Security: Contact Forms, Captcha, and Email
Security is a huge deal these days. If Amazon and Google can be hacked, anyone can. Hackers can always get at you. But there is no reason to make it easy for them.
Quite often, clients will ask me why we put a contact form on a website rather than an email address. I also often get asked if a Captcha code is necessary. This post answers those questions.
Why no email addresses or links on the site?
There are two main reasons you don’t want your email address openly visible on your website: First is SPAM.
In HTML, your email looks like this…
Web Hosting Security: Keeping Your Site Safe
While many clients are aware that security is very important for their site, few understand the importance of web hosting security. The web host is a company that provides server space for your website to live.
Your website is only as secure as the place it lives.
I still today have clients who need to be educated on why they don’t want their website on their own servers. Simple answer: are you spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to protect your servers from the latest cyber attacks and malicious code and back them up in different locations? Also, do you…
The Martian Rule
The most important rule in web design is the Martian Rule:
Can a Martian tell in 4 seconds
Who you are
What you do
Where you are?
And in less than 8 seconds
What makes you the answer to their problem or need?
Martian Rule Content
First, the name of your company should be absolutely clear, and preferably in a way the visitor will remember. No point in selling them on a product if they don’t remember your name.
Second, it is wrong to think that visitors to your site know what you do. They may have stumbled on your site accidentally and may,…
Oh Those Browsers
The different ways browsers present a website has been an issue since there was more than one browser. All browsers have the job of interpreting the web page code and displaying it to the user, but no two browsers display all code the same way. What that means is that a website may look fine to one person and not to another, depending on what browser, and what version of the browser, each is using. For example, if I create a website in Internet Explorer , it probably will not look exactly the same in Chrome or Mozilla Firefox or…
What is Responsive Web Design
Responsive Web Design is the new version of mobile website design. Ideally it takes into account the variation of sizes on which a site can be viewed as well as the difference in processing capability to view it. The goal of responsive web design is to have the website transition gracefully between different sized devices as seamlessly as possible. This can be a challenge. Here is how it usually works-
code on the site determines on what size device the site is being viewed
depending on the size, it will call on a different style sheet and possibly a different…
Visual Clients Encourage Great Websites
I have several clients who have a good visual eye, knew what they wanted and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I am very happy with the final product of their sites. Clients like this push me to stretch my vision and talents to meet theirs, so that the site moves from good to great. I first need to stress that these clients have a good visual eye. Without that, they would merely have been difficult clients. I am proud that I have several clients who, either by vocation or avocation, are highly visual people.
With WordPress websites, it’s sometimes easy to install a…