You can see image sizes using right click and Properties in both Internet Explorer (Right Click  Properties) and Firefox (Right-click View Image Info).  In Chrome, the easiest way to see an image size is to install an Extension to View Image Properties – there are quite a few options there (I used this one).

The old Windows XP powertoy resizer allowed you to right click on an image and resize it very quickly and easily, if you needed smaller size images for the web. Unfortunately it no longer works on Windows 7. However, the powertoy has been rewritten for Windows 7 and made publicly available.

Resizing the easy way …

To resize images the easy way, you simply:

• Download and install the resizer program first from http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/
• right click the image in your Windows folder,
• choose Resize Image
• select Medium or Small, or choose a specific size if you need one

If you still have XP, you may like the Windows PowerToy which you can find by Googling for "Windows PowerToy Resizer".

More options with the powerful Gimp tool …

Alternatively, you may want to use the much more powerful (and more complex) free software "Gimp" which is described in Haleemon's article at Resizing images for your website.

You can install this very easily using the installation system at www.ninite.com – tick "Gimp" then click the green download button and follow prompts from there!

Ever experienced losing a password? And having to waste time getting a reset code or link emailed to you? Or having to register yet again? We have .. many times!! Until we found a wonderful little tool recently.

I was quite amazed to discover a wonderful little tool called LastPass about 6 months ago and I’ve been delighted with how useful this gadget has been, and how well implemented it is. LastPass encrypts and saves your passwords safely in a database and will allow you to share them across computers.

How did we find LastPass? A number of us in the office have been using and enjoying Google’s great new browser, Chrome, for some time and enjoying its speed, robustness, and virus-proofness. However, we were concerned about the lack of security for saved passwords (also bad in Internet Explorer) which is one way a lot of people’s sites get hacked (virus steals passwords and sends to hackers etc etc). Firefox has a master password system which protects all your saved passwords with another password, so they can’t be stolen, and we wanted something similar.

Once you install LastPass, it asks you to setup an email and password, and from then on you have to login only the first time you need a password retrieved. Every time it sees you use a new password it asks you whether you want to save it, and it will auto-fill login details on webpages it recognizes.

One of the really handy features is that it saves your passwords on a secure server, encrypted with your own password. You might think this is an issue, but it’s far less of an issue than having them unencrypted – we’ve actually seen saved passwords stolen by viruses and used to hack websites on our servers.  If you are saving passwords with IE (Internet Explorer) or Firefox, you urgently need LastPass!

LastPass has other useful advantages:

1. it works in all the main browsers – Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer
2. the passwords are stored securely – don’t forget your password or you’ll lose the saved passwords
3. If your PC dies, you don’t lose all your passwords
4. it works in multiple locations – eg on your home PC and laptop
5. It works on both Macs and PCs

LastPass is many times more secure than saving your passwords in Internet Explorer and Firefox .. we strongly recommend you don’t do that any more!

How to install:

1. Install Chrome if you haven’t already (the fastest way to do this is with www.ninite.com if you are on a PC)
2. Go to www.lastpass.com and download the installer
3. Click on run and accept the defaults
4. Wait about 1 minute
5. Set yourself up a username and a good password that you won't forget

Note you don’t need Chrome – but it’s easier to install it now and let LastPass add itself to chrome than to do it later … and you might fall in love with this great little browser from Google!

Tips for use:

1. If you will ever use Firefox or Chrome, install them before installing lastpass so that lastpass sets them up properly in one hit
2. Common sense: Don’t ever store your banking passwords or credit card information in LastPass. Common sense says this is a bad idea, even though I have no reason to doubt LastPass’s security, which sounds top notch. Don’t tempt fate.
3. When saving a password change the description to be a little more meaningful, will save you time later
4. Change the LastPass settings to log you out after a 2 hour timeout, or after the browser is closed for 10 minutes. You’ll have to enter your password a little more often, but it’s going to be more secure. If you live in a family environment and share your PC, make the timeout shorter or logout when you finish, or both!
5. Use a sensibly good password for LastPass. This is definitely not the time to use your last name backwards, or your kids’ or dogs’ names!

LastPass is free to use, although if you like it you can send the developers some money by paying a tiny subscription annually.

We hope you enjoy this great free tool!

Text of the latest spoof follows:
—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Warning Code: ID67565434.
From: Webmail Upgrade Team © 2010
Date: Tue, October 12, 2010 12:46 am
To:
————————————————————————–
Dear user account

We are updating our database and e-mail account center. We are deleting all unused webmail account and create more space for new accounts. To ensure that you do not experience service interruption during this period, you must provide the details below:

Check your account BELOW
1. E-mail :……………………………
2. User :………………………………
2. Password :……………………………..
3. Confirm password :………………………….

You will receive a confirmation of a new alphanumeric password that is valid only during this period, and may be changed by this process. We regret any inconvenience this may cost you.

Please reply to this message so we can give you best services online with our new and improved webmail functionality and improvements.

Webmail © 2010 Team Upgrade Warning Code: ID67565434.

Here are 5 basic steps to prevent your site from being hacked:

1. Remember that any software you install on your website could get hacked – it’s like a PC – but it’s out there on the internet 24 x 7!  Not updating that software, is the same as hiding your head in the sand – hoping really hard nothing will happen – and it probably will!!
2. Change your website Admin password to something that contains (at the very minimum):
   • both upper and lowercase letters
   • at least one number
   • at least one character/punctuation mark
   • consider using another username, not “admin”
3. Update your website software (and check for updates at the very minimum every 3 months)
4. Pay attention to your website statistics. If your bandwidth all of a sudden/out of the blue is 3GB higher than it has been in the past 3 years and you haven’t done anything different (eg Adwords campaign, radio promotion, handing out flyers etc) this should raise some serious warning flags in your head and prompt you to investigate further.
5. Keep your computer anti-virus software up-to-date (kind of like #3… but not really). If you have a key-logger virus on your computer, your strong, super secure password is useless because the bad guys will be able to see it and wreak havoc on your site.  We see this regularly!

I know we’ve written about this (numerous times actually) in the past but you’d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t) by the number of sites being hacked despite our warnings. Cleaning up a hacked site is not a trivial matter and can become quite costly.

If they’re made available to you, why wouldn’t you jump on the chance to take precautionary measures to protect your site?

If you’re not sure what this means, you’re welcome to ask for details.

Your blog is very enriched. You can see my website [Company Name] Australia which is best [keyword] Shop in Melbourne, Armidale, Brunswick. It also eminent [keyword] Suppliers and [keyword] Stores as well as best [keyword] Shops in Brunswick, Melbourne, Armidale .

**Please note that we have removed the company name, website, and industry keywords Apart from the blatant grammatical mistakes and awkward language, this comment is being spammed on many (87 at last count) blogs in this particular industry – and these poor quality postings can really tarnish their professional reputation. What's worse is that most of the blogs that are being spammed with these comments are hosted on Blogger/blogspot.com, a blogging platform owned and operated by Google. This is considered "black hat SEO" which is essentially a foolhardy attempt at fooling Google. This is what will happen – there will be a spike in the client's website's ranking (which could possibly justify this SEO company promise of a listing on the 1st page of Google), but once Google tracks what is happening, our client's website will be blacklisted. When you're blacklisted on Google, you not only lose your ranking but basically will need to start at the bottom (which could be page 1,000!) and re-establish yourself all over again trying to earn back Google's trust by submitting a request reconsidering your site. Not worth it. This same SEO company had posted comments and entries on behalf of this company on sites and directories completely unrelated to the client's industry, such as the "adobe learn" site and "athiest news and views".  I rang up the company because I had to hear for myself their sales pitch: "We guarantee you'll be on the first page of Google" and "It takes 3 weeks". Disgraceful. This is what the Official Google Webmaster blog page says about spam comments. Unfortunately pleading ignorance just isn't worth the headache and negative penalty effects that your site might receive as a result. The quintessential tip-off of a dodgy company:  guaranteeing you'll appear on the first page of search results. Google does not disclose their searching algorithms. Google pays their employees very very well, provides all kinds of perks, essentially treating their team like royalty so that there aren't rogue employees who tell all of Google's deepest, darkest secrets; what is the likelihood that some random company can hold true to their promise/guarantee your business to be listed on the first page? Google provides a LOT of information on their site and in the Webmasters area. Before you pay some dodgy company $200-300/month (yes, that's what they charge!) to ruin your ranking, arm yourself with information. You don't need to be an expert, but you should walk into the meeting with some knowledge of the basics. If you're lucky and persevere, Google may be forgiving in the long run. The question you need to ask yourself is how many months will your site not appear in the search listings and how much business will you have lost as a result? Moreover, how much money will you then in turn need to pay for a legitimate SEO expert to fix your ranking, remove your site from being blacklisted, and put you back into Google's good graces? Think about that and whether it's worth it? Unfortunately, ignorance is not bliss and in this day and age, you get what you pay for. These dodgy companies prey on innocent, unsuspecting business owners and lure them in with false promises. Knowledge is key, read for yourself straight from the horse's mouth in Google's SEO Starter Guide the do's and don'ts so you aren't fooled!!

Surprisingly, the same concept holds true for your White Dog Green Frog passwords. You are provided with different logins for different areas. This is not to confuse you or make your life difficult for our own personal amusement, but because well, they are different. Not only that but if one area is compromised, you aren’t affecting the other areas and more importantly the other accounts on the server.

So to break it down, here are a few of the main login details for White Dog services that you may have:

Billing System -  Here you will find information such as:

• Invoices
• Credit card details
• Contact info (phone #, email address, etc)
• Login details for your cPanel account
• Products/services renewal dates
• Listing of your Support Tickets
• Domain management
  • Contact details for Whois
  • Nameserver details
  • EPP/auth code

We try and make it easy for you too. If you don’t recall your password,  you can always reset it.

cPanel (eg: www.yourdomainname.com.au/cpanel). This is the control panel/dashboard of your hosting account and as such you will be able to perform various useful functions such as:

• Manage your email account(s)
  • Create new email address(es)
  • Reset your email password
  • Modify your email account quota
  • Create email forwarders
  • Create mailing list
  • Change MX records for domain(s)
• Create/restore backup of your website
• Park/add-on domains
• View disk space & bandwidth usage
• Website statistics
• Install software with Fantastico
• and many more

Email credentials for Outlook  setup:

• Your username is your FULL email address (that is, your entire email address. Not just your name, but the bit before and after the @ symbol)
• Email password that you set up in your cPanel. If you don’t remember your password, login to cPanel and reset it

While on the subject of passwords, it would behoove you to have a reasonably strong/secure.  Words that you would find in a dictionary would not make a good password because it’s easily guessable. Not guessable in the sense that I’m going to try words that I think you might use, but guessable in the sense that hacking programs can scan your account until it either can’t break your password (“Ste8v_in!” – secure) or is able to figure out your password (“buttercup” – not secure). It’s like using a common office paperclip as the key to open your Lexus car door.  If you really want to use the name of your pet, try adding a number and a punctuation mark as well as mixing the case to the password for an added level of security.

For example:

skippy – bad
Ski$5ppy – better

smokey – bad
Smo6keY! – better

Incidentally, two of the most common causes of hacked accounts are 1) weak password and/or 2) a keylogger virus (which is a software program on your computer remembers your passwords by tracking the key strokes that you make on your keyboard).

Read another article on the WDGF blog on password security here.

Domain Renewal Group (DRG)  is an outright scam. I say again – Domain Renewal Group is an outright S-C-A-M! DRG (should be renamed to Dodgy Renewal Group) also trades as Domain Registry of America (DROA) which is an organization that has had its own fair share of scamming issues. How DRG/DROA are still in “business” perplexes me, though if you change your name often enough, you are able to be a bit elusive! They trick you into thinking that your domain is up for renewal when 1) they don’t even manage the domain and 2) attempt to get you to pay them money for nothing essentially. If you receive a letter from them, toss it in the bin ASAP!

Because I find it all very amusing, I decided to read through their Terms and Conditions. Here’s a doozy that caused my colleague and I to get a good laugh and 10 minute rant:

Any domain names transferred over to Domain Renewal Group during their registration period must have no more than 2 years left until expiry in order to qualify. (example: if today is January 2007 your domain name cannot expiry any later than January 2009). Any domain names that have over 2 years left on their registration period may be subject to a $15.00 per year additional fee at Domain Renewal Group’s discretion. (example: if today is January 2007 and your domain name expires in 2010, Domain Renewal Group may charge an additional $15.00 on top of your renewal fee).

What does that mean you ask? Basically if any of you decide (or get tricked) to transfer your domain to them, if it has more than 2 years, then DRG/DROA will charge you $15/year.  WHAT?!?! The reason why they would do this is they won’t make any  money on your domain until it’s up for renewal so they’re charging a $15 “just because” fee. Hilarious really. It’s like ‘if you have a dot (.) in your domain, then you will pay us money’. Unreal.

But wait, there’s more. Under their privacy statement:

Yes, we do share information but only as described below…..

Advertisers: We will share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers…

Partners: We partner with other parties to provide specific services. When the user signs up for these services, we will share names, or other contact information that is necessary for the third party to provide these services.

AND! If you decide to host with them:

License of Your website content Domain Renewal Group grants to You, and You accept from Domain Renewal Group, a non-exclusive, worldwide and royalty free license to copy, display, use and transmit on and via the Internet Your website content in connection with Domain Renewal Group’s performance or enforcement of this Agreement.

In short, this means they own your website but will let you use it (they grant you license to the content). Dodgy doesn’t even begin to describe them. Consider yourself warned!

Enough of DRG/DROA, they might think that we’re picking on them. While some of these letters use scare tactics to get you to essentially switch registrars others, such as Domain Name Group, use the lure of a free iPod to get your money. Not a scam, smart really. I mean, who wouldn’t want a free iPod? But alas, let’s do a bit of light analysis:

• iPod (~$80 for a 2GB iPod)
• 2 year domain registration
• Free email and web forwarding  (note: this is not hosting, but rather pointing your newly purchased domain to another hosting/email company).

They charge $245 to register, transfer, or renew. It also doesn’t matter what type of domain, it’s $245!

So to register a .com.au – $245; To register a .com, you guessed it! $245.

To give you an idea of the fee disparity, WDGF charges $40 (2yrs) for a .com and $49.95 (2yrs) for a .com.au. Domain Name Group are not technically scamming (as it does say that it’s an “invitation to register”) so much as they are guilty of charging an obscene amount of money but, hey, at least you get a free iPod!

The moral of this blog post is for you to make you aware of the type of scams that are out there and for you to thoroughly read through the letters that you are sent. The bad guys don’t care about ethics, and they’re out there ready to prey on your naivety. The onus is on you to arm yourself with knowledge and a spoonful of common sense doesn’t hurt either.

We feel it is important to clarify the role we play and the services we offer. We are not your ISP (Internet Service Provider).  We host your website, yes, but we do not provide you with Internet access. That would be Telstra, Optus, iiNet, Internode, TPG etc.

We also do not know your ISP account details; that would be a privacy breach on your ISP’s behalf.

If your Internet doesn’t work, you will not be able to get email or see your website, but both your website and email will be there waiting for you when your Internet starts working again – others will be able to see your website and email you, but you will not receive the email until your Internet connection is working again. When this occurs, please ring your ISP and not White Dog Green Frog as we are not the service provider and are unable to assist.

The quick way to test this is to visit a big website or two and press your “Refresh” button in your web browser – if www.google.com is down then you know your internet is not working!

Love,
Your friendly techs at White Dog Green Frog

Upgrading your software with the latest releases is absolutely vital to keeping your website current, functional, and secure.

When a program is outdated, it’s just like an automobile that hasn’t been serviced recently, it starts to act wacky and sometimes shut down. Programs react similarly so don’t forget to upgrade your software (and service your cars!).  Also, websites with old software tend to get hacked (vandalized) more often.

For instance, Fido’s control panel actually displays a green icon in the bottom right-hand corner that will alert users when an update is available. Click on the icon and select the latest version. Fido will then perform upgrade. Log out and log back in to see that the upgrade has been applied. Click here for a doco with screenshots explaining the process.

If you’ve installed software such as Joomla, with Fantastico, our automated software installer, you’ll find it a simple matter to update things through Fantastico.

To upgrade your Joomla website:

Log in to cPanel
Ensure that you have plenty of disk space
Backup your current site
Scroll down to software/services
Click on Fantastico De Luxe icon

If you see something like the message below, there is a newer version of the software (eg: Joomla and WordPress) that needs to be updated:

UPDATE NOW!
Following installations are not up-to-date. Keep your installations secure and up-to-date and ensure that future versions of Fantastico will be able to maintain your installations by updating now.

Joomla 1.5
Location Installed Version Upgrade Link
/ 1.5.11 Upgrade to 1.5.15 (<— click this link and follow instructions)

WordPress
Location Installed Version Upgrade Link
/blog 2.8 Upgrade to 2.9.2 (<— click this link and follow instructions)

You can find information on how to use cPanel in your initial Welcome email or via emailing our support team. If none of this makes sense to you, you probably don’t have any software installed on your website!

NOTE: Please ensure that you have an adequate amount of disk space to perform the upgrade. If you do not have enough disk space the upgrade will fail during the process.

Strange, indeed. Typical of IE to be annoying (grrrr!).

After a bit of head scratching and digging we discovered that IE (all versions – ETA looks like this is issue has finally been resolved with IE9, currently in beta as of 17/9/2010) doesn’t play nice with images that are saved in CMYK color format. Makes sense (sort of) as CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key [Black]) is for print and RGB (Red, Green, Blue) is for electronic screens/web.

“Haleemon”, you ask, “what ARE you going on about?”

When an image is created/modified, it’s coloring is one of various formats; 3 of the most common formats are CMYK, RGB, and Greyscale. Most browsers can render any of the formats even if it’s a CMYK image.

Practical example: A client sends you their logo to add to your website, but the logo was created for their print campaign. Most people, except for the Graphic Designer, wouldn’t know the difference (or care for that matter) but alas, Internet Explorer does.

Quick fix – open up Photoshop or Gimp and save the image as an RGB image.

Here’s how: In Photoshop or GIMP, from the menu go to Image, then select Mode, then click on RGB and save the new image.

Reupload the new image to the website and voila, problem solved!

IE actually has a number of these types of (ahem) issues. As web developers we stay abreast of these issues to ensure that the websites we create render correctly in all browsers.

If you are an IE user, I’ll leave you with the challenge to try out one of the other popular browsers, such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari, for a month. Feel free to comment back and let us know what you think.

If you like speed, check out this Youtube video on Google Chrome’s speed. But alas, I digress…