Using Images on your site

The following is covered in one of my video tutorials. Check video tutorial 7 for more details.

Some people are uploading images to their sites straight off of the camera or iphone. Firstly, well done for adding visual content to your sites. This is absolutely the right thing to do. However be aware of the following limitations and the impact they can have on the hosting and on your users.

An image displayed on your website is limited in size to the space available for it. Generally I advise 610 pixels wide unless it is in a gallery, then it can be larger so 1024 pixels wide might be ok. This means you need to scale down the size of your image before it is displayed on your site.

Why?

The website is set up to display an image in the available space on the page or in the gallery. If the image is 5000 pixels wide, it is reduced to 600 pixels wide in the browsers rendition of your website. So there is no value in sending a 5000 pixel wide image for a space that is only 600 pixels wide. (A pixel is a picture element or small dot that can represent one of 24 million colours, the screen you are looking at has millions of small dots). Continue reading Using Images on your site

Spam, Spam, Spam

From time to time I get asked the question whether the website is broken because a strange message has come in from a contact form.

Invariably they contain links to somewhere else, usually obfiscated links so you cannot tell where they will go, without going there. They also have completely random text, sometimes just random sequences of characters, and sometimes a passage of text which has no bearing to the function or purpose of the charity website. The text is added to try to get around various spam detection mechanisms.

Why do we get them?

They are sent through comment boxes and forms, and often get around form checking methods. The reason they are being posted on your site is because the settings on your site may instantly publish it. If that happens then the person responsible for sending it have just got some free advertising through your website. Some sites automatically publish comments or form content. In your case this is deliberately disabled when I publish your site.

here is one example you may have seen: Continue reading Spam, Spam, Spam

Asking your visitors to comment on your site

I completed a Home-Start site this week for Home-Start Bracknell Forest. One of the requests for content was quite unusual compared to the 100+ other charity sites that I have built over the past 3 years.

This group had an old site that I replaced. I was asked to add a feedback page, so they could gather comments from those people that came past the website on their views about the website.

I have used a function that is built into all WordPress websites where you can invite comments on articles (posts and pages). I have turned it on at the bottom of this page so you can see an example and make a comment. You can do this on your site as well (and turn it off again). But you need to be aware of what might happen.

Catering for the Bots

A growing problem is Form Blasting. This seems to be a relatively new tool in the world of the hackers and fringe groups who use computers to post adverts and links into forms. I have seen several examples over the past month where those that use Form Blasting advertise the fact in one of the forms that is submitted from your website. You pay say £150 and they will place your advert for knock off Gucci bags on 10,000 websites. Continue reading Asking your visitors to comment on your site

Marketing an Event on your website

If you are now familiar with your website then you will know that when you type in http://www.mysite.co.uk it goes straight to the home page. If you were marketing something then you could have a news item that is prominent, but then you rely on someone locating it. If you have a newsletter built into your site then you are pushing the information out to an already interested audience. But is there a better way?

Yes there is!

Continue reading Marketing an Event on your website

Need to create a PDF file?

What is a PDF file?

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It is a universal way of reading a document on any device. You do not need any special software to read the contents of a file encoded in PDF other than a PDF reader. These are generally already embedded in your operating system or application software that you use on any device, whether that is a desktop, laptop, tablet or smart phone. It is also independent of operating systems and therefore a cross platform solution sharing documents irrespective of whether you are on a Windows, Linux or O/S X (Apple Mac), Android or other platform. Continue reading Need to create a PDF file?

Adding Video

Sometimes a site can be made more interesting or effective by adding video to the site. It may be a promotional video about a service, or a fundraising video to raise awareness of the services that are provided from an organisation and where your money goes.

While some of my client base do use professionally developed videos from small specialists, it is also possible to create your own if you take a little care. Most people have video cameras, and many cameras these days have the ability to record video. If you have a DSLR then some of these can produce very high quality video in HD and above. Continue reading Adding Video

Publishing News based on a time and date

Sometimes it is desirable to publish something in the future but prepare it now. The commercial world, government and many other organisations who have marketing departments, control the release of news in this way. It has a greater impact if it all comes out together.

It is possible to prepare a news item or post ahead of time and then set it up so that it only becomes visible on a certain date and at a certain time. Continue reading Publishing News based on a time and date

Highlighting a quote on your site

Sometimes there is a need to highlight a message or piece of information on your site, these may be quotes extracted from the text or something that you want to visually stand out. There is a double quote icon on your editing screen. If you start a new paragraph and then apply the (double quote) icon to that text it will look similar to this.

Do all crabs thing humans walk sideways?

The style applied will depend on what master template is used on your website, so it will not look precisely like this unless you are using the WordPress TwentyFifteen template. Continue reading Highlighting a quote on your site

Google Maps Anguish

For most of the sites I have built I use Google Maps to indicate where the organisations are located. This method was very simple to do and immensely valuable to users and web developers, it was a free service and Google had a simple method for handling it. It was also very popular.

Then it all changed

I suppose if you are offering a free service for a long time and get absolutely no benefit from it, it is inevitable that someone will wake up and start charging for the service.

If you do a search on “embedding google maps” you will find lots of references to methods that were simple, but no longer available. You will also find lots of complaints about Google maps getting very complicated. An often quoted response is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Continue reading Google Maps Anguish

Understanding your sidebar

Most aspects of your website can be edited using the page or the post editors. This is how you can delete, edit or create new content for your site.

There is one area where it is not so obvious how you can modify the contents.

If your site has a sidebar then this is managed from the Appearance Menu. View this article on Widgets to understand how your sidebar is managed, and how you can change the contents presented in your sidebar.

Take care here, HTML and other code can be presented in the sidebar, so it is not like editing a page or post in the Visual editor.