OK, this will be a rant. You’ve been warned.

One of my pet peeves online is actually a really small thing that has a big impact on your site and on the users who read your site.

Tiny fucking fonts for bodies of text.

You know the sort of sites I’m talking about. They often look like slick, super-styled, beautiful websites with lovely, aspirational imagery. You long to find out more about these siren-like digital puffs of unicorn breath, how could something so beautiful be conceived of on an internet web page? That is, until you turn to the blog post/about page/another page with a mass of text.

And it’s SO. FUCKING. SMALL.

It’s so goddamn small, you’re wondering if you should make a visit to the opticians. Or you’ve suddenly uncovered a dormant dyslexia. Or perhaps you have fast-onset glaucoma. But you MUST read on, dammit.

Well, until your eyes are so bunched up from squinting, you look like you have two cat’s anuses in place of where they once existed.

(Take it from me, it’s not a great look.)

You know, I had a quick Google to find out how many people in the world needed glasses or contact lenses to help them see better. What returned was pretty fascinating:

• An estimated 75% of the US population requires some form of vision correction. (75%?!?!?!)
• In Singapore, 80% of adults have short-sightedness.
• 30% of the 16-18 year old population of the UK are thought to need corrective eyewear.
• A third of UK drivers could be putting themselves and others at risk due to poor eyesight.

Basically, whoever you are (and apparently women are more likely to need glasses than men. Excellent.), the likelihood is that you’re not safe from Cat’s Anus Eyes.

So, internet people, I IMPLORE YOU, STOP USING TINY FUCKING FONTS. You’re pissing off 75% of North Americans, 80% of Singaporeans, 30% of the youth of the United Kingdom and 33% of people driving around the British Isles. (As an aside, I don’t recommend that you read and drive. You might lose your place in your book.)

Reading fonts are best at a minimum of 14px, but I personally think to make your site easy to read, use a size of 16px.

Small fonts are SHIT and they’re annoying and they drive people away from wanting to read your content however good it is, I mean who are you trying to conceal your work from?! I very much doubt that your niche market is “anyone with vision clear enough to pilot a fighter jet”.

Even if you do have perfect vision, remember that potentially a vast amount of people visiting your website WON’T. So do yourself a favour.

USE BIG MOTHER FONTS, PLEASE.

Smooches,

G x

It’s so unbelievably exciting when you get a new website or logo design.

Perhaps you’ve invested in a web designer for the first time and you’ve got some of the page mock-ups back. Maybe you’ve done a bit of your own design handiwork in Pixlr and you’re really proud of it.

Perhaps you love the designs and perhaps you hate them. Perhaps you’re somewhere in between. Whichever way, what you’re likely to experience next is the desire to share it with people, just to “get a feel” for it.

So you ask everyone you come in contact with; family, friends, neighbours. Hell, even the postman doesn’t get away lightly as you thrust the laptop in his face and ask him deep questions about the emotions that your designs evoke, and if this design was an animal, what animal would it be?

First off, you absolutely should want to get other opinions about the design (or designs). It’s important that you do get a feel for how things go down – you are, after all, so close to your business or blog, that you can’t be all that objective on it.

However, if you’re a laptop-thrusting, deep-question-asking, feedback-hungry monster, you’re missing the point of getting feedback. Oh, and also, you’re being a dick. Stop it.

Getting feedback, really useful feedback on your new website or logo design, starts with one crucial point, and Derek Halpern of Social Triggers says it perfectly:

“Before you build an audience, you need to know who you want sitting in the chairs.”

SO. FUCKING. TRUE.

So how does that apply to asking for feedback?

Simple. Only ask people for feedback if they are in your target audience.

Yeah, husbands and nans and neighbour’s dog sitters and the team at Staines B&Q have opinions, we all do. But if your business is geared towards mothers who want ideas for entertaining their toddlers in the daytime, you can probably rule out 98% of the people you’ve spoken to in that first list because their opinions probably won’t be the same as your target audience, or y’know, the people who actually give you their money to solve their problems.

Before I get shot down for forbidding boyfriends, wives, and best mates from commenting on your designs, I do understand that it is useful to have an outside opinion – they may well think of something that you hadn’t, just don’t solely rely on their view. You will get a much juicier response from asking your people.

I have had plenty of clients who’ve said, “my husband doesn’t like this” or “my sister suggested we try this” when it comes to a design I’ve created, because they trust their ideas implicitly. And that’s great that you have so much support and involvement around you.

But this is your business and your blog and your website and your logo. At the heart of all the feedback that you get should be you.

Seriously, trust the fuck out of yourself. You’re often right.

Smooches,

G x

Artwork by The Oatmeal, “How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell”

(No, it’s not an “I’m pregnant” announcement. It’s an announcement about a new product I’ve created to help you and your website woes, but more on that later.)

First and foremost, I want to send out a massive thank you to everyone who entered into the Three Little Improvements competition last week. I’m very honoured that you took the time to enter, and I’m only sorry that I can’t do one of these for everyone. I picked the winner at random, and the winner is….

JULIA FROM http://energysessions.at/! Congratulations!

Julia runs distance healing sessions using something called “The Emotion Code”, a technique developed by Dr. Bradley Nelson, an American chiropractor and holistic healer which releases trapped negative emotions from your body. Julia runs Skype and email sessions where she can help to clear up to 9 negative emotions trapped in your body, and provides you with a report afterwards. And from the look of her testimonials, her clients bloody love it!

So, here’s Julia’s website:

First impressions are that it’s clean and easy to navigate thanks to the Coraline Theme from Automattic. I love that Julia has made a point of highlighting parts of sentences to really bring out the important areas of the sentence. That’s perfect, because on the web, we tend to skim over large areas of text. Keeping text in small, bitesize pieces, and emboldening or highlighting the important points is a hot-diggitydamn good way to make sure your visitor takes away the essence of your site.

So, let’s get down and dirty with the three improvements…

1. Up the imagery impact

When it comes to things like distance healing or holistics, some people will already be in there like swimwear while others won’t touch it with a bargepole, but probably the biggest group are the ones sitting on the fence wondering, “Does it work?” and “Is it worth it?”. Now, for anyone selling a service, we have to come up against this, but I think that in Julia’s line of work, there needs to be an instant trust link created between the reader and the website.

Currently, Julia’s image headers are a bit, well, generic. They don’t say what the website is about, and they don’t really add any meaning to the content of the site. (Before I continue here, I must say that Julia’s site is a work-in-progress and isn’t due to go live for a week or so! Technically, we’re getting a sneaky-peak!). As an outside user who wants to trust the content, but is also aware that it is quite easy to put a website up, chuck a PayPal button in there, it doesn’t look like these images add to the trustworthiness of the site.

Juicying-up the header images using more related imagery (and better still, include an image of Julia) would work wonders – and it’s something you could easily create using Pixlr.com like I demonstrated in the Pimp That WordPress Site Header episode.

2. Break up the home page with a couple of carefully chosen testimonials

Julia has some glowing references in her testimonials page, but don’t hide them away in there! Pull one or two fabulous ones to the front page. Visitors WANT to trust you, and what helps people to trust you more than anything else? Proof that someone else in the same boat has done exactly the same thing, felt exactly the same doubts and fears before taking the session, and come out feeling like a trillion Euros. That is one of the greatest forms of trust you can have.

3. Beef up the intro

While I love the fact that Julia has pulled out the important focus points for her “You are in the right place” introduction, but I think that section needs to stand out more from the rest of the page. Changing the style of font for the header and upping the size of the text for the top sentences could add more impact to that section. Remember, you want to grab readers by the eyeballs and you don’t have a huge amount of time to do that on the web until someone forms an opinion about you – somewhere between 4 and 8 seconds is the time frame I see bandied around a lot. If you aren’t making a decent, positive, trustworthy impact in that space of time, you could be losing visitors.

What I also think you could benefit with is a “BOOK ME” button right underneath. It could just lead to the sales page.

So, you want to see what a few tweaks could do to Julia’s site?

Thought you would… Click below:

I’d like to point out here that the image is NOT of Julia, but simply a stock imagery of a random woman – I’d suggest that you always use a picture of yourself, else you’d find yourself embroiled in some long and expensive court cases.

Anyway, congratulations again to Julia, and I hope that helps to give you a little focus and clarity to your website.

So, if you’re thinking that you’d like to revamp your website, but you’re not entirely sure how, or where to start, and that you don’t have the money to get a new site, and you don’t have the time to sit and scour your own site to see what you can keep (and what should be ditched), I’m excited to to introduce to you a new product of mine:

My J&P Website Critiques.

It’s a little bit like these Three Little Improvements that I’ve been doing, but much more in depth. Instead of just reviewing three things on one page, I focus on up to ten pages, the actions you want people to take AND the flow of the page. I look at four key areas, including look & feel, usability, functionality and search-engine friendliness.

I then compile everything up into a hearty report (including the page mock-ups like you see above, so you can see exactly what the changes would look like without having to go to all the effort of actually changing your pages!) so you can hand it to your web designer or assistant (or even complete yourself if you’re nifty with the code and design!) and sit back, safe in the knowledge that your site just got a bit more awesome.

I can look at your home page, about page, sales page, product page, portfolio page – you name it, I’ll review it based on your ideal customer and as a someone who’s experienced in designing and building web pages.

Think of it like couple’s counselling for you and your website. Don’t feel like you have to get a new site if all you need is a sexy little revamp.

Take a look at the Website Critique homepage for more information.

Well, that’s all for this week, but by GOD I’ll be back next week with some more awesomesauce,

Smooches,

G x

** THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED, A HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL OF THOSE WHO ENTERED. THE WINNER HAS BEEN CHOSEN AND WILL BE ANNOUNCED TOMORROW IN THE BLOG **

This week, I’m doing something a little different.

I’m going to give a website a once over with my special Jane&Philbert comb. Just three simple pointers to make someone’s website a little bit more user-friendly. Today’s website is Not Just Another VA run by the amazegorge Jenny.

I call Jenny a systems sex pest (she knows this, by the way). Her joy is in putting systems in place where before simply lay chaos. Seriously, she’s awesome. Since talking to Jenny, I have started using Freshbooks [aff] for all of my invoicing needs, I’ve opened a business account to separate my personal money from my business money (yeah, I know, I know, shameful money management…) and I’ve bought separate notebooks for my to-do lists, projects and general notes. I’m not even a client of hers! These are just the tips she’s given me!

So, to say thank you for her invaluable tips in getting my brain from “OOOH LOOK! SOMETHING SHINY!” to “OOOH LOOK! SOMETHING SHINY! I’ll make a note of that and come back to it after I’ve finished this bit of work.”, I’m giving her three strategic actions she can take with her site to get it working better for her and her visitors. (And if you’d like some of my juicy tips for your own site, keep reading!)

So. this is her home page.

It’s clear, it’s clean, you can see straight away where the navigation is, the text is a decent, easily readable size and it’s a good, classic font. Essentially, the core basics are in place, and it’s a beautiful blank canvas on which to build upon.

1. Run the top headline across both columns

And while we’re at it, bump up the size a touch.  This really sums up the site and gives a taste of Jenny’s personality, but I think it needs to sit above both columns as a proper introduction. Currently, I find my eye drawn immediately to the right – which is not necessarily a bad thing, as she wants people to sign up, but having a big headline that explains your site should be the first place the eye is drawn.

2. Make the headline a bit more appealing

Just simply pulling out words like “salsa band” and changing that to a different salsa-bandish font ups the impact of that headline. Jenny’s style is fun, and she can hint at that without going into the wacky-borderline-children’s-entertainer-psychotic. She can also use the brand colours to play about with it a little more.

3. Move your picture up into the main text

Finally, it’s great that Jenny has her picture on the homepage (bonus points for you, Jenny!), but actually I think it could work better if she integrates it into the text. It looks like she’s physically saying the words, and I truly believe that people want to make an immediate connection with a site owner, so get that face front and centre!

And this is what these three changes could do to your site (click to expand):

So then, how do YOU, dear readers, fancy some of the same treatment?

I’m giving one of you lucky people the opportunity to get your site featured here on Jane&Philbert with my three simple tips to improve one of your website pages.  You can enter by leaving me a comment here or a wall post or comment on the Facebook page with your website link, the page you’d like some help with (homepage, sales page, portfolio page, product page, contact page, whatever – but just one page) and the main action you want people to take when they get to that page (for example, watch a video or  sign up to your newsletter). I’ll pick the winner at random (using http://www.random.org/) on Wednesday 26th April 2013, 1st May 2013 (yes, I ballsed up the original date!) so all entries must be in by the 26th 1st May at midday UK time. It’s open to anyone with a small business website or a blog, so what are you waiting for?!

Until next time,

G x

First off, NEW SITE! (If you’re reading this in email, come and have a look!). More to be added over the coming weeks, but I just couldn’t hold off any longer!!!

So, did you hear the news this week?

No, I’m not going to talk about Thatcher (and you should be thankful for that, no-one needs their ear bent by me about anything related to British politics…), I mean the WordPress-related story.

So, cliff notes in case you hadn’t:

Do you use the username “admin” for your WordPress login? Oh, you do?

And what about your password?

Oh, well my password is GREAT, it’s got letters AND numbers in it, I hear you say.

(And I’m totally sending a bitchslap your way you if it doesn’t, by the way…)

Well, great. But does your password contain a dictionary word or name with those numbers, e.g. robert1982 or 29doolanstreet? It does? Oh.

Well, bend yourself over the nearest desk, sweetcheeks, you might want to get prepared for a good, hard hacking. With a crap username teamed with a crap password, you’ve just handed the lube to a hacker.

If you’ve never had your site hacked before, let me tell you a little story; a good few years ago, fresh from university, I was working in-house for a computer parts and sales company as a web designer. I had just designed and built this amazing new and magical news page for them. It was basically BRILLIANT. Until one day we came in and found that a few customers had emailed to find out when we had started selling Viagra.

It turns out that hackers exploited a security flaw that I failed to consider in the design of this new news page, and added some cock-be-big pills to the products database. Luckily, they were just out to drive more people to their crappy Viagra site rather than take down the website of the company that I was working for. Basically, they could have completely decimated the ENTIRE database. Everything could have been obliterated, and would have had to restore everything from a back up which could have taken weeks. Luckily, the site was down for half a day, while I sat there feeling like a MASSIVE TWAT. I had a stern talking to, and in fairness, I have never made that mistake since.

I was lucky, VERY lucky, but the majority of hackers are quite happy to completely wipe your site, and replace it with a page that says “L0lz, u iz bin haxxxxxxd.” Which is basically the computer version of someone breaking into your house, stealing all your furniture and worldly possessions, then taking a shit on the floor.

So, if you value your website and the content that you’ve taken time and effort (and blood, sweat and tears) to provide to the world, take note. I am about to turn your website into a motherfucking portcullis.

1. Change the username and make it unique.

If “admin” is your username, CHANGE IT. If something like “test” or “user” or “aaa” is your username, CHANGE IT! NOW!

To do this, log in with your credentials and go to Users > Add New. Create a brand new user with a unique username – email addresses work brilliantly for this. Give them a role of “Administrator” and click “Add New User” (Quick note here, it’s one email address per WordPress website, so if your crap admin user has the email address, change it to another one and save before creating the new user) . Now, log out of the account with the crap username, and back IN to the new account. Delete the original user by going to Users > All Users, hovering over the offending user and deleting them. Easy peasy.

2. Make your password hard to crack

I am, once and for all, ruling out any creation of passwords where you patch together the name of your dead cat and the year they were born – “felix1995″ is a crappy password. Yes, really.

The best passwords are greater than 7 characters in length, they contain uppercase and lowercase letters, they also contain numbers AND special characters.

I can hear you now, “so, basically Gemma, what you’re telling me is that I have to have a password that looks like I’ve mashed my head against the keyboard four or five times? How the hell am I supposed to remember that?!”

Well, yes and no.

By all means, mash your head against a keyboard four or five times if you have a good way of remembering it. Alternatively, if you want something that makes visual sense to you, try this sort of format:

J4n3&Ph!lb3r7

or

P4ssw0rd!

Take a name of someone or something you will remember, switch in numbers where letters should be, add some well-placed capital letters, chuck in an exclamation mark here or a question mark there, and already you have a password to be reckoned with. (Neither of them are my password, in case you were planning on trying!)

3.Make sure you have the latest version of WordPress

Every few weeks or months, WordPress releases a newer version. It not only means that you have the latest features, but you have the latest protection as well. Not sure which version you have? Go to Dashboard > Updates and that should tell you. Back that shit up before you do, mind!

4. Get some extra protection with security plugins

There are a number of different plugins out there, and while you don’t need them all, you can certainly benefit from using a couple in tandem with one another.

I personally recommend having a login checker type plugin that checks every failed login attempt within an IP address range – and blocks the perpetrator after several failed attempts. My friend Jenny from the awesome Not Just Another VA likes Login Lockdown (Plugins > Add New > type in “Login Lockdown” and install the top result), a blissfully simple way of making life very hard for someone trying to hack into your system.

The other I recommend is Wordfence Security (Plugins > Add New > type in “Wordfence Security” and install the top result). This is an awesome powerhouse that scans all of your WordPress files looking for anything dodgy, and gives you actual, simple steps to follow to fix any issues whether that be to change a pants password or upgrade to the latest versions of plugins.

5. Stop storing your passwords in your browser

The next time your browser asks you if you want to store that five millionth set of login details or turn on AutoComplete, think again. It’s not actually that hard for a hacker once they’ve cracked your computer to subsequently get all of your password details. Things get messy that way!

I use a system called LastPass which is basically the daddy of all password management systems. And best of all, it’s totally free. Not only does it store all of your new passwords in a very secure “vault”, it saves the insecure browser passwords and removes them from your browser and it generates excellent quality passwords and assigns them to the saved site in a click. It autocompletes with ease and you can lock it down pretty tightly, so no more mashing of heads on keyboards to make OR remember a password.

These are the main aspects of keeping your site ship-shape and hacker-free, but nothing is foolproof. Make sure that you back that shit up regularly in case the worst happens!

Smooches,

G x

There are often occasions – in fact, more often than NOT when you’re starting out with a business or blog or… well, *something* (but you’re not entirely sure what it is yet) – where setting up a full website might not be the best option for you. Perhaps you just want to test something out, or perhaps you frankly can’t be arsed to set up a sales page for a product you’re selling.

Maybe, just maybe, getting a full website would be a bit like overkill. 

Whatever your reason for not needing a WHOLE website, here are some COMPLETELY FREE options that are availble for you to get stuff up online in minutes.

I need: an online poster for my class or band or I have one product that I just want to sell or I have an announcement that needs some pizazz

Try: Tackk.com.

As soon as you land on the main homepage, you can start editing your page, and it takes no time at all to change the colours and fonts and add a header here, or stick an image there, or chuck a date here, or add a buy now button just there. All changes are saved automatically, and you don’t need to sign up for an account (although if you end up having more than one, it can be really beneficial to see all of your Tackk pages together).

You can even change the theme so it gives you an idea of how you should lay your design out. Not to mention the simple, non-distracting layout makes for the EASIEST GODDAMN SALES PAGE you ever did see.  Best of all, all the styles, colours, fonts and themes are so meticulously put together, it is almost physically impossible to make it look shit. How d’you like them apples?

I need:  an online business card or vanity page

Try: about.me.

Upload a picture of you, or a suitable background image, add a bit of information about who you are, what you do – hell, write your unabridged life story if you want and use that. A good selection of fonts and styles to look through, though the quality of your background image will seriously affect the overall look of your site, so make it a good one! Mine is here, if you’re interested, but you can randomly search through lots of people and get a feel for what looks hot and what looks like a hot turd.

I want: to build an online community

Try: a Facebook group.

Considering that there are over 1 billion accounts on Facebook, you can pretty much guarantee you can gather together a small corner of the type of people you want to target. Groups are different to pages as they’re much more contribution-based than a Facebook page (which can often just be page owners self-promoting their latest blog posts. Ahem…*notices a very interesting stain on shirt*… ). It’s not quite a traditional forum, but as all member posts are shown to the entire group, you can get some great conversation going. If it bombs, you can just shut the damn thing down, but if it takes off, you can start to plan where to go next.

I need: a blog (but I’m not sure I want to stick with it yet) or I need a blog (but I want to spend zero money getting it live)

Try: WordPress.com, Blogger.com or Tumblr.com

OK, these three options are quite different, and it very much depends on your audience and the flexibility you need.

First off, don’t assume that if you want to upgrade to a self-hosted WordPress website in the future that you should probably plump for WordPress. Not necessary. Why? Because self-hosted WordPress can import each of these formats into a site. You needn’t lose any of your information.

That said, WordPress.com websites do have the most flexible options and if you’re planning on using WordPress self-hosted in the future, this gives you a great starter-for-ten on the most prevalent fetaures. WP.com blogs work as standalone websites as well, and this is probably the main selling point here, and lest we forget the veritable smorgasbord of themes (many, many thousands that are free) living wild in the Google Jungle.

Blogger.com is another great platform, and better if you’re worried that one day, you’ll press a button on your computer and BOOM, Russia disappears. It’s a touch more beginner-friendly than WordPress and has a number of lovely themes to use, some free, some premium. To be honest, there isn’t a huge amount between this and WordPress, but some people just prefer Blogger. Best bet is to try one and see what you think.

Tumblr.com actually has a great youthful crowd. It’s quite foolproof to set up, simple to add posts, but it really is suited to scrapbook-style snippets, snaps, poetry, videos and some very clever animated gifs rather than epic tales of your life and times. Some examples for you to have a look at:
http://landscape.co.vu/, http://realitytvgifs.tumblr.com/ and my personal favourite, http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/ (If you don’t look at anything else today, make this your priority. Actual wee will escape from laughing)

Have you used any of these? Do you use  any free resources to create your online presence? Let me know in the comments below, or come and say hello on the Jane&Philbert Facebook page

Until next week,

G x

So, instead of writing a blog post of biblical propotions today, I decided to spend a little time and come up with a flowchart.

Yep. Because everyone loves a flowchart, right?

So, if you’ve ever wondered when is the right time to hire a web designer, this flowchart should cover the essentials. So if you’re an entrepreneur or business owner who’s wondering whether they have to take the plunge, feast your eyes on this (click to get the full size)…

I will say that each person has their own reasons for getting a web designer, and even if after this you still think you should employ a designer, then by all means DO! It’ s purely a guide, and it doesn’t cover all bases.

Smooches,

G xx

It’s basically a fact of internet life. You own a blog, you’re gonna get spammed.

(Doesn’t stop it from being a really fucking annoying fact of internet life, mind.)

Spam comments are just about one of the most frustrating things you can get on your website, and having had my fair share of it since I started this blog a few months back and made some significant changes to it, I thought I’d share some of the best tools that I’ve used (and others that could work well for you) in order to cut the DAMN SPAM DOWN.

When I started the blog, I was plagued like never before with all kinds of spammy cruddy comments. Some are blatant, “HEY! Buy this [insert name of drug] here <link>”, while others are generically complimentary, “Wow, you are clearly very astute, I will send everyone to this weblog. No-one has delivered this information so perfectly *snivel, snivel*” which then oh-so-cunningly links to some dodgy website.

The technology that spammers use nowadays is constantly being updated; spambots, IP hijacking (or in other words, using someone else’s IP address to spam you), and there’s even been a growth in manual spammers – that’s right – PEOPLE who are ACTIVELY finding your blog and spamming it.

What douchebags.

Which begs the question, “Why the fuck do they do it?!?”

There are two main reasons:

1. The more links they can put out in the interwebs, they believe the more chances it will increase their SEO (they obviously didn’t read my take on that).
2. Just because.

So, how the hell can you stop it?

Well, you can’t completely stop it, but you can certainly slow it down. Here’s my top tips:

Moderate your comments

I really can’t state enough how important it is to make sure that your commenters have been moderated AT LEAST for  the first comment they make. If you are freely allowing any old person (or automated spambot) to comment on your blog posts – and believe me, they will – you might find one day that you check your comments and see three hundred comments trying to flog you and your readers dodgy pharmaceutical drugs or cheap  designer handbags.

Now let’s just imagine for a second that you’re a reader or client and you’ve just come across that amount of spam on someone else’s blog…

It’s a bit like walking in to a housemate’s room while they’re out and realising every available surface has been smeared with poo. You’d look around at the horror, then back the HELL out that room closing the door and hoping to god that you didn’t touch anything. Then you wash your hands. And move out.

Basically, you wouldn’t do business with a company who can’t manage their spam comments properly because it’s like they don’t care about who or what is trying to interact with them. Make sure that’s not your business by moderating comments.

Moderate your comments by going to Settings > Discussion and after “Before a comment appears” check the “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”, and save your settings. If youdon’t chekc the comments very often, but you’d like to get notified of the comments coming in, click “Email me whenever a comment is held for moderation”, and save.

Use a decent spam eliminating plugin

If you can cut out one sort of spam pretty easily, it’s automated spambot spam, and there are a few plugins that can really help with this.

One is Akismet, which is powerful and comes pre-installed *but* comes at a price if you’re a commercial blog with prices starting at $5 per month for one site. In essence, your spam comments are sent via Akismet’s servers for processing and filtering, and it sorts which are spam and which aren’t before sending them back to you.

Alternatively, you can use something like Spam Free WordPress which does pretty much the same thing… and for free, which is always a welcome price! You install this by going to Plugins > Add New and searching for Spam Free WordPress. Click Install, and once it’s unpacked, Activate. You’ll need to get the license key from Todd Lahman’s website (completely free), and once you have it sent to you via email, you place this under Settings > Spam Free WordPress > License Key, and this activates it.

You can set up the options here to remove HTML from comments (i.e. not allowing spammers to put their own links in the comment box), and the plugin will automatically disable Pingbacks and Trackbacks (links from other websites to your blog posts that can show in the comments section – another method used by spammers, so I recommend keeping this setting checked!)

In my settings, I have Spam Stats, Remove Comment HTML, Close Pingbacks, Generate Comment Form, Old Password Fields and Nonce Security(the name of the latter, I admit, makes me snigger…) all checked. These settings work best for me.

Use the Comment Blacklist feature (with caution!)

Again, under Settings > Discussion, you’ll see the “Comment BlackList” text area.

Now, although you can add both words AND IP addresses, I do strongly advise against NOT blocking IP addresses from commenting. The main reason for this is that most spammers hijack or falsify the IP address they use to spam you. The IP address (which is essentially a computer’s address) could actually be a genuine reader with no spamming intentions, but who’s IP been unfortunately used for nefarious gains.

However, I do recommend you use this area to stick in all those crappy words that show up in the bulk of your spam comments. You need one word per line, but be cautious! If you’ve been getting lots of spam containing the word “sex” for example, placing this word in the comment blacklist would also capture any words with this word in it e.g. Essex or sextuplet or sexagenarian. Admittedly, those would be weird words to have in a comment, but hey, I’m not judging!

Those three tips have helped cut my spam enormously, but I’d like to hear from you: What do you use to rid yourselves of the pesky spam? Let me know your set ups, and your success rates. You can post in the comments below, or let me know on the J&P Facebook page.

Smooches,

G xx

If you’ve ever been on a website before when the images they’ve uploaded take about a billion years to load, and when they do, they’re all out of shape or even pixelly, you’ll immediately think, “Oh. Well, that looks a bit crap.”

And you know what else? It makes the site look unprofessional, like the owner doesn’t really give a flying monkey’s ballsack as to what their website looks like nor how it makes their business look.

You will probably automatically and subconsciously brand that website owner as having a below-par product or service, and either expect a lower price  from them, or just go somewhere else where the images don’t look so crap.

That’s right, people. We judge books by their covers. And we judge websites by their images. And we judge businesses by their websites.

So, basically, crap images could be losing you money.

Am I scaring you yet? Chances are that you might have made one of these mistakes (or *gasp* are still making them). But you can change it, and pretty easily as well. Read on to find out three of the best ways to make images look like total crap on your website (and how to fix ‘em. Today.)

1. Upload the BIGGEST FUCKING IMAGE you can find and make absolutely no effort to resize it or crop it.
   Go on, click on that image above (No idea who the child is as an aside, just a random image from a free stock imagery site.)AAARRRRRRGH IT’S MASSIVE! YOU CAN SEE SNOT! YOU CAN PRACTICALLY SEE WHAT THIS CHILD HAD FOR BREAKFAST!

   Unless you need to link to a downloadable, print-quality image, DON’T upload images of this size to your website. Why? It slows down your page load time which is frustrating for visitors, and frankly, no one really wants to have a microscopic view of your pores.

   Easily decrappify by doing one of two things; either resize and crop the image on your computer (Window users can use “Microsoft Picture Manager” which comes automatically installed, just right click on the image file on your computer > Open With > Microsoft Picture Manager, then use the  resize function. If you’re a Mac user, you can do something really similar in Seashore or iPhoto) or (if you’re a WordPress user) resize it in WordPress. Yes, just upload your image and under the header “Attachment Display Settings”, select a dimension that fits nicely in the page.

2. Find the smallest fucking image ever and try to make it fit in a big space
   
   Unless you’re going for the “faces-blurred-to-protect-the-innocent” look or you’re pixelling-out a picture of someone’s genitals , this is a sure-fire way to help your images look like utter turd on your site. Just because the space is there, doesn’t mean you should fill it up if the image doesn’t stretch that far!Easily decrappify by removing the width and height attributes on your image HTML tag, or setting the width and height attributes to the actual dimensions.And in case you’ve never seen one before, an HTML image tag looks like this: <img alt="" src="http://pathtoyourimage.com/folderitlivesin/nameofimage.jpg" width="36px" height="35px" />

3. Stick a skewed, out of proportion image on your site that looks like it’s been through a fairground Hall of Mirrors
   
   No, it isn’t making you look thinner, but it *is* helping to make your site look quite shit. The same goes for images that are wider than they should be. NEWSFLASH: THEY LOOK AWFUL. And it’s easy to resolve.Easily decrappify by figuring out which primary dimension you need (do you need the image to be 300 pixels wide? Or perhaps you need it to be 512 pixels high?). Pick ONE dimension; height or width and remove the other from the HTML image tag, so you’re image tag will look like either of the following:

   <img alt="" src="http://pathtoyourimage.com/folderitlivesin/nameofimage.jpg" width="300px"/>
   or
   <img alt="" src="http://pathtoyourimage.com/folderitlivesin/nameofimage.jpg" height="512px" />

   The image will automagically resize to the right constraints without you needing to guess. Easy peasy, huh!

   Alternatively, crop the image to the right size before you upload using the same software as before, OR (if you have WordPress) use the Edit Image function under Attachment Details in the “Add Media” section when you’re in the main editor.

There really is NO excuse for crap images on your site, and you can fix them today. Go and take a look at your own website images. Are you making the same mistakes?

Smooches,

G x

PS Have a random image problem that you can’t quite figure out? Leave me a comment!

If you joined me on my Pimp That WordPress Site crash course, you may already be familiar with Pixlr (and if you haven’t seen my Pimp That  WordPress Site crash course, what are you doing?! Go! Sign up for it! It’s completely free!).

If you’ve never experienced Pixlr.com before, it’s basically like a really lightweight and ONLINE (i.e. nothing to install and eat your RAM) version of PhotoShop. And if you’re scared of using PhotoShop, but would really like to create your own graphics, start here at Pixlr.

Lotte from the fabulous Good Sense of Houmous blog (makes me both laugh AND drool. Oh, and try her scrambled eggs. So good, I need them inside me, fnarrr.) emailed to ask how the gradient tool worked in Pixlr. I covered it briefly in the course, but it is a great tool that can create some awesome effects, so I went ahead and made a little video for you all…

Happy gradiating, sexpots!

Want your questions answered? Comment below, post on the J&P Facebook page or email me.

Smooches,

Gemma x