Thomas McGee

Designer, web developer, and creator.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

Hey TeachKit is now available on the @kit App Store! Looking forward to seeing what creators make with it: https://t.co/NPl4luZHWb

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

Putting your logo on everything does not make the brand stronger by itself.

A restaurant is remembered because the food is great, the service is great, and the experience is worth repeating.

The logo becomes meaningful because of what it represents.

Not the other way around.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

Your homepage should not treat every piece of content equally.

For my site, I’m leading with deeper articles and longform videos because they carry more thought and context.

Shortform still matters, but it should support discovery and freshness without burying the deeper work.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

A homepage should not just be a social feed.

If you create shorts, articles, and longform videos, the newest item should not automatically be the most important item.

I’d rather feature deeper work prominently, then organize the rest by topic and freshness.

Fresh, but not chaotic.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

I do not want every shortform video on my site to become an exit ramp to YouTube.

So I built individual pages where people can watch shorts directly on the site.

They can still go to YouTube if they want.

But the default experience stays clean, focused, and connected to the rest of the content.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

Shortform content gets buried fast.

So I’m building a way for my site to pull in recent shorts, organize them by topic, and automatically surface the freshest categories near the top.

The goal is simple:

Let social platforms create reach, but let the website preserve and organize the value.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

Most visitors do not care whether your content started as a TikTok, YouTube Short, article, LinkedIn post, or tool.

They care whether it helps them.

So organize content around the user’s problem, goal, or question.

Not only around the format.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

Better design feedback:

Not just:

“Make this headline bigger.”

Try:

“I want this headline to stand out more. What can we do?”

Maybe the answer is size.

Maybe it is color, type, spacing, or contrast.

Give the designer the goal, not only the instruction.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

A portfolio should not only be thumbnails and polished case studies.

If you have built real things that exist in the wild, show them.

Live projects, working tools, real websites, and finished products often communicate more than a carefully cropped mockup.

Show the work.

#PortfolioWebsite #WebDesign #UXDesign

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

A logo only means something because of what it represents.

The Apple logo would be meaningless without the products, experiences, trust, and reputation built behind it.

Same with any business.

Your logo identifies the brand.

Your actual customer experience builds it.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

If someone clicks your “Hire Me” page, they probably already have some level of interest.

Don’t overwhelm them.

Give them the bottom line:

What you do.
How you work.
What they should do next.

If you want people to take action, make the action easy to take.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

A portfolio does not have to be a static page you update once every few months.

For my personal site, I built a dynamic section that pulls in recent projects from a separate portfolio site I created from scratch.

That makes it easier for people to quickly see what I’ve been building lately.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

A logo is not what people buy.

They buy the product, the service, the result, and the experience.

A good logo can help people remember you.

But if the actual offer is weak, the logo will not save it.

Design should support something real.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

A great logo cannot save a bad product.

A polished brand kit cannot fix poor service.

Design matters, but it should support the quality of the business, not cover for the lack of it.

The actual customer experience will always matter more than the logo.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

A lot of people see white space in a design and ask:

“What can we put there?”

But good design is often the opposite.

It is not about how much you can add.

It is about what you can take away so the important thing is easier to see.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

Design feedback is most useful when it explains the problem, not when it tries to do the designer’s job.

Instead of:

“Change the font.”
“Make this blue.”
“Move this here.”

Try:

“This feels too formal.”
“The CTA is getting lost.”
“This section is unclear.”

That gives the designer something to solve.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

One simple UX improvement for content-heavy websites:

Don’t make the search box start empty.

Pre-populate it with useful items, recent content, popular resources, or key pages.

If someone finds what they need before they even type, that’s a win.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

One of the biggest problems with website editing is that so many tools still copy the same old WordPress style UX.

Big left sidebar. Cluttered interface. Too much friction just to make a simple change.

Most modern SaaS products are much better at getting users from point A to point B quickly. Website editing should work the same way.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

One of the clearest examples of WordPress plugin risk is when plugin ownership changes hands.

In this case, around 30 plugins were reportedly acquired, updates were pushed, and backdoors were introduced so backlinks could be added across hundreds of thousands of sites to boost gambling and other spammy websites in search.

That is the problem with plugin dependency. You are not just trusting code. You are trusting every future owner of that code too.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

Compromised WordPress plugins can become an SEO problem fast.

An attacker gets in through a vulnerable plugin, then adds links, redirects, or other junk to boost their own sites in search. Your website ends up passing value to theirs without you even realizing it.

That is one more reason plugin-heavy setups are risky.

[Thomas McGee @ThomasEMcGee]

WordPress is over 20 years old, and it shows.

It is slow, bloated, cumbersome, and too dependent on plugins. My preferred approach now is to build the full custom site first, then add a very thin CMS layer so the client can edit exactly what they need and nothing more.

That means faster launches, less overhead, and a much cleaner experience. In many cases, I can now get a custom site up in a day.