Keep those passwords unique and safe

Following a recent site visit to a client, where their server was protected by a default username and password (and I guessed it first attempt) it seemed timely to remind everyone about some basic password rules.

Creating a secure password:

• Mix capital and lowercase letters.
• Include punctuation marks and/or numbers.
• Include similar looking substitutions, such as the number zero for the letter 'O' or '$' for the letter 'S' or number 3 for letter "e".
• Create a unique acronym.
• Use an unrelated piece of date e.g. name of place on map selected by random pin

You should avoid:

• Don't use a password that contains personal information (name, birth date, etc.)
• Don't use keyboard patterns (asdf) or sequential numbers (1234).
• Don't make your password all numbers, uppercase letters or lowercase letters.

And remember to keep passwords safe and change them regularly. You might want to load your passwords into a password safe where you need a master password to access them when the time comes.

Time for spring cleaning...

Repetition, repetition, repetition

The message is in the title. Do it well, do it regularly and remember to tell people about the results. Whatever you do well, show it off. Do not boast, let your actions tell the story. If you are doing it well, and often enough, it should be easy to get the message over to those that matter.

Re-order that list visually!

A great way to re-order a list of items in an intuitive and visual way. New list order is then stored back to the MYSQL database. There are several ways of doing it, but this is a neat addition. Have a look at the jquery library for a series of sortable options.

Textures to impress

Clean high quality textures can lift a site from the mundane to impressive. Offering multiple sizes of their images this texture site is clean and simple to use and offers some particularly high quality textures.

Watch out for page load time and be cautious where you use the larger images. Less is more!

Fabulous Fonts - but use them wisely

You may notice sites using some impressive fonts, without using graphic images only. If you want to apply a font consider the Cufon javascript font replacement. This allows you to encode a chosen font on the page and then specify the elements to which it will apply.

A powerful tool, but keep it to the main headings or selected page elements or it can look too much (and will slow the page load).

The results are excellent, although there is some break up on some of the mini browsers such as Opera Mini when used on smart phones.

There are other tools for achieving this, but this is a good way of breaking out of the standard browser fonts.

How to grade a website

Ok, it is not the whole picture, but a useful free tool is the web site grader from hubspot.  Test your site and see how it is rated.  It is very focused on social media, but overall a useful tool as a pointer to site performance.

SEO in 2009

As we head into 2009 we need to review the performance of our sites and ensure that we are getting the best possible performance. Watch this space for a selection of top tips.