ABQweb Blog (ABQweBlog?)

The computer revolution seems to have come to a fork in the road. On the one hand, we’ve got multiple screens and higher resolutions. On the other hand, we’ve got netbooks and smartphones. More often than not, both hands belong to the same person! What to do, what to do?

A long time ago in a galaxy far away (apologies to George Lucas), we had to worry about whether people were viewing web sites in VGA (640×480) or SVGA (800×600) resolution.  From there, it was a pretty straight line to high speed connections and high resolution displays.

Until recently.

Now, we are just as likely (more likely?) to view web sites using our smaller screens as we are to view them using our larger ones. As a web designer, this creates a major problem – do we build sites for high res screens and live with the results on small ones or do we build sites for low res screens and live with the results on big ones?

Yes.

Some take the first road, some the second, but very few travel on both.

I try to build sites that look acceptable on a wide variety of displays. I take my queues from my clients, but I also try to educate them on the positives and negatives of their choices. Usually, I think we reach a happy medium.

You can see it in most of the sites in my client gallery (www.abqweb.net/abq-gallery.htm). As you change the size of your browser window, the site automatically adjusts. Get really small and you may have to scroll left to right, but usually you won’t. Get really large and you may see wide margins, but you’ll probably just be able to view the page with less scrolling.

If you want your site to look good on netbooks and smartphones, use a short header so your visitors can see the opening text on your page. Use more words and less graphics so that each page loads more quickly. Don’t start audio and video clips automatically.

Of course, most of these techniques will also make your site look better to everyone who visits, whatever type of display they are using. And that’s the most important thing to remember – your goal should be to give your visitor the best experience possible.

Easy to say, hard to do, but worth the effort.

One of the biggest problems we face is dealing with the daily deluge of email messages. Some of these messages are obviously from spammers, phishers and other “bad guys,” but many of them are from people we know (or at least they “look legitimate”). After many years in the computer industry, I’ve become a real skeptic and I’d like to share a few tips that I think can help you avoid some common problems. Here are my four basic email rules for messages that have links or attachments:

1. If you don’t know who sent it, don’t follow links or open attachments – just hit DELETE. I know, this is pretty obvious, but you’d be amazed at how often I hear from someone who “forgot” about this rule.

2. If it seems to be from someone you know, but the message is really generic – just hit DELETE. “Here is the file we discussed” sounds official, but have you ever really sent someone a message with only that text and nothing else? No greeting, no salutation, no “how’s the kids?” The only time I have EVER violated this is when I’m actually on the phone with someone and I send them a message while we are talking, then wait to make sure they receive it while we are still on the phone!

3. If it seems to be from someone you know but you weren’t expecting it – VERIFY it before clicking any links or opening any attachments. Send a message back to them (but type their address in manually) or call them on the phone and make sure this is really something they sent to you. If something is really time sensitive, chances are you already knew about it before the message arrived (see Rule #4 below). If it isn’t time sensitive, the delay while you verify it won’t matter.

4. If it seems to be from someone you know, it is personalized, and you were expecting it, GO FOR IT! To me, you’ve taken every reasonable precaution and it is probably exactly what it seems to be.

Of course, none of these rules will matter if you aren’t protected with an up-to-date browser and good anti-virus software. The “bad guys” are getting smarter all the time and will probably find a way to get around even these precautions.

But for now, at least, if you follow these rules, you will be much less likely to follow the wrong link or open the wrong attachment. If this works for you (or even if it doesn’t), please let me know.

Copyright 2009 ABQweb, a division of L&S Marketing, Inc. Feel free to link to this post, but you can’t use all or part of this content without permission.

As a web designer, web host and businessperson, I have A LOT of email addresses. I have EVEN MORE web pages that list one or more of my email addresses, including domain registries that list me as the owner of dozens of domain names. Lately, I’ve been wondering if there’s any way to protect my addresses from spammers, scammers, and robots.

I already encode the email addresses on the sites I create, which is SUPPOSED to stop the robots. I’ve even taught some of my customers how to do it, although I’m not sure how much good it does if you try to change it after posting pages with “mailto” in them. Once the spammers have you, they definitely don’t let go.

I also use a version of “formmail” on the sites I host that encodes the “recipient” field so  it doesn’t contain an email address. Of course, some spammers just try to “break” the forms by submitting them hundreds of times with garbage information. Not fun, but if it doesn’t break, I can almost live with that.

In some extreme cases, I’ve encoded the actual header for the form so the word “formmail” doesn’t even appear on any pages. It also seems to help, but the downside is that it becomes more difficult to identify (and update) pages with forms. Nothing is easy.

Finally, I’ve signed up many of my addresses (and quite a few of my customers’ addresses) to run through Postini for additional spam filtering. When I first signed up for Postini, I saw an amazing decrease in the number of spams I received. Instead of seeing 2000+ messages every Monday morning, I only saw 100. No wonder Google bought them!

I’ve been doing this for over 10 years and it seemed to be working pretty well, but something has changed in the past six months or so. Postini is grabbing thousands of messages every few days and hundreds are getting through each day. The “froms” are random, the subjects change slightly with every message, and no spam “campaign” seems to last more than a few days.

Just when Postini seems to learn how to stop it, it changes. White lists are practically worthless, as messages appear to come from people you know or even from yourself! I’ve stopped adding people to my white lists because it just means that all the spam pretending to be from them gets through automatically.

Is there anything that can be done short of changing your email address every month or two? I’m finding it hard to be optimistic, but I’m open to suggestions. If you’ve tried something and it’s working, let me (and everyone else who reads this blog) know about it. The spammers are working hard to beat us, but maybe we can work together to beat them. At least I hope so.

It’s been a few months since I decided to experiment with this blog and I must admit I’m a little surprised with the results so far.

I haven’t really publicized this portion of my website, choosing instead to see if anyone finds it, reads it, and comments on it. My oldest son, who is definitely connected 24/7, doesn’t think anyone will find this as I haven’t posted it on one of the free blogging sites like “blogspot.”

Based on what has happened so far, I’m not sure. I’ve received almost 50 “comments” on my previous postings, but you’ll notice that only one of them is actually visible. The rest have been spam. Some are simple comments designed to create links to the writer’s web site, while others are virtually identical to messages I receive via email.

I’m going to keep posting occasionally and keep track of whether the comment mix changes, but it makes me wonder if having a blog isn’t just another way to set yourself up for spam. I hope not, but I’m definitely going to keep requiring approval for comments to make sure nothing inappropriate ends up on the site.

Thanks for reading.

In a recent issue of the Albuquerque Journal, there was an article about a dispute between a web designer and a business over who owns the design and content of the web site that the designer created for the business. The court ruled that the site belonged to the DESIGNER absent any written contract stating otherwise.

While I’m a big fan of the legal process, I think they got this one wrong. As a designer, writer, programmer and PR professional, I think it’s simple – YOU pay ME, so it belongs to you.

Of course, if you DON’T pay me, you aren’t entitled to anything. Refuse to pay your hosting bill, your web site (and email) will disappear. Refuse to pay your web design bill, all your pages will be removed and replaced with a “coming soon” banner. Pay your bill, it all comes back.

So, to all my customers who have asked if we need to have a contract now, I say “relax…if you pay for it, you own it.”

The Journal article also talked about who should register and renew your domain name and implied that you have to be careful about shady web designers and hosting companies who register your domains under their names. While I admit that there are people and companies like that, this is my standard practice for a number of reasons:

1. For new domains, the annual domain registration fee is bundled with the hosting package and is provided at no extra charge.
2. Many customers don’t want to be bothered renewing their own domain names each year, and if they forget, it becomes my problem.
3. It is a lot easier to manage a large number of domains in a single account than to create a separate account for each hosting customer.
4. By managing the process for my customers, there is only one username/password to remember.

If my customers already have the domain registered and want to continue managing it themselves, that’s perfectly fine. And, I have NEVER refused to turn over a domain to my customer or another web designer or host if the account is current.

To be prudent, you may want to have a discussion with your web design and web hosting company and see where they stand on this issue. If you work with us, you already know where you stand. If you don’t and you’re not happy with the answers you receive, feel free to give us a call (or at least give somebody a call who will protect YOUR rights to your domain name and your web content).

It seems like everyone has a blog these days, but SHOULD THEY?

An easy question to ask, but not necessarily easy to answer. In order to help me make up my mind, I thought I would join the list of people with blogs. This way, I can understand more about how they work and what they can do, which will allow me to better guide my friends, colleagues, and clients.

The first decision, of course, is what to write about. I’m open to suggestions, so contact me if you have any.

Let the journey begin.