AuRise Creative

05/26/2026

WordPress powers 43% of the internet.

It is also responsible for a significant percentage of the "my website got hacked" and "my site just broke and I don't know why" panics I get called in to fix.

Not because WordPress is bad. Because WordPress is powerful, and power requires maintenance.

The plugins that haven't been updated in 18 months. The theme from 2019 that's no longer receiving security patches. The hosting plan that was cheap for a reason. The login page with no two-factor authentication. The user account with admin privileges that belongs to a developer who finished the job two years ago and whose credentials are floating out there somewhere.

These are not exotic vulnerabilities. They're the ones I see every single time.

If you're running a WordPress site—especially one you didn't build yourself and aren't actively maintaining—a security audit is not a luxury. It's insurance.

And if this list gave you a small pulse of anxiety: good. That means it landed where it was supposed to.

When did you last audit your WordPress site? If the answer is 'I don't know what that means'—let's talk.
www.aurisecreative.com

05/21/2026

Your website is making promises your business isn't ready to keep.

Or the reverse—your business is incredible and your website hasn't caught up yet.

Either way, there's a disconnect. And disconnects cost money in ways that are invisible until suddenly they're not.

The client who almost hired you but the site looked too small for the job they had in mind. The speaking opportunity that didn't come through because your credentials page was buried. The press inquiry that went unanswered because there was no clear media contact.

Your website is out there representing you 24 hours a day. It is having conversations on your behalf while you sleep. It is making a first impression, establishing credibility, and deciding whether someone reaches out—all without you in the room.

Is it saying what you'd say if you were there?

That's the question the free consultation is built around. Not a sales call. A diagnostic.

What is your website saying about you that you haven't approved? Genuinely curious.
➡️ www.aurisecreative.com

05/04/2026

📣 REMINDER!!!

I'm speaking at the 13th Annual Disability & Mental Health Summit, and I want to tell you why this one feels personal.

🎤 "What I Wish My Family Knew About Pathological Demand Avoidance / Pervasive Drive for Autonomy"

📅 Thursday, May 7th | ⏰ 10:00 AM

PDA — Pathological Demand Avoidance, increasingly reframed as Pervasive Drive for Autonomy — is a profile that sits inside the autism spectrum and is one of the most misunderstood, most frequently missed, and honestly most exhausting things to navigate without anyone around you understanding what it actually is.
Here's what it's not: it's not a child choosing to be difficult. It's not a person deciding the rules don't apply to them. It's not stubbornness or a personality flaw or something that would go away if the parents just had firmer boundaries.
Here's what it is: an anxiety-driven need to maintain autonomy and control over one's own life — including the small stuff, including the stuff that seems like it shouldn't be a big deal, including demands that come from people you love and trust. The nervous system is the one calling the shots, not the will.
I've watched people with PDA get disciplined, punished, pathologized, and misdiagnosed for years. I've watched families fall apart trying strategies that made perfect sense — and made everything worse — because nobody told them that with PDA, conventional approaches often backfire.
That's what this session is about. Not theory. Not a clinical overview. The real stuff. The human stuff. What I actually wish the families who love people like me already knew.
If this sounds like your life — please come. If it sounds like someone you love — please share this with them.
See you May 7th.

(Tag someone who needs to hear about PDA 👇)

04/29/2026

Things that were optional for small business websites in 2019 that are now just table stakes in 2026:

— Mobile-first design (not mobile-compatible—mobile-first)
—Page load under 3 seconds on a phone connection
—Basic accessibility compliance (alt text, contrast, keyboard nav)
—SSL certificate on every page
—A contact option that takes under 60 seconds to complete
—Content that's actually been updated in the last 12 months

None of these are advanced. None of them require a massive budget. They are the floor, not the ceiling.

If your current website doesn't clear all six of these, it's not failing because the internet is hard. It's failing because these fundamentals weren't baked in—and they need to be.

This is the kind of thing I look at in a free consultation. Six items. Thirty minutes. Clear picture of where you actually stand.

How many of these does your site clear? Drop the number below—be honest, nobody's judging.
www.aurisecreative.com

04/24/2026

Celebrating the 2 year anniversary for DaVinci Workshop and Cafe and I got myself some sweet iced coffee art!!

Thanks Goli! Happy Anniversary!

04/21/2026

People ask me sometimes why I offer a free consultation when a lot of developers don't.

Honest answer: because I was scammed once. By the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I took out loans to get a degree that didn't deliver what it promised, and I spent years navigating that system trying to get any kind of resolution. I know what it feels like to pay for something and not get what you were told you'd get.

I decided early on that I was never going to run a business that left people with that feeling.

So the free consultation exists because I want you to know what you're getting before you spend money. It exists because sometimes the answer is "you don't actually need me, here's what you should do instead." It exists because the relationship I want with clients is one where they trust me, and trust takes a conversation, not a sales page.

I make stuff for the internet. Websites, web apps, email templates, plugins, tools. I do it because I'm autistic and code is a special interest and I genuinely love it.

But I also do it because small businesses deserve a real partner in this, not just a contractor who takes the payment and disappears.

That's what I'm here for.

Book the consult. Let's talk: www.aurisecreative.com

04/13/2026

Something real for a second.

When I started AuRise Creative, I made a decision that some people thought was strange for a web design business: I decided I would rather turn down clients than work with people who stood against the things I believe in.

I believe in accessibility—because the internet should work for everyone, not just the people who built it. I believe in equity—because I have seen firsthand what happens when systems are designed for the majority and everyone else has to scramble. I'm autistic. I'm q***r. I have spent a significant portion of my life navigating spaces that weren't built with people like me in mind.

Those experiences don't live in a separate part of my brain from the work I do. They're in it. In every site I build with real accessibility standards. In every time I say "you can do it cheaper, but here's what that costs" instead of just taking the money. In every free emergency repair that I do because no small business should face that panic alone.

When you hire AuRise Creative, you're not just getting a website. You're getting someone who cares whether it actually works for everyone who needs to use it.

That matters. I think it matters to you too, or you wouldn't have read this far.

If values matter to you when choosing who you work with—that 30-minute consultation is there. No pressure, just a real conversation.
www.aurisecreative.com

04/08/2026

Real talk about web accessibility that isn't a lecture:
One in four adults in the US has a disability. That's not abstract—that's your potential clients, your donors, your customers.

When your website has low-contrast text, no alt text on images, a menu that breaks without a mouse, or videos with no captions—you are not just failing an accessibility audit. You are literally not letting a meaningful percentage of your audience in.

And in 2026, it's not just an ethics conversation anymore. ADA web accessibility lawsuits have been climbing for years. Federal guidance has gotten more specific. "I didn't know" is not holding up well as a defense.

The thing I tell every client: accessibility isn't expensive to build right the first time. It's expensive to retrofit after the fact.

If you don't know where your site stands, that's what the free consultation is for: www.aurisecreative.com

Ask me to check one accessibility thing on your site right now. Drop your URL. I'll look.

03/30/2026

It's 9:47pm on a Sunday.

You just got a text from a client: "Hey—your website is down. I was trying to send you the form and nothing's happening."

You check. They're right. The whole thing is just… gone. Or broken. Or showing an error message where your homepage used to be.

And you have absolutely no idea who to call.
This is the moment I built the emergency website service for. Because this exact situation happens constantly, and for small businesses without a dedicated IT person, it can mean lost clients, lost revenue, and a few hours of pure panic that nobody should have to experience alone.

If I can't fix it in 45 minutes, it's free.

Not a gimmick. Not a teaser. Just the reality that most website emergencies have a specific cause that an experienced developer can identify and resolve quickly—and you shouldn't have to pay a premium for that just because it happened on a Sunday.

Save this post. You might need it.
www.aurisecreative.com

03/29/2026

"The real problems are difficulty accepting feedback..."

Is your feedback helpful or just not how you would do it? Do you offer any solutions or just criticize their work?

"... poor time management..."

Only a problem if you care more about how much time their butt is in a chair than their productivity and output. A good worker can do the same thing in 6 hours compared to what a mediocre worker can do in 8 (or a poor one in 10), so why can't 2 hours of free time be their reward if you're not going to give them a raise to sit in a chair to waste those 2 hours checking emails?

"... struggling to adapt to professional environments after years in academic ones."

You mean forced to conform to an outdated model that is detrimental to employees' work efficiency? Or is it your lack of trust in these employees to know what conditions optimizes their own work speed and output? Or maybe your desire to control others.

I am a millennial and I see Gen Z and Alpha as the results of what my therapist has been saying for years to help me build my own self-confidence and stop being a people pleaser and dormat for others.

I find these younger generations inspirational. Criticism like this article just goes to show how stuck in your ways you are. When you work in tech, you update or you get deprecated ✌🏻

Bosses are firing Gen Z graduates shortly after hiring them.

And the reason might not be what most people expect.

A survey of over 1,000 business leaders found the issues aren't about intelligence or technical ability. The real problems are difficulty accepting feedback, poor time management, and struggling to adapt to professional environments after years in academic ones.

Not a skills problem. A READINESS problem.

And honestly that's a more complicated conversation than most people want to have.

Because both sides have a point worth understanding.

Gen Z entered the workforce during one of the most disruptive periods in modern history. Remote school. Pandemic isolation. A completely fractured sense of what normal professional life looks like. The organic exposure to workplace culture that previous generations absorbed just by being around offices, mentors, and colleagues during formative years simply didn't happen for a lot of them.

That's real. That matters.

But here's what's also true.

The ability to take feedback without getting defensive, show up consistently, manage time without being micromanaged, and adapt to environments that don't perfectly match personal preferences. These aren't generational luxuries. They're baseline expectations of professional life that don't negotiate with comfort levels.

Every generation has had to figure this out.

The workplace doesn't reshape itself around you. You reshape yourself around the workplace until you've built enough credibility, skill, and leverage to start changing things from the inside.

Companies are now investing heavily in onboarding and mentorship specifically designed to bridge this gap because the cost of hiring and losing a new graduate within six months is SIGNIFICANT.

But mentorship can only do so much.

At some point the responsibility shifts to the individual walking through the door.