota and into Minnesota. They're not looking for cutting-edge web trends. They need websites that function properly and hosting they can count on.

If you're in West Fargo and that sounds like what you're after, I can help with that.