9 Planets/Blog

What we've learned shipping websites.

Twenty years of design, accessibility, hosting, and SEO posts — written by the people doing the work, for clients and the next generation of agencies trying to do it well.

Latest writing.

Notes on design, accessibility, hosting & SEO — from the people doing the work.
FeaturedAccessibility

WCAG 2.2 in plain English: what changed, and what it means for your site.

AAA, AA, A — the alphabet soup of web accessibility just got a refresh. Here’s a working translator: nine new criteria, why they exist, and how to know if you’re already meeting them without realizing it.

9 Planets·April 18, 2026·3 min read
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The case against the hamburger menu (on desktop, anyway).

It saves three pixels of space and costs you every casual visitor. We dig into the data, the patterns that work better, and when hamburgers actually do belong.

9 Planets·1 min read

Local SEO for service businesses: the unsexy checklist that works.

Forget the AI-generated content farms. The fundamentals — Google Business Profile, NAP citations, real reviews, schema — still move the needle more than anything else.

9 Planets·1 min read

WordPress is fine, actually.

Everyone wants to migrate to a static site generator. Then they realize the client also wants to update copy without a pull request. A defense of boring tools, twenty years in.

9 Planets·1 min read

How we scope a website redesign in three conversations.

No 80-page RFP. No discovery sprint. Just three calls — what you have, what you need, what success looks like — and a one-page proposal at the end.

9 Planets·1 min read

Why we still run our own hosting in 2026.

The big three platforms got expensive. Edge networks got complicated. We do the unglamorous middle path — managed VPS, real backups, a phone number that rings — and our clients stay for fifteen years.

9 Planets·1 min read

Color contrast: the one accessibility fix that pays for itself.

Of all the accessibility wins, this is the cheapest and most visible. A walkthrough of what AA actually requires, where most sites fail it, and how to check yours in five minutes.

9 Planets·1 min read

Stop centering everything.

Centered hero. Centered headline. Centered CTA. Centered grid. The reflexive symmetry of the modern landing page is making sites blur together. A short rant, with examples.

9 Planets·1 min read

Write your own About page (please).

No one wants to read "We are passionate about delivering best-in-class solutions." Five exercises for finding your actual voice — and why it matters more than ever.

9 Planets·1 min read

A small ode to the humble HTML form.

Native form validation got really good. Most sites haven’t noticed. Here’s what you can ship today, with zero JavaScript, that beats half the contact-form plugins on the market.

9 Planets·1 min read
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