One of the great pleasures of freelancing is meeting a wide variety of people, but we don't always know how to deal with certain personalities. Here's an article to help you manage 12 Breeds of Client. We've had all of the mentioned client types… we've been in business since 1994 so lots of clients have come and gone. My favorite breed to work with is the The Hands-On Client.

Right now we have lots of wonderful clients and a huge amount of work, so we're very grateful for all our breeds of client! :) 

Here's a neat service which protects your email address very nicely! Visitors have to enter a security code (captcha) to see your email address. We're using this on our site now, with an address set up especially for this service. We'll report if we get any spam at the special address, but I think it's going to work great.

Recently I've had the pleasure of installing a great mailing list management program called PHPList. Getting the software installed and set up is the easy part… the hard part comes when you have to write all of the messages that go with such a system (registration confirmation, thanks for registering, etc). Plus you have to set up a page where people can go to sign up for your newsletter. Now, I'm a big fan of keeping things simple, and this article about Fine-Tuning Your Sign-Up Page makes a lot of sense. You don't want to collect so much information you lose people, but you also may want to know more about your subscribers, so it's a fine balancing act to get the info you need without being too nosy.

Today I found an interesting article on CNN, regarding hard drives in copy machines . Apparently some copy machines keep a copy of your copy, and it may end up… well, who knows where? Once it's digital, it's up for grabs. Who's to say a smart hacker won't learn which copiers do this, pose as a repair man, and take copier hard drives from busy places, the day after taxes are due? Maybe it would be too much work, but you never know how desperate people are or what they'll do for a little money. So be careful where you get your tax returns copied this year. Better yet, save a tree and file electronically!

Also today I learned (via ScamBusters.org) about a service to protect your identity. It's called LifeLock and they basically make your sensitive information useless to hackers and thieves, by putting blocks on your credit reports. Their CEO proves it works by posting his own social security number on the home page. Brave guy!

Recently we added a new section to our web site evaluation report - page size. Why is this important? Because you have less than 10 seconds to make an impression on a visitor and if your page isn't showing something by then, you may well lose a visitor because they clicked on to something else in the meantime. It's rough out there! Our attention spans aren't what they used to be.

While researching page size and speed issues, I came upon a little script which will measure and report the speed of your site. It's called - what else - Site Speed! This nifty program measures how long it takes a web page to load. It requires PHP and can be loaded to track any kind of web page (HTML or scripted), and it's available for both Linux and Windows hosts.

http://www.numion.com/SiteSpeed/index.html

I've installed it on our home page and it's been tracking for a week - there are a few results to look at, anyway. If you click on the little N icon at the bottom of the page, it will bring up our stats. 

How would you like to receive this response from your web hosting company's support department?

"My admin attempted to repair it [a database table], but it was corrupted beyond repair. We brought back the backup from yesterday, but it, too, was corrupted. There's nothing further we can do."

Aieeeeee! This could have been a disaster, but the client  was prepared with a backup copy! Instead of losing 6 months of data, she lost only 4 day's worth, so her investment paid for itself many times over. This happened at an otherwise very reliable web hosting company, but because they only keep one day's worth of backups and it took a few days to discover the problem, it was too late. Technology isn't perfect and things do break, so protect yourself by having a backup file or 10.

Today I found a really interesting new tool for looking up domain names:

http://www.psychicwhois.com/

It brings up domain names as you type, allowing you to see what names are available or registered. This could be a great tool for domain name research or just for fun, too. Give it a try! 

Time to upgrade again! That's one great thing about WordPress… bugs and security problems are fixed pretty quickly because it has a wonderful support community. The upgrade to 2.0.7 is recommended because it contains important security fixes. Also, they plan on releasing an upgrade to version 2.1 later this month. I would say upgrade to 2.0.7 and then let the little bugs get worked out of 2.1 before upgrading to that version.

Today I discovered a new feature of WordPress.org called Ideas , where you can go suggest improvements to WordPress. What would you like to see added to WordPress? Your dream just might come true.

Scammers are getting more sophisticated every day, so it's important we remain ever-vigilant against their poking and prodding, trying to find ways into our business and personal lives. Here's a great article with a list of ways you can protect yourself:

www.networksecurityjournal.com/2007/01/the_fight_again.html  

Some of the tips are more techie but there are plenty of things you can do in your day-to-day surfing to keep yourself safe. Only when we have educated users will the problems begin to go away!

It's easy to sell books and other products using your Amazon account. Just install one plugin for WordPress and away you go! After installing, I started looking around my office to see which books have been helpful to me. One of my favorites is Getting Things Done, by David Allen. His advice makes a lot of sense.

If you would like this nifty plugin for your copy of WordPress, feel free to contact us for installation.