Award-winning web development since 1995
Written: November 22, 2016
Each morning as I start my work routine the first thing that I do is read the Inbox of my email to see which messages require my attention for the day. Today I received two new email scams that at first blush looked almost legitimate.
Domain Abuse Notice
That email subject caught my attention, because the last thing that I want is a web site that is infected by something malicious, so here’s what the entire email looked like:
The English grammar looked OK, however the first clue that this was a phishing scam was their request for me to download something by clicking a link. Any legitimate email would instead be coming from my web hosting provider, and they would have specific details like:
This email is from a domain name called domaincop.net, and when you browse that site something comes up in Arabic letters, so this is not legitimate at all, you may safely delete this particular email.
Email Abuse Report
Ironically this second spam email has almost the identical type of subject line as the first email with a colon and a web site address in it:
The link in the Click Here is for a domain at abusemonitor247.com, which is just another junk content web site. Also notice the international phone number area code. Just like the first email scam notice this one has no customer details:
So the moral of this story is beware of warning email messages that prompt you to click or download a report without any account details. Be smart, be safe.
Tags: email, phishing, scamWritten: November 2, 2016
Most business web sites have a purpose, something that the business wants you to do, like buy a product, make an inquiry, or simply pick up the phone and call them. Miller Insurance has been around since 1886 and when you browse their web site they want you to do a couple of things:
We already had the first item well covered because they have written lots of content to inform. Today we added the phone number and address to the upper-right corner of each web page:
Having a clear “Call to Action” is quite important for most web sites, so ask yourself if your site accomplishes this. If your site doesn’t have a Call to Action, then consider adding one.
Tags: Miller InsuranceWritten: October 9, 2016
My MacBook Pro prompted me to upgrade to the latest OS, now named macOS Sierra, so I said OK and have been playing with the new features today. The installation process took maybe 30 minutes or so, and while that was happening I was able to watch some Netflix series on my iPad.
Siri
Users of iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone have long been able to chat with their devices to ask questions or control apps, so now we have that useful feature on the desktop. I first asked about the weather, but then quickly discovered that I hadn’t setup my location:
Oddly enough the icon for Siri is supposed to be in my Menu Bar, but it isn’t showing up, instead I have to find it in my Dock instead. The hotkey to invoke Siri is “command shift”, however that is already defined to be the Spotlight feature. Oops, Apple duplicated their own hotkey sequences and failed to notice that gaffe.
Universal Clipboard
This nifty feature allows you to copy from one device, say the MacBook Pro, then paste into an iPad. Sadly for me this feature requires that my MacBook Pro be a 2012 or later model, but I’m using the 2011 model so this doesn’t work at all, ugh.
Auto Unlock
This trick requires that you purchase an Apple Watch, then it will unlock your MacBook Pro. I’m not going to buy a watch just to do this task, but I understand how wearables could impact my laptop.
Apple Pay
You can be shopping on your Safari browser on the desktop, click the Apple Pay button, then use your iPhone or Apple Watch to make the payment. Since I own the iPad Air, this doesn’t work, it requires an iPad Air2 device.
Photos
Memories will arrange your photos into collections that are grouped by people, events and location. Worked OK on my MacBook Pro, but I couldn’t find it on my iPad device.
Messages
I can use the Messages app and add fun emoji. Most of my contacts use Facebook Messenger or regular text messaging.
iCloud Drive
Works across all my devices like iPad and MacBook Pro, kind of like Apple’s version of DropBox.
Optimized Storage
Clever feature to move infrequent files from my Mac into iCloud, leaving more space on my Mac. Haven’t tried it, but it does make sense should I run out of space.
Picture in Picture
In iTunes or some web sites on Safari you can start playing a video, then float that video to a corner of your screen while you work on other things. The only streaming that I do is on Netflix, so I haven’t tried this yet.
Tabs
Apps like Maps can have multiple tabs, just like in a web browser. I’m a Google Maps user, so seldom play with Apple Maps.
Summary
For how I use my MacBook Pro this latest OS is mostly eye-candy, so really won’t change my daily work and entertainment routines. It was free, so thank you Apple
Tags: MacBook Pro, maxOS SierraWritten: October 7, 2016
I got a phone call from Mike Matthews, owner of Measured Marketing Solutions awhile back and he wanted a better way to enter over 1,000 art portfolios into a web site for the Oregon Visual Arts Ecology Project. My first action was to browse the web site and see what it looked like:
It was a WordPress site and they were using a popular commercial Theme called Avada that supported the concept of a Portfolio. Oddly enough there was no way to bulk import a list of Portfolios, so Mike wanted to know if it were possible to use an Excel spreadsheet to define all of the Portfolios, then import them somehow into WordPress. My reply, “Yes, of course that can be coded.”
On the Home page there are several Featured Portfolios on display, so when you click the thumbnail then you get linked to a detailed page like this one:
Notice that on the right-hand side there are clickable links for:
All of this visual, text and link information had to be imported from an Excel file into WordPress and then create a new Portfolio for each line of the spreadsheet. I coded a custom Plugin just for this one task, tested it out, and saved Mike much time from having to manually create over 1,000 portfolios.
Summary
WordPress is a very powerful and extendable Content Management System (CMS) that allows organizations to show the world what they are all about using an intuitive visual medium. WordPress may be customized to do something special with off-the-shelf Themes, saving you valuable time and manual typing effort.
Tags: Avada, WordPress
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