If you spot any other oddities please post a comment below and help make this post a reference document

We recently had the challenge of creating landing page within a WordPress install for a client. We completed the task to the letter and we’d like to tell you more about it, full write up to follow.

As a sneak peak – here is the landing page in question:

Simply Overseas are international property agents based in Shrewsbury Shropshire we have property for sale in Cyprus, Spain, Italy and Crete

So, I’m back on track with what I do best: website development for my own clients and advice to those who ask and and pay for it. I think I shall have a lot more success that way, I shall be happier and ultimately better off for it.

Twitter updates will be more business like from now on, more focussed on what’s going on at Design Conscious and website development. I shall be posting news on designconscious.com website and that will notify twitter accordingly, I shan’t be having a twitter app open to monitor my stream much either, sorry if that means I lose some followers.

I think this is the bast way forward for me and Design Conscious, many thanks to you all.

Feel like being sociable?

Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn… if you had to choose which is the most effective way of using social networking?

You may choose up to 3 answers

While it’s true that email is a revolution for the electronic age it’s all so true that spam is a very big issue for us all. Spam, in our poll, came in a very close second and therefore proves what a bighead ache it is for us all.

Some people struggle with email from the word go, they find the settings that are required for their email client confusing and once it’s set up they don’t like to change it – which is why so many companies have a proper website but use an email address given to them by their broadband supplier. Regardless of what this poll says – email for a lot of people is a nightmare.

But we can’t ignore the poll, the top result was ‘I Lurve Email!’ which is encoraging for me because the more people that can get their head around email, the easier my job becomes when I do their websites. Spam came in second in the vote and without doubt it affects every single email user in the world. There is light at the end of the tunnel though in the shape of Spam Filters.

Managing Spam

A spam filter is a method of automatically checking the contents of an email for trigger words, phrases or attachments. Certain words are given a score and if the total score of all the words in the email reaches a certain level, the email is classed as spam and is dumped in your Junk Folder. When you activate your spam filter for the first time you will normally find that spam will still manage to get through to your inbox, this is because you need to train your filter and fine tune its decision making process. My spam filter for instance (SpamSieve) gives me a two options: Train BAD and Train GOOD. If a piece of spam gets into my inbox, I simply right click on it and choose Train BAD, the words in that email are then given a higher score and the sender is added to my Black list. The words having a higher score means next time round email offering me the same ‘content’ will be junked more readily and any new email from the Black listed sender will automatically be junked as well.

I can also do the reverse, if the spam filter gets a little over zealous and junks an email I need, choosing Train GOOD, lowers the word score and adds the sender to my White list enabling them to email me again without compromise.

Spam filters are very, very useful things and I urge you to get one. Spam contains viruses and phishing traps so the less you are exposed to them the better.

Here are the two apps that I have used that work very well:

Mac: SpamSieve

PC: SpamFighter

Can Spam be cut off before it gets into my inbox?

Yes, and very effectively too. The hosting provider I use has an excellent feature called SpamTitan, be default it’s off, but activating it gives you a spam filter within your mailbox on the mailserver. This means that spam is filtered off before you login and pick up your mail.

I bought myself an iPod Touch so I could check my mail while I am away from my desk. The amount of spam I was getting coupled with some other daily regular email made the task of checking email into a chore. So I enabled SpamTitan so see how that would work out, I also adjusted my receive procedure so I wouldn’t pick up the regular mail on my iPod. The change was dramatic, I went from sorting through 30+ emails to just 4 or 5 all of which were client related and no spam.

Now occasionally spam gets through, and occasionally expected emails get trashed but you can tickle your settings accordingly and on the whole I have to say my spam measures are working well.

SpamTitan is easy to turn on and easy to turn off if you think it’s getting too much in the way, but in my opinion it’s worth while taking a look at. Contact your hosting provider, or login to your website admin panel and see if you have the facility.

Other email issues

The poll highlighted that bounced messages and the inability to receive were also issues for people. These two areas of annoyance are usually linked and can normally be traced back to a full mailbox at the server. A lot of people like to manage their mail via webmail and sometimes more than one user needs to access the same account. People solve this by checking the box in their mail client that says ‘leave messages on server’. This is fine, but after time the mailbox becomes clogged with old mail and runs over quota and when that happens the mailserver starts to reject incoming mail.

The simplest solution is to always mange your mail using an email client on your computer (such as: Outlook, Entourage, Thunderbird etc) but if you can’t and you have to leave email on the server, then you have to find a way to manage your email archive and delete all non-essential mail, then at some point look at increasing your mailbox quota with your hosting provider.

Final words

Email is a big part of our lives now and online communication is only going to get more important and integrated. It’s far to easy to take it for granted and let our guard down, so please take an hour out of your day today and make sure you have spam protection in place, and of course if you need help you can always contact us at Design Conscious or via twitter

It was good to see a better turn out at the Design Conscious virtual ballot box for this vote, the numbers still weren’t high but I thank all of you that did vote.

Is email the bane of your life?

Email is a godsend, no more scribbled letters, no more paper or stamps or running after the post van at 5pm. Heaven isn’t it? For some it’s not, so lets hear your opinion.

You may choose up to 3 answers

What's the best tool to use for Social Networking?

Start Date: May 24, 2010 @ 10:48 am
End Date: May 31, 2010 @ 8:30 am

I have issues with email over:

Start Date: May 17, 2010 @ 1:02 pm
End Date: May 24, 2010 @ 8:40 am

Do you back up your anything on your computer?

Start Date: May 13, 2010 @ 9:30 am
End Date: May 17, 2010 @ 9:00 am

Or first poll didn’t bring in huge numbers of voters, 11 people viewed the page and only 5 people voted. From that I draw two conflicting conclusions, the first is the idea of backing up isn’t very sexy so nobody was energized to vote about it, the second and more worrying is that people just don’t back up and were embarrassed to answer. I’m not sure what to think really, but I’m hoping it’s the first option, because if people really don’t back up then they are heading for a major head aches in the future.

I’m not sure I need to back up, I mean what do I have of importance on my computer?

It’s so easy to over look what’s right under your nose, if you can identify even just one item from this list, then you need to back up:

Digital photos - family, friends, kids, holidays

Downloaded music – music you have bought online, you may not have a CD copy

Work documents – all you business letters, quotes, emails

Address book – all your contacts names and address that are stored in your computer address book

CV – if you have a paper version that’s a start but imagine typing it in again

Accounts – your business accounts

Personal accounts – information about your personal finances

The list is almost endless, almost every file on your computer has an importance and therefore will cause you a set back if you loose it.

I really don’t have time to back up… and anyway I’ll forget so it will be pointless

Who does have time to back up? Not me. And yes it’s something you will forget to do… unless of course you automate it. All back up software knows that us humans have rubbish memories and we have no time or inclination to copy a file from one place to the next, that’s why back up software is schedulable. All you have to do is invest a little time to set it up and once it’s done you are safe in the knowledge that it will take care of itself.

My back up runs from 5’0clock onwards until it’s finished, because between 5 and 8 on an evening I am not using my computer so the software has the computers full attention, but most software will run happily in the background and you’ll never notice.

Hmmm, this back up lark seems easier than I thought, I’m off to buy an external hard disk and some software!

Hold your horses, while backing up to an external hard disk is great, and is an excellent step forward, what happens if your office burns down or floods? The back up that’s sitting next to the ruined computer is… er… well.. ruined as well. And, unless you buy a network hard disk, you won’t be able to access it when you are away from your computer.

There is a cheaper and more effective way of achieving your goal, and that’s backing up to the internet.

Woooooo, backing up to the internet? That’s risky isn’t it, who knows who will have a look at my stuff. Don’t fancy that much!

Contrary to popular belief backing up to the ‘cloud’ is safe and secure so long as you use a reputable company with a track record. I use Mozy as it offers all I need, the software is Mac and PC compatible and your account allows you to back up more than one computer should you need it. You might find that your broadband supplier gives you cloud space with your deal, however I always like to keep my elements separate, because if you move broadband supplier your back up will then have to change and you might not be able to replicate it the way you had it before (and you’ll have to back up from scratch again).

You don’t have to use Mozy, there are lots of others out there too. I like Mozy because if you use my link, and sign up and start using the service, both you and I get an extra 512mb (half a gigabyte) of storage space. So the free option… oh did I mention they have a free option? So taking the free option with my link will give you 2.5 gigabytes of safe and secure storage which will really get you going. Then when you find that this back up lark isn’t so bad after all, you can upgrade your account to unlimited and back up your whole computer. Once the initial back up is done, it will tick over in the background and replicate only what’s changed. The full service is approximately £37 for the year and id possibly the biggest bargain you will ever get but prices do vary depending on the package you take.

But… if you are dead set on getting an external drive then go ahead and do it. Any back up is better than no back up at all.

Final recommendation

If you do nothing else, please do this:

• Identify your most precious files (work docs, accounts, photos etc) and copy them onto a DVD(s).
• Label them clearly with todays date and what the disk contains
• Take them to a family member’s house or a friends house and ask them to look after it for you.

This way you will have at least an off site snap shot back up that, if the worst did happen you could at least restore something of your working life.

A data disaster is something that anybody who uses a computer will experience at sometime and a backup might just save your bacon when it strikes.

So many of us don’t back up though and this poll is to find out just how many that might be. Comments are open at the end of this post for you to tell us your issues or backup problems. If enough people have the same issue then you never know we might be able to find a solution together, so please vote in the poll and add a comment if you can.

Voting is over for this poll but please read the Debrief

It seems that some people don’t know the difference and often come to hifix.co.uk (who are a UK Hi Fi and Audio retailer) expecting to find out about money exchange.

Now while the two companies have very similar names and web addresses, neither are connected to each other in any way. It’s most important and I have to stress this, please check your URL’s when you link to hifx that you don’t add another ‘i’ and make it hifix

Translations done using bablefish please forgive any inaccuracies

Vous avez su que hifix.co.uk (notez cet URL a deux i’ ; s, comme dans : h i f i x) n’est pas la même compagnie que hifx.co.uk ? Il semble que certains don’ ; t savent la différence et viennent souvent à hifix.co.uk (qui sont salut un fi BRITANNIQUE et un détaillant audio) comptant découvrir au sujet de l’échange d’argent. Maintenant tandis que les deux compagnies ont les noms et les adresses très semblables de Web, ni l’un ni l’autre ne sont reliés entre eux de quelque façon. It’ ; s le plus important et moi doivent soumettre à une contrainte ceci, vérifient svp votre URL’ ; s quand vous vous liez au hifx ce don’ ; t ajoutent un autre ‘ ; i’ ; et faites-lui le hifix.

Wussten Sie dass hifix.co.uk (merken Sie dieses URL hat zwei i’ s, wie in: h I f I x) ist nicht die gleiche Firma wie hifx.co.uk? Es scheint dass einige Leute don’ t kennen den Unterschied und kommen häufig zu hifix.co.uk (wer eine BRITISCHE hallo FI und ein Audioeinzelhändler sind), erwartend, über Geldwechsel herauszufinden. Jetzt, während die zwei Firmen sehr ähnliche Namen und Netzadressen haben, werden keine miteinander in jeder Hinsicht angeschlossen. It’ wichtigstes s und ich müssen dieses betonen, überprüfen bitte Ihr URL’ s, wenn Sie mit dem diesem hifx Sie don’ verbinden; t addieren ein anderes ‘ i’ und bilden Sie es hifix.

Usted sabía que hifix.co.uk (observe este URL tiene dos i’ s, como en: ¿h i f i x) no es la misma compañía que hifx.co.uk? Parece que alguna gente don’ t sabe la diferencia y viene a menudo a hifix.co.uk (quién es hola un Fi BRITÁNICO y un minorista audio) que espera descubrir sobre intercambio de dinero. Ahora mientras que las dos compañías tienen nombres y direcciones muy similares de la tela, ni unos ni otros están conectados el uno al otro de cualquier manera. It’ s más importante y yo tenemos que tensionar esto, comprobamos por favor su URL’ s cuando usted le liga al hifx ese don’ t agrega otro ‘ i’ y hágale el hifix.