SSL certificates

SSL certificates encrypt information sent to your site, so if it is intercepted by a third party the information will be useless. This is ideal if you’re running an e-commerce site or personal information is being sent to your site by visitors or customers. For full details on SSL certificates please visit sgis.co.uk/ecommerce-SSL.php

Domain Privacy

Some customers don’t wish their personal details to be stored on the WHOIS database for public viewing. If you’re an individual using a UK domain then you can opt out of this database, however if you have a global domain (.com etc) this is not available. To get round this we have introduced a domain privacy service for global domain names which hides your contact details. For more information please visit sgis.co.uk/domain-privacy.php

These Add-ons are optional and won’t be needed by every customer, if you need advice on any of these products please contact us.

Compare our BuddyPress hosting packages

Step-by-step guide to installing BuddyPress

1. Before attempting to install BuddyPress you need to ensure that the directory you wish to install it to is empty. If you’re looking to install BuddyPress to the root directory of your site then you will 1st need to remove the default index.html file which is created automatically when hosting is set-up. To remove this file simply click on “File manager” from the your hosting control panel and open the public_html file. From here you can then delete the file.

2. Once the directory you want to install BuddyPress to is empty you then need to navigate back to the main menu and click on the BuddyPress option under the scripts heading as shown below. Follow the instructions on screen to start the installation.

3. This will then start the WordPress installation where you can pick your site’s name and set-up log-in details.

4. Once WordPress has been set-up, log-in to WordPress using the details created and click on the plugins menu option on the left sidebar. From here you will see the BuddyPress plugin. Simply activate the plugin and your site is then ready to go and you will be using BuddyPress.

BuddyPress is becoming increasingly popular and for an idea of what it’s being used for you can visit the following link to BuddyPress’s site where they showcase sites currently using it – http://buddypress.org/showcase/

All our hosting packages come ready with the BuddyPress installation script so why not compare our packages to get the best price for your BuddyPress site.

A good looking website isn’t necessarily a good performing one. When designing your own website or briefing your designer you need to think about how your readers behave online and how you can make your website easier for them to use. There are lots of things you can do but the following golden rules will help to get you started.

1. See – Scan – Click

Readers will see headings and key information, scan large paragraphs of text and click to learn more if they need to. Make sure you break any text up in to bite size chunks which are easy to read. Use headings and bullet points to highlight important information

2. Top left is primary real estate

Think about the way that you read a printed page of text – your eye goes to the top left of the page first. The same applied on the web. Readers will look at the top left of our site first – often without realising it! You need the most elements of your site around that magic top left space. It might be your logo and brand name, it might be text or navigation. It all depends on what you want users to do when they reach your site. A blog wants users to read their content, an ecommerce site wants users to start searching for products to buy – their objectives are very different.

3. Think about the fold.

The fold is the point at which you need to scroll down the website to see more content. You need to make sure that any must see information or special offers are above the fold – otherwise you risk you readers not scrolling and not seeing them. If you have a special offer of 50% off for example, this needs to be towards the top of your page. The most common screen size is 1366×768* which should give you an idea of the screen size you should be optimising your site towards.

*Source of information http://gs.statcounter.com/#resolution-GB-monthly-201012-201112

4. Links – make ‘em obvious

A simple “click here” isn’t always enough to make it obvious that something is clickable. Make sure your links are underlined and a different colour to the rest of your next – not black. Blue is probably the most ideal colour as it’s what we are used to when browsing the web and search engines – though if blue clashes with your site another colour would do.

5. Be wary of flash

Flash and animation can make your site look pretty cool, but it can also be annoying and is not supported by apple products such as iPhones and iPads. If you are using Flash then make sure you are using it sparingly and that there is an alternative version of your site available for those who don’t have flashplayer.

Guest blogger Gemma Screen – Head of Campaigns at Sift Media
A prolific tweeter and social media enthusiast. Gemma has a wealth of experience in digital media and advising organisations on how to successfully promote their business online. – Follow Gemma on twitter @Gemma_Screen

New features of Joomla! 2.5 include;

• Automatic notifications for updates
• Improved site search engine with auto-completion
• Built in CAPTCHA
• Improved filtering by category in Article Manager
• Filter the Frontend Who’s Online by User Group
• Formatting added to plugin debug
• Alternate meta tags for multi-language sites
• Improved SEO with language code option
• Offline option during set-up with ability to add a picture
• For a full list of new features visit joomla.org

Joomla! 2.5 is available on all of our hosting packages with prices starting at only £10 per year. For a full comparison of our packages please visit our hosting page

WARNING: Some of these tips require you to make changes to WordPress code. Always remember to make a full backup of your site and SQL database before attempting to make these changes as errors could leave your site unusable.

1. Keep up-to-date

Using the latest version of WordPress ensures that you are getting the most up to date security features and will included fixes to older versions. It’s also important to keep your plug-ins up to date for same reason.

Before attempting any updates always remember to take a backup of your site and SQL database.

2. Keep regular back-ups

Although this doesn’t directly improve your sites security, if it was to be compromised it’s a lot easier to restore if you have a recent backup of the site and SQL database. More information on backups can be found here.

3. Force SSL on admin area and login

If you have purchased a personal SSL for you domain name why not increase the security of your admin area and login page by sending information over your encrypted channel. For more information on SSL please visit sgis.co.uk/ecommerce-SSL.php

If you have a personal SSL It’s fairly easy to implement as WordPress can be forced to do this by adding the following line to your wp-config.php file.

  define('FORCE_SSL_LOGIN', true);

Please make sure the above is added before the below line of code, otherwise it will not work;

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');

4. Remove the WordPress version number from the header

By default WordPress displays the version being used in the header of your site and this could lead to problems if a hacker is aware of certain weakness to the version you’re using. Luckily there is a quick fix to this be adding the below code to your functions.php file;

<?php remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator'); ?>

If you don’t have a functions.php file for your theme you will need to create one via file manager

5. Don’t use admin as your username

By default older versions of WordPress would force the main admin username to be admin. Luckily WordPress now allows you to choose a custom username when creating your site so avoid using “admin” as your username.

6. Delete unwanted plugins

If you have a large collection of deactivated or unused plugins it would be worth completely deleting them. Keeping your plugins organised and up to date will help improve your site’s security.

7. Remove the tick from “Anyone can register”

If this box is ticked it means anyone can sign up to your WordPress admin area, even if you don’t advertise on your site. If you have no need to allow anyone to registration then go to Settings >> General and remove the tick from Anyone can register. If you have a need for this and wish to allow anyone to sign up, make sure the New User Default Role is set to Subscriber and keep a track on who is signing up via the user menu.

8. Use a secure password

Although obvious make sure you use a secure password that contains lowercase and uppercase characters as well as numbers and avoid words found in a dictionary. Random passwords are effective and there are many tools on the net for creating them such as www.pctools.com/guides/password/. Finally changing your password regularly is never a bad idea.

Got any more tips you’d like to share? Let us know and we’ll add them to this post.

Key Features of MODX

• You don’t need to know PHP to make changes
• HTML is the main driver using tags to add the dynamic database content
• Community created add-ons that are easy to install
• SEO friendly – complete control over metadata and URL structure
• Customisable site appearance
• Customisable admin area
• Multiple levels of access for different areas of the site
• Uses a static HTML caching system for fast loading
• And many more – Visit modx.com for full features

Screenshot of a MODX site

Please visit the following link if you want to demo MODX for yourself – http://www.trymodx.com/

1. Review your site’s design
Take a look at your site’s structure and design and ask yourself if any improvements can be made.

• Could the navigation be easier to use?
• Could image size/usage be reduced to improve page loading speed?
• Consider using a cascading style sheet rather than inline styles to improve page speed.
• Consider breaking large bodies of text into smaller chunks.
• Is it easy for customers to contact you?
• Add a favicon – click here for more information.

2. Make time for blog entries and updates
Finding the time to update your website can be hard and it’s very easy to overlook if you have a busy lifestyle. Keeping your website update is one of the most important things you can do and making targets weekly or monthly can massively help your productivity. However you need to make sure the target is realistic, don’t plan to do 3 blog post a week when you know it wont happen, instead aim for to something achievable like 1 blog post a week and stick to it.

3. Spend more time on social media
If you’re looking to increase visits to your site by using social media you need to make sure you spend the time communicating via these avenues. Similar to the second point, give yourself a routine and stick to it.

4. Update software
The new year is a perfect time to check that all the software you are using is up-to-date. It is important to check this regularly as using out of date software can result in security risks and you might be missing out on any bug fixes on the latest version. If you are using a CMS such as WordPress make the time to update to the latest version as well as updating any plugins you have installed.
N.B Please remember to back-up your website before attempting any updates

5. Review your site’s Analytics
Take a close look at your sites statistics to see if there are any areas you can improve. Things to look for are;

• Review pages with a higher bounce rate than the rest of the site to see if any improvements can be made to these pages to reduce visors exiting straight away.
• Have a look at your top landing pages and review how you can optimise them further.

6. Set goals for 2012
Make a list of things you want to achieve through your website and what you need to do to make it happen. Writing your goals down really concentrates the mind and helps remind you what your aiming for.

7. Update your footer
If you have a copyright section which displays the current year or a range of years that doesn’t update automatically make sure this is updated.

8. Back-up your website regularly
Backing up your website doesn’t take long and can save a massive amount of work if your site needs to be restored for any reason. Set regular reminders or get in a routine of backing up after any major changes to your website. Click here for more information on backing up your site.

9. Try something new
The new year is great time to get out of your comfort zone and try something new on your site. You could try introducing a newsletter for your visitors to sign up to, add a blog section if you don’t already have one or give PPC advertising a go.

10. Check that your links are still working
Offering a link on your site that doesn’t work will frustrate visitors, looks unprofessional and may make them leave your site. Take the time to check your links and make sure they still work, an easy way to check this is to use Google Webmaster Tools www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Number 10

Top Gear blog

Stephen Fry

Inksie

Mashable

Ebay blog

Mozilla blog

Sylvester Stallone

If you have limited or no experience in creating websites from scratch then our Web Builder software, which comes free with every hosting package, might just be your solution. The software allows you to easily create a multi-page website and with over 200 templates to choose from you’ll be sure to find a design to suit your needs. The templates have a number of pre made colour schemes available which you can customise by using a point-and-click colour picker for easy colour selection. A small sample of the templates can be seen below.

Cost

Web builder comes free with every hosting package. This means you can get a site live from only £10 per year plus the cost of a domain name. For information on our hosting packages please visit our hosting page.

Pages and page templates

There is no limit to the number of pages you can add and we offer a number of page templates to allow easy creation of photo albums, calendars, surveys, download pages, links pages and more.

Easy publishing

We make publishing your website easy, once you’ve clicked the publish button your website will be live and viewable on the web. Once Live the site can still be changed, simply update your site’s content and click publish again to load the new content to the web.

Easy re-design

If you want to change the design and feel of your site after you’ve published this is also very easy. After a few clicks you can quickly change the complete website design without having to re-enter any information. We can do this as all your website’s text and information is held separately so is easily applied and loaded to different designs.

Web Builder demo

You can demo our web builder software by following the below link.

Demo Web Builder Now

If you need any advice on our Web Builder please contact us.

Write Code Online writecodeonline.com

This website allows you to quickly test Javascript and PHP online and with a hit of a button you instantly get the results of your code.

Kuler – kuler.adobe.com

Kuler is an application created by adobe allowing web designers to share colour schemes. It’s a neat site for finding the right colour palate for your site – try clicking on the selected scheme in the header to get a full size view.

BgPatterns – bgpatterns.com

BgPatterns is neat little web app where you can quickly create tiled website backgrounds. There are options for image sizes, opacity settings, textures, rotation, canvas size and colours. There are also quick buttons to test the image online and a download button once you’re happy.

Icon Finder – iconfinder.com

Icon Finder is massive online library of free icons for download, helpful if you need Twitter and Facebook icons.

The plain English Campaign – plainenglish.co.uk

The plain English campaign has a handy “Drivel Defence” that checks your text to ensure it is in plain English and doesn’t use Jargon or unnecessary words.

bitly – bitly.com

Create a free account with bitly to access to their URL shorting service – If you have a Twitter or Facebook account you use these to sign up. Great for if your short on space to fit in a URL and it has click tracking so you know how many people use the link and when.