Author: Kerch McConlogue

Harrisburg, PA: A WordPress front end web developer who speaks plain-English to nonGeeks

Thou shalt have no ADMIN user on a WordPress site

NO ADMINI have been noticing a LOT of people named “admin” have been locked out of a few of my client websites.

That means somebody tried to log in and then used the wrong password or maybe just the wrong user name/password combination.

It happens.

You don’t remember if your user name is a short name or an email address. You try a couple combinations and finally get it right.

If you mess up too many times, you get a message that you’ll be locked out for a certain amount of time or until you call in someplace to have it fixed. (Banks are really big on that one and I’m glad!)

So why am I (website contact person) getting all these “locked out user” notifications?

I’m seeing these attempts since I recently installed the quite wonderful iThemes Security plugin.
It evaluates and protects a WordPress website from more than 30 vulnerabilities.

IF you install it AND set it up!

Notice of Rant starting
BTW, you know you have to do more than install this (or any) useful plugin?
You have to step through the suggestions for making your site secure and then DO WHAT IT SAYS!  Imagine it?

Recently I had a request from a client, named Gene, to fix a slow site. Gene thought it might be the host’s fault.

Nope!  Too many plugins, too many not updated, and WordPress too far behind.

But the worst was the plugins installed and activated that were not even set up to actually do the stuff they are supposed to do.

It’s kind of like buying a book and figuring that once you own it, so you know what’s in it.

And you know that’s not true, right?  RIGHT??!!

But I digress..

end of rant

 

 

Because I know that my sites do not have any of these user names, I know it’s some baddie trying to get in using brute force (big computers) to guess your password.

Pretty soon the baddies will find your actual name, “Gene,” so you probably have a user named “gene” and they’ll start working to guess that password..

and if they succeed, we got trouble…

right here in River City.
That starts with an S and that stands for you know what and it STINKS!

SO
Please log into your WordPress site. Change your password .. and I’m not saying change it from “password” to “123456”

I’m saying CHANGE IT FOR REAL!

Don’t use a word from the dictionary. Don’t use your birthday or your address. Don’t use your kids’ names.

Here’s a story about a guy who used his passwords to change his life.   It’s creative and affirming and that’s the way to really use a password!

 

 

Updating iPhone Apps

Find the App Store icon and click on it.
Find the App Store icon and click on it.

I posted a link to this article on Social Media Examiner  on my Facebook page.

I think the first of the ways is particularly cool so I said so on Facebook

My first friend asked: “Great.. How do I update to the latest Facebook App?”

Pretty basic question.
But I have learned that if I GET it once at least 3 other people are wondering the same thing.

So here’s how (complete with my own phone screen shots!)

Find the App Store icon and click on it. Looks like a big A and I circled it in the screen shot at the right.

Please don’t hate me because I have 86 apps to be updated. (That’s what that little 86 means in the red circle)  There are excuses and reasons.. but please don’t ask about them.

On the next screen, click on the  UPDATE button with the arrow that’s circled in the lower right of this screen (below).

photoThen scroll down til you find an app you want to update.

We’re talking FaceBook here.. but it could be any APP  and it could be ALL apps. (Yep, if there are 86 you could be scrolling a while. OR you could choose the UPDATE ALL in the upper right corner, that I did NOT cirlce)

I already updated my FaceBook app. (na na na)  So the button at the right says OPEN.

But if I hadn’t it would say:  UPDATE

Click that and then wait…. a while.

When the button says OPEN, you’re good to go.

 

Finding a web person is not a scary prospect

But it can be if you don’t quite understand
what you can ask for from a web developer.

KitchenBut it’s not that odd of a process.

Let’s say you want a new kitchen.  How do you get one?

(Aside from selling a kidney to pay for it, I mean.)

You talk to a people. You find pictures. You get estimates. You figure time lines. And, because somebody will be in your house with your stuff, you decide if you like and trust them to do what they say. AND you check references. (At least you should!)

You probably never have installed plumbing or a counter top, (and even if you had) you’ll certainly ask questions like, “How long will I be without my sink?”

That’s just common sense.

But if you’re taking about the internet… whoa that’s different. Wait, Is it?

child as web developerIt can be a bit scary because it can feel like everybody but you understands how computers and the internet work. Heck, 4-year-olds play computer games. So how hard can it be?

So you can be forgiven for being a bit leery of fessing up that you really don’t understand anything more than how to read email and watch cat videos on YouTube.

But look,
finding a web developer follows exactly the same process as finding someone to redo your kitchen.

Talk to people—friends or colleagues who have a website as well as the developers you find. Find examples of sites you like. You get estimates. You figure time lines. And you decide if you like and trust the person you talk to. Check references.

Maybe you worry you wouldn’t understand what the web developer was saying,
or maybe he’ll think you’re stupid…. so why ask?

Here’s why: In the beginning, the goal is just to figure out if you can communicate with this person.

  • Does WebPerson make you feel like you’re taking up too much time?
  • Or imposing?
  • Or like you really shouldn’t be asking these questions at all?

So ask some questions that you DO understand.

There are no right answers here.  But when you ask questions and you know you’ll understand the answers, you’ll gain confidence to ask other questions that might have more complicated answers.

How about just asking some simple questions like:

  1. How long is the WebPerson’s longest continuing relationship with a client?
  2. Does WebPerson remain in contact with old clients? Help them out if they get stuck?
  3. But if at least one relationship was long, what was special about it?
  4. How /big is the biggest site he/she worked on?

Pay attention how this person treats you when they answer. Were you comfortable? Treated respectfully?  These things matter.

I’ve written a short paper called 7 Questions to Ask When Interviewing a New Webmaster/Developer/Designer/WebGuy

Fill out the form below, and I’ll send you the whole list

  • Are you sure you spelled it right?
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Replying to complaints

From polite and not so polite complainers

Often complaints can be the impetus to
fix a giant mistake or just
make an better experience for the next customer

If you have been in business for more than 20 minutes, somebody has probably complained about something you did or did not do right.

How you handle these suggestions can affect the progress you and/or your business will make.

A stereotypical grandmother will probably tell you that your garden is lovely even if it’s really not. She’s being polite or perhaps, she thinks, encouraging.

Oh, dear, you just can’t grow palm trees in Boston

A master gardener will tell you if a plant is invasive or just not suited to your area.

But let’s say your grandmother IS a master gardener. She will tell you that you can’t grow palm trees in Boston. She’ll keep coming to visit and she’ll keeps trying to tell you what’s not working in your garden.

If you’re not smart, you grumble to your friends about that “idiot old woman” who can never be satisfied with what you’re trying to do.

If you are smart, you listen to her advice and find something else that will grow better in your yard.

Further, I’m just guessing that this lovely kind grandmother will continue for some time to help you with your plans. Sometimes, perhaps she’ll be less patient with your efforts. But you know she was right about the palm trees so you keep trying to hear her points.

But if you don’t acknowledge her expertise, or say, at the very least, thank you, she’ll quit poking her nose in your business.

You might be happy about that because it’s way easier to not be annoyed with all the “help.”

On the other hand, your Boston neighbors will laugh hysterically when at your palm trees fall over in the snow and die.

How many Dear Abbey columns have you read where the grandmother says, “I’m just not sending any more checks. The kid never says thank you!”

What’s this rant about?
The folly of ignoring the expertise of outsiders by a business or organization

Sometimes the person complaining, we’ll call that person Gene, has no tact at all and calls the organization to task on obvious missteps. Leadership feels their collective blood boil when they see a comment from Gene. In an all too human way, they just want to shut Gene up and avoid any confrontation.

So they miss the jewel of wisdom in the conversation.

Sometimes the person complaining, we’ll call that person Kelsey, has a good history with the organization, specific needed skills and a habit of knowing when things won’t go as planned. Kesley has a bit more tact than Gene, but the longer Kelsey’s contributions are ignored, the less generous Kelsey is with advice.

Not everyone has the skill or social grace to criticize constructively.
But by ignoring the information, in either case, the organization suffers.

Don’t miss the message for the attitude

Some people will say that complaints written in email tend to be overly blunt, that the reader can’t always hear the intended tone of the writer.

However, the advantage of email is that the reader CAN take a few minutes to get past the rant and find the jewel in the pile of doo-doo and then, take a high road in response.

If the master gardener says you can’t grow palm trees in Boston, ask for suggestions of what you could grow to give you the same feel of height or architectural interest that you were aiming for.

If someone complains about your website, ask for specific things you should consider doing.

Do a little research over the suggestions. The Great Google knows everything. And without too much investment of time, you could find support for the suggestion or a different way to address the issue.

 

Photo credit: by: Ian Britton at FreeFoto.com

Google hates “coming soon”

Let’s say you want to bake a cake and you find you are out of eggs.

You go to the grocery store to buy some and find a sign that says “Eggs: coming soon!”

You look around the store manager to ask, “What does this mean ‘coming soon’?”

He says, “Well, they’re on a truck.. that’s coming soon. We don’t know exactly when. But ..soon. So you should check back again … soon.”

And I know you hate “Coming Soon,” too!

How do I know?
Here’s a story:

egg crate with coming soon
Let’s say you want to bake a cake and you find you are out of eggs.

You go to the grocery store to buy some and find a sign that says “Eggs: coming soon!”

You look around the store manager to ask, “What does this mean ‘coming soon’?”

He says, “Well, they’re on a truck.. that’s coming soon. We don’t know exactly when. But ..soon. So you should check back again … soon.”

Ridiculous, right?

How many times will you go back to that store? (It would make me really angry and I’d vow to never shop there again.)

Search engines are designed to help searchers find the best content relative to the search terms.

So when their magic robots scan your content, they can pretty easily tell if it says “coming soon” or “under construction.”

Here is a sad example I recently found on an established website with a new front page:

A new website is coming soon…
in the meantime, this site is temporarily unavailable.
We apologize for any inconvenience.

However, the MEMBERS AREA can still be accessed during
construction and testing of the new site…
CLICK HERE to go there now.

That’s just 41 words and pretty much none of it yields any indication of authority on any subject.

That is particularly sad because when searching for an obvious specific keyword, the site had been number one in Google for MANY years.

I can’t say that their ship is sinking fast. But it sure is pissing off people who want to find information that should be obvious there. It should also be angering members who rely on a directory to find business.

Google expects at least 300 words on a page to even consider that there is relevant information available there.

Everything on the internet can change pretty easily. So how about instead of “under construction,” you scrape together 300 words about your business or site.

A sentence or two including:

  • The name of your company and contact information
  • Your own name, a picture with appropriate “alt tags”
  • What your company does and who it serves

If Google finds your “coming soon” banner during its indexing more than a couple of times, your traffic will suffer. And it may be very hard to get that ranking back.

Valuable Feedback… How to get it easily!

Good feedback is
like a warm blanket on a cold day.

happy gumbiesIt makes me feel safe and warm and cared-for. And I hope the warm fuzzies transfer to new people who might be thinking about working with me.

But what if you don’t have any actual written feedback?

It’s remarkably easy to get it. Just ask for it.

A good time to do that is before you’re all the way finished with a project, when you client is excited about what’s happening.

That’s not to imply they won’t still be happy later, but in the middle of the project, you are top-of-mind for the client. Later, they may be on to something else and, much as we don’t like to think it’s the truth, they probably forget about you.

When you’re asking remind them, too, that you don’t want a letter of recommendation, just a few words that describe the relationship and what they get from it.

Remember, if it’s your plan to share the feedback on your website or in a brochure, nobody will read a long letter anyway.  So when you’re publishing, bold the important part of the comment. That will help visitors get the salient points and skip over the extra words.

Alexandra Franzen posted over at Mashable a great piece on helping people give useful feedback.

She says if you can give people at least a starting point, they’re more likely to give you what you want and need.

She lists great prompts for good feedback, the kind you want your mother (or possible clients) to see. Like:

I’m constantly impressed by the way [your name here] handles problems like ___.

And then there’s also the other kind of feedback.

They kind that points out where you’ve messed up or didn’t complete something exactly like the client thought. That’s the kind we wish we didn’t have to hear.

HOWEVER, it can be the most useful of all.  Think about it:  If nobody tells you you have spinach in your teeth, how would you ever know?  And once you do, it’s easy to fix.

So she lists some prompts like:

 The most challenging thing about working with [your name here] is ___.

If you ask for feedback, you have to be ready to receive even the negative kind.

And not with an excuse or even a reason. It’s more useful for you and more respectful to the client if you ask: How do you think I could fix that?

Do you have some other prompts for getting feed back?

OR if you’d like to write something about working with me, I’d be really happy about that!

Photo credit: JessicaGale from morguefile.com

Who is your ideal client?

I know that finding my ideal client is paramount to having the most fun doing what I’m doing.

Yep, that might sound like a strange notion coming from a web developer. But when you work for yourself, you have that wonderful opportunity to enjoy what you do, or do something else!

I used to be ADHD coach and helping my entrepreneur clients do that was often a big topic. Once I heard Sonia Simone, of Copyblogger fame, suggest that “I am my ideal client.”  I don’t think she meant necessarily exactly like me… but I generally like to work with people who have the same sensibilities and values.

Dana Rayburn wrote an excellent article for the ADHDcoaches newsletter, Circle, on just this topic. She says:

Being clear on my Ideal Client also improves my conversations with potential clients. Instead of focusing the calls on selling my services, I’m focused on finding out about the person … I’m able also to quickly and easily know who isn’t the best match for me and can quickly refer them to another coach.

My ideal clients are people who not only
want to work with me but who also understand that
I want the best for them,
their business and their website.

I know that getting a new website can be overwhelming. There are lots and lots of questions to ask and answer. AND I’m trained as a coach, so I have skills to help you figure out what it is that you want.

You should also know this: I’m not a “client is always right” kind of person.

That just means I won’t let you run with scissors.

However, I will always listen when you tell me what you want. I will tell you when I think something you said is brilliant, and I will tell you—in plain English—when and why I think something is a mistake.

Wanna know for sure?  You won’t know if I’m YOUR ideal webmaster until we talk!
Contact me. Or call (443) 255-3401

Kerch McConlogue signature

Photo credit: Placardmoncoeur from morguefile

5 Easy Things You Can Do To Get Better Search Engine Ranking

Key words aren’t everything. But they sure do help!

Even if you aren’t sure what Google thinks your key words are, you can certainly figure out what you think your post is about.

Get really specific about it—just one or two words will help YOU be clear.

Keep to that idea all the way through the article.  Keep looking back at your first line. Are you still on track?

Yes or no? Keep going or restructure.  And then use these simple plain-English tips to help search engines put you in the right places.

  1. Use descriptive, accurate words in the title of the page. Choose wisely. Have no more than 70 characters, including letters and spaces. AND there are voices in the wind saying that number may be reduced to 50 to 60 characters.Get your key word in the beginning of the title.Don’t get cute with short ambiguous titles like “What I did last summer.” It would never imply that you dismantled a car engine or made a wedding dress. Be specific.
  2. Use those keywords near the very top of your content. That reinforces for search engines–and visitors—what the page is about.It also reminds YOU, while writing the content, what you are supposed to be focusing on. Poynter Institute for Media Studies has an excellent slide show on writing effectively for the internet.
  3. People understand images but search engines can only read text.Here are 2 ways to help the machines give people the right answers:
    1. Before you upload, name the image something descriptive.
      MGAengineblock-topview.jpg or dovegray-weddingdress.jpg are way better names than DSC0007231.jpg. This has the added advantage that when someone searches the internet for MGA engine block, or dove gray wedding dress, your image (and therefore a link to you page) will show up in that image list.Irfanview is a free image manager that allows you to change the name of an image while you are looking at it. That’s a big deal if you have a lot of images to rename!

    2. ALT tags, TITLE tags, Captions: Oh, MY!

      “ALT tags” are the words that show up on a site when an image doesn’t load for any reason. And they are used by screen readers for people with some disabilities. Google suggests using Alt Tags smartly.

      “TITLE text” elaborates a bit on what was established by the ALT text. This is the default language for Pinterest pins. It is suggested that you include the URL to your post here SO it will show up in the Pinterest title.

      On the web, like in a magazine or newspaper, captions on pictures get read. And some studies show that they are the most read part of an article—by humans, for sure, and because they’re text, machines read them, too.

      How to do this without code?

      add media buttonWhen you use the WordPress “Add Media” link, a title will be automatically be named. Add a title tag, and a caption. See that? No code: just fill in the boxes.

  4. Break up big blocks of text. Use key words in headings.Big blocks of text might be easy for machines so read, but not so much people.Did you ever think about how easy it is to read a newspaper where the columns are so narrow?Studies show that visitors mostly only scan content. So because headings and bold words stand out, people notice them.
  5. Please note: headings, and subheads, are not just bold or colored words. They have specific code attached to them so that the search engines know that those are important words.change a heading style in WordPressUse the “format” drop down on the WordPress visual editing window (shown at the left)  to choose the appropriate heading tag.Each page should have one and only one Heading 1. That’s the title of the page. WordPress adds that automatically. But Heading 2 and 3 can be more liberally used.

These tips will not get you to number 1 in search results for one word searches like “coach” or “mechanic.” But they will help you with narrow, specific searches, like the ones your ideal customers use.

And if your ideal customers are not finding you, are you using the normal words that real people use to describe what you do?
That might be the clue.
Got a thought? Or a question?

Image by giggs

PS: I’m speaking about SEO at the ADHD Coaches Organization 7th Annual Conference in Phoenix, AZ, May 3. If you’re a coach, check it out.

Why do you need a new website?

Let’s pretend you wake up one morning and decide you want a new website.

Curious Monkey asks whyBut here’s the question: Why?

Maybe you finally figured that the site you made in 1999 is a little out of date and you want to fix that. That MIGHT be a good reason. But if your website is doing what you want it to do, then maybe “change” isn’t enough of an answer. After all, the Marlboro Man hasn’t changed much in more than 50 years!

“Why” is a big question.

Is your website doing what you want it to do? Do you know what you want it to do? Do you know what you have to do to make that happen?

“If you’re stuck, throw some money at it.” That’s what my friend Leslie says.

But if you’re not independently wealthy, that might not be a good idea. And even if you are, it’s probably not a good idea.

You have to know what you want your site to do for you and for your visitors.
Your web developer should not be the one to decide that for you.

garage framingSay you get a contractor to build a new garage. You have to plan what you want to do with it. What should be different from the one you have? And even though the men doing the work swear it’s reason enough, bigger is not the only criteria.

We thought about the one we’re building and planned it.

We made sure there is capability for plenty of outlets, put windows in the wood shop and the lift bay, but no windows, besides those in the door, in the general garage area. We continue to think about it as the process proceeds.

Your website is no different. What do you want to have happen there?

  • Should people buy something?
  • Be educated about something?
  • Sign up for a newsletter? (Do you know what the purpose of that is? That’s a conversation for another day.)
  • Do you want them to return time after time?
  • Or do you just want them to see that you really exist and do not have two heads?

You can surely find someone to redesign/rebuild your site, make it more up to date, add features you didn’t have before like maybe a way to signup for a newsletter, add google analytics and links to social media.

If you’re not clear about what you want, two things happen.

  1. You’re at the mercy of your web developer and what s/he thinks you should have.
  2. And then, when you don’t like what s/he does, you’re both in for endless tweaks and twists. That makes the process tiresome for both of you (at best) and costs you more money.

In the end this is all about communication—between you and your visitors and then between you and your designer.

Think about how you want to talk to your visitors. Conversationally? Technically? Formally? Any answer can be right but you must decide.

People need to know you before they like you. Then they have to like you before they trust you enough to give you money.

If you need help with the writing, ask for it. A developer should have at least one colleague who can help with that.

Why do you need a new website?
To realign your site with your message.

But before you start, you have to know what you want people to do when they visit. Only then can you help them get on the track that leads where you want them to go.

Make sense?