Nov 14

Save on Web Hosting with GreenGeeks

Web Hosting Black Friday Deal for Small Business

Disclosure: This post contains an endorsement for products and/or services, which means when you click on a link, I may receive a commission or some other bonus. However, all the products and services I recommend are personally handpicked by me and I use them daily and/or recommend them to my clients regularly.

It’s that time of year when Black Friday deals abound! As many of you know, I’m a huge advocate for using a reliable web host, and my go-to choice for a long time now has been GreenGeeks (remember my rave review?). Here’s a refresher on why I ♥ GreenGeeks:

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May 21

Outdated SQL Server Warning and Why GreenGeeks Rocks

Outdated SQL Server Warning and Why GreenGeeks Rocks

Disclosure: This post contains an endorsement for products and/or services, which means when you click on a link, I may receive a commission or some other bonus. However, all the products and services I recommend are personally handpicked by me and I use them daily and/or recommend them to my clients regularly.
 
You may or may not have noticed that since WordPress 5.2 – released in 2019 – Site Health has been an included feature of WordPress by default. The tool monitors a site’s health and alerts users to potential issues and suggests improvements. One of the alerts I seem to be seeing quite a bit lately is ‘Outdated SQL Server’. Site Health goes on to explain, “The SQL server is a required piece of software for the database WordPress uses to store all your site’s content and settings. For optimal performance and security reasons, you should consider running MySQL version 8.0 or higher. Contact your web hosting company to correct this.”

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Mar 28

Fake Google Reviews: What You Need to Know

Fake Google Reviews: What You Need to Know

I’m a long-time reader of the business insights articles a results-driven online marketing agency sends me excerpts from via email. Today, I clicked through to read the full content of an article about fake Google reviews. The article was an informative, easy read. I enjoyed it most of the way through, but toward the end discovered a suggestion that concerned me. The article advised its readers to offer incentives like discounts or coupons to their customers in exchange for their reviews. This is actually not allowed by Google.

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Sep 01

Stuff I Like: SiteGuru

Product Review: SiteGuru SEO ToolBack in 2018, I happened upon an awesome deal for an SEO tool from DealFuel (known as Greedeals at the time). Because I thought it would assist me in helping  my clients get a head start on their SEO, I jumped on it. While I’m by no means an ‘expert’ in SEO,  I believe it’s important for me to have a solid understanding of the basics. As a web designer, it’s vital to include foundational SEO for any website I build. After all, I can build the most unbelievable website in terms of design and functionality. But if no one finds it through search, what’s the point, amiright?

Just one of the many things I love about SiteGuru is that the product is always evolving; they’re always looking for ways to improve the service. Other terrific features include:

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Aug 22

Cushion the Blow of a Facebook Hack

Hacked on Facebook Help

The only surefire way to NEVER have your Facebook account hacked is to not have a Facebook account. But there are some preventive measures you can take, as well as procedures you can have in place to help cushion the blow if it does happen to you. [Updated 11/17/21 to include information on adding Trusted Contacts to your account.]

Protect Yourself from Facebook Hacks (to a degree)

Use a secure password. You’d think this was a no-brainer. But I still have people coming to me for help who’ve been hacked and when I ask for their most recent password (it’s a recovery step which I cover in the second half of this post), it’s something like ‘skipper123’. Wanna know how secure your password really is? Head on over to experte.com and find out! The tool there will estimate how many years it would take a computer to crack your password AND tell you if the password you entered has been compromised by a data leak or hacker attack. My Facebook password would take 34,000 years to be hacked. I should be safe. 😉 Continue reading