WordPress – Page 12 – Wingrove-Services

Social Media – Spread the word

Social media in all of it’s forms is increasingly important, particularly for organisations with small budgets, or no marketing budget at all!

I have come across a very neat plugin for WordPress, it is called Social Media Feather. I have incorporated it on a couple of sites and it seems to be moderately easy to set up.

I have also set it up on this site as well. You can add it to your website by logging in as an administrator and going to Plugins, Add new, and searching for Social Media Feather.

It provides two sets of buttons, one for sharing a site/article/page and another set for following a Facebook/ Twitter or similar feed. Continue reading Social Media – Spread the word

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

Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo email user?

If you have most of your email transactions going through a hotmail, gmail (google mail) or Yahoo email account then you need to read this!

Many of the organisations I work with use their domain name as the primary email account. Some use their Broadband Service Provider’s domain name, and some others use Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo.

Whatever you use, have a backup email account. Here is what has happened to one organisation I have been helping this month. As a result of this they have lost their primary email address for at least a month.

Help I am stuck in Ukraine!

I received a message like the one below, I have seen these before, I have removed the email address in this case. Continue reading Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo email user?

Home-Start Birthday Badges

I have built around 35 Home-Start sites over the past 3 years, many are on their second generation as I switched from HTML to WordPress 2 years ago.

For most of them, they feature a birthday badge in the sidebar. This is a graphic, and I usually place the next 3 years + worth of birthday badges in the media library so that the respective organisations can update them.

It is important to show how long an organisation has been established on your site, it says you are stable and are likely to stick around. (Regretably that is not always the case in these days of reduced funding).

Follow the link below, and you can download 25 years worth of birthday badges in a zip file. They go from 10 through to 35 years. After you have downloaded them, unzip them and keep the ones you need and discard those you do not need. Continue reading Home-Start Birthday Badges

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

Check your site from time to time

About 10 days ago WordPress released a new upgrade to the WordPress framework. Everyone has an auto-update mechanism that should check for updates to plugins and the WordPress core every day. If a new version of code is detected then the site is automatically moved to maintenance mode (generally for less than 30 seconds), the site is then upgraded and made public again. This happens several times a week because each element or building block on your website is maintained by the authors independently.

The reason I have set it up this way is because there are frequent updates to fix bugs and vulnerabilities. It is essential to always be running the latest code on your site.

Last week I was made aware of one site that had “disappeared”. The admin side of the site was still present and functioning, but the users view of the site was a blank screen. I have seen two other cases like this.

Check your site

Do check your sites from time to time to make sure they are running. Once a month/ 6 weeks use your contact form to make sure that is working too. Continue reading Check your site from time to time

Changes in Google search criteria

Google understandably do not publish the precise methods used in indexing sites and subsequently ranking them for presentation in a Google search.

One thing I recently found out this week while looking at earlier sites and search results were some warnings that Google was placing on some sites that are not “mobile friendly”.

Because we have more and more mobile devices around there has been a shift over the past 4-5 years to create websites that change how they are presented to a user based on the screen size of the device they are using. These are generically called Responsive Websites. Continue reading Changes in Google search criteria

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

Category: WordPress

Social Media – Spread the word

Best browsers to use for editing

Protected: Hackers at the door

Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo email user?

Help I am stuck in Ukraine!

Home-Start Birthday Badges

Using Images on your site

Why?

Check your site from time to time

Check your site

Changes in Google search criteria

Asking your visitors to comment on your site

Catering for the Bots

Protected: Two Factor Login