Vanessa Wood CT Freelance Web Designer
Happy New Year! How can I tell it’s a new year? Oh, there are several hints–one hint is all all the productivity videos that start to show up in my YouTube feed.
Continue reading “Scheduling Blog Posts: Borrowing from Bullet Journals”
Does design ever stop you in your tracks? You know, like the sleek Italian leather sofa in a store window. Maybe the decor of a new restaurant? How about the reverse?— does bad design cause you to turn your head to stare?
Continue reading “Good Design: Branding 101”
A2 Hosting’s latest e-newsletter contains an important article titled What Is Mixed Content & How To Fix It. It makes several points that every WordPress user should be aware of. You know how you get a warning screen now when you try to view a HTTP website? Well, it’s going to get worse. Starting this month the next releases of Chrome will block Mixed Content.
Mixed Content is defined as a browser (like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) loading both HTTP and HTTPS content. You may have a SSL certificate and a site that displays as HTTPS in a browser bar, so where does this HTTP come from? The simple answer is LINKS. If you’ve linked to pages within your own site that used to begin with HTTP or other websites that begin with HTTP.
Yes. To restate the problem…. Even if your site is HTTPS, it it displays HTTP content (website links, even old YouTube links, etc.) the browsers may block pages on your site.
Pinpointing HTTP links in your site is a reminder to do a periodic check for broken links. You’d be surprised where broken links come from! A great example is President Thomas Jefferson on the White House website. It’s a dead link (page that no longer exists). Jefferson hasn’t been purged, but each administration has the prerogative of changing websites and the current administration did that, Jefferson is still there but on a new page and in a new layer of page structure on the site.
There are several options as how to handle these dead links.
The simplist method is to search Posts and Pages for “HTTP:” to see where it is used in links and text.
There are also two types of plugins for WordPress that are valuable. The first is the Broken Links Checker. It’s in use by at least 700,000 WordPress users. It shows broken links, gives you the opportunity to change links in the plugin dashboard, and can even provide a link to the Wayback Machine. If you don’t enjoy changing links one by one (even in a plugin dashboard) you can resort to a find and replace plug that will seek out HTTP: files and change them to HTTPS:. This method must be done with extreme caution and while it changes a large number of site links in one click it DOES NOT identify if broken links so you may solve your HTTP to HTTPS problem but not fix dead links.
It’s not enough to have a shopping cart on your website. The next step to increasing sales is to showcase your products in photos on Instagram. The first move to linking your Instagram account to sales on your website is to make it a professional account.
Follow these simple steps.
Once these steps are completed you’ll see a message that you have more tools. That means that once your website’s shop is connected to a Facebook catalog you can then start to tag products in the photos you post on Instagram. LET THE SELLING BEGIN!