Cool • Creative • Inspiring

Where Does Your Website Live?

If you want a website, you need to sign up with a hosting service. A hosting service provides the space on the Internet where your website will live.

My website currently resides on a shared server at InMotion. Most people go with shared hosting. It’s generally the least expensive option and perfectly adequate for websites, like mine, that don’t experience heavy traffic. If your website gets a lot of hits every day, with an occasional spike or two, a VPS (Virtual Private Server) would be a better choice. Dedicated servers are for the uber popular sites where everybody is trying to access something on the site at the same time.

Here’s an easy-to-understand breakdown, prepared by InMotion, explaining the differences between these three types of hosting:

My Current-Menu-Item

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I’m not especially fond of breadcrumbs. I have nothing against them personally and have no problem when people choose to use them, but for my own personal websites I prefer to have highlighted menu items indicating where on the website people are. My websites are small, and the hierarchy only goes so deep. Every page points to a menu item. So it makes perfect sense to me that the menu item a page points to should be highlighted in some way when you’re on that page.

On this site I chose to go with something quirky and fun. Not only did I want the text to change from black-to-red, but I wanted a little strawberry to appear above the menu item. It doesn’t matter which page or sub-page or category you go to on my site, the menu item comes up highlighted with red text and that quirky little strawberry.

Adding a current-menu-item class for the primary menu was easy. Mine looks like this:

.nav-primary .current-menu-ancestor a,
.nav-primary .current-page-ancestor a, 
.nav-primary .current_page_item a {
	background: url(images/float.png) top center no-repeat; 
	color: #b90000;
	}

NOTE: My site does not use current-menu-item; instead, it uses current-page-item.

Because the above CSS also added the quirky little strawberry and text color change to the sub-menu items, which I did not want, I had to include the following:

.sub-menu .current-page-ancestor a, 
.sub-menu .menu-item a {
	background: none;
	}

So far, so good. The only thing left were the posts.

Normally, adding classes to the CSS or code to functions.php does the trick. This time, however, no matter what I tried, I could not get posts to point to the correct menu item.

Finally, I found a way. Here’s what ~~I did~~ you can try:

Install the Genesis Simple Hooks plugin by Nathan Rice.
Activate the plugin.

Go to Genesis >> Simple Hooks (on your Dashboard menu) and add something like this to the wp_head hook:


<?php if ( is_single() && in_category( 'blog' ) ) { ?>
    <style type="text/css">
        .nav-primary #menu-item-1306 {
            background: url(https://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/image.png) top center no-repeat;
        }
        .nav-primary #menu-item-1306 a {
            color: #b90000;
        }
    </style>
<?php }

Change the code in red to (1) the category your post is in, (2) the ID for the menu item you want to highlight (view source code to find out what it is), and (3) the image file you want to use for the background.
Check the little box to execute PHP on the hook
Save. That’s it!

There are two categories on this website that feature posts. Here’s what my full code in Genesis Simple Hooks looks like.

Favicon Fever

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Just about every website has a favicon. If your browser supports tabbed document interface, like mine does, you can find the favicon in the tabs next to the web page name.

favicon in tab — Favicon for Sweet Solutions is a strawberry

How to create a favicon

Favicons are typically 16×16 pixels. They are created using favicon generators, like the one at Dynamic Drive. It’s an easy process—anyone can do it.

Choose a logo or other image that relates to your website. It’s important that the image you choose is easily identifiable when reduced in size to 16×16 pixels. Supported file formats are: gif, jpg, png, and bmp. If you require a transparency, a transparent gif or png file should be used. Take care not to violate copyrights by using a trademark or other copyrighted image.
Upload the image to the favicon generator.
Click the button to generate the icon, and save it to your hard drive.
The favicon is now ready to upload to your website.

For more information on favicons, and a bit of inspiration, see:

Wikipedia—Favicons
W3C—How To Add a Favicon to Your Website
Favicon Generator and Gallery

Elvis Has Left the Building

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Recently, I changed hosting services. I had been with my previous host, who shall remain nameless, since 2002. During that time, I had no issues and was completely satisfied with the service.

It’s easy to be satisfied when there are no issues. I mind my own business and rarely, if ever, contact my host for any reason. So I had no reason to complain and could never understand why others trashed the customer support at this particular hosting service as being near non-existent, slow to respond, apathetic, lackluster, and rather rude.

That May, things changed. Suddenly, I started having all sorts of problems. My website became sluggish, slow-to-load, and unresponsive. Every time I tried to make updates, I was kicked out of WordPress with error messages saying my connection was lost. Other sporadic messages said that WordPress could no longer establish a secure connection because my server was not configured correctly. I was getting server errors left and right. More than once I could not log in because my username/password were not being recognized. Several times I could not access my site at all because, I was told, my own IP address had been blocked by my server’s firewall. It was a hot mess.

This went on all summer—it was one thing after the other. I contacted tech support repeatedly looking for answers. It took them forever to respond. First, they blamed WordPress. Then, they told me that the OpenSSL version 1.x I needed for WordPress requires CentOS 6 and up and, unfortunately, the server I was hosted on was still using CentOS 5 . . . as if this was somehow my fault. I felt a definite disconnect. Their responses were oftentimes generic, not addressing my specific issues at all. The final blow came when they announced that brute force attacks on my website as well as a lot of hits from some bad Bots and IP addresses were causing spikes on their shared server. They wanted me to fix it.

I don’t know anything about brute force attacks or how to stop them. I’m a web designer. I rely on my host to keep its servers updated and secure. If there are security or other issues with my website, I expect my host to be readily available and willing to put some effort into helping me resolve the problem(s).

In retrospect, I believe the sudden issues I experienced were directly related to the shared server my site was on. At the same time I was having problems, my host was in the process of upgrading its servers from CentOS 5 to CentOS 6, and the final portion of that upgrade was with the carriers that provided the connectivity at my data center. There may have been too many people on the shared server, or my host may have arbitrarily reduced CPU limits for its customers. Whatever. Whatever my host was (or was not) doing during that server upgrade was having a definite negative impact on my website.

All I have left to say is . . . for 13 years of good service . . . thank you, thank you very much. Bye bye.

Three Techniques to Improve Your Marketing

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Visitors to a website or blog come from all over the world. This is a great way to connect the dots between distances. But what happens if they come and go without so much as a click on that newsletter form that pops up begging them to join? It always attracted people before. Now, not so much.

Trends change. Marketing tactics become less effective, and opt-in forms may not have the same positive results they once had. It’s time to upgrade your marketing techniques and UX.

UX (User Experience) encompasses the interaction people have with your company, services, and products when visiting your website. You want them to be engaged. You want them to have a positive experience. You want them to always find something new and interesting that will keep them clicking.

Focus on experimenting like crazy to figure out the most effective things right now and to stay ahead of the curve. —Spence Lanoue, UserTesting

UserTesting has come out with an excellent little pamphlet that explains the lead generation techniques for high conversions and great UX and offers three techniques you won’t want to miss:

Technique #1: The Content Upgrade
Technique #2: The Social Squeeze Page
Technique #3: The Feature Box

Download Your Copy

Google Algorithm Update

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Beginning April 21, Google is activating a new algorithm that will negatively affect the search ranking of websites that are not mobile-friendly. For me, that means any sites designed before there was such a thing as mobile responsiveness will have to be redesigned.

Google has an explanation of what Responsive Web Design is, but because it’s written for developers, it’s easy to zone out trying to comprehend what Google is trying to say.

Simply put, websites now need to be user-friendly on all screen sizes and mobile devices, including smartphones.

Website elements must fill the screen without horizontal scrolling
Text must be readable without requiring you to zoom in
There must be adequate space around buttons and links for easy navigation

Any kind of online update is usually a drag. This one puts pressure on me to update client websites that are not necessarily broken, and it’s a pain for clients who don’t want to take on the expense of a site redesign.

Don’t get me wrong. Websites should be redesigned every 2-3 years, and redesigning an older site to make it mobile responsive is the way to go. Now, more than ever, people are using laptops, tablets, and smartphones to surf the Internet. You want them to be able to visit your website without any issues.

But don’t panic. Just because Google is making this change, it doesn’t mean that they or other search engines won’t pick up your website. They will. And it doesn’t mean your site won’t appear on smartphones. It will. It just means your site won’t look as good on smaller devices and you might find yourself lower in the search rankings than you are now.

No pressure. No pain. Redesign when you’re ready. I just want you to know what’s happening, so that you don’t read it elsewhere and wonder why I didn’t say anything.

Where Does Your Website Live?

My Current-Menu-Item

Favicon Fever

How to create a favicon

Elvis Has Left the Building

Three Techniques to Improve Your Marketing

Google Algorithm Update

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Cool • Creative • Inspiring

How to create a favicon

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