DoS stands for Denial of Service. Essentially a server will be bombarded for so many requests for information from a website that it will seize up. For those readers who need to be more technically informed the please read the Wikipedia description here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

If I have built your site in the past two years please rest assured, yesterday and today will see the new recommended security software installed into your websites as a courtesy. If you are reading this and your site wasn’t made by me then the recommendation for security is to install the Better WP Security Plugin. Search the Extended Plugins section of wordpress.org to find it.

Best of luck, Alan

Resolution

It is the law. Make your images 72 dpi (dots per inch). Pictures will come from some phones and most cameras usually at anything from 96 to 300 dots per inch. They are designed to do so to make it possible to take a memory stick into Boots and get a 6″ by 4″ print that looks quite good. If you need an image for a brochure or printed newsletter then usually your picture will need a resolution of 300 dots per inch. If you’ve ever seen a pixelated  photo in a newsletter it’s because the image has been taken from the internet with a much lower resolution. Now you can smile wryly to yourself whenever you see this.

A computer screen shows no more that 72 dots per inch so anything above that is wasted information to be downloaded by your reader.

Pixel Size

Now the image is the regulation 72 dots per inch the chances are that it is still huge on the screen. Many programmes (eBay, instagram, Flickr and WordPress etc) will allow you to resize your image either automatically or with some kind of slider. An image is important for you and your reader. It can convey emotion, information, set the scene or indeed be merely illustrative. What ever the case it matters. Popping up an image that displays larger than an average screen is not good on the whole. Of course there are exceptions, for example, popping up diagram and linking to a larger version of itself for more detailed study.

The best solution is to resize your image yourself (or ask me to do it for you) and make it the size you want it to be. The publish it as full size safe in the knowledge that the picture will display exactly as you choose rather than a machine decision aspect ratio scaling.

The image above shows different pixel sizes. The numbers are all in pixels as elements of a website are measured in pixels. The convention is always to the width followed by the height even if the image is in portrait format. The width of this content area of this website is 700 pixels. If I make an image bigger than that I have two choices. I could make an image smaller and link it to a larger version of itself or live with an artificial compression of my image down to 700 pixels width. I couldn’t live with myself so I have made an editing decision not to have images larger than 700 pixels wide on this site.

In the next articles

Over the next articles I’ll be looking at framing and image and what tools I use to actually do the image manipulation. Subscribe to this website to make sure you don’t miss tips, tricks and other sundries.

I was approached through a mutual acquaintance to develop a website in a hurry in support of an emergency fundraising initiative to benefit Haiti, a country in the grips of a cholera epidemic following recent devastation by Hurricane Sandy.

The loose collaboration of organisations, companies and individuals gathered for this project already had a Facebook page and a Twitter account up and running. The site was to act as a supporting platform for communication and to host the text donation line details.

The site was designed and built over a weekend just before Christmas (2012) with the text donation line going live on Christmas Eve. The text donation service is being managed by Oxfam. The site is run using WordPress and benefits from a custom design using the Headway theme system.

Post-Christmas the site is hosting details about an online Art Auction being run by Nottingham Contemporary and archive from a benefit gig held on 5th January 2013. The site will be continued to be updated on an as and when basis.

www.helpforhaiti.org.uk

With new tours across Europe booked fort he coming months ÜPSTAGING Ltd have decided to take the plunge and redevelop their old site into a living breathing organ for the company. Watch this space to find out how Tom and the crew get to grips with Twitter on the road and documenting some of the amazing stages they construct in the most exciting cities in Europe.

I’ve worked with Ellen Carroll for years on and off. Her company, Nellie PR, were early adopters of social media and blogging. They saw the potential and are benefiting from understanding what social media is and how it can be best used in a business to business environment.

Yesterday I completed www.nelliepr.co.uk This is the company’s fifth web design using the same base WordPress system we installed over seven years ago. As a PR company Nellie PR always need to be on trend.

The new website features a design by renowned Bristol based designer Lizzie Everard www.lizzieeverard.com and was implemented using the Headway theme system. It features custom menus, different navigation for different sections and newsletter sign up. The best thing about Nelliepr.co.uk is that Ellen and her company have full control over the content. Their understanding of how search engines work and attention to content detail ensure that the site is lively and ranks highly in Google.

I wish Ellen and her team every continuing success with her new look site and will continue to support her in maintaining her web edge over the coming months and years.

Lately I’ve been toe dipping in old school web development for small businesses. It’s been a while. For the past few years the web work I’ve engaged in concerns whole team development. Sites that require copywriters, coders, designers, project managers (that was my role) and have the budgets to support all of this industry. Outside of the web world it’s all been about helping people help themselves. Tutoring, organising classes, supporting people in voluntary roles, bid writing and strategy development. Having stepped back from the larger site following the decision to have a reasonable work/life balance I have been amazed at the kind of things that small businesses have had to put up with and how much they have spent to do so.

This week I’ve spoken in some depth with five potential clients about their existing websites. The issues mostly relate to new business. More specifically their businesses attracting new business. Despite each site taking different directions and wanting to attract different audiences the common factor was that they all were built a while ago and then left alone. Some of them had been made without the customer/reader in mind at all. The sites I looked at this week tended to make assumptions. The owners without exception are all expert in their field. They know all there is to know about their subjects. A website for customers needs to impart some of that credibility but it can’t assume that the potential customer will spend any time researching anything just to get something of use out of a site. A website needs to answer the customer question, “What’s in it for me?” quickly and obviously. To be able to do this in the first place a website needs to rank in search engines to be found at all. It is no use spending time and money on a site that is never read.

There are many specialist companies out there that will ‘optimise’ a website for a fee. Frankly if you would like to go down that route then good luck. The specialist search engine optimiser is a very skilled role indeed and engagement can pay dividends. Be cautious. There are plenty of charlatans out there. Some of the people I spoke to this week had met some of these in the past. My advice is find someone local and with a good reputation, mutually set the parameters of success and stick to them. Here in the East Midlands I can recommend http://www.hallaminternet.com/, if nothing else sign up to their free newsletter for plenty of top tips and news about search engine optimisation tips and tricks.

For most people this isn’t an option. Smaller businesses need to set about climbing the Google ladder themselves. Without recourse to the specialist services on offer elsewhere the best thing a business owner can do immediately is think about what they would want if they were the customer. Why should I use their service/product? Make sure that the site reflects this in its content. The whole thing should be geared towards what the customer needs and not what the owner is prepared to offer. Of course the fine line is that this needs to be done with respect. It’s a small step between useful information and pratronising waffle.

So is it all about the money?

Well, yes it is and no it isn’t. The end goal is about customers and consequentially money but before a business can get to that stage in a relationship they need to attract potential customers and then convert them to actual customers. Twice as tricky if the business site is invisible and even if found says nothing useful.

If you have found this item interesting or indeed useful. I am happy to chat. Visit the contact page for details of how to get in touch.

I have been in love with the internet since I first encountered it at university in the mid ’90′s. The thing that attracted me and hooked me so deeply was the universality of it all. A bit of coding in Note Pad and some command prompts were all one needed to have equal footing to the rest of the world. Of course there were only a million or so websites at that time.

Scan forward nearly two decades and we are at the stage where online is considered a pre-requisite to full citizenship. Amazing how fast things change. The Digital Inclusion Thoughts project is a partnership project. It’s a blog cataloging reflections and musings on the nature of digital citizenship, what that means in the wider world and how this Nirvana is going to be achieved in this country.

The initial project partnership is between myself and longstanding digital inclusion champion Peter Goodwin. There is a standing offer to guest authors to contribute. The blog is well read. The frequency of the updates is moderated to limit its intrusion into busy reader’s email boxes. Most of the project audience have subscribed to receive new articles straight to their email rather than rely on having to pop along just in case things have been added.

To find out more about this ongoing project and indeed read the articles for yourself, please visit http://digitalinclusionthoughts.wordpress.com

Nottingham Counselling Service (NCS) has been providing counselling services in Nottingham for over 30 years and is one of the most respected and established providers of counselling services and therapy in the East Midlands, UK.

Nottingham Counselling Service needed a new website that they could maintain themselves. The site had to have a directory of counsellors and a resource library. As a starting point they had a logo.

Working in partnership with Steve Crofts of Glowmedia (www.glowmedia.co.uk) and Ellen Carroll  (www.nelliepr.co.uk) we set to work. Steve did a terrific job of design and coding the site using expression engine. Ellen weaved her copywriting magic, turning text into easy to digest web optimised copy in that special way that she does. I worked directly with NCS to plan the site in how it would look and work. I also worked directly with the team to ensure that the site meet the needs of the client. The site has been produced to meet accessibility standards to WAI AA.

As with all community associations, Nottingham Counselling Service found it difficult to justify the expense of a photographer. Buying stock images didn’t seem the right approach given the sensitive nature of the site content. The site had to read and look real and not like it was put together by one of the larger American agencies. I took the photos during an in-house photo shoot that we arranged. It was important to the feel of the site that the composition of  the photos depicted more than one person yet allowed enough ambiguity for the reader to project themselves into the scene. This is why half of each image has a grey-scale area with a title on it.

The site has been running for over four years now without interruption. As a team we are proud of the work we did on this site and for the help it has been to NCS in reaching those who need their services.

Visit: http://www.nottinghamcounsellingcentre.org.uk

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small piece of code that is picked up by a browser and does several jobs. On nearly all websites a cookie will inform any website statistics that the site owner is gathering. On some sites like Amazon or Ebay, a cookie will remember who you are and welcome you when you return. Some websites use cookies to target advertising specific to the kinds of websites the reader has been visiting. This website and all of the sites that I build use cookies for gathering information on how many people are visiting and what is being read.

Who is the regulating body?

The hubbub over what the EU cookie law means in practical terms for site owners is not clearly defined in its entirety yet. In the UK the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) (http://www.ico.gov.uk/) is the authority charged with protecting information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals. As such they are also responsible for upholding the cookie law in the UK.

 What does this mean to me as a web site owner?

As a site owner you will need to offer readers the option to opt out of accepting cookies from your website. Different organisations have approached this in different ways. Some have huge acceptance boxes across the middle of their screens, some have little links tucked away in sub menus. It is tricky because no one wants to confront a reader with a legal decision before any reading can take place.

What I did to comply

After some research the solution that forms the compromise between legal compliance and reader experience seems to be the little green triangle you may see in the bottom corner of this screen. (Many thanks to Civic UK for the solution) If the reader does not accept cookies then they can still use this site. If they do accept cookies then the green triangle goes away and is not shown again. The second part of the solution was to revisit and update the privacy page for this website to ensure it covered cookies and their use,

Is what I did legally compliant?

The simple answer is that I don’t know and neither does any one else really. Until the ICO bring a case against a website owner there is no precedence for this new law. As soon as a case has been bought then every site owner in the UK will have clear and unequivocal guidance in what does and what does not constitute guidance. In the meantime by offering reader cookie opt out and beefing up the privacy statement for this web site I have ensured that this site will not be the test case.

I will of course return to this subject following a court ruling and clear unified compliance rulings.

It’s been a little bit busy this weekend. I’ve been working on three WordPress websites, two locally here in the Vale of Belvoir and one for a client down in Exeter. After looking at code, graphics and layout pretty solidly since Friday lunchtime I thought I’d take a moment to show you what a website looks like under the hood. Behind the usernames and passwords there lies a secret trinity of GRID, MANAGE and DESIGN. The tool depicted above helps to make the WordPress websites I produce both flexible and functional.

A far cry from Friday morning when I was photographing dogs for the canine physiotherapy website that is now very nearly ready to launch, Canine to code in one snack meal. It’s busy, busy, busy in Belvoir.