Spam in a can

Google’s Re-Captcha service is free,which is a lovely thing. It’ll help with all manner of things;we’ve just started using it on the Melbourne Genderqueer forums and hopefully this will help reduce the number of spambot signups they’re getting.

Getting Google Calendars onto WordPress

The problem:Facebook events had to be manually added to google calendar,which was then added via plugin to a website I maintain.

The calendar ALSO didn’t display anything but the one google calendar,and there were several being subscribed to.

Get a google calendar account and add the events

1. get a google calendar . . . →Read More:Getting Google Calendars onto WordPress

Keep things simple

More and more I see websites that you have to dig for information. You click a button that’s clearly named to give you the hope of more information,and you end up on another general page which doesn’t have what you’re looking for,

So you click again,and the same thing happens.

Rinse and repeat.

. . . →Read More:Keep things simple

making phone numbers clickable

On a lot of mobile phones with touch-screens (iphone,etc),you’re able to tap on a phone number on a website to dial that number.

Some numbers don’t get recognised however –13 numbers for example.

Thanks to Jennifer at Scriptygoodness.com,there’s a solution:it’s a hyperlink with a difference. Click to read more about . . . →Read More:making phone numbers clickable

Backup your data!

A report in the Melbourne Age today,is one of unexpected kindness:

Hope for humanity –a laptop thief returns data from a stolen PC

However,it’s not something you can count on.

Backups have become far,far easier in the 21st century —almost every external hard drive comes with easily used PC and . . . →Read More:Backup your data!

Microsoft security and viruses

For all those running Windows,Microsoft has released a new security patch. Read more about it at The Age:

Microsoft security fix issued

You can get it here:

Microsoft October security update –only works on Internet Explorer 6 or greater

With any microsoft computer,it’s really important to keep your security and virus protection . . . →Read More:Microsoft security and viruses

Why you shouldn’t use Facebook for personal stuff

I wrote this email to some friends about Facebook versus a personal password-protected website for photos and personal stuff. Thought it might be of use to others

Just wanted to write some things about Facebook.

First,putting photos onto Facebook is really dangerous as it regularly changes security settings without telling anyone. In the . . . →Read More:Why you shouldn’t use Facebook for personal stuff

Membership sites (part 2) –paid membership

I’ve already written about membership sites and the ways you can create a WordPress site in such a way.

What I didn’t write about was “membership levels”. That is,where you have different fees for different levels of membership. Frankly,it didn’t occur to me until a client asked for it.

For single-level membership…

For . . . →Read More:Membership sites (part 2) –paid membership

Creating your own Favicon in Photoshop

The Favicon is the little icon that appears next to a website address in the website address bar –up there at the top of your browser. It is literally a tiny little image that’s dropped into the html folder of your website,or if you want to be neater,an image subfolder. The code at . . . →Read More:Creating your own Favicon in Photoshop

Find your lost or stolen mac or iPhone

Macs and iPhones are,like everything from Apple,rather nice pieces of kit. Despite the naysayers,the doom-mongers who go on about how they will one day be as inundated with viruses as PCs are today,they still help rather than hinder you when you’re trying to do work. A friend once pointed out the . . . →Read More:Find your lost or stolen mac or iPhone