In October 2021, contract forms that were previously sending emails stopped working and return the message “Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact the administrator by another method“. I looked at the Contact Form 7 forum and verified that others were reporting the same issue. If Google’s reCAPTCHA integration was set up the error message appeared. If Google’s reCAPTCHA integration was removed the email was sent. This proved that the form was configured properly and there were no email service issues causing the error.

Unfortunately, the Contact Form 7 forum support was asking people to report all their installed plugins and to go to a default theme, but no progress was being made to correct the issue. I decided to do some deeper investigation.

Contact Form 7 Error Messages

When you edit a Contact Form 7 contact form there are tabs at the top: Form, Mail, Messages, and Additional Settings. Clicking on the Messages tab shows the list of messages that the contact form may return when the form is submitted. By default the message “Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact the administrator by another method” is sent if the Sender’s message failed to send AND if the Submission was referred to as spam. To understand why the error message was being displayed I changed the error message under “Submission was referred to as spam” to “Failed to send your message because it was viewed as spam. Please contact the administrator by another method“. With Google’s reCAPTCHA integration set up, I then filled out the contact form and submitted it. This time I got the error message “Failed to send your message because it was viewed as spam. Please contact the administrator by another method“. So I now knew that my form was being viewed as spam.

Contact Form 7 Spam Logging

Google’s reCAPTCHA integration is one of Contact firm 7’s spam protection modules. When I looked at reCAPTCHA there was no information to understand why the message was being identified as spam. However, I did have the Flamingo plugin installed. Flamingo is a message storage plugin for Contact Form 7. In 2019 Contact Form 7 and Flamingo releases provided spam logging to help identify why a message was being marked as spam.

Flamingo has Address Book and Inbound Messages. Inbound Messages is a list of all of the messages that are submitted. At the top there is Inbox and Spam. Clicking on Spam shows you a list of the messages marked as spam. I clicked on view under my test message and I saw that the Spam log: reCAPTCHA response token is empty.

Normally you would see something similar to Spam log: reCAPTCHA score (0.00) is lower than the threshold (0.50).

Spam log: reCAPTCHA response token is empty

Contact Form 7’s FAQ page lists “Spam log: reCAPTCHA response token is empty.” What does this mean?” and it says, “An empty reCAPTCHA token can happen for several different reasons. One of the common reasons is that reCAPTCHA’s script file is not loaded, or that it is malfunctioning. In most cases this is caused due to the ill-designed theme that is used on the site.“

In my case, I dismissed the ill-designed theme as the cause because I am using a popular and well-designed theme. However, the script file is not loaded was of interest to me. I am using a caching plugin to improve the performance of the website and I had checked “Delay JavaScript Execution”. When I unchecked this and cleared my cache my forms send without an error.

I have shared this information with Contact Form 7 on their forum, and I have asked which JavaScript files should be excluded from Dalying JavaScript Execution so I can still maximize the performance of my website while having my contact forms work.

If this is helpful to you, please let me know. If you have other information that you think will be helpful please share that as well.

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I discussed:

• selecting quality plug-ins
• keeping WordPress and plug-ins updated
• regular scanning of the website for malware
• installation of security defense software on your website
• backing up your website and storing copies of the back-up in a location other than your website server for disaster recovery
• quality website hosting

These steps are still important and Web Image Designs offer WordPress security and maintenance packages that help keep our client’s websites safe.

In this article, I am going to expand my focus to address how to develop a strategic strategy for your business internet assets.

Domain Name and DNS

Two primary internet assets for your business are your domain name and your Domain Name System (DNS).

A domain name is a unique name that is used to access your website on the internet. It usually is somename.com. The part after the “.” is called the top-level domain (TLD). Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) maintains a list of available top-level domains. Your domain name is also generally part of your business email address –  name@domainname.com.

The DNS is the domain name’s directory that tells the internet where to find your domain services such as your email and your website.

You must buy a domain name from a domain registrar. ICANN maintains a list of accredited registrars. ICANN’s list of accredited registrars includes many website host providers; however, I do not recommend buying your domain from the hosting provider where you host your website. If you decide in the future that you want to change website host providers this likely means that you will also need to move your domain name.

I recently had a client who hosted their website at Bluehost, their domain name was registered through Bluehost and their DNS was managed by Bluehost. Due to various performance and support issues with Bluehost, it was decided to move the website to another hosting provider. When the client canceled the Bluehost web hosting account, Bluehost deleted the domain name’s DNS entries. Therefore, when Bluehost deleted the DNS entries the client’s website and email no longer functioned. We learned that Bluehost does not provide DNS services for domains that do not have their website hosted at Bluehost. Therefore, we had to move the DNS to get the website and email functioning.  We ended up transferring the domain name and DNS and closed the Bluehost account.

Godaddy will provide DNS services for Domain Names registered with them even if they do not host your website.  However, if you are hosting your website with Godaddy and then your cancel your web hosting account with Godaddy, they too will delete your DNS settings.  Unlike Bluehost, you can go back to the DNS and re-enter your DNS entries and everything will be fine.

Therefore, if your domain name, DNS, and web hosting are with the same provider be aware that if you move your website and close the web hosting portion of your account, your DNS entries may be deleted. Also, the provider may not support DNS services without hosting your website even though you bought the domain name from them.

How Do I Keep My Domain Name and DNS Secure?

In order to keep your domain name and DNS safe – and avoid the unpleasant scenarios that I described above – I recommend the following:

The business owner should own the account where the domain name is registered.

In 2004 when I first started in the website business it was common place for the web developer to buy the domain name for the client out of their agency account. However, now I recommend that the client be the owner of the account used to register their domain name. The domain name is the identity of your business or organization on the internet. Therefore, it should be treated as an important business asset and be under your control.

Buy your domain from a reputable domain registrar

Godaddy is a good place to purchase your domain name. They are a large corporation and they provide DNS services even if you do not have your website hosted with them. Generally, their support is good.

Be sure to use strong passwords and two-factor authentication on your account. If bad actors access your domain name account, they can take over your domain name. I do not recommend Godaddy’s web hosting services to my clients.

Keep your domain name separate from your other internet services

Keeping your domain name separate from your other internet services helps make sure everything is not down at the same time. If you have your website, domain name, DNS, and email all with one provider and there is a major issue with the provider you may not be able to access any of your services. If you instead have your domain name with Godaddy, DNS with Cloudflare, your email with Google, and your website with WP Engine it is unlikely that all three will be down at the same time.

DNS with redundancy

You cannot purchase a domain name from Cloudflare, but they do provide DNS resolution in data centers across 200+ cities and they boast 100% uptime and the fastest DNS in the world. In addition, Cloudflare has leading-edge security and protection against attacks and they provide CDN services.  I recommend that you purchase your domain name from a reputable domain registrar, such as Godaddy, and change the nameservers to point to Cloudflare. This will allow the domain name’s DNS to be managed at Cloudflare. Learn more about Cloudflare’s DNS and how to update your nameservers to Cloudflare.

In summary, I recommend the following:

• Purchase your domain name from Godaddy
• Google or Microsoft 365 email through Cumulus Global
• Website hosting with WP Engine, SiteGround, or FlyWheel. Web Image Designs provides turn-key hosting services for our clients on these quality hosting services.
• DNS with Cloudflare

If you implement this recommended strategic diversification of your business internet assets and make off-server back-ups of your website you will minimize your vulnerability to attacks and provider disasters.  

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However, not all businesses have been able to adjust and this has lead to job loss and increased hunger. According to Worcester County Food Bank 1 in 12 people, and 1 in 9 Children, in Worcester County do not have enough healthy food to eat. To think that people in our own community are going hungry is heartbreaking. Therefore, as Web Image Designs reflects on our wonderful clients and our good fortune we decided to make a donation to the Worcester County Food Bank in the name of our clients.

94% of all fund donations directly support Worcester County Food Bank’s food distribution and advocacy programs. Every $1 you give enables Worcester County Food Bank to distribute $4 worth of donated food. We encourage others to join us to help fight hunger by donating to your local food bank.

We wish you all safe and happy holidays and we look forward to 2021 with hope and renewed energy and creativity.

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Each year, the North Grafton Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the North Grafton area a great place to live, work and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2020 North Grafton Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the North Grafton Award Program and data provided by third parties.

About North Grafton Award Program

The North Grafton Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the North Grafton area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

The North Grafton Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community’s contributions to the U.S. economy.

SOURCE: North Grafton Award Program
CONTACT: North Grafton Award Program
Email: PublicRelations@companytopselection.org
URL: http://www.companytopselection.org

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WordPress 5.0, known as Gutenberg, is scheduled to be released on December 6, 2018.  Gutenberg is a block editor with the vision to improve the WordPress editing experience. Automattic, the creators of WordPress, decided to make the new editor part of WordPress’ core instead of a plug-in. The current editor, now called the classic editor, will become a plug-in for WordPress 5.0.

Follow these steps when upgrading to WordPress 5.0

• Make a full back-up of your website. This back-up must include all of your files and your database. Download the backup so you can readily access it to restore your website if needed.
• If your hosting solution has a staging area, push your live website to the staging area. If your hosting plan does not have a staging area, this is a perfect time to move to a hosting solution that does have a staging area. Otherwise, it is strongly advised to set-up a testing area for your website.

The next steps should be performed in a staging or testing area:

• Install the classic editor plug-in.
• Upgrade to WordPress 5.0.
• Upgrade ALL plug-ins. WordFence is a security plug-in that should be installed on your website to keep your website secure. Wordfence includes the functionality to scan all of your installed plug-ins and flag any plug-ins that appear to be abandoned, which means they have not been updated within the last 6 months. You should strongly consider replacing plug-ins that are no longer supported both for security and functionality reasons.
• Thoroughly test all WordPress, theme and plug-in functionality. I recommend developing a test plan and making sure that you test and record the outcome of each test aspect. If you chose to move forward with plug-ins that have been flagged as abandoned, you will need to pay special attention to these plug-ins during your testing to make sure that they are not causing issues.
• Once your testing has proved favorable, push the staging site to the live site, assuming that your live site did not have any changes made to it during your testing period. Or, you can repeat all steps on the live website.

When Should you Upgrade to WordPress 5.0

Normally I recommend keeping WordPress upgraded to the latest release, however, in the case of WordPress 5.0, I recommend that you wait 3 to 6 months after the official release date before upgrading. This will allow time for issues to be discovered and resolved and for plug-in and theme vendors to be fully compatible with WordPress 5.0. WordPress will release security updates to 4.9.x, so there is no reason to rush to WordPress 5.0.

However, managed WordPress hosting services may auto-upgrade to WordPress 5.0. Therefore, if your website is on a  managed WordPress hosting service I recommend that you immediately make a full back-up of your live website and complete the upgrade steps outline above. Otherwise your website may become inoperable.

If you need assistance in upgrading to WordPress 5.0 contact Web Image Designs and we will be happy to assist you.

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Five Reasons Why WordPress Is So Popular

1. WordPress is free & open source with a large community for “tips and tricks” and troubleshooting
2. WordPress has a large array of themes and plug-ins to create a unique website with broad functionality
3. WordPress is SEO friendly
4. WordPress is easy to use
5. WordPress is contentiously improving to offer more functionality, improved integration, and better security

There are additional reasons why WordPress is so popular, but the above reasons are important features for selecting a platform on which to develop your website, and why you should use WordPress. However, the downside to this much popularity is that it makes WordPress a target for unscrupulous behavior. Think about it, if your goal is to develop malware to infect websites wouldn’t you set your sights on the most popular platform? This means that even small businesses may find that thier website will become the target of the malware bots.

Does this mean I should not develop my website on WordPress? Go back to my five reasons why WordPress is so popular.

Does this mean that WordPress is insecure? No, not at all. But you need to maintain your website to keep it secure.

Best Practices To Keep WordPress Secure

To reduce your WordPress security concerns, here are several proactive measures you can take to keep your website secure.

Keep Your WordPress Version Up-To-Date

Due to WordPress’s large and active open source community if there is a security issue it gets reported quickly and WordPress is quick to react with a security update. Therefore, it is important to keep your WordPress version upgraded to receive the benefit of the security releases. WordPress will automatically upgrade your dot versions of WordPress (if it has not been turned off in the config file), but it will not automatically upgrade your point versions. Example: WordPress will automatically upgrade 4.9.4 to 4.9.5, but they will not automatically upgrade 4.9.x to 4.10.

Important Note: Before you update WordPress or any of your plugins, make sure that you backup both your website and your database first – just in case something goes wrong during the update, you will have a backup to restore from!

Choose Plug-ins Wisely And Keep Them Upgraded

Research plug-ins before you install them to see what others have to say and make sure that the plug-in is maintained. If the plug-in developer has not issued an update to the plug-in within 6 months, I recommend you do a bit more research. Using a poorly-designed plug-ins or a plug-in that is not maintained, meaning it has not received security updates, is just inviting hackers in the backdoor of your website.

When WordPress has an upgrade you will often see that some of your plug-ins will also have an upgrade. It is important they you upgrade your plug-ins because they may be patching the same security issue as WordPress. Plug-ins may have upgrades outside of a WordPress version upgrades, so it is important that you stay vigilante in keeping your plug-ins upgraded.

You should inventory your plug-ins periodically to make sure that they are still maintained by the developer and that they are providing functionality that you are using. If you are not making use of a plug-in then delete the plug-in. Do not just deactivate the plug-in, delete it. Deactivated plug-ins still can provide a backdoor into your website.

Tighten Up Security Features

• • Turn off comments or limit the length of time users can comment on your posts.
  • Don’t allow open registration.
  • Limit the number of Administrator user accounts on your website to the bare minimum
  • Require Secure passwords
  • Do not allow Admin as a username
  • Make sure that that the correct file permissions are set
  • Remove and block spam comments

Backup Your Website

Backup your website frequently. That way, if your site does get hacked, you can get it up and running again quickly.

Do not just store your backups on your website’s server. Make sure that you have off-site backup storage for disaster recovery. If all of your backups are stored on the server with your website and a disaster strikes the server or your host provider, your website could be lost. If you have backups off-site then that backup can be used to get your website up and running on a new server.

Install Security Defense on Your Website

Install security defense on your website that provides a web application firewall, blocks brute force activity, and blocks intrusion attempts. This type of software can be configured to ban/block activity and IP address.

Scanning Your Website For Trouble Spots

Regular scanning of your website for malware and other security issues can help you find any issues quickly — hopefully, before Google marks your website as having malware. If you find an issue right after it occurred then restoring your website from a backup is an option. However, if you find the issue several months after it occurred, this often mean that restoring from a backup is not a viable option. Scanning can also sometimes alert you to vulnerabilities in your website so corrective action can be taken before you are hacked.

Quality Hosting

Cheap shared hosting is a bad bargain. It makes your website slow, which hurts your ranking in search engines, and it is inherently difficult to secure completely because many different users have access to the same file system. Virtual Private Network hosting often costs more, but your get what you pay for, improved website performance and more security.

Following the above steps will go a long way towards safeguarding your WordPress site. And, I can say with some confidence, if you do NOT follow the above steps it is highly likely that your website will be hacked.

The “Best Practices To Keep WordPress Secure” can be followed by anyone, however, often time business owners find that their time is better spent focusing on their business. If that is the case for you, Web Image Designs offers packages to keep your website secure and up-to-date. If you have any questions we would be happy to discuss which WordPress Security & Maintenance Package is right your you.

photo credit: DeclanTM  License

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Accuracy
Businesses change and evolve, often driven by market demands. Does your website content still accurately reflect all of your products and services? Is your contact information still the same? Have you added recent testimonials? Have you taken down old promotions and added new ones?

Search Engine Visibility
 Search engines like relevant and up-to-date content. If you never (or rarely) update your content, your search engine rank will suffer. Whether you understand the rules of Google’s current ranking algorithms or not, they are in operation. If your website has outdated information or hasn’t been updated recently, it actually hurts your credibility in Google’s eyes. If your competitors have been updating consistently, their websites will begin to appear above yours in search results.

Blogging
One of the easiest ways to update your website content is by posting regularly on your blog. WordPress have blog capabilities that make it easy to setup and maintain a blog. If you’re not already using your blog, ask your web developer to show you how to activate it. Then begin blogging on a regular basis – at least once a month, though once or even twice a week is ideal. Make sure you are using categories to help with optimization of your content and make it easy for visitors to find the content they are interested in reading.

Broken links
Links that go off to another website are vulnerable to breaking because those links are out of your control. Broken links are not only frustrating to the visitor, but also unpopular with Google, so this will hurt your rank. Test any links on your site regularly. Only link to reputable sites, and make sure you set external links to open in a new window so you don’t drive traffic away from your site.

Branding Consistency
If you’ve made changes in the look and feel of other marketing collateral, such as your logo, company colors, tagline, brochures, or business cards, make sure you adjust the same items on your website. It’s important to keep your company brand consistent across all marketing mediums. You’re trying to create an identifiable brand.

Content Management
If you have a CMS and update your website content regularly – good for you! But when was the last time you updated your CMS software itself, including all of your plug-in modules? This is particularly important if there has been a security release of the software, since not updating it could make your website vulnerable to hacking. Also, check from time to time to see if there are any new plug-ins you might want to consider that could benefit your site’s functionality or appeal.

Regular Backups
When was the last time you backed up the content on your website? Always make sure to back up your website content and database before updating the software version. Frequent backups should also be done as part of your regular maintenance plan so you can capture recent content updates. You don’t want to rely on the hosting company alone to have a recent backup of your website should anything go wrong. It is critical that you have off-site backups for disaster recovery.

Search Engine Optimization
SEO is an ongoing and complicated process. As the internet continues to evolve, so do the algorithms and rules used to determine how your website ranks in search results. As Google updates their algorithms, websites can actually be penalized for some practices that use to help their website rank higher. Therefore, it is important to review your website’s SEO practices on a regular basis to make sure you are not being penalized and that you are maintaining your search rank for terms that are important to your business.

While you can’t become an SEO expert overnight, you can view Google Analytics to understand the activity on your website and Google Search Console to look for any issues on your website and ways to improve your SEO so that you not only rank better for your keywords, but you also keep customers on your site longer to generate higher sales. If you don’t have Google Analytics and Google Search Console installed on your site yet, you should do so right away. If you are not reviewing the performance of your website, at least monthly, then you are likely falling behind your competition.

Social Media Links
Social Media is still an excellent way to drive people to your website and to promote your business. If you have blog articles or web pages promoting a new product or service, you should be posting the url on your social media sites to drive people back to your website. Make sure you add your social media icons to your website so visitors know how to connect with you there. Also make it easy for people to share your compelling content with others on their social media accounts.

Competitor Research
Are you checking out what your competitors’ sites look like on a regular basis? What are they blogging about? How are they using social media, and in what ways? What products, services, or specials are they offering? Is there anything their sites offer that yours doesn’t? Use them as a benchmark to determine how you can improve your own site.

Copyright
If you use a copyright date in your footer (or a similar date, such as “Last updated”), make sure you update the date each year.

Taking the time to give these matters some attention can go a long way in helping your website’s ranking in search engines, keeping your website secure, and maintaining a professional appearance. However, business owners often find that they do not have the time to keep up with these important tasks and that is why finding the right website partner is critical. We offer website security and maintenance packages that will keep your website up-to-date and secure. Taking this burden off your plate, and putting it in the hands of a professional, will free up time to focus on growing your business.

The post The Importance of Website Maintenance appeared first on Web Image Designs.

Planning Phase

Goals & Marketing Strategy

The first step to a website project is to define your goals. A website is a critical component of your digital marking strategy, but success cannot be achieved, or measured, without knowing your goals. When your goals are clearly defined your website can be designed to support your goals.

As you are defining your goals you need to think about how you strategy to drive traffic to your website? Organic search only? Google AdWords? Social Media? Email marketing?

Client Persona

You need to develop a persona for your target client. You need to define what they want and need and how you can quickly and easily provide what they need. Your content needs to speak to them. It needs to tell them how you can solve their problem and why you are the best choice for their solution. Too many websites simply tell you what they have to offer, but do not tell the potential client how they are going to help them. You need to engage your client at an emotional level and solve their pain-points.

Competitors

Identify at least three quality competitors. What are they doing well? How can you improve on what they are doing to solve your target client needs?

Design Phase

Branding

Your logo is the cornerstone to your branding. It sets the tone for all of your marketing materials, including your web site. Your website color pallet and font choices may be derived from your logo. Therefore, if your logo needs to be redesigned that needs to be the first step in your design process.

Website Structure

The planning phase work will play a large role in defining your website content (text & Images), pages, page layouts, and your navigation paths. SEO will play a large role in this step. The focus and keywords of each page needs to be clearly defined. The page needs to have clear and meaningful headings with quality content.

Concept Websites

Identify at least three website with design features or functions that you like. This requirement may be met with the competitor websites, but it could be websites in a completely different business sector than your own. You may like some aspects of a website and dislike others aspects. Both type of feedback is helpful. This process is similar to what you would do if you were going to build or renovate a home. You would find inspirational concepts to help you define the must haves and the nice to haves in your design.

Development Phase

Website Build

In this step WordPress will be loaded on a server and themes and templates will be loaded and created to support your design. Pages will be created and designed, navigation will be set-up, widgets will be created, and plug-ins will be added. Text, images and meta tags will be added to your pages. Functionality will be tested. Website performance will be tested and optimized. Website security will be hardened. Old website urls will be mapped to new urls and all needed 301 redirects will be identified. An experienced website developer will follow best practices to make sure that your website is designed properly, optimized, and secure.

Acceptance Phase

The web site is now ready for review and approval. All changes will be completed and a final round of testing is conducted before launch.

Deployment Phase

Once your website is signed off it is ready to go-live.  If the website was developed under a domain name that is different then the domain name that will used when the website is live, then the website will need to be renamed to the live domain name.  Any old urls that are no longer used will need to have 301 redirects to your new urls to preserve search engine page ranking. Your new sitemap.xml will be submitted to the search engines.  Google analytics and web master consoles will be set-up to help monitor the activity. Congratulations!  Your web site is now live!

The post The Web Design Process appeared first on Web Image Designs.

In this post I will focus on describing the steps to make this change. I have used these steps to change a lot of WordPress website from HTTP to HTTPS with success. However, every website is different and you may need to do things differently. If this is helpful, please let me know. If you need to take different steps please share so it can help others.

1. Dedicated IP address

A dedicated IP address is a unique IP addresses for your domain name. For example if you type https://64.233.187.99/ it will take you to https://www.google.com. This is their dedicated IP address that uniquely identifies the domain name google.com. When using HTTPS protocol you need to uniquely identify your domain name so the proper SSL certificate can be severed.

Depending on your hosting account you may need to purchase a dedicated IP address. You will then need to assign the dedicated IP address to your website in your host account and update your domain name’s DNS to point to your dedicated IP address. The timing of these updates is important. Until your DNS is fully propagated some people may still get your old IP address and will not be able to access your website.

2. SSL Certificate

You need to purchase a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate and install it in your host account. A SSL certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates the identity of a website and encrypts information sent to the server using SSL technology. There are many providers and types of SSL certificates available. The key is to make sure that you are purchasing a SSL certificate from a reliable provider and select the type of SSL certificate that best meets your needs.  If you are hosting your website from a quality host provider then it may be easiest to purchase a SSL certificate through them.

Once you purchase the SSL Certificate it is important that you pay close attention to all email messages and follow the instructions carefully to install the SSL certificate correctly.  File any email messages and instructions in a safe place for future reference.

When the SSL certificate is installed properly, you should be able to visit your site at either HTTP or HTTPS and have it come up fine.  But you are far from done, keep reading.

3. Back Up your Website

Do a complete (database and files) and store the back-up in a safe place in case you need to restore the website.

4. Force HTTPS in WordPress Admin

To force HTTPS in the WordPress admin area, put this line in your wp-config.php file at the root of your WordPress install:

define(‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true);

Test that this is working by going to https: followed by //yoursite.com/wp-admin/ or use your custom url login path (be sure to change the HTTP to HTTPS). If that work then continue to the next step. If it does not work remove the line from your wp-config.php file and make sure your SSL certificate is properly installed.

5.Change WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) from HTTP to HTTPS

In your WordPress Admin go to Settings -> General. Change both the WordPress Address URL and the Site Address URL from HTTP to HTTPS. Save Your Changes.

6. Change Your Existing URLS To HTTPS

It is highly likely that you have URLs specified as http://yourdomainname throughout your website. We need to change them to https://yourdomainname in order to avoid mixed content errors (see more on Mixed Content Warnings below).

Install the WordPress Plug-in “Search & Replace” by Inpsyde GmbH. It can be found at: https://wordpress.org/plugins/search-and-replace/

Once the Search & Replace plug-in is installed and activated in your WordPress Admin go to: Tools -> Search & Replace

On the Backup Database tab. Create a backup of your database by clicking “Create SQL File”. Then download the SQL file and store it in a safe place in case you need to restore your data base. Note: in a future step you will create a SQL file that will be used to change the domain name from HTTP to HTTPS. This file will have the same name as the database back-up so it is important that you store the database back-up in a location so you do not confuse the two files.

On the Search & Replace Tab. You will now change all of the domain name urls from http to https.

“search for” enter : http://yourdomainname

“replace with” enter: https://yourdomainname

Click on “Select all tables”

Make sure “Dry Run” is clicked on so you can review your results to make sure that the changes look correct. Once the dry run is finished the dry run details will be displayed above the tabs.

Click on View details. Review the results to make sure the new urls look as you expected. If they do, then close out of the details file and you will go back to the Search & Replace tab.

Now you are ready to create the SQL file to make the database changes.

Click on “Select all tables. You will need to click this on again or you will not get any results.

Click off “Dry Run”

Click on “Export SQL file with changes”. A SQL file that contains the changes will be created. Note: The plug-in will not allow you to change the domain name directly to the database.

Download the SQL file with the database changes. Make sure not to override the SQL file that contains your database back-up.

On the SQL Import tab. Select the SQL file with the changes and click on Import SQL file. Try not to freak out as this can take a bit of time. Once the import completes you will receive a message above the tabs that hopefully says the SQL file was successfully imported. You can also use phpMyAdmin to import the file if you prefer.

Note: I recommend that you remove the Search & Replace plug-in when you are done.

7. Verify Your Website Is Fully HTTPS

While viewing all pages on your website you should see a green lock with the words Secure and https://yourdomainmane in the URL area

If you do not see this, make sure you entered https://yourdomainname and not http:// and try again. Still no green lock – go to step 8.

8. No Green Lock

If you do not have a green lock then you most likely will have a circle with an i in the middle – info icon. This means that you are not fully HTTPS yet. You will need to fix the URLs that are not HTTPS.

If you are using Chrome as your browser click on the info icon and then click on the details. You will most likely see “mixed content” and “blocked” information. The information detail will tell you which page on your website was trying to load an insecure url. The insecure url is using HTTP and not HTTPS. I find that this often occurs if images are being loaded in widgets or TablePress where the full path to the image was specified. The full path will contain HTTP and unfortunately the Search & Replace plug-in does not change these URls to HTTPS for you.  I am sure there a lot of other places where the HTTP protocol can be lingering, so the only thing to do is read through the warning file and fix all of them.

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At the start of our discussion Barbara shared that our discussion would focus on general situations and was not legal advice. If there are questions related to a specific situation, it is recommended that you schedule a consulting engagement with Barbara. Barbara can also provide group training or present to your organization.

Here are the fruits of our conversation:

Is my website content copyrighted?

Works created before 1923 are in the public domain due to copyright expiration. Works created between 1923 and 1989 without a copyright are not protected and are considered free use. Works created since 1989 are covered by the intellectual property law and are automatically owned by the author. This means that your original work website content created after 1989 is covered by copyright law the moment it is created (in a fixed tangible form). If your website content has not been updated since 1989 then copyright law is probably the least of your worries.
Although copyright violation is illegal, it can be difficult to prosecute offenders unless you have registered your works. However, website content is often revised frequently, and each revision made on separate days may need to be registered individually. The details related to copyright registration can be found here from the Copyright Gov website.

Putting a copyright notice at the bottom of your website is recommended because it makes it clear to all that your website content is owned by you and should not be used without your permission.

How do you know if an image can be used on your website?

Google makes it easy to find pages and pages of images, but that does not mean that you can just use any image. The copyright laws that keep your website content safe from misuse also cover images. Therefore, to make sure that you have the legal right to use an image on your website it must have been created by you, purchased by you from a stock photo provider, or has a license that explicitly states that it can be used for your intended purpose.

Flickr can be a good place to find images that can be used on a website free of charge. You can search images based on a variety of license types. Once you find an image that you are interested in using it is important check to see if the image has license restrictions.

The license information for this red space car image is highlighted in yellow. The image is in the public domain and can be used on your website. Other images, may list use restrictions.

In summary, the best practice is to assume that images, or content, found anywhere on the web cannot be used unless it is explicitly stated that it is available for use. Mark your website with a copyright notice to make it explicitly clear if you do not want your content or images used without your permission.

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