Are you thinking of, or currently operating a business of some sort?

Perhaps a side hustle, or an Etsy shop, or consulting, or selling clothes for a non profit?

Are you just making it up, listening to a thought leader, friend, or coach on what to do and just slapping together the website and other technology needed to make it work as you go?

It’s okay, that’s normal, but it won’t get you very far.

Free blogs are great, Shopify is great, Facebook Pages are great, but they should not be the main component behind your business. [they are excellent accompaniments]

An hour spent learning the foundations of a business website, of general online business tools, and how the pullies and levers work will make all the difference in giving you the context to grow your business and make actual sales.

You’re inside a car, operating the air conditioning before you understand how filling up the gas tank works, what road you’re on and where you’re going. You’ll be comfortable for a while, but it’s going to get ugly when you’re so far in the wrong direction turning around seems impossible, and your gas just ran out.

What to do?

Prime yourself on the basics on websites, email addresses / marketing, and sales systems.

Here’s what others have said after doing that

…put comments from forums where I released this..

How to do it?

Knowledge is power in this case, and I’ve put together a technology guide to reference and learn the foundations.

A read through of the guide will be a powerful action step in understanding where to start in your business, what’s the next steps for growth, and eliminating any of the common technical hurdles or misunderstandings.

 

ITA – update beacon technology guide pages based on LI and fizzle feedback – use as incentive upgrade on a new blog post about the foundations of online business and the modern entrepreneur

The problem: No theme updates in over 9 years! multiple bugs, visual anomalies, and overall problems were creeping up on the aging continuing legal education membership site https://funcles.com – not an all too uncommon reason for a site refresh.

The task: Update the theme, which surprisingly had been maintained by the original author, which in itself was impressive, fix all the likely broken elements and after recommendation, migrate the site to a more reliable website host: WP Engine.

Tools & Setbacks

The tasks required involved a myriad of tools including: WordPress, the theme Arcadian, WP Engine, WP All Import, lots of text plugins, and new SSL setup from Let’s Encrypt.

The project was not without it’s up and downs but over a two day period, the site was updated, the visual breaks, like the sliders were fixed and the membership site was loading faster than ever.

Website Migrations More and More Common

Website migrations have become more and more common as service providers outgrow first versions of their websites due to increased traffic, or new configurations like a membership site warrant higher quality hosts. Often times they are just frustrated with their host as well.

Thanks!

Jane, the owner of the FunCLEs website was gracious and great to work with, thanks Jane!

IT Arsenal loves migration and theme upgrade work, glad this went well!

 

 

Zoom – http://zoom.us/ – Yes, I know about the security issues, yes I still trust them, and they are working on it. Best multi-person easy to use video chat out there. I’ve tried to have 3+ person Facetime group chats several times, it’s just not as good.

Notion.so – https://www.notion.so/ – Like a container for your brain, which has to capture a lot right now, including all those posted articles about how to keep your kids entertained, educated, and healthy, see here for my saved, organized ideas -> https://www.notion.so/robertgranholm/kid-covid-ideas-c3a0e11f74df401085955c6ba4e54133

Freedom – https://freedom.to/ – Programmable focus time, lock out things like your email, Facebook, etc, so you can get real work done

Synergy – https://symless.com/synergy – Do you have a work laptop, and some form of home computer? Synergy lets you use one keyboard and mouse for multiple computers

Peloton – https://www.onepeloton.com/app – 90 day free trial, start a new workout home routine

Kardkeeper – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kardkeeper/id1500710136 – save all your old xmas cards, then throw them away please, because you probably are going through things you haven’t in a while and stumbled on your stack of cards you don’t want to trash but don’t know what to do with.

Published on: May 8, 2020 at 12:36

I’ve been using various digital tools for over a decade.

Every once and a while one comes around that is so versatile, useful, and easy to use you’re rather dumbfounded.

This is CloudHQ and their conversion and migration tools for me, right now.

Their deep level of integration and extensions with Gmail and the ability to for instance, PDF every email in a label and then provide you a download link, is something that you could only get with days of cobbling custom code on Github, and then still with much frustration. I’m looking at you pixelcog.

I’ve used their tools to migrate data from Google Drive to Box in the corporate world, and to manipulate and save off Gmail data from my Google accounts down to real world formats like PDF.

In 2020, I used their tool to migrate terabytes of data across 60 Google Drive accounts to Box accounts and it work beautifully!

Both are seamless, the tool is done well, it’s well documented, and there’s even a low need free version for almost all it’s integrations.

Check them out, I’m impressed.

-> CloudHQ

Malware is not fun.

The pain is two fold, the embarrassment and un-usability of your website, and then there’s getting it cleaned up in addition to that!

We’ve had rashes of website malware clean up lately. It’s typically malware to either redirect a website elsewhere, or more nefarious, inject different links into existing links on the site. 👎

IT Arsenal recently cleaned up two different instances of malware, both on lower tier hosting, Hostgator, and GoDaddy.

One was fairly easy to clean up, the other was much more difficult and intertwined into the structure of the files. Again

In the end it took hunting through FTP, the database, and employing a malware tool that sifts through the individual files and then taking action on them.

Gladly, both were able to be repaired, however one took 3 days until the primary fix was complete, and during a critical time for prospective buyers for this particular client.

[you’ll notice we are not sharing names this go around on the Client Spotlight, but typically we do]

At the end of the ordeal, one client asked, the very understandable question, how do I keep this from happening. Here was our response.

Prevention

There are a few methods to prevent and protect from website malware.

• A better host, like WPEngine, who takes better care of their shared hosting environments would be a big help.
• Running and checking weekly/monthly, a type of security plugin, like https://www.malcare.com which alerts you and attempts some form of automated removal.
• Keeping regular, routine, monthly backups, and managing those offsite.

IT Arsenal does this as part of a package that includes project work. Here’s what I said to the client recently.

“I think you already know this but I have a $100 monthly program that includes backups, and easy restores, and I would do this security work as part of it, Something like this if it were to happen, would be a quick restore for functionality and then investigation at no cost.”

You can find out more about the Fix and Maintain service here.

Good luck out there, and let IT Arsenal know if you need help!

Website hosting is boring, and something that most people don’t think about except when they initially want a website, and then when something breaks on that website.

WP Engine does something very boring, website hosting, in a way that makes working with them enjoyable.

I’ve had this “aha” moment after enough work with their platform, recommending them, and then in turn having people hire me to move their websites to WP Engine without my prompting to feel compelled to write more about them.

I’ve migrated 10 people in the last 12 months. Moving your entire website isn’t particularly easy, so the decision takes thought and planning.

It’s clear that website hosting is a sliding scale of quality, I’ve seem hosts come and go, grow and shrink in terms of quality [Bluehost, cough, cough] and while there’s no ONE answer that will always be right, to the question, what do you think about website host XYZ.

I’ve been in enough Facebook communities where someone eventually asks the general group, “What website host should I use” and then 134 comments later, you have no idea what the general consensus is and whole lot of opinions and gifs.

However, for me WP Engine is as close to a perfect website host as I’ve found anywhere. Their service is excellent, their support is incredible.

I put this in context of your mission critical websites, the “flagship” domains you have, belong on WP Engine, here’s a few reasons why…

• One button staging environment, copy and test without breaking your existing website
• Top quality on demand chat support
• Clean and functional web portal
• Quality of hosting, uptime, speed, and built in malware protection

Do I still use other hosts?, sure, absolutely, I have development sites, and subdomains, and truthfully, sites that aren’t ready or are not important enough to put on the higher quality, and higher cost hosting go to places like SiteGround, and Hostgator, ect.

Website hosting is a per website choice, and not all websites are equal.

So there you have it, it’s been said. 

If you’re frustrated with your host, and have perhaps outgrown them, give WP Engine a try, or drop us a line and ask anything you’d like about them. IT supports over a dozenusers on the platform and interact with them regularly.

–> I’d be happy to help you with your migration process.

Questions like this are what IT Arsenal thrives on, get in touch if you need to know something about your website or have questions about a change you’re thinking about.

IT Arsenal has been received a lot of emails that go something like the text below…

“I was going to reach out to you anyway. My WordPress site needs a PHP update. Can you take a look at that? What would be the cost to update that for me?”

While it’s not a particularly difficult thing to handle, if you’re not familiar with things like your hosting companies control panel, PHP versions, cPanel and similar other concepts, this is likely going to throw you.

Rest assured, while carrying on a few other conversation items about website concerns, such as malware, pop ups, and some page updates, these PHP updates have been getting handled in quick order.

Do you need a hand with something like this? Drop us a note!

This Q&A comes from some recent optimization work I’ve been doing for a client.

I’ve been examining page load times, plugins, server quality image size and several other things that load how fast a website loads. Along with this was the scripts that load on a page, and Facebook Pixel.

Don’t leave! I know I said scripts and your eyes glazed over, but the question, “Why isn’t my Facebook Pixel loading” or getting me the data I should be getting prompted a deep dive into what the page was loading.

The Facebook Pixel works by inserting a script onto a page, and then reporting back data when that script loads.

We found there were a lot of scripts on this page, including two different Facebook Pixels, which at first thought in the troubleshooting stage, that seemed like it had to be it. This seemed especially true because even more confusing was that one of the pixels was loading, but the other wasn’t.

Facebook Pixel Helper

How did I find this out, apparently Facebook has made a Google Chrome extension for investigating just that, here’s their Facebook Pixel Helper extension.

With this installed, I could see feedback on the pixels on the page and what was happening, which showed one loading and one not loading.

So we moved onto testing, I removed one script and tested it again, hmm still didn’t load. Replaced the one I removed and added the other back in, it worked!

Hmmm…

So it was that particular script…odd but making progress.

Minification, the Culprit

In the end, it took re-arranging the sequence of scripts and thinking back to the optimization that had been done, and actually turning off an optimization feature called minification so that the pixel scripts were not combined with other scripts to load as one block of code to resolve the issue.

One of those things that only gets discovered by attention to detail, and deep dives into a website.

This was of course enabled earlier to speed up the pages overall loading time.

So, after re-arranging the scripts, using the Facebook Pixel Helper extension, and turning off the minification of scripts, the answer was uncovered.

Fixed

Now, both pixels are loading, reporting their data back to Facebook and the client is happily getting the ad feedback they need.

More work will likely be done on the page speed optimization, but due to their specific mix of needs, script minification will have to be handled carefully.

Here’s a scenario IT Arsenal  recently recently contacted about, it might sound familiar…

A panic’d emails comes through…

Hi, I received this email from my website host, Hostgator, GoDaddy, BlueHost, one of those, and it says my site is offline, or partially disabled due to malware, and then a long list of obscure files, locations and information!

What is this blather, wait, did I read my site it down?. Oh my gosh, it is!

That’s it.

Uhhh, okay, how do I fix this you’d ask yourself if you received this email. Sure there were some recommended actions with links to support articles in that confusing foreign sounding long string of words I didn’t really understand, but they don’t make anymore sense than the email itself.

What you do know is your website isn’t loading any longer.

Ugh!

Unfortunately this happens often in today’s constantly cyber attacked world, especially when you’re using a lower tier website host, like the ones mentioned above, and countless others. [which I have nothing against, you’re just not paying for a certain grade of security and customer support and most of the time you don’t need it and are unaware this could happen whens starting out with your site, so it hits you like a shock later]

What to Pre-do?

Well, if you could go back in time, I’d remind you, always have a backup of your website somewhere, through some plugin, service, or other. We’ve blogged about that plenty here, and drop us a note if you want personalized advice. If you have a backup, you can restore your site and then talk about security options.

We also recommend/ask about security tools on your site to prevent this, but we won’t go into that either since that’s not the scenario.

What to Do in the Moment

Since we can’t go back in time, what’s the next best steps?

1. See if your website host has some sort of phone support and let them know you have no idea how to follow their instructions for cleaning your site of malware [which likely takes running scans and removing/replacing several files via FTP] – sometimes their support reps will use the tools at their disposal and simply clean things up, this is a bit of a shot in the dark, but it’s not that far fetched.
2. Hire a service, like Sucuri to clean things up, however they are a bit templated in their actions, they have a great scanning/cleaning tool but it’s still on you to install, setup, configure and make sense of unless you pay some rather high prices. [$499 for their business package per year that isn’t clear on if you get phone support or not]
3. Hire a small agency/consultant with less popularity/reputation to personally handle the situation. IT Arsenal would fall into this category by the way, you’d get custom hands on service, but yes, if you don’t know us, and that might seem scary. [it’s not ]

Hopefully this doesn’t happen to you, but if it does, now you have just a little bit more knowledge on how to act.

Ever wonder what designers and web folk are talking about when they use the term “CSS”? Ever wonder what it stands for?

Cookbook of Special Sauces?

Climbing Super Speeds?

Cheesy Sandwich Snack?

Can’t Stand Spiders?

It actually stands for “Cascading Style Sheets” and it’s how designers and web producers keep consistency with style details (fonts, colors etc.) so designs appear the same over multiple web pages and browsers.

CSS is a type of language that describes the design/style of an HTML document and how the elements on a page should be displayed, basically separating presentation and content. (“Cascading” refers to the priority order to decide which style rule applies if more than one rule is applicable to an element.)

In WordPress, the CSS accompanies the theme, and sometimes the theme allows this to be changed easily through its drop downs and easy menus, and sometimes the only way to change it is by going into the code.

CSS allows more control over the design process while reducing complexity and repetition, basically saving a lot of time. But even more than being a time-saver, separating content and presentation lets the same page be seen in different styles for different rendering methods like voice and Braille-based tactile devices, as well as adjusting for for mobile devices. This means better experiences on your website and increased accessibility, allowing more of the internet to be seen by more people in more ways.

SSL

WP Engine [an excellent website host I’ve recommended in the past] sent this to their newsletter list earlier in July.

It’s one of the most straight forward I’ve seen that essentially says, if you don’t have https before your website, Chrome is going to start labeling you as NOT SECURE loud and clear to all visitors. Many other browsers have already begun or will do this soon also.

You don’t want your site seen as insecure. You will lose traffic, lose customers, and potentially be targeted for hacking.

We’ve written posts in the past about how important SSL is, and methods for how to get a certificate for free, which is largely accepted now as common practice, but the work afterwards of implementing and updating an existing site is where most website owners struggle.

That is where the actual work comes in when configuring an SSL, making it work with your site on all pages and with all elements, ensuring that “lock” icon that shows on most browsers.

Take heed, if you don’t have an SSL, and your site is not loading over HTTPS, now is the time to act!

TLS

Another item you may have started receiving emails about is TLS.

If you’re using a website host that is generally reactive and not proactive about your website, you may have some issues receiving payments on your site due to this TLS update soon.

Essentially, an older version of what’s used to secure transactional data is being retired, and if your current website host isn’t using the newer forced version, 1.2 or above, your plugin, code, API key, whatever you use for sending that data around, will begin to fail.

Most commonly this is going to show up in your PayPal plugins and Stripe Plugins [because those are the most popular] that you haven’t updated in months or years.

The fix? It can be a painful one, it involves contacting your host and asking them to update your server environment, or having someone do it on your behalf. IT Arsenal recently ran into this for a client using Gravity Forms, Stripe, and the website host Site5.

How can you check what version of TLS you’re using?

Download this WordPress plugin and run it [it’s outdated but still works as of now].

or

You can also click the lock on your browser and inspect the certificate, it might not explicitly use the letters TLS but it will tell you what encryption is involved and you can do some Googling from there.

If you have questions about SSL, or TLS, or anything technical for your website, we’d be happy to answer them.

-> Drop us a note, make a comment below or hire us to get your site updated and switched over!

 

Elaine Chukan Brown serves as the American Specialist for JancisRobinson.com, a contributing writer with Wine & Spirits Magazine and a columnist at Wine Business Monthly. Her work has been featured in World of Fine Wine, Decanter, Robb Report, MensHealth.com, GuildSomm.com, San Francisco Magazine, Alquimie and Noble Rot, among others.

That above is pulled from her site. Elaine is also SUPER gracious, kind, and in our interactions, a no muss, no fuss website owner. Her website is wakawakawinereviews.com.

IT Arsenal has been maintaining wakawaka as we’ve come to call it, for several years. Sprinkled in with her primary monthly service for updates and maintenance has been some initiatives like a payment gateway for some t-shirt sales, form setups, and most recently adding security to her site. However, at the same time, the site was compromised by a hack and in resolving the issue, forced a scenario of updating her website theme.

If you’ve never been caught in this double whammy of a scenario, it’s not fun. Elaine’s site was being hacked, then cleaned, then hacked again due to security holes in her old theme. At one point she had over 1000 randomly generated users on the site commenting. Not good.

Upgrading the site to a new/dramatically updated theme was a forced fix. It was overall good, as it’s good to keep your software updated, but also required decisions, downtime, website loading issues, and some ongoing tweaks to get it back to the way it was. Upgrading WordPress website themes is not difficult, but if you haven’t done it before, it knocks out things like your logo, menu, any customized fonts and colors. Resetting all those in an unplanned situation adds chaos and stress.

However, we recovered, and it was Elaine’s patience understanding that greatly helped getting the site back up to speed. We were both working at this impromptu stressful problem, noticing things and emailing often.

IT Arsenal is happy to report the site is now loading with an SSL which means it has that nice HTTPS lock in the browser bar, better SEO, it’s inherently more secure, and up to date!

It’s a pleasure to maintain and be the point person for Elaine and her business website goals. When I see her emails, I don’t huff and puff, but dig in knowing we have a solid partnership. Thanks Elaine!

We frequently get asked to incorporate a blog into new websites. This is a highly technical, labor-intensive process.

Just kidding.

That’s what we’d say if we were the Wizard of Oz and were more concerned with looking smart than being helpful. In truth, we are both smart and helpful! A blog as it turns out are a default function of a WordPress website – it’s baked in. The most used website platform in the world. There’s not much involved aside from setting up some parameters.

In this post we’ll explain the concept of having a blog inside of WordPress so a) you understand it and know you shouldn’t be charged for it and b) so you can start experimenting with them yourself.

The primary blog page (the index) gets defined on the Settings > Reading page in the backend of WordPress. You make a page, skip putting content in the Editor, and then define it as the “Posts” page in the settings. Your individual blog posts (Posts > Add New) are then listed here in chronological order on this page. Your theme could also have some other method of inserting the index into a page, you’d have to read the theme documentation to be sure but this is the most common method for setting up the blog page. That’s it, that’s a blog.

The URL structure (the text in the address bar) of the posts is setup on the Settings > Permalinks page. The naming structure can be setup as an appendage to the domain name so a separate domain or website is not required. Therefore, if your website is wizardofoz.com and your blog post is “The Scarecrow Did It” then the URL for your blog post would be wizardofoz.com/the-scarecrow-did-it. You could set up the structure to include the date, or category, but Google, in terms of optimization prefers this setup, so it’s best to stick with it.

Easy, right?

Now the content, the marketing, the styling, oh my! … but we’ll save those for future posts.

At IT Arsenal we can also do all this for you. We’re here to help and answer any questions you have, it’s seriously what we do all day, and love it!

Feel free to send us a question on our Q&A page -> https://itarsenal.com/contact/question-answer-support/

Happy blogging!

We frequently get requests from people looking to move away from their current website host. Some are frustrated with poor customer service or lackluster performance. Others have been left in the dark because they hired the same person to build and host their site, and that person either never gave over full control, don’t know what they’re doing or have just disappeared, leaving their client stranded.

What most people don’t realize is that moving website hosts isn’t a simple request – your domain name and email are impacted as well. Migrating to a new host involves handling all files, databases and emails, making sure they know how to “talk” to each other while protecting against data loss in the redirection process.

The three most common elements in a hosting migration are your domain name (the name itself and where it’s registered) the files (your host) and your email (typically the same as your website host).

Your email can sit with your host or a host dedicated to email services only. This means one company can own your domain while another hosts your email and still another your files. This approach keeps you from having all your proverbial eggs in one basket and avoids dependency on one company for everything. Having everything in one place can be easier to manage in theory, but this isn’t always the case. You buy domains in one place and then another, you need better performance so you buy hosting at one place but still have domains at another place, etc. The point is that there’s complexity, and it’s beneficial to know what’s involved before you move.

We love WP Engine for WordPress only hosting, G Suite for email and their other services, and Google Domains for domain registration.

However if you’re looking for the all in one solution, Site5 is our go-to for lower quality, but dependable all-in-one hosting.

If you’ve decided that moving is the best approach for you, follow these steps to ensure a smooth transition:

• Sort out what lives where. Is it all in one place or multiple locations?
• Make a plan. Are you moving everything? Just your files? Lay out what needs to move.
• Execute. If you’re using WordPress, and most (okay 30%) of the web is, you need to move your files and databases. They then need to be linked back to the new host. Once this is done then email accounts need to be recreated and (possibly) the email itself moved.

IT Arsenal handles migrations with ease and sets you up to easily change your host hassle-free. See our migration service here and let us help you to toast your host!