Best browsers to use for editing

While any browser can be used for viewing a WordPress website, I have found that Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari (Mac users) are probably the best for editing a site.

The main issue lies around Microsoft Internet Explorer and it’s various versions which have never really fully followed the web standards.

If you are experiencing any issues editing a site, first make sure you are not using Internet Explorer.

If you follow the video tutorials I have placed on this site, there are some of the steps which will not always reliably work with Internet Explorer 8,9, 10 & 11.

You can download Firefox here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/

You can download Google Chrome from here: http://www.google.com/chrome/

Protected: Hackers at the door

Google Analytics

I have around 75 sites running Google Analytics, I can grant full access to you so you can see your statistics. There is also a video tutorial I have created which gives a very brief overview on interpreting the information. The video can be found on this page: Video Tutorials

Interpreting the data

There is a great deal you can do with Google Analytics, and there are some specialists that make a living out of using it, and interpreting it. I would encourage everyone to take a peek at it. It will show you how many hits your site receives per month, and what people are looking at. I would not however take it as gospel. It does need some interpretation, and at best it gives you an indication of how many visitors you had expressed as a range, rather than an absolute value. For example some visitors arrived by accident. They tend to leave from the page they arrived on. These are recorded as “bounces”. What is not clear though is how long they spent on the page, and whether they got what they were looking for.

Doing your bit

There are some organisations I have worked with that have not followed up and checked their sites rankings in Google. There are things that I can do to improve your ranking through the development of the website, and there are things that you can do. Without both of us working together on this, you cannot benefit from being at the top of an organic search. It is important to point out here that the goal is to be at the top of a google search without paying anything to influence your ranking. Continue reading Google Analytics

Email issues: When Forwarding does not work

The following is a bit technical, but bear with me. It is useful to understand how some of the mail protection policies work and the impact they may have on your mail in some circumstances.

I have a large number of email accounts, I don’t tend to check them all, but consolidate them by setting up forwarding. So any mail coming into say myname@somedomain.co.uk is forwarded to myname@someotherdomain.co.uk. Then I only need to check one email account at “someotherdomain.co.uk“.

Up until a few weeks ago, I had this working ok within a single hosting company. I made some changes when a second hosting company came on line, and moved one of my accounts to hosting company #2. Then I started to see problems.

I am using a forwarder in one of my hosting accounts. This may be relevant to you if you are using forwarders in your hosting. I generally set up one to handle messages posted to your site. These are generally handled through a mail account called info@yourdomain.org.uk which may then be passed to your normal administrative email account which could be xxxx@btconnect.com or another service provider email. Continue reading Email issues: When Forwarding does not work

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

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

Reset your email password

When you are initially set up with email I set a password for you, or one is provided by your organisation. If I set up an email password for you, it will generally be a complex sequence of characters which is not easy for you to remember. If you only use Outlook then it does not matter. If however you want to use WebMail, then it is important that you have a memorable password, because you will need it when you login.

There are two ways you can reset your password. One is by asking the person in your office who manages your site to reset it. They will access something called the control panel, and from there they can reset it. Alternatively you can do it yourself. Continue reading Reset your email password

How to set up an Out of Office Email responder

I have added a tutorial under Email in the main menu which covers the steps you need to take to configure an out of office email responder. It is not very difficult to do, and will ease the administrative burden when people are out of the office.

I have indicated to some groups that this feature is not possible in the hosting we are using, it turns out it is. The only issue is that it is not seemlessly integrated with Outlook and MS Exchange Server which is possibly where you may have come across it before.

Go to this page to learn about how it works, and how to set it up. This article is password protected.

Creating Banners on your site

Sometimes you may wish to add a box that is formatted differently to the standard elements on your web pages.

I have had this question raised by several people and for that reason I have created a page covering this. The page is specific to Home-Start websites however the principles will apply anywhere. You just add the code to your page in TEXT mode and then switch to VISUAL mode and edit the panel to your requirements.

Read more about this here: Banners for 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