<![CDATA[When it comes to your business’s revenue… are you wanting 2017 to be a bigger year than ever before? We are proud to announce a presentation series beginning January 11th at the Stackd Design offices in Springfield.

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The post How to triple your business in 2017 appeared first on Dave Spicer.

If you sense that your website or a client website under your control has been hacked, first and foremost, you shouldn’t panic. It is true that a hacked site has the potential to hurt you badly. It can hurt your business, damage your reputation, immobilize your life for a while and even cost you your customers. A hacker may also use an attack to steal critical data from you and then use it to blackmail you or sell the information to your competitors. The motive could different.

So, care should be taken to protect your website from hacking attempts. But sometimes despite your best efforts, your website may still get hacked. The following are some sequential steps that you should take to recover your website.

Steps to repair and recover your website

1. Check your computer first: The local environment should be scanned for any viruses first. If your computer is infected, it makes the job of hackers easy. First, get your antivirus updated.

2. Change passwords: You will have to change all the passwords that may have been compromised due to the hacking attack. You will have to change passwords in the control panel of your website, your network and also your database so that the hacker no longer has access to sensitive information. You should change cPanel passwords, FTP passwords and SSH password. Also if your website has multiple user acoounts, make sure to create new passwords for all users. A hacker may use his access to create new users. If you closely scrutinize the user account administration of your website, you may be able to identify the bogus user accounts and remove them.

3. Understand what exactly happened: You should first try to determine the nature of the attack. Did the attackers inject any new code, did they include a remote file or did they hack the cPanel? Is your website the only domain hacked or did other websites also fall to the attack in case of a shared web host?

4. Contact your web host: Most web hosts have the right tools, a support team with the right skills and specific information about the hacking attack that can help you identify the nature of the problems or find a solution. They can also provide backup support. If you are on a shared hosting service, other domains hosted may have been compromised as well. So a concerted effort will be needed.

5. Update your CMS and plugins: You should always use updated CMS platform and also use the latest versions of the plugins because hackers often find a loophole in versions that have not been updated.

6. Remove your site from blacklists: Many search engines including Google may balcklist your website if they find it hacked or infected by malware. In such a case, you will have to request them to remove your website from such a list because it affects your SERP or they may even remove your website from search index.

7. Take your site offline briefly: If you can’t fix the problems immediately, take the website offline briefly. It would prevent further damage by the hacker and also stop your users from getting a malware alert which can damage your reputation. Instead, display a 503 error message to inform the users that the website is temporarily unavailable.

Conclusion

A website can be hacked due to many reasons and in many ways. But you should always take steps that mitigate chances of an attack. Don’t make it easy for hackers to attack your website. If you are not confident with coding, consult a professional in case of a hacking attack.

The post How to Fix and Recover a Hacked Website? appeared first on Dave Spicer.

Child themes are themes which inherit properties, functionalities, and styling of another theme called the parent theme. Child themes allow you to modify only a part of the total theme that you are using without modifying the complete theme. Modifying a whole theme often creates problems when you upgrade to a higher version, on WordPress. Child theme allows you to create a separate set of files using which you can modify the theme without affecting the code of the original theme. That is why child themes should be the preferred format of modifying a theme.

WordPress checks the child theme first for a particular functionality and if it does not exist, then WordPress checks its parent theme for the functionality. According to ‘ElegantThemes’, 85% of WordPress users modify themes but only 35% use child themes. The reason could be a lack of knowledge about child themes or perceived difficulty in creating one.

Reasons for using child themes

• Makes updates easier: If you update without a child theme, you can either update or lose the changes that you have made to the theme or not update it at all. Of course, not updating the themes, plugins, and the software WordPress would make it outdated, and cause it to lose efficiency. Security may also be compromised.
• Makes the process of development easier: If you decide to make an update without a child theme, you may be adding snippets of code to the code base of the original theme, which could run into hundreds if not thousands of lines. That means, tracking the changes may become cumbersome later on. It makes more sense to make changes to the child theme which contains less number of files and also less code to handle. That makes the documentation process easier.
• Makes reverting to the original condition easier: If you think that customization of the theme did not go according to your plan, you can simply disable the child theme, and everything would go back to the original state.

Steps for creating a child theme

A child theme can be created by following these simple steps:

1. A theme directory needs to be created in the WordPress install.
2. A style sheet with appropriate information about your child theme has to be created.
3. You may now use the functionalities of the parent theme.
4. Activate the child theme, and the WordPress site would look like the original.

Conclusion

A child theme has a lot of advantages and is easy to use, contrary to popular belief. If you are a designer who makes frequent changes to your WordPress supported blog or website, start using child themes and enjoy the advantages.

The post Why should you be Using Child Theme for your WordPress Site? appeared first on Dave Spicer.

XML sitemaps are very important from the SEO point of view. These sitemaps help search engines to understand just how much of the content needs to be crawled. However, their importance is often underestimated. Sitemaps, also help in improving the navigability of the site and making it more user-friendly. Sitemaps help you to structure your website. You can include the connections, external and internal links, the various sections, and headings and subheadings. In short, it tells either humans or spiders (in the case of Google) where and how to go within the site.

While Robot.txt is an exclusion protocol and tells search engines what not to crawl on your site, sitemaps do the exact opposite. It helps search engines index important portions of the website and thus improve its visibility. Google was the first search engine to use XML sitemaps which are different from ordinary HTML sitemaps. Now, other search engines are also following suit and thus the importance of sitemaps have grown further from the point of view of SEO.

Advantages of sitemaps

1. A sitemap is like a blueprint: A sitemap is like a blueprint for building a house. It guides people who are working on the project to design a website. It should be kept in a central location and in a format that makes it easily accessible. It helps everybody working on the project to know the project status, the changes that have been made or changes that may be made. It saves wastage of resources and extra work that would have been required otherwise.
2. A sitemap helps to understand the goals: A sitemap gives a goal and a plan to the designer. It helps the designing team to understand what they exactly want from this website and what needs to be done in order to attain those goals.
3. Avoid duplication of content: It would be a waste of time and resources if you continue to create similar content again, and again, every time you need it. It is far more elegant and efficient to interlink content. A sitemap helps you to understand which pages exist where and how they have been interlinked. It makes the process of linking easier.
4. Sitemaps make it easier for search engines to index changes: Although search engines take a lot of time to index new pages or changes to your website, the process can be made more streamlined by having a sitemap which captures the changes.

Conclusion

A sitemap is an essential part of a website from the point of view of design, SEO, and navigability. Google does not even penalize sites if they have one XML sitemap and another HTML sitemap. As the importance of indexing increases and search engines come equipped with better crawling algorithms, websites would need good sitemaps to make the process of loading the site URLs quicker.

The post Importance of Sitemaps for your Websites appeared first on Dave Spicer.

You may have encountered the ‘White Screen of Death’ when visiting your website. This is a documented WordPress error, and can arise from a number of issues.

Low PHP memory limit set by website host

Shared hosting providers often do this. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough memory for your plug-ins to run, or scripts to be executed, or both, ultimately resulting in the White Screen of Death.

There is a simple fix for this:
Simply log in to your FTP server, find the public_html folder, and open the wp-config.php file in a text editor. Add the line

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘64M’);

to the PHP code (you should find a section starting with some lines later – anywhere between these two lines will do), save the file and close it.

Plug-ins

A faulty plug-in could be causing the White Screen of Death. In the public_html folder, look for a sub-folder named wp-content. Inside this, there should be a folder named plugins. All you have to do is rename it to something else, like ‘Betsy’ – or any other name you like. Then see if your site is working, minus the plug-ins. If it is, you now know for sure that the White Screen of Death is caused by an incompatible plug-in.

What is the solution?

Inside the plugins (or Betsy as it is now) folder, you will find a folder for each of of your plug-ins. Rename Betsy back to plugins, but try the renaming process for each plug-in’s folder (and then reloading the site) until you find out which one is causing the White Screen of Death. You find the plug-in responsible when you have renamed that plug-in’s folder and the White Screen of Death doesn’t occur.

After you have zeroed in on the culprit, see if you can find an alternative plug-in for your website. If not, try updating it to its latest version. If none of the plug-ins are causing the White Screen of Death, then it might be your WordPress theme.

WordPress theme

In the public_html folder, there should be a folder named themes. Rename it, and the site should revert back to its default theme. If the White Screen of Death no longer appears, you know your theme was causing it. Just like we did with the plug-ins, you can rename it back to themes, but before doing so, you can rename the active theme’s folder name.

This changes your theme, but better that than a White Screen of Death. You can then try downloading a new WordPress them for your site.

Too technical? We can get your WordPress site back up and running for FREE. And in less than an hour!

The post Get Rid of the White Screen of Death – Permanently! appeared first on Dave Spicer.

There is only one reason why you should do this – it leads to more buzz on social media about your pages and/or blog posts, and that can prove to be extremely helpful for your search engine rankings.

With WordPress, you could choose from any of 16 designs for social media icons, and you can also add animation to them, like mouse-over effects or automatic shuffling. The social media icons could also be made to ‘float’. This makes visitors more likely to click on them, and they can be prompted further if you add ‘counts’ to the social media icons. The latter has a psychological effect (most people follow the herd, and if one or a few persons have ‘liked’ or ‘shared’ it on social media already, they are more likely to do the same).

Where should you place the social media icons?

You could do this at the top of the post. If a few people have ‘liked’ or ‘shared’ it, then that means the article must be interesting enough to read.

You could place it beside the post. This could be done in such a way that they always remain there, no matter how much you scroll up or down. Left or right? Research shows that people focus more on the left side – which is why Google has its search results on the left and paid advertising on the right.

The bottom of the post is also a good idea. If the content is great, people will want to click on them after reading the article.

What you should choose depends on the theme you are using, and also the length of the post. If it is too long, people might not get to the end of the article for them to click on the social media icons. If there is space at the sides, you might want to consider placing them beside your post. This especially makes sense if there are other call-to-action buttons at the top – you don’t everything bunched up together that the social media icons are lost in the crowd.

How many social media icons? And which ones?

A study shows that the most social media activity is caused by ‘tweets’, readers mentioning the link to your article on Twitter. This amounts to 38.6% of the total, and in second place is Facebook ‘likes’ (33.8%), followed by Facebook ‘shares’ (26.7%). Everything else is minimal, but LinkedIn can be great if your posts are aimed at those who work in an office. If you are into fashion, Pinterest and Instagram are also good choices.

The post Add Social Media Sharing Option to Your Pages / Posts appeared first on Dave Spicer.

One of the most annoying things you would have definitely faced as a business owner (or will face if you are going to start one) is the spam that comes through the contact details on your website. Well now the most obvious thing to do would be to not put any contact details at all- but then what is the whole point of a website? You want a website so that you can tell your prospective clients how they can contact you and as such, the contact details are the most important part of any website. Does that mean you will be plagued by spam for all eternity? Certainly not!

Do these things to reduce the spam you receive:

1. Disguise your email: The most common mistake that a website owner does is to put up the email ID exactly as it is. For ex. [email protected]: IDs like this easily find themselves on a spammer’s list and make you an easy target. Alternatively, what you can do is put up your email in all letters like this: abc(AT)alphabets(DOT)com. Not including email ID symbols means that it has very little chance of getting detected by a spammer. People who actually want to contact you can definitely know how to do that by substituting the alphabets with the appropriate punctuations or symbols. Now, what do you do if the people who want to contact you get confused by this? This brings us to point no.2

2. Put up a picture of your email: Instead of typing your email ID, convert it into an image, or put up a screen-shot or photo- anything that is not typed. Technically, you actually haven’t put up your email ID, but only uploaded a picture. This has got to be one of the best ways to outwit those spammers, ever. At the same time, you are eliminating any confusion for the one reading it- a complete win-win!

3. Add a contact form: By adding these forms you are asking the person who wants to contact you to give his or her details to you so that you can contact them instead of them mailing you first. As a result, you are not posting an email ID that can be spammed. Only a genuine probable client will bother to fill the form so what you get are mails from really interested people.

Need fool-proof ways to eliminate spam coming in from your website? Computer professionals can baffle you with the number of ways you can prevent spam. Contact a professional now and kiss those spammers good bye forever!

The post How to Prevent Spam Coming Through Your Websites appeared first on Dave Spicer.

Websites are the best way to communicate with the world. You may have full-fledged business, or you may be an entrepreneur trying to get people to know more about your business, or you may be a part of an institution trying to share their events and news with the public- websites are for just about anybody who has something to offer the public. People on the net are ever-changing, and trends are updated every minute.  Is your website updated to meet this fast-changing virtual world? If not, then here are four reasons you should do so today:

1. Nobody likes routine: The 21^st century is all about variety. A modern man is restless with routine and is easily bored with everything. The same is true about people who visit your websites. Websites whose designs are updated from time to time greatly please their followers as they provide some fresh air and break from the monotony. People want variety, novelty and freshness. This is definitely one of the most important reasons you should consider updating your website theme.

2. To make things simpler: Nobody likes a website which is difficult to navigate through. Today people like short-cuts. And as the owner of a website, you need to make sure you give them the shortest cuts possible! People hate clicking links and sub-links, headings and sub-headings. They just want the info, and they want it now. So try getting feedback about how you can enhance the ease of access of your website. Simple, functional websites are always better than complex, complicated ones.

3. To gain more trust: It’s common sense that a website which has the same consistent design from ancient times until now will be seen as one that is not worth coming back to. Why? Because your readers may just feel that since you are unable to get creative, you lack substance! This is why products, automobiles and even buildings keep wearing new faces every now and then. Letting that dust gather on your website design is going to make you lose your visitors.

4. To have an edge over competitors: And of-course, the most important of all- outshine your competitors! It is true that substance wins over appearance; But how will you present the substance of your website to your readers if the appearance is not catchy enough? A catchy and attractive theme will definitely increase the value of your content and your credibility.

Convinced but confused about what you can do? Just contact the pros and watch your website bloom into a masterpiece!

The post Four Reasons Why You Must Update Your Website Theme Today appeared first on Dave Spicer.

There is a long running debate within the web designing circle whether frameworks serve a whole lot of purpose. While some say they are redundant, others maintain that frameworks play a crucial role.

Some argue that websites can be built without breaking a sweat with CSS, JavaScript or HTML. Then why should frameworks find an application in web design? But others say that if you are building a simple website without a lot of pages or a dynamic website, frameworks find good use. If you have to create multiple log-in credentials on your website, a framework would provide you with a structure to do it easily without having to do it multiple times manually.  Frameworks are templates which contain snippets of codes and other design elements which help you to take care of the basic design needs of your web-page and help you to save a lot of valuable project time.

Another major advantage of a framework is that a lot of them have been tested, debugged and validated. So, it not only saves you the time of writing the code in markup language but also save you the time of testing.

When you are designing a website, you will have your areas of strength. There may be other areas where you need some help. So, if you are using frameworks, you get instant, ready-made help.

What is a framework?

A framework is a set of tools or design conventions that is stored in the form of modules and can be invoked by calling it as a function in a code that you may be writing. A lot of ordinary tasks are taken care of through these modules. A framework doesn’t mean a licensed product that you will have to subscribe to or buy. You can create your own framework and store it as a module in a library and call it any number of times.

Advantages

• They are usually very fast. You can use an API to create a simple design in one-tenth of the time probably of what you would have taken otherwise.
• They can boost the efficiency as designers can focus more on solving the unique challenges rather than having to take care of common problems perfunctorily. This definitely boosts output and problem solving abilities.
• It definitely brings down the final cost of the project at hand.

Disadvantages

• The scope of work may be limited as you have to use the same framework essentially even with modifications.
• Frameworks contain files like normalize.css that have not been configured for the particular context in which you want to apply them.

A framework has both pros and cons. It is up to you to decide whether you want to use them or not. If you can identify the right context for its application, it does provide you a lot of leveraging power and speed. Carefully protect your individuality even when you are using an open source framework.

The post Should You Be Using Frameworks In Your Web Designs? appeared first on Dave Spicer.

The use of grids in web design is not too old although it was popular with print technologists from the beginning of 1950s. But more graphic web designers are embracing the concept of grid layout to properly create a structure or framework of the page where different design components can be placed. A grid is a structure made up of intersecting straight and curve lines. Each intersection takes place at regular intervals to create the tiniest unit of color called pixel. A grid helps to organize graphic elements in a coherent manner so that they look easy on the eye. They also de-clutter the space and help a graphic element to contrast against other graphic elements on the page or one part of the same graphic element against the other parts.

A well-organized grid reduces visual chaos and provides a breathing space to each design element so that they stand out individually as well as a single unit. A well-coordinated grid layout can help the designer to determine the right color proportions and use the right balance between design elements and white space at the margin of each row and column.

Grids are also simple. Although a grid based layout may not be suitable for all projects, a bulk of the modern design projects which need speed and efficiency are using grid based layouts to establish order without looking monotonous.

Some of the benefits of grid-based layouts are as follows

1. Aesthetic appeal: Grids can maintain clarity within chaos. It ushers in a certain order which makes it possible for the designer to clearly highlight the different design elements and use vast amounts of content in a single grid layout without cluttering the space. It is sensual without being exotic.
2. Enjoys the benefits of economies of scale: A design grid once created can be used as a road-map for future design ideas and the time of creating a new design reduces. It allows different designers to collaborate effectively since the core grid is in place and all they have to do is create different designs by switching places of components on the same grid i.e. changing the alignment or using new components on the same grid.
3. Allows creation of responsive web design: A grid-based layout is ideal for creating a responsive web design because it uses a single set of design codes to be used for the creation of a website for different devices.

A grid based layout is cost-effective and saves a lot of time. If you are building a commercial web design, in 8 out of 10 cases, you would need to use grid-based designs for their inherent advantages.

The post Why do Most Experts Prefer a Grid-Based Web Design? appeared first on Dave Spicer.