So I was planning on writing this really great article about how to setup an internet merchant account and payment gateway for eCommerce. It was going to have all of these great referenes and break down the whole setup process for client’s to truly understand what they need to do.  Well, Smashing Magazine beat me to it! Go here to read the article,  It is quite handy if you ask me.

As a part of the new website rollout we wanted to make ourselves even more accessible to our clients.  One of the most commonly heard complaints about web developers and designers is that you can NEVER get a hold of them.  Calls go straight to voicemail (or worse- VM box is full!), emails are never returned, projects are delayed (even forgotten); unfortunately this is all too common in our industry.

We strive to return all emails and phone calls within 24 business hours and be on Skype, AIM, and iChat during business hours for instant availability.  You can click on the contact page of our portfolio site at  Creation-1.com and check our Skype and iChat status.  Drop us a line and say hi!

Moderating Comments

Editing a post in the WYSIWYG

Adding photos, video, and other media, to your site

WordPress is one of the most popular and flexible open source platforms for websites.  Because of this popularity spammers have found it to be an easy and vulnerable target for all kinds of different spamming methods.

Lets briefly cover the 3 most common types of spam you will be subjected to on a WordPress site.

Comment Spam:
Comment spam is when a comment is left on your post or page that  somehow links back to a suspicious website.  The comment is usually suspiciously broad like “Nice Post!” or “I agree”  or references something in no way related to your content.  The goal of the spammer is to raise the amount of incoming links to a website or even increase the saturation of certain target keywords. Not deleting or leaving yourself vulnerable to this type of spam can cause quite a few problems.  Your Google Pagerank depends heavily on the sites you associate yourself with so keep that in mind.

PingBack/ Trackback Spam:
When you are blogging it feels great to be noticed and have someone link back to your post.  Spammers take advantage of this by creating fake links back to your post.  In turn this “Pingback” records on your page depositing a link from the spammer.  Many people think of this as a good thing because we as bloggers are always looking for incoming links to help us move up in Pagerank.  Don’t let this bite bite you in the rear!  It doesn’t matter if you have a million incoming links if they are all from spammers.  Delete that ugly thing because you do not want your site associated in any way with spam.

Form Spam:
With the same goal as comment spam the spammer builds what is referred to as a “bot” (Think evil Decepticon from transformers).  The bot is programmed to search for forms to submit email spam by automatically filling out millions of forms at a time.  Becoming a victim to form spam can leave your inbox an absolute mess!

Solutions!!

Now that we know how and why spammers work lets do what we can to fend them off!

Akismet Plugin- Your first line of defense:

Akismet is no secret to WordPress users.  It’s only one of two default plugins in your WordPress install (The only one that actually does anything).  Despite this you wouldn’t believe how many sites I have logged in to and seen that the plugin is NOT ACTIVATED.  Yes, you have to register at wordpress.com and paste in your API key.  It takes an extra step but it will save you hours of daily work. I cannot stress this first step enough.  Akismet will save you from a majority of comment spam in one swoop.

Comment Timeout Plugin- For the old time bloggers:
As you write more and more articles you will notice that your archived articles are being spammed more than your fresh articles.  Often times an article can be grabbed by a spam bot and it will be difficult to release the hold of this evil little vulture!  That’s where Comment Timeout comes in.  You can set a number of days for your article to be open for commenting and then they will be disabled.

Captcha- Are you human?:
A captcha is a non- machine readable image that makes the user verify the contents before commenting or submitting a form.  You can find plenty of plugins for this both for commenting as well as contact forms.  Captcha can verify that your user is human and not a “bot”.

Wordpress Admin Settings-  Your built in spam ninja!:
Wordpress has a few settings that you can tweak to make your life easy when dealing with pesky spammers.

1.  Force your users to submit their name and email before they can submit a comment.
2.  Go to the Options>> Discussion panel and change your comment moderation.  Set the number of links for a comment to be held in moderation to 1.  The Default is 2.  Now when someone leaves a link on a post it is held in moderation.  Most spam contains links.
3.  In the comment moderation panel add to your spam words.  For instance, if you are getting hammered by prescription med spammers add words like, “viagara, tramadol, vicodin” to your spam list to prevent these comments and links.

Extra Tidbits-

Use a Gmail filter: Gmail has a pretty good spam filter.  You can utilize it by forwarding your email to your gmail account and forwarding those filtered emails to your “spam free” email account.

Replace text with an image: If you have your email address displaying on your site make sure it is not static text.  Create the button in photoshop and save it as a JPEG, GIF or PNG.  This will help your email address from being swooped up by the spam bots.

Don’t be a dummy: Think twice before you post your email address on a forum, newsgroup, or message board.  Spammers don’t just get email addresses from thin air (Although they are working on it).

Captain Obvious: Decide carefully what your companies email addresses will be.  If you don’t have an IT staff to clean up your email mess make sure you don’t have a corporate structure email.  For instance CEO@mycompany.com, or firstname.lastinitial@mycompany.com.  Get creative!  admin@ or webmaster@ are all just begging to be spammed!

I hope you came out of this with a bit more insight on how to prevent wordpress spam and maybe even spam in general.  The root of spam is held in the hands of greedy humans who’s ideas are constantly evolving.  As web publishers we need to be moving right along next to them with a shield to block these mischievous little creatures!

This one’s for the mac users out there who want to publish your iCal but don’t want to pay $100.00 a year for such a basic service.

Before I start I must mention that Google Calendar is much better for people who need multiple people publishing to the same calendar.  If you just want to have clients and/ or co-workers view your iCal calendar on their iCal then this will work great for you.

1.  Go to http://box.net and sign up for a free account.  It’s super fast and easy!

2.  Open iCal

3.  Right click on the calendar you want to publish and select “Publish”.

4.  Check the appropriate boxes according to what you would like to publish and select “Private Server”

5.  Enter https://www.box.net/dav/Documents as the base URL and use your box.net email login and password for the login and password fields.  Sometimes this wont work.  In that case either get rid of “https” and just use “http” or use “https://www.box.net/dav” instead of “https://www.box.net/dav/Documents”

6.  Press “Publish”

7.  To send the calendar to your colleagues you can right click on the calendaer and press “Send Publish Email” .  Make sure you give them your email and password.  You may want to use a password that is not the same as your other accounts and keep the box.net account empty of any private info.

8.  Sit back and relax knowing you just saved $100.00!

I just read a Great Article at Problogger.net about 30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media For Small Business.  The article reiterates a lot of the advice that I personally give to small business owners.  Especially the advice about blogging and focusing on the outlets that will be the most powerful for your business.

Our focus is mostly on development and design but we often integrate social media into websites.  People want to know what works and what doesn’t.  It really depends on what your goals are.  Determine your goals before you start your social networking and online marketing. This will save you a lot of time.  Unless you have a larger team, you can’t participate fully in every single one.  It’s better to just pick 1 and build on that.  Don’t participate in another until you think you can handle it.

Here’s the goods:

CLICK TO ENLARGE or go to CMO.com to download a PDF

This post serves as a reference for how to set up your email on several different devices and email programs wether your website is hosted on Media Temple or with Creation-1.

Set Your Email up With:

• Outlook 2007

• Windows Live Mail

• Apple Mail

• Iphone Mail

• Blackberry

• Entourage

I just read a great article at Smashing Magazine that is a must read for anyone thinking about a new website.  We build 95 percent of our websites with a content management system that allows the client to update and edit their content with ease.  The article helps explain the capabilities of content management systems and the basic principles behind  them.

Click Here to read the article!

You will often find yourself needing to check your email but for whatever reason you do not have access to your computer.  This is where the beauty of webmail comes in!  Just open up your browser and you can read your most current emails online.

Creation-1 Hosting Clients:

1.  Open up your browser.

2. Type in webmail.yourdomain.com

3. Your username is your email address.

4.  Your password is the same password you used to set up your email account.

5.  Press the “Log In” button

6. Check your email

Genus Customers:

1.  Open up your browser.

2. Type in mail.yourdomain.com

3. Your username is your email address.

4.  Your password is the same password you used to set up your email account.

5.  Press the “Login” button

6. Check your email

Notes:

Your default email program is what decides how early emails are deleted from the server.  Emails that are not on the server are likely archived on your computer.  These settings can be adjusted on your personal computer.  Also, Please use Firefox and save yourself a headache.