So I always always tell my clients that if they get an email that they are unsure about – to send it to me – whether they think its spam or hackers or domain renewals – they can forward it to me knowing that I will check it out for them.

So I have just had in one such email – pure and utter spam!!

So this email is basically from a company called webmarketingenquiry.com – which is not actually a company at all – just a holding page – and it saying that someone from brandenic.com has looked at the website and wants to tell them (out of the kindest of their heart of course!) that the website is

• not mobile ready,
• not responsive (kind of the same thing),
• not easy to read
• and in fact looks old and out dated!

And that for a small sum they could fix this for them..

Not exactly what they want to hear about a site I have just redesigned and built for them!!!

So having a look around I can see that it’s sent from one company with a reply-to address of another – always a good indication they are up to no good! On checking out the website I can again see that the first address redirects straight to the second address.

On hitting that website – the chat box pops up and lol and behold – hilariously – I think someone has just called me stupid!

Oh bless it really does pay to check out your own website before calling someone stupid!

No point emailing them – US based so no GDPR and – here was me thinking that all emails should have an unsubscribe link.. no way to unsubscribe without emailing them back (which just tells them someone is listening! and gets you more spam!)

So when I say that you can trust me – I mean it – I don’t resort to cheap marketing gimmicks to generate business – feel free to tell me your ridiculous email / web stories!

Do you know?

Do you understand quite how vitally important your domain name is? Your domain name is ;

• Your website
• Your email address
• Your intellectual property!

And if you don’t have access to it – then someone else has the ability to;

• Change / remove / delete your website
• Change / remove / delete / add email addresses

You might not think that is such a big deal but what if someone inserted a rude website in place of yours, or used your email address to spam people … the consequences can be huge!!

It used to be quite simple to find out who owned domain names – you would do a WHOIS ie a look up – and it would tell you ;

• The domain name
• The registrant information
• Where its being stored
• and potentially who the admin contact was

Now however – since the introduction of GDPR some of that information is hidden – which makes it much harder to work out who owns it and where its kept.

It is still possible but adds an extra layer of complexity.

Why does it really matter though.. yes indeed quite often a friend or neighbour or web designer, graphic designer someone you came across purchased that domain name for you – quite often some of these people not really understanding the whole idea might have purchased that domain name – IN THEIR NAME.. which means they own it!! you don’t – seriously the registrant contact details of any domain name is the person that owns that domain name. And if that is not you … So maybe you and they part company or you forget who it was – you now need to get that domain name back. Often its as simple as asking them – but sometimes its not that simple and you have to go down the route of proving that that domain name is yours, and if your name is not the registrant then that gets a little bit harder, and if you don’t have invoices to prove you have paid for that domain name well life can get very sticky indeed! How about a rename rebrand?!

So what should you do

• firstly find out who has access to your domain name,
• then find out who the registrant is
• if its NOT you – ask for that to be changed asap!
• if it is you and you are happy you know who has it – you are good
• if not – give me a call and I can help get your domain name back for you and into an account with someone you can trust!

Don’t ignore it and leave it until its too late!!

One of my favourite Windows’ operating system – Windows 7 – will no longer be supported, will no longer have security updates, in fact it’ll be the end of Windows 7 as we know it.

January 14th, 2020 – an important date!

Why is this important?

We saw it with Vista and XP, as soon as Microsoft stopped supporting them and stopped creating security updates – it was open season for the hackers!

So please don’t leave yourself open to losing everything! Upgrade to Window’s 10 asap

And if you are not comfortable doing that – I can help – well actually Ann can! Ann and I have worked together for years, we support each other and so if you personal or business need a hand upgrading your systems to Windows 10 – give Ann a shout at YourITWorkplace.

In this day and age people always want things now, immediatly – we don’t like to wait. We are busy busy busy and need things now now now – mobile phones, tablets, ipads all of this technology means that so much is right at our fingers tips when we are out and about. Which is great – it means that your website has the ability to reach people wherever they are and whenever they want

BUT

If your website is slow to load – user be gone!

Yes we are still so very fickle – and impatient!

So how does YOUR website stand up to the speed test? Have YOU tried your website whilst out and about? How does it compare?

We have a number of tools available to us to test this “speed”, gtmetrix.com and tools.pingdom.com to name two. If you use either of them you will see heaps of information on the speed, with suggestions to make it faster. GREAT – well kind of…!

These tools are great – if you know how to read them – which isn’t always that simple – and sometimes we can spend £££ getting A ratings and making sure every line is crossed and i dotted – and still that often just isn’t enough! Don’t forget that the user end plays a bit part too – the broadband, wifi or phone signal people are using will also play a big part – but the user won’t think that – they won’t blame themselves – the’ll be off looking for a website that is faster than yours (if yours is too slow)

So what else can you do? Well check your web host

Yep sometimes you can do everything possible to make your website faster and it just doesn’t quite get there, its slow to work on.. its slow to load – everything you can do you have done – anything else you need to change your own website – so do you remove things from your site that might be helpful to your customers to satisfy the speed??

No you change your host (of course speaking to them first usually helps but in some hosting companies they are just not geared up for maximum speed).

So here are a couple of web hosts that I use that I have found to be great on speed:

• Kualo – green web hosting – but also surprisingly spritely and great pricing too
• Kinsta – this however is my go to web host for large sites that need speed! These guys do not do email – but boy do they do speed!

So if you have a website that you think is slow or could be faster, give me a call / email and lets have a chat and see if we can make it move up a gear!

It has been something that has bugged me for a while – why doesn’t Google make it simple for you to ask your customer for a Google review?

We all know that the more Google Reviews the better we are seen in Google – not sure why they make it difficult.. but anyway I finally had chance and a thought to see what I could find out.

Here is the answer

don’t forget this only will work if you have a Google place account for your business

1. First you need to find your place ID, go here Google Maps API – just click the link

2. Once there type in the search box for your company name.. in the map below you will see your name and your place ID

3. Copy that place ID ie ChIJ52jZaZCodkgRUglEXziSpzk

4. Then insert that ID into this link https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=

So I would get https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJ52jZaZCodkgRUglEXziSpzk

That’s it! Send that link to your customers and ask them kindly for a review

Sometimes the simplest things are not quite so simple!

For anyone else that is trying to work out how edit a page settings in facebook to change the map location, is not that simple!!

So I finally worked out how to sort it

Open Facebook and your business page
Go to Settings
The Page Info
Scroll to the location area
The insert the new address and postcode – this doens’t change the map though!! (obviously we are not on Google!)
Now on the map itself you need to drag the PIN and reposition it to the right location – don’t just drag the map or just change the address neither of those will work!
Its simpler to make the map zoom less so you can move the PIN further
Once done you are done

Only took me 3 goes to figure it out!! Move the pin not just the map itself!

We have some interesting times ahead – WordPress 5.2 is arriving and it looks like it might specify up to PHP 7.3 is required – but most plugins have not been written for PHP 7.3 – which does mean the potential for a lot of broken websites appearing!

PHP 7.0 is no longer being supported and therefore everyone should be on PHP 7.2 or above (don’t ask where 7.1 went!)

Sadly people are not making it simple to work out whether the plugins being used are PHP 7.0/7.2/7.3 compatible – trial and error on staging sites seems to be the only way!

So for now keep an eye on your WordPress website – keep them up to date – and keep those plugins up to date – you should at least be on PHP 7.0 – for the speed improvements alone!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year one and all!

We have had another influx of emails that are being sent to companies telling them they are non GDPR compliant – the whole emails, company, register is a scam – do not click the link and enter ANY details – delete and bin!

To the Owner of ...
It has come to our attention that your company is not GDPR compliant.
As your company is not GDPR compliant your company has now been entered onto the Non Compliance Register.
Your company is under review and may be reported to the ICO for non GDPR compliance.
Please go to www.noncomplianceregister.com and enter your company name into the search box.
You will see listed on the page the actions that may now be taken against your company for non GDPR compliance.
The Non Compliance Register is a FREE public service that is available to any member of the public.
The public can search the register to see if a company can be trusted to store their data securely before they give that company their personal data.
This email has been sent to inform you that you are on the non compliance register.
There is no need to reply to this email.

More information can be found here

Last night another WordPress version 5.0.2 was released and being a maintenance release sites across the world that are already on WordPress 5.0.0 or 5.0.1 will auto update

So on clicking WooCommerce > Orders it says

No Orders Found

Not the words any shop owner ever wants to hear!!

Basically 5.0.2 has a bug that breaks the orders page within your woocommerce store! It’s not a major break – it won’t stop people ordering and you can still see your orders by clicking the mini menu above. Just click PENDING, PROCESSING, COMPLETED orders as per normal and up will display the orders new and old!

However this isn’t something that you want to leave like this and certainly you don’t want to panic your clients who have woocommerce stores.

Until another release is released to fix this – please insert these lines into your functions.php theme file


function fix_request_query_args_for_woocommerce( $query_args ) {
if ( isset( $query_args['post_status'] ) && empty( $query_args['post_status'] ) ) {
unset( $query_args['post_status'] );
}
return $query_args;
}
add_filter( 'request', 'fix_request_query_args_for_woocommerce', 1, 1 );


Much thanks goes to this post for posting this resolution