Author: gnbadmin

How Do People “Really” See Your Website?

You want visitors to your website to get the best experience, right?

One of the primary things you need to consider is what your site looks like in the visitor’s browser.  If you think this doesn’t matter you are sadly mistaken since different browsers can display all or part of your website differently.


Now, to be perfectly honest, there is not a whole lot you can do to assure that your site looks the way you expect it to for every visitor BUT, you can dramatically increase the odds in your favor.


Think of it this way… If you were selling a product and through your experience and marketing research you found that two-thirds of the people who actually bought your product were wearing polarized sunglasses, wouldn’t it make sense to put on a pair of polarized sunglasses to see what exactly those buyers were seeing?


The same general principle applies to your website.  Are you aware that over 2/3 of all website visitors are using Google Chrome for their web browser?  Only about 14% use Safari, 7% use Internet Explorer and just over 6% use Firefox.


That means that, on the average, two-thirds of the visitors to your website will be seeing it a Google Chrome! This should clearly tell you that designing for your site to look it’s best in Chrome is the wise thing to do.


When we design a website for a GraceNet client, we give heavy weighting to how it displays in Chrome and Safari because that covers about 75 of all visitors. Of course, we want it to look good in IE and FireFox as well but those browsers continually have issues displaying the most current coding.


The brilliant folks over at TechAdvisor.com made up this great little graphic:


So, what should you be doing to provide the best user experience for your website visitors?  We strongly recommend you check how it appears in Chrome and Safari to be sure that the majority of your visitors actually see what you want them to.


All the best,
The GraceNet

• Keep Them Out – They Want To Hurt You!

This is what is happening at the login screen of your website!

Sadly, it is naive to think hackers are not interested in your website. They don’t care what is on your site… they want to covertly use it for their enrichment.

But, Why Would Anyone Want To Hack My Site?

The truth is that hackers rarely care about what content is on your site. They don’t typically want to destroy it, they want to USE it… without your knowledge, if possible.

Those old style hackers who wanted to delete your website and put up a “You’ve Been Hacked” page are now very few and far between.

There’s A New Enemy In Town!

Nowadays it is far more likely that a hacker wants to quietly access your site so he or she can insert hidden code that can redirect your visitors to a dangerous place.  A place where people’s financial and/or personal information can be compromised.

Sometimes they add code to your pages that will try to download and install a virus onto a visitor’s computer that can send the hacker and the email addresses, passwords and more that are stored on that device.

Other hackers want to earn money by redirecting people to porn or betting sites. You may ask, who would fall for that?  Loads of people. Every single day.

So, What’s It To ME?

If your website is accessed by these criminals, you run a very high risk of being blacklisted on search engines and even blocked in web browsers,  It is a horrible image to present and can take days or even weeks to recover your site and even longer (if ever) to regain visitor trust.

You NEVER want your visitors to see something like this:

Bad Software Warning

What Should I Do To Protect Myself?

  1. Immediately change any login passwords (including email) to “HARD” passwords.  Stop complaining about remembering them and just do it.  If you want a solution to the remembering problem look at password storage systems like 1Password. Problem solved.
  2. Make absolutely sure your website is using up to date coding.  That means that if you are using software like WordPress or Joomla, it is the most current version available.  If your site uses any .php pages you need to assure the php coding is good.  You may need the help of a php expert on this.
  3. Use good Anti-Malware protection for your website like our GraceNet Anti-Malware System that monitors your site 24 hours a day and initiates immediate action if an intrusion is found.  You can read about it HERE.
  4. Install a good AntiVirus program on your own computer(s) that can alert you if an intrusion makes it to your device and can eliminate the threat.  There are some very good ones from McAfee, AVG etc.  Here’s a link to a good list.

There’s a lot more you can do to protect your website and personal computers from attacks but, if you act on the 4 above, you will be doing better than 99% of all website owners.

Here’s to happy and safe hosting.

• It’s All “About” You!!

All AboutDid you know the second most viewed page on a website is typically the “About” page??

That’s right! Whether your website is a business, personal, church or ministry site, people seem to want to know “About” it.

This should be a real eye-opener for you.  Many websites offer a really nice and well designed home page but tend to give much less attention to the “About” or “About Us” page… Even Though It Is The Second Most Viewed Page!!

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• A Common Email Disaster To Avoid

Imap Or POPDo you check your email on more than one device?

Maybe you use a desktop at the office and a laptop or tablet at home?  How about on your phone so you can get email wherever you are?

 

This is NOT a technical post, it’s a “practical” one that can save you a whole lot of trouble and it’s SO very easy to understand and follow the suggestion.

Whenever you setup ANY email software you MUST be very sure that any and all devices used to check a specific email account are either POP or iMap!  If you mix these email protocols you are asking for trouble like lost email and mail that appears on one device but not any others.  This can be a huge pain in the neck for you so just assure ALL devices are set to use the same protocol for each email account.

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• Coming Soon ~ Super Press

Dear GraceNet Family:

We have heard your requests and are very excited to announce our upcoming GraceNet “Super Press” Plan. Need an easy to use and extremely versatile website creation & management tool?  Here It Is!!

18%With WordPress soaring in popularity to now manage about 18% of the world’s websites, it has become the premier content manager on the internet. The GraceNet has offered WordPress for years and we know many of you are already using it but we are finding that a huge percentage of our new clients want to use WordPress to create and manage their websites.

Our incredible tech staff has developed a very special plan with powerful features just for those of you who either are now or intend to take advantage of this amazing website management tool.

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• How To Deal With Spam ~ Part 1

Stop SpamDid you know that about 90% of all email is spam?  Yep, nine out of every ten emails sent in the world are junk mail so it’s really no wonder it can overwhelm your inbox and annoy you every single day.

To give you an idea of the problem spam can create, our mail servers here at The GraceNet have internal filters that block well over one million spam emails every day… per mail server… and that number continues to increase.

Even though mail servers can block that many junk emails, a huge amount still get past the filters and into your inbox  because spammers are continually finding ways to trick these server-side anti-spam systems.

Lots Of Spam

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