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4 Tips for Setting Secure Passwords

Late last week DreamHost was hacked and the call to change passwords for user accounts went out quickly. I don't personally know anyone who had any issues with the security problem, but nevertheless, it's a scary situation to be confronted with.

A lot of times, due to the overwhelming number of passwords you have to remember, people will choose easy-to-remember passwords, and/or repeat the same passwords over multiple sites.

There are a few ways to generate passwords that are secure and there are tools to help you do this. Here, we're going to cover a few basics for selecting a secure password.

New Site Launched! Mountainbelle.com

I've had the great pleasure of working with my friend Justin Lukasavige on several projects and we recently completed a new website - mountainbelle.com. This is a Wordpress site that we built using the Standard Wordpress Theme and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what we wanted to do with colors, fonts and themes and after a few revisions we found something that would work perfectly. The goal was to create an atmosphere that was fun, colorful and whimsical.

Mountainbelle.com is what used to be the old lukasavige.com website. Christine posts all the time, and she'd grown tired of the old and less-fun site that was pretty much black and white. She called it "Blah. Drab. Boo."

I'm glad that's she's pleased with this one!

The Newly Redesigned Orracle Media Site is Here

Finally - after months of working on this site a little here and there it's finally done! Really - it's done! Everything has been revamped and it's got a lot of new stuff. There are a few changes from the previous version to make note of and a couple other changes to know about.

All of the content from MyWebsiteWorkshop.com is now over here at the new Orracle Media site. I figured instead of having two different sites doing many of the same things that it would be best to merge the two and consolidate them over here.

Premium Wordpress Themes - Which One You Should Choose & Why

So you're looking at premium Wordpress themes and wondering which one to use? Wordpress has a lot of different options when it comes to 3rd part premium themes and I get a lot of questions about Wordpress themes and which to choose.

The 5 W's and one H of Web Design

Who

Who are your visitors going to be? Figuring out who will be visiting your site is key as this will help you plan out your content. Who is your target audience? Can you use it for customer service to take better care of your existing customers?

Who is going to develop it? Are you going to do it in-house? Are you going to hire a developer? This is important. There are varying opinions on this, but I'm of the opinion that if it's going to be representing you to the entire world, it needs to be done right and working with a professional is never a bad idea. A competent professional can help guide you through the different phases of getting your site done right. If you're not sure of your ability - or those within your organization - to build it correctly get some help.

Four Tips For Using MindMeister to Plan Your Website

If you're not using MindMeister then by the time you finish reading this post I hope you'll go over and give it a shot. This is probably one of the best tools I've come across that helps you associate abstract concepts together when planning. I'm currently using MindMeister to plan several large client sites in addition to using it to help me map out my business.

I've talked a lot about planning your website in previous posts and this is the perfect tool for visual learners to get their ideas on virtual paper and see how things fit together. To get a good idea of how this looks take a look at this public map that was created about Google +.

WordPress Website Installation and Setup Service

Sorry that I missed the podcast yesterday, but I can assure you it was for a good reason. I've got a couple new projects that are reaching launch stage and I wanted to tell you about my newest service that's ready to go.

The first one that I would like to announce is a new service for Wordpress that I've been working on and planning for quite some time now. It's called the "Wordpress Installation and Setup Service"! Okay, so it's not really most exciting name ever, but it's exactly what this service does - get you a Wordpress site set up and installed and up and running FOR you - it's fast and secure and done correctly according to Wordpress' recommended installation guidelines.

An Absolute Essential for Your Website

One of the things that can make a huge difference in the quality of your website is having high quality photos and images featured throughout. Sites with low-quality, pixelated, or just poorly shot images just don't look good. And it's not just me who thinks that way, it's all those visitors who are bouncing off your website too.

Load times are always going to be a concern for your website and its pages, but the proliferation of broadband high speed internet connections tend to marginalize this issue (but don't ignore it!). You can get high quality images to load quickly and look great at the same time.

However, getting good, quality images, isn't very hard to do. No - you don't go and search through Google Images and grab what you want. That's the wrong way to do it, and it can get you in a lot of hot water so resist the temptation. But there are several ways that you can get quality images for your site that are legal, ethical and perfectly okay.

Get the MyWebsiteWorkshop.com Podcast on iTunes!

I'm very excited to announce that the MyWebsiteWorkshop.com podcast is now available on iTunes!

I launched this podcast a couple months back, but waited to submit it to iTunes so that I would have a few episodes already recorded and in the books. Now, after getting all the right pieces put together to submit my podcast feed, (there will be a blog post about that next week) it's now available for download via iTunes.

I know it may still a bit rough around the edges as I work to make it better, but it's a work in progress. No one knows everything, and I'm learning a ton about how to make the show better (I'll have a post about upcoming features soon too). So please subscribe on iTunes, check it out and let me know what you think. I'm already thinking about changing the music and adding a voice-over to the introduction, but like I said, it's a work in progress.

I've recently started collecting questions for the podcast too. If you've got a question about anything web-related please let me know and I'll answer it on the show.

Don't Wait Until Your Update Crashes to Learn About Backing up Your Site

If you’ve ever had an update go wrong, you know the importance of having a solid back-up plan for your website. If you haven’t then count your blessings. However, if you don't have a back-up plan in place for your site files and your database you could be in a lot of trouble should something go wrong with your update.

It doesn’t matter what content management system you use. They all have periodic updates that need to be done - whether it’s updating to the latest release to get additional features, or it’s a much needed security update. Modules and plugins have updates too and they also need to be updated.

Unless you want to spend many hours sifting through the wreckage of what was once your site trying to put the pieces back together you need to have a good plan for backing up your site’s files and database.

Here are a couple ways to build your back-up plan.

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