Blog
Our standard maintenance plan includes one hour of consulting a month. In the last couple of days several maintenance clients have contacted me after receiving scary, threatening “copyright infringement” messages coming from their contact forms or other sources.
Here’s one example. Note the suspicious elements.
And here’s another, note the similar email address? Others I’ve seen are MelissaphotoXYZ@aol.com. So it’s a pattern. The email addresses may also be spoofed.
Name: Melissa
Email: Meligallery355@yahoo.com
Phone: 14161744402
Message:
Hello there!This is Melissa and I am a qualified photographer.
I was puzzled, to put it nicely, when I came across my images at your web-site. If you use a copyrighted image without my approval, you must be aware that you could be sued by the owner.
It’s illicitly to use stolen images and it’s so filthy!
Check out this document with the links to my images you used at XXXYYYZZZ.XYZ and my earlier publications to get evidence of my copyrights.
Download it now and check this out for yourself:
https://sites.google.com/site/XXXYYYZZZ/googledrive/share/downloads/files/storage?ID=XXXYYYZZZ
If you don’t remove the images mentioned in the document above within the next several days, I’ll write a complaint on you to your hosting provider stating that my copyrights have been infringed and I am trying to protect my intellectual property.
And if it doesn’t work, you may be pretty damn sure I am going to report and sue you! And I will not bother myself to let you know of it in advance.
“It’s illicitly to use stolen images and it’s so filthy!” It’s misspellingly too! That’s actually fairly common for scammers — they’re not interested in replies from people with great English skills. Or skeptical ones. They want suckers!
Look. It really, truly, honestly is the case that you shouldn’t use other people’s images without permission on your website. And it’s true that you can be asked to take them down, and even penalized if you don’t. For that reason it’s a good idea to have some form of “receipt” for images you use — the URL you got it from, a notation that you either took the photo yourself, licensed it from a stock photo company, or with credit if you downloaded it from a free-to-use creative-commons source. You don’t have to publish the credits (though it’s always polite if you acknowledge free-to-use creators somewhere on your site.)
But it’s very nice to be able to say “oh yeah, #!%! you, I got that image legally from XYZ when someone sends you an actual legal takedown notice. Extra credit? You may be able to sue someone who sends you a false takedown notice!
Bottom line: While you might get real takedown notices if you really are using content that doesn’t belong to you, this “Melissa” character is a spammer and a scammer and you can safely ignore messages from them.
Big hats off to everyone who was smart enough to ask first before clicking that link!
It’s funny how much things have changed since I built my first website back in 1997 or so. It might have been for a hand-coded “blog” I tried to manage all in HTML (not a good idea, but WordPress and precursors like MovableType weren’t really a thing yet.) Or it might have been for an extended family calendar.
Either way they never really got off the ground. Registering a domain name “only” cost $300/year! (Down from $1,000/year!) From the only domain registrar on the planet. If you wanted to actually serve a website you had to have a computer and a static IP address… also a dedicated phone line since back then even DIY web hosting involved dialup access unless you were a really big institution. And that 283×283 pixel photo of the two of us? Back then that was daringly big!
Times have changed since 1997. My son’s now grown, out of college, and on his own! We no longer have to worry about Netscape Navigator 4.0. Or any version of Internet Explorer.
Somethings haven’t changed. For instance most people (up to 85% for some sites and almost all apps) are back to using their phones to access the internet! 😂
One thing hasn’t changed though. I still really enjoy working on websites! It never gets old.
Photo by trendingtopics 
On a WordPress-related Facebook group someone asked…
I’m looking for something similar to Schedulista that can do the following:
-Allow people to book appointments on a website
-Remove unavailable appointments in real-time
-Send SMS/Email reminders to people who book the appointments
-Create a calendar each employee can access from an app
-Open source to manipulate how it appears on a Wordpress website
Any Suggestions?
I’ve had clients who use the cloud-based Acuity and Schedulicity appointment managers, and one client has had great success with the self-hosted BirchPress plugin. (No affiliate links, just tools clients have used.) I don’t have very strong opinions about which is best.
My advice is always to look for ones with a well-reviewed companion/connecting plugin for WordPress.
More important, no matter what you choose: look for two-way synchronization with your calendar apps whether it’s Google Calendar, Outlook, Cal, or whatever. It’s WAAAY easier to have the appointment scheduler that automatically blocks out time on your schedule when you have a doctor’s appointment or an unplanned day off.
Being able to enter an appointment once and having it automatically update to your schedule saves you from having to remember to enter those things in two places. Having new client appointments show up on your personal calendar makes sure you don’t overbook yourself with them!
This is all in keeping, by the way, with the internet-authoring goal to “Create Once, Publish Everywhere.” Something I spend a lot of time talking to clients about and really ought to spend more time blogging about as well.
Photo by ℓαurα suαrez
A contributor to a WordPress Facebook had a question about image compression:
I have [an image-optimization] plugin installed to compress my images and I noticed while doing a bulk compression that there are multiples of the same image (in different sizes) that it compressed. I did not do this manually. It seems that something created multiple images in different sizes when I used one. Is that normal procedure or have I goofed royally?
Here’s how I answered
Yes, WordPress automatically generates multiple “thumbnail” images when you upload a photo. The defaults are 150×150 literal thumbnails for galleries, etc. But also 300px “medium” and (I think) 1024px “large” format. A few months ago it started generating hidden 1536px and 2048px thumbnails for… reasons?
Some themes (cough*themeforest*cough) will sometimes generate a dozen or more additional ones for very particular, often-little-used sizes.
it used to be a much better idea to limit the number of thumbnails generated (still is, actually, for those oddball 1900x75px banner liners a Themeforest theme might cook up.) But WordPress now sends lists of available image sizes to browsers so they can pick the smallest, most appropriate size for the user’s screen.
The result is more storage on your server, but sometimes very much faster page speeds for mobile devices.
The good news is that optimizing plugins like Optimole will process all the thumbnails as well as the originals. You might optimize the dickens out of your original uploads, but the server-based thumbnail generating routines WordPress has to rely on usually aren’t as efficient. So it’s a good thing when optimizing plugins do a pass on those as well.
On a Facebook group for the Beaver Builder page builder, someone asked “Maybe a crazy question… Would it be possible to take HTML from another page builder and import into BB?” Here’s how I answered the question.
I did this just the other day (Thursday!) It was a horribly slow site built with an expired version of the popular but old-school Enfold theme/builder. The site broke into a shower of colorful code errors if you bumped the PHP version past the obsolete version 5.6.
So based on my recent experience the short answer is that yes, it does speed things up a little since you don’t have to re-type the content and it’s fairly easy to delete the enormous shortcode blobs that Enfold (and Divi, WP Bakery, etc.) create.
The first thing to do is replace the current theme and disable whatever page builder they were using. (Often they’re intertwined so it’s hard to turn one-off without turning off the other.) In my case when I switched to the Beaver Builder theme the client’s site reverted to a whole mess of shortcodes.
![When you turn off the original page builder all that's left is a huge amount of text enclosed in [brackets], a.k.a. "shortcodes."](https://realbasics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bender-with-disabled-theme.jpg)
The shortcodes usually have identifying info in them — e.g. column widths, image filenames, colors, etc. And of course I was able to use the original live version as a reference. Between that and the leftover bodies of text it was pretty easy to delete the leftover shortcode text and rebuild the pages.
One big advantage, of course, is that the page and menu/navigation structures are intact. If you’re going to use widgets in your new design instead of Beaver Builder modules and/or the Beaver Themer plugin then you can simply re-add those from the “unused widgets” section of the Appearances->Widgets page.
Another big advantage, sort of, maybe, is that all the images are in the Media Library so it’s a matter of finding them (you can search by the filename if nothing else) and placing them. The downside, though, is that with older sites (this one was from 2016) the images are often too small to look good in full-width situations so I still had to do a little fishing for larger versions.
All in all I’d say it saved me two or three hours on the project.
But there’s no way to do it automatically. (I’ve heard of plugins that will “re-interpret” shortcodes into simple WordPress elements but didn’t find one when I looked before starting the project.)
It’s actually pretty fun — good practice! But only slightly less work than rebuilding from scratch, copying and pasting content from the original site.
Here at RealBasics we build all new and rebuilt websites using the popular Beaver Builder page builder [non-affiliate link] products. On a Facebook group we follow someone asked:
How do people explain using BB plugin and theme to clients? When comparing to other agencies who buy [heavily-advertised commercial theme company] themes and use demo content…
I usually say “well, I’ve found that commercial themes seem to come with a lot of extras that tend to slow things down. A lot. In practice, though, when I use the popular, well-reviewed Beaver Builder plugin and a “blank slate” theme (also from Beaver Builder.) I can reproduce anything theme you care to show me.”
Then I say “A lot of times those themes only look good if you first import all their demo content. But then you have to go back through and replace it with your content. That’s often more time-consuming than adding your content to an empty page.
Next I’ll say “In the past I had years of experience working with graphic designers and building custom themes from their Photoshop or Illustrator files. Reproducing an existing theme with a modern page builder is child’s play compared to that.
And finally I’ll say “So if you’ll show me an example of a theme you like I can quickly match it, and give you better overall performance with less bloat, more security, and more long-term flexibility as well.”
Most of our clients seem to understand this explanation. It’s been years since we’ve used anything else.
Reverse disclaimer: We don’t get money or brownie points for recommending JenniferBoylePhotography.com. Instead we wholeheartedly recommend her work because we get awesome complements for client sites that use her photos. We can take credit for sites running quickly, securely, responsively, and sustainably. But what people really notice is design, the text, and especially photos. Jenny’s portraits and “business documentary” photos make our work look great! We can’t recommend her enough.
We particularly appreciate that she’s got plans specifically for businesses, including
- Basic Session for $175, for a full-size, free-to-use studio portrait
- Full Session for $395, for an hour-long session ($40 more for on-site) for three full-size, free-to-use photos
- Branding Lifestyle for $535, for a 90-minute on-site, possibly multi-location session with 30 full-sized, free-to-use photos
If you’re in the market for spiffing up your website with new photos give Jenny a call at (206) 406-6835, email jenniferboylephotography@gmail.com, or visit her website: Jennifer Boyle Photography
It’s almost 2020 (already!) but according to a quick Google search there are up to several million websites that still have phrases like “this site is under construction” somewhere within their pages.
Now the good news is many of the top results are other people cataloging and making fun of sites that still use that 1990’s flair. The bad news is that some of the results are from people who are still offering new ways to say it on your website! Unfortunately plenty of other results are sites that… still say that. In dead earnest. Sometimes years after their site was built!
Not to beat our own horn here at RealBasics but if your site still says “under construction” somewhere we’ll be happy to fix it for you in one of these ways
- Delete the page for you — if you haven’t “constructed” the page by now then you probably never will. Let us take care of that for you.
- Finish constructing the page — maybe you’ve always meant to finish constructing the page but haven’t had time. We’ll be happy to do that for you!
- Do a full-scale assessment of your website and make recommendations for building a new one — if your site is old enough that someone wrote “under construction” on the pages then it may be out of date in other ways. We’ll be happy to help you with that too!
This is a plug for a paid-for online video blogging course. This post includes a direct link and an affiliate link to the course (you can choose either.) I recommend it highly to clients who are interested in a safe, supportive environment for learning how to do video blogging. If you’re not into that you can scroll down.
Earlier this summer I told quite a few clients about a great video-blogging course called the Ignite Video Challenge. It runs a few times a year on Facebook and she’s offering it again.
If I did mention it I probably also said that based on almost 10 years working with instructional designers at Microsoft it’s the best run and most useful online course I’ve ever seen.
The course is only $20 for four weeks. It’s all done on Facebook, in small, private groups where you get to see each other’s work, and where only positive and encouraging comments are welcome. Because everyone is nervous! I may also have mentioned how sorry I was it’s only offered a few times a year.
The good news is the course is back. Signup is this week.
Niamh (pronounced “Neve”) is unbelievably reassuring, supportive, and informative in her video instructions — her videos are usually about three minutes long with another minute or two where she practices what she’s just preached to give you an idea what she has in mind.
The main thing, though, is it’s actually really fun! And only takes maybe 10 or 15 minutes a day at the most! And you really do learn all the essentials for how to record a video, how to be yourself in front of a camera, and how to upload it to Facebook, YouTube or other video platforms.
If you’re interested you can sign up one of two ways:
You can sign up directly here
Or if you’re ok with me getting a very small commission (the price to you is the same regardless) you can use this link to signup instead
Here are the other details
- Sign Up Week: Thursday, September 5th to Wednesday, September 11th
- Closes at midnight Pacific on September 11th OR when they sell out all spots, whichever happens first.
- Challenge begins: Monday, September 16th to Tuesday, October 8th.
- Cost for the Challenge is only $20.
Let me know what you think!
Of course we do office consultation for maintenance clients. When we say you get one hour a month for standard site maintenance we mean it. Sometimes that involves fixing something that wasn’t working quite right on the back end. But sometimes it involves a one-hour strategy consultation on how to blog effectively. No, we won’t wash your car or water your plants for an hour a month, but if it’s related to your website we’re more than happy to help.
