Nielsen SoluTIons

Add an SSL certificate to make your site secure

Lars — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 20:29:41 +0000

Since Microsoft and Google started to warn in the Chrome and Edge Browsers that sites are not secure, it is no longer only e-commerce and sites that handle confidential information, which are affected. Even if you have simple homepage, it can easily scare people away, if you don’t install and enable an SSL certificate, so there is a nice little green lock and https://… in the site address.

Most places offer SSL for free

Most host providers offer free SSL certificates nowadays via Let’s Encrypt, such as Unoeuro, Aze Hosting, SiteGround and Nestify to name a few. GoDaddy still hasn’t implemented Let’s Encrypt, but it probably won’t be long. In the mean time I would probably use another provider, if I were to host a new site, why pay 50 Euro a year for something that ought to be free. If you are going to update your site and are already paying someone to do it, it should not cost much to move your site and get it up and running somewhere else, as part of the package.

Configuring SSL

It varies a little how you configure SSL. Aze Hosting and Nestify take care of it for you automatically, while you need to enable https protection in Unoeuro. However you still need to enable “https redirects” in .htaccess file, which is located in your public_html folder (normally), the webroot. There are great examples on how you can add a couple of lines into the file here, so you ensure people always are sent to https://.com, else things will continue to looking this

Next you need to install and activate the really Really simple SSL plugin i wordpress and enable https.

Cloudflare

If you use Cloudflare you also need to go into Crypto settings and set SSL to Full (strict).

Remember Polylang

If you have a site with multiple languages and use the Polylang plugin for WordPress, then you need to go in to language settings and save the settings again, you do not need to make any changes. if you don’t do this, you will see “too many redirects”, when trying to change to another language. It also doesn’t matter what settings you go into as long as you save.

That’s all folks.

The post Add an SSL certificate to make your site secure appeared first on Nielsen SoluTIons.

Help, my site is too slow

Lars — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:53:48 +0000

Your WordPress site is grinding at an abysmal pace, people are leaving it before even looking at your contents. Google analytics shows a much higher bounce rate and much fewer visitors. Everything is looking hopeless. The site is even offline at times, and those who created and configured your site are long gone, or want a fortune to look at it again.

What can I do?

The first thing you need to do, is to update WordPress and plugins, a lot happens in a year or two. Obviously check the documentation to see if the plugins compatible with the latest version before you start and ensure you have backed up version, if anything goes wrong.

The next thing, is to verify if your site has a cache plugin installed and configured correctly. A cache plugin like W3 Total Cache plugin can make your site up to 50% faster. Finally look at your pictures. Most sites today have lots of images, and by using a plugin like reSmush.it you can compress and reduce image size without noticing any difference.

All this is something that can be solved in a couple of hours, depending on size and complexity. If you have hundreds of posts and images, it will obviously take longer, but most of that time is server time, which doesn’t cost you anything. Worst case, it might be worth to pay for the pro version of the plugin, if you have a massive amount of high res photos, but in the majority of cases, the free version is just fine.

My provider doesn’t understand me…

Once you have optimized your site, and it continues to be slow and unstable, you need to start looking at your provider. What hosting package did you buy? Is your site sitting on a slow shared server? Can you get a better hosting package at a reasonable price? Or is your hosting provider so inflexible, that you cannot add domains to an existing site or buy domains without hosting, slow support etc., Then you should consider changing. Do you have users in different countries? Perhaps you should look at a CDN like Cloudflare, so you content is cached closer to your users, some providers even do that already.

But, I have no idea how to move a site…..

It can be a little complicated, especially if you are trapped at a provider, with a slow server, where even migration plugins like Duplicator give you timeouts. Then you have to do two step migration, backing up the database, copy data via FTP and adapt some plugins directly in the database. If the site is cached, it might be worth emptying it and temporarily disabling it before you migrate, and then enable and configure it again at the new location. You also need to remember rename URLs if you are changing location and domain and ensure redirects are in place for the old domain.

If you know WordPress a little there are plenty of guides out there that can help through the process, and some providers will help you too, but be prepared that that the site may not work 100% at the new location, some plugins may need to be reconfigured or edited in the database. And of course you have a backup of your site before you start doing anything, right….

But, it will probably cost me the same to get a new site…

No, it’s not that bad actually, A new site will cost you between 300 – 1000 Euro, depending whether it is a simple blog or an e-commerce site. A normal site migration we can do for about 80 Euro. If the site is more complex, we are happy to take a look a give you a free quote.

The post Help, my site is too slow appeared first on Nielsen SoluTIons.

Great service and quality does not need to cost a fortune

Lars — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 02:48:37 +0000

They often say that price and quality go hand in hand, but we in NS believe that great service and good quality do not need to cost a fortune. What drives us is our passion around all things digital.

Apps and homepages

The last 5-6 years we have worked on different projects, food ordering site, WordPress design – check the very active blog site A Drop in the Ocean, app projects, simple and more advanced. We have just completed Craft Beer Finder, a really good companion app when you need to find craft beer bars. The app contains the latest in location technology, which was very complex to get implemented.

If you have started your own company and haven’t created your website, then we can help creating a good quality site, find hosting, create domain and email accounts and configure everything. We will try to find the best and cheapest offer on the market, so you only pay what is necessary.

You want an app, you have a good idea and a mature business plan, and you have considered how to monetize the app, then we can help you with:

app specification requirements
finding a software agency for development
establishing timeline
get your project localised
running the project from start to finish

People think it is just a question of finding a company and give some loose instructions and get half a verbal agreement, but it almost always ends badly, especially when you work with foreign low cost companies, you need a more hands-on approach. Even with a great spec, which goes a long way, there are always unexpected obstacles and delays which appear as if from nowhere. Culture differences, time difference, weekend falling on Friday and Saturday and different perception of quality of design are just some of the things you need to look out for. Just look at GDPR jungle that you need to get through. It has complicated development projects and many companies outside EU, think they understand the regulation but there are still a lot of gaps in that area.

Help running your daily IT.

We do assignments like infrastructure, setting up Office 365 or G Suite among other things – everything that a small company get exposed to IT-wise. If you don’t have time or miss knowledge to handle the digital and infrastructure part of your business, like Google My Business, create a Facebook business page or updating your homepage, we can take care of that for you as well – and for a very competitive price. Most tasks are not time that consuming, when you have the expertise. Therefore it can be done fast and cheap. Would you like to use Office 365 or Google’s G Suite, then we can help you here as well, so that everything just works. And if you need support later, we can include that too.

Be there all the way

Though we take care of everything, it can still help having an active role to play throughout the project, even with a simple homepage. It is easy to make a nice design shell, but what about the content, what should the text on your site say, what pictures do you want and where do you want them. Do you need to take some pictures or buy some? Looking around for inspiration can help too and can make delivery happen even faster and also make you happier as you potentially will need fewer changes going forward.

The same is the case for an app project, the more you are involved in the major decisions, especially design, the closer the app will be to what you had in mind.

The post Great service and quality does not need to cost a fortune appeared first on Nielsen SoluTIons.

Welcome

Lars — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 23:47:51 +0000

Blog

Welcome

See the latest news and interesting posts from Nielsen Solutions.

Add an SSL certificate to make your site secure

« Older Entries

Nielsen SoluTIons

Add an SSL certificate to make your site secure

Most places offer SSL for free

Configuring SSL

Cloudflare

Remember Polylang

Help, my site is too slow

What can I do?

My provider doesn’t understand me…

But, I have no idea how to move a site…..

But, it will probably cost me the same to get a new site…

Great service and quality does not need to cost a fortune

Apps and homepages

Welcome

Blog

Add an SSL certificate to make your site secure

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Meta