Blog
March 25, 2015
If your website is not mobile-friendly by April 21st, Google will throw your website under the bus. I have seen it before. Now that 60%+ of website views are on mobile devices, Google has decided to punish websites that don’t work on them. When the Panda and Penguin algorithm happened, five websites that I was manager of SEO for went from #1 on Page 1 on Google to page 8, 10, and worse. The new mobile-friendly algorithm has been dubbed “Mobilegeddon” by the Entrepreneur.
March 23, 2015
All four major website browers, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Apple's Safari were hacked at the Pwn2Own contest in Vancouver, Canada on Thursday. JungHoon (lokihardt) of South Korea was able to hack all four browsers by himself. He was rewarded with $225,000 USD and new laptops. The Chrome hack was the largest payout since the contest started, resulting in $75,000 in prize money.
March 23, 2015
The YPD Captains Endowment Association website was recently hacked by an anonymous hacker group. It has been declared that "no confidential information has been compromised." Anonymous was accused of the attack, but recently has stated that they did not actually inject malware into the website. They also jabbed NYPD for targeting and abusing the people it is meant to protect, and that the attack was expected due to their previous actions.
March 19, 2015
My team and I have been moaning and groaning about Internet Explorer and its browser compatibility and old version compatibility problems for years. We are excited to hear more about the Spartan Project coming later this year. Spartan will be coupled with Windows 10 and, according to a Microsoft employee during a tour last month, will be able to provide high quality browser compatibility and fast load times. The software may be exclusively available for computers and devices operating on the Microsoft Windows 10 platform.
March 18, 2015
Whether you are a web designer or a website owner/client, you are likely working in a new business milieu – one that is only a few years old – wherein independent entrepreneurs and/or small businesses interact directly over large distances or across time zones. Even “local” jobs are often further than would make sense to commute for a meeting; most clients and designers never meet face-to-face. At the same time, website owners are also dealing with new technology suites for which they have no background for understanding.
January 26, 2015
Last month, I wrote about the impact of running out-of-date content management systems, such as the old Joomla 1.5, to your site's searchability, security and success. (If you missed that, you can catch up here). While all of that information is still valid, a major recent event in the world of CMS series has made necessary and addendum to that information: As of the end of January 31st, 2014, the Joomla community has ended its support for the long-term release Joomla 2.5.
December 12, 2014
While many people are aware of the security risks associated with allowing their website software to run out-of-date, there is still an idea that these security risks do not immediately impact a website's success until there is a security breach, something that may never actually happen. This line of thought can lead site owners to see a greater cost in software updating than in the incremental loss of standing in the numbers game that governs the likelihood of a security breach.
December 12, 2014
If you're purchasing website design and/or website development services, it's probably because you are not an expert in this field. Of course, you might just be a web guru so busy with high-end enterprise development that you don't have time to build your own website; if you are, you can stop reading this – it is not meant for you. Okay. For all of the rest of you who are still with us, the problem remains: you don't know how websites really work and you are hiring a website designer or design team to build one for you, and you know that you can't really tell how progress is coming on a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, and that feels a little like going to the auto-mechanic who may or may not be trying to siphon as much dough as possible from you.