News – Page 2 – Wingrove-Services

Give A Little Love Campaign

The following is just for those Home-Starts who have come forward and requested the promotional pack I have offered for free to support the John Lewis Partnership Give A Little Love campaign.

The list below covers those sites I have added it to.

https://homestartraw.org/ 17/11

https://homestartnwglos.org.uk 17/11

https://homestartsd.org 17/11

https://hseeb.org/ 17/11

https://homestartbracknellforest.org.uk/ 17/11

https://home-startmedway.org.uk/ 17/11

https://homestartealing.org 17/11

https://home-start-cotswolds.co.uk 18/11

https://home-starteastsurrey.org.uk/ 18/11

https://home-startbanbury.org.uk/ 18/11

https://homestartcheshire.org.uk/ 18/11

https://home-startwatford.org.uk/ 18/11

https://home-startsurreyheath.org.uk/ 18/11

https://home-startsittingbourneandsheppey.org.uk/ 19/11

https://homestartsurrey.org 19/11

https://homestartspelthorne.org 19/11

https://homestarttamworth.org.uk/ 19/11

https://hsguildford.org.uk/ 19/11

https://home-startnorthsomerset.org.uk/ 19/11

The following sites are in the queue to have the promotion added to their website:

Queue is currently empty!

Notes on managing the promo

I have used content from the HSUK website and not edited any of it other than making links into your local site for About Us and Volunteering. That means you get the benefit of showing the promotion.

The videos are running in YouTube and are not locally on your website. That means if someone decides to move them, they will stop working. If that happens let me know please.

I have done three things:

1). Added an additional slider to your home page featuring the graphic for Give a Little Love, this slider is linked to a post. The slider can be edited if you wish to change the messaging. Look for Smart Slider in the sidebar of your site and locate the slider and edit it. It will be the first one in the set you currently use on your home page.

2). Added an introduction which I think came from a Press release on the 13th of November. It is all generic and talks about the promotion.

3). Added a detailed post which should also be at the top of your news page and the bottom left of your home page which includes the detail and the videos, and how to participate. Participation links back through to the HSUK promotion. I have not changed these, nor should you.

You can edit anything I have added to localise it more for you. But you should keep the core part of the messaging to be consistent with the scheme. You may also add in other supporting news related to this promotion.

While it looks like a lot of work, I am using the Divi system to it’s full advantage. The work was initially carried out at Home-Start Runnymede, refined there, and then saved to a library. I can then visit your site and load the library and quickly produce the two posts and link them into your site. It takes me less than 10 minutes per site to do this. For this reason, I cannot spend a lot of time localising it further for you, and still do this for free. Hopefully the generic version, partially localised to your site will meet your needs.

Best wishes,

Mark.

← Another Scam, how it works Suite CRM →

Website Health

WordPress has recently introduced a health widget in the dashboard. It indicates the health of your website. I have been getting questions on it. It looks like this.

I have not done anything yet on this site (my site) so let’s take a look. First thing is not to wholly believe what it says. But we should check it out. I have clicked on the Site Health Screen link. It takes me to here.

The first thing to note is at the top. It is now running some tests. Which infers it did not really know what the state of the website is.

We have 0 critical problems, if you ever find you have one or more in this space alert me immediately. A critical problem could bring your website down.

The two recommended improvements show that I have one or more themes that are not in use, I should remove them.

It also says I have one or more plugins loaded which I am not using, I should remove them. Both of these are security precautions. In our case, not that important.

The last one relates to a function in the hosting which I have never seen anywhere, and is not supported by this hosting. It too is non critical. However it is worth checking by opening the box.

In the meantime while we have been thinking about this page the Site Health has changed to:

… GOOD. Well I did not do anything to the site. Unfortunately the way this has been implemented is a little alarmist. I don’t mind WordPress mandarins building a stronger and more robust platform, but this feature is not a great implementation as it turns out.

Check for yourselves

When you next login, give it a try and see what the page says. If you see something there after you have loaded it and are concerned, let me know and I will check it out for you.

← Website unavailable and other messages WordPress Site Health Check →

Speeding up websites

Over the course of the past three years I have raised over 300 tickets with the hosting company to raise technical questions and try to resolve problems. That does not mean they are not very good, far from it, they offer an excellent service, and are based in the UK in Nottingham.

One of my eternal questions is why is this one website running slowly and the others are ok. That can be for all sorts of reasons, including my local area network as it turns out. I inevitably am told “well it all looks ok from here” but they are sitting on the end of a VPN and not accessing the site in the same way I am doing it.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I am working my way around all of the website accounts and making some optimisations in the hosting account. I have to do this on a per account basis, and it will likely take the next two weeks as a background activity. It includes increasing the number of variables a website can use, this is important for Divi based sites, increasing the memory the site has available to 512MB. Turning off the standard WordPress Cron job manager and running one CRON job every minute from the hosting. Standard WordPress needs to carry out housekeeping functions, and these are triggered by visitors. If you do not have many visitors the jobs may accumulate, and also the hosting limits the number of jobs to be run to one per visitor. The fix in the hosting and getting the housekeeping function triggered from the hosting will keep these jobs to a minimum.

While doing this I am also checking the sites, adding back in the Google Analytics plugin you used to use, it was sold to a third party by the author, and from then on the new owner was asking for money for what should be a free service. It will show a graph on the dashboard after it is installed again.

Increasing backups to 8 consecutive weeks, and setting up an encryption password to protect the backups.

If you lost it, I will reinstall the old WordPress editor, some of you have mastered the Guttenburg WordPress editor, but it is a stretch, if you only go into the site now and again. The original editor was much easier to use.

Checking everything is running on the site.

Finally turning on a website optimisation function in the hosting and a CDN (Content Delivery Network) function in the hosting.

Having worked through that lot, your site and page changes should work in a couple of seconds. That seems to be the case with the first 20 sites.

I am trying to get all of the accounts to reflect the same standard settings. They have not over the years for a number of reasons.

Any problems drop me a line.

← All about Email and Webmail Website unavailable and other messages →

Support via Zoom

Like most of you I have become a Zoom convert and have taken out s subscription. I can provide ad hoc support if you are stuck, free of charge, just drop me a line and I can give you a hand. Training is also available delivered via Zoom if you need a refresher, or never got any training because of the coronavirus pandemic. So no excuses for not knowing how to do something.

Remember no such thing as a silly question. So if something is bugging you, stopping you from updating your site let me know.

Plugin Conflict

I recommned that everyone checks their contact form each month to make sure it is still working. It is effectively sending yourself a message. Particularly if things seem quieter than usual.

Why?

Mainly because from time to time something may conflict with what was formerly a stable installation. Each week there are three or four new software releases that will be available for your website. Because of the choice of plugins I use (they are generally used in the 100,000’s and they are well supported). Occassionally something may go wrong, it is usually transient, and fixed quickly due to the number of people using them.

Mailpoet 3 & Contact Form 7

These are two very popular plugins used on thousands of sites. I have come across an issue where both are installed. However it does not seem to affect all websites where both of these plugins are used which is unusual. At the moment the problem seems to occur on new sites only.

It can be identified in the following way. Firstly go to your contact form and send yourself a message. Did you receive it, or did you see an error message? If you received it ok, then nothing more to do here.

If you did not receive the message, go into the plugins page and deactivate MailPoet 3. With MailPoet 3 deactivated go back to your contact us form. Send yourself a message. If you now receive it, it indicates that there is an interaction between MailPoet 3, Contact Form 7 and the sending service. If that is the case please drop me a line and I will sort it out for you. I have a workaround which is already implemented on many sites.

Available for small commercial sites now

If you know of anyone that is looking for a website for a small business, I have just started to develop sites for this market. I have taken three more on over the past month. Two of which needed to be rescued from other hosting companies with higher fees.

I can provide a similar service to the one I provide to charities including training. But if someone is looking for editing and maintenance as well, I can provide that on a PAYG basis, or pre agreed development work.

Just put your friend in touch with me for an informal discussion on where I can help.

Ripping off Charities

I was approached by someone requesting help with their charity’s website. She was the chair of the organisation. As with most of my connections with people it was largely word of mouth and recommendations. They connected through my website.

This was also significant in that I was using the Tawk.to app on my website and cell phone, and while sitting watching TV they popped up and started to ask questions. (Check out Tawk.to on your site).

Anyway it transpired that this organisation had their website rebuilt by a commercial organisation. The fees were high, and it was very difficult to edit the site, and they were seeking more control.

I offered to look at the site to get a feel for what might be involved before making any commitment.

It turns out that the developer had charged them £750 for a FOUR page website. Plus there was nothing notable about the design, it was based on a template that cost around $28. There was more…. The developer had a minimum charge of £105 whether it was a 5 minute job or a 3hr one. (They charged £35 per hour). In correspondence it was clear that the developer was offering to update the website as it was running on old plugins and an older version of WordPress. They would not click on the update button for free, they would charge the client for that service.

I requested access to the website to find that all of the editors had “AUTHOR” rights and were very limited on what they could do. This would mean they had to go through the developer to get anything done. And of course pay a fee.

This is one of the reasons I work with Charities. I thought it was absolutely appalling that a developer could charge £750 (for an at best £100 website) and the website could be locked down in this way, with the client having practically no control and having to do everything through a developer whose charges started at £105. This is the worse example I have come across in the past 9 years of doing this.

Solution

This charity is my most recent addition to my client list. As I did not have full access to their website I rebuilt it externally, using a new template in my hosting. I increased the pages to incorporate GDPR, Terms and Conditions, Accessibility and a few other things. The site is now around 12 pages and has a more robust structure and is more mobile friendly than the former site.

All of the editors now have Administrator level access and can see all of the site and change it all. They also have multiple 10GB mail accounts available, training built into the webiste, and I will run a Zoom session with them shortly to show them how to develop the site further. The cost? £0 for the development work and £60 per annum for the hosting. I cannot do that for everyone that approaches me, but this was an awful case of a small charity being ripped off by a commercial and allegedly professional developer. I have spent a lot of my time in the commercial world, some of it in very high margin businesses, but even based on my experience, this was an excessive case of profiteering.

You should always be in control

My philosophy is very simple. I give you the same level of access rights as I have. Which also means you can break the site if you do not know what you are doing. All of my clients are free to take their websites somewhere else and have access to the hosting control panel and domain name. I provide free training to ensure that you can edit your site and not incur any editing expenses if you wish to do that. Which ultimately means you can spend more of your budget on the services you provide to your clients.

← Coronavirus image for posts Available for small commercial sites now →

Coronavirus image for posts

For those of you with Divi based websites, your posts are best displayed with an image to conform to the newspaper layout you see on your news page. But where do you get an image from?

I originally thought this image was made from dried flowers inserted into a ball, but reading the small print it is actually a 3D generated image of a measles virus.

To use it, place your cursor on top of the image and right click and save the image to your local computer.

The image source is from https://unsplash.com and was created by CDC

Generic virus image

Here are some others so you can create your own. All of the links below go to the Unsplash.com website where there are thousands of free images covering all sorts of subjects.

https://unsplash.com/photos/bkc-m0iZ4Sk

https://unsplash.com/photos/w9KEokhajKw

https://unsplash.com/photos/rnr8D3FNUNY

← Coronavirus Resources page Ripping off Charities →

Covid-19 coronavirus support messages

I have received quite a few messages requesting support for adding in messages relating to offices are now closed, or other guidance relating to the Covid-19 pandemic. I have carried out all of those free of charge.

If you do not have a message on your website about it, maybe because you have forgotten how, let me know and I will help get something on the site.

My only request to you however is please provide me with the message you want visitors to read. While I can certainly be creative, the message really needs to come from you, not me. It also helps me to just concentrate on the mechanics of getting a message on to the site.

The best way to tackle this is to create a post or short article with your detailed statement in. You may edit this later as circumstances change. I add a bouncing box on to your home page in a prominent location which advises people that you have an important message. I connect the box on the home page to your post, or I can add both of them in.

If you do it that way, you are not placing a huge notice on your home page, just a small one with the detail in the site.

Contact me for more help or guidance.

Keeping parents sane!

I will also extend this to include a single page or post with help for parents (or your clients) with tips on how to keep the children busy as well. But I need you to do the legwork and present me with the text and links to the appropriate sites. My role is pasting the content into your site, not being creative editing it. If you wish to do that, I will also create a page on my website as a resource that others can copy, as everyone is facing the same set of problems.

← Online Training Coronavirus Resources page →

Online Training

If you need a break from the garden or cooking during these times of social isolation, why not consider a training session online? I normally visit people after they have had a new website launched or a substantial rewrite and provide training. But right now much as I am suffering from cabin fever, I cannot do that. However we could do something online. Contact me if you are interested, especially if you have training outstanding at this time.

How does it work?

Right now, I could not tell you, but I will speculate. I will identify a free application (probably VNC) which will allow screen sharing. I will set up the training in your website, we will both go online at the same time. You will need to install VNC or some other screen sharing application. I will connect to your computer (with your permission). I will provide instructions on where to get the application and what to do to install it, how it works, and most importantly how to remove it completely afterwards. I know a lot of remote IT support specialists use these types of programs, or consoles to remotely access computers. It is also a massive security hole if you leave them there ready for access. So I will tackle this with that in mind. You install it, and you remove it afterwards.

We will also need an audio channel open, so either a landline, skype, whatsapp or other method can be used. I can do this in a variety of ways, so it is really down to you and what works for you on the audio side.

I will talk you through the tutorial, as I can see what you are doing, I can advise you if and when you need guidance. When I run these things onsite, they are normally 2.5hrs. Online, we can split it into two sessions.

Interested?

Firstly, I would like an expression of interest. Because I will need to do some legwork to figure out how to do this if there is enough interest. For those of you who have not been trained, the sessions are free. It is part of the package that I provide. For those of you I have already trained, the cost will be £40 for a refresher unless I have recently upgraded your website. In which case it is free.

← Did Nominet contact you? Covid-19 coronavirus support messages →