Organisers – Epix Media, Laser Red, Lava and Ruddocks – are keeping to the established format – three short presentations interspersed with networking for LincsTweetMeet 3.

Trefor Davies, co-founder and chief technology officer at Timico will predict the impact of 4G mobile connectivity on social media usage; Daniel Ionescu, managing editor at thelincolnite.co.uk is set to talk about app development; and Jonathan Fitzgerald, senior media and communications officer at Lincolnshire County Council will give his views on how the public sector can make best use of social media.

“We set up LincsTweetMeet to bring people, who connect online through social media, together in the real world and to help people interested in social media find out more about how best to use it in a business setting,” says Liam O’Leary of Laser Red. “LincsTweetMeet 3 will, like our previous events, cover a wide range of topics and give people a chance to meet their online friends, followers and connections in real life.

“After LincsTweetMeet 2 and at LincsTweetMeet Lite, which was held during Social Media Week, we took the time to talk to the people who came along and found out what they wanted to hear about next. We hope that by focusing on their feedback that this event will be equally as successful.

“As a result of this research, we found out that people would really like to feed their tummies as well as their minds, so we’ve introduced a £10 charge which covers the cost incurred by The Showroom to provide food and drink for everyone who comes along.”

For further information or to book your place at LincsTweetMeet 3 visit http://www.lincstweetmeet.co.uk  or connect via Twitter: @LincsTweetMeet.

View our 3 reasons to register on the LincsTweetMeet YouTube Channel.

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So what are cookies anyway?

Cookies are like memory for your web browser and they store information as you browse the web. Cookies are used for all sorts of things including visitor tracking, keeping you logged in to websites and remembering items in your shopping basket. Basically “a cookie is a small file, typically of letters and numbers, downloaded on to a device when the user accesses certain websites. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device.” (ICO 2011)

What’s the new law for?

“The 2003 Regulations implemented a European Directive … which is concerned with the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector. In 2009 this Directive was amended by Directive 2009/136/EC. This included a change to … the E-Privacy Directive requiring consent for storage or access to information stored on a subscriber or users terminal equipment – in other words a requirement to obtain consent for cookies and similar technologies.

Governments in Europe had until 25th May 2011 to implement these changes into their own law. The UK introduced the amendments on 25 May 2011″. (ICO 2011)

Does it affect me?

The chances are if you just have a small static business or personal website that it won’t affect you, however even if you have Google Analytics installed you really should be doing something to comply with the law.

There’s been a lot of wondering about Google Analytics and the new law; the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) have stated that they are unlikely to prosecute for the use of cookies like Google Analytics although this is not a guarantee.

“Although the Information Commissioner cannot completely exclude the possibility of formal action in any area, it is highly unlikely that priority for any formal action would be given to focusing on uses of cookies where there is a low level of intrusiveness and risk of harm to individuals” (ICO 2011)

The ICO recommend an “opt in” pop up or bar at the top of your website asking for consent as per their example (I’ve read that only 10% of people actually clicked on the ICO’s notification to activate cookies) and there is no required method in the guidelines. We spotted a great alternative which instead informs users of the cookies your’re using and tells people how to switch them off. For small websites using only cookies that are essential to the site’s functionality or are for Google Analytics we’re hoping this solution is adequate.

What can I do?

We’ve written a small plugin for WordPress websites which applies the same functionality you can see on our website, namely the pop up in the bottom right corner that appears when you first visit the site and the “Cookie settings” link at the bottom of the page.

We’ll be implementing this free of charge for all our clients currently on WordPress that wish to have it, providing their website only uses essential and GA cookies. If you’d like to use our plugin on your own WordPress website please get in touch, we can also implement it on to non-WordPress sites too.

The current guidelines are quite general, we think this solution will be sufficient however we can’t make any guarantee’s.

More info:
(Quotes above obtained from these pages).

ICO guidelines

ICO website

Comic by The Chapel Dawn

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It’s really important to know where your website is and who is managing it. Most of you probably won’t ever have a major issue related to your website hosting, but those that do tend to be those that are unaware of where everything is. Recently I have had two clients with fairly serious issues that we’ve managed to resolve. Both were unsure where their domains and websites were being held; one had a previous web developer that wasn’t particularly helpful when it came to getting our hands on what we needed and the other had a handful of company names and none would admit to hosting their website, despite what the evidence said!

Below I’ve outlined some quick checks you can do yourselves to make sure you know where everything is. I’ve also added some tips to make the management of your website a little bit easier. The details of owning a website can get quite complex, I’ve tried my best to keep it simple!

If your unsure what any of the terms I’ve used below mean, I’ve added very brief descriptions at the bottom of this post.

Quick Checks

Is my domain registered in my name?

Whois is a directory that holds information about all domain names (webite addresses). It’s really simple to check who owns a domain, just go to who.is and enter your website address. It will also tell you who the Registrar is (the company the domain name was registered through).

If someone else registered your domain name for you and it is not registered in your name according the Whois directory, ask this person to change the registration details. If you have any issues with ownership of your website, providing the domain is in your name they can normally be resolved (even if you don’t have direct access to the domain name).

Where’s my website?

The Whois directory also gives you information about the name servers. These can be used to identify where the website itself is being kept. For example our website’s name servers are “…1and1.co.uk” which tells you our website is on a 1and1 website hosting account.

I don’t have a login for my website or domain names…

If you don’t have a login for your website or domain names with either of the companies identified above (using the registrar and name server information) the chances are you’ve asked your web developer to host everything for you. If that’s not the case, you may just have misplaced the details – contact the company(s) in question and they will usually help you get access.

My website is with my web developer on their private hosting

This is absolutely fine providing you trust and get along with them. Some companies will require you to host with them if you are using their own software within your website and this is usually to help prevent copyright infringement. We have clients that host with us and others that prefer to have their own accounts; for us it’s whatever the client is most comfortable with.

Tips

Own your domains

At the very least, make sure your domain names are registered in your name. If a company insists that you host with them against your wishes, you can still keep your domain names on an account owned by you and “point” the domain name to their hosting account where your website is.

Keep everything in one place

Some clients seem to like to register domain names with multiple different companies, have email accounts elsewhere and their website somewhere else… usually though a lack of awareness or communication between colleagues. Keeping everything on one hosting account makes life so much easier when you come to have a new website built, whether that’s with your developer or on an account of your own.

Document it

If you have multiple team members keep a central document containing all relevant contact details that explains where everything is. This is something we do for our larger clients, usually after having gone through most of the process above. Once we get everything organised we create a list of where everything is with the contact details of their account managers within the relevant companies.

Over the next month or so I’ll also be covering what to do if your website is stolen or duplicated and the new laws around cookies (not the biscuit kind)!!

Term Reference

Domain name: this is your website address, for example ours is www.epixmedia.co.uk

Website: these are the files/pages people see when they go to your domain name.

Hosting: this is the place your website files are kept. You can also usually keep your domain names and email accounts on your “Hosting” account.

Name servers: Your hosting account is kept on a server somewhere, the “name servers” section on the Whois directory shows you the address of that server. This can help you identify where your website files are being kept.

Whois: A directory containing information on the registration of domain names.

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Now you can just drop in to The Showroom’s iCafe on Tritton Road in Lincoln from 2pm – 4pm on the second Wednesday of every month and we’ll be there to lend a hand. Bring your tech along and any details or passwords we may need to help you resolve the issue.

The service is completely free and we’ll aim to spend 10-15 minutes helping you answer your tech questions, and if we can’t help we’ll at least be able to advise on what to do next!

Next dates: TBC

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He joined fellow Mo Bro’s as part of the Lincoln Business Club team who are quickly raising funds. Will has been updating his Mo space every day so be sure to log-on to watch his progress at http://mobro.co/epix

You can donate online and all donations to the team or individuals will be gratefully received!

http://mobro.co/LBC

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1. It’s Free

WordPress is free! You can even host it for free with a wordpress.com domain (ie http://yourname.wordpress.com) though their hosting is rather restrictive. You can also host your wordpress site with your web developer or other hosting companies such as 1and1 or godaddy. Be sure to check that the host supports wordpress before signing up for anything.

It has the potential to be absolutely 100% free if you also make use of a free theme (more below) and have a bit of time to invest in finding your way around. However doing this has its downsides and to really make the most of it we would recommend you at least have a chat with your developer!

2. The easy-to-use admin

Adding new website pages and blog posts is simple – WordPress has a visual editor and allows you to manage images and galleries.

You can also manage your website menus and navigation if you want, plus WordPress has a whole heap of more advanced features if your feeling adventurous!

3. Free & custom themes

WordPress has thousands of free or low cost themes available on hundreds of libraries across the internet. These themes are a financially viable way to give your site a design and some of the themes that sell for a small fee have some great features too, however using one of these can take some uniqueness away from your website and brand.

A way around this is to have a custom theme built, as this means your WordPress site can be designed by a designer and hand-coded just like any other site. This is really what makes WordPress so wonderful – its ability to be completely customisable whilst still giving you full control. See some of our custom themes built for clients here.

There is a third option too, and that’s to have an existing theme edited, and customise it to fit your brand. A good example of this is the lincolnshireweddingfayre.co.uk website.

4. Simple set up

Setting up WordPress is simple, especially on WordPress’ own hosting or other web hosts that have WordPress built in. If you prefer some help, a developer can set up your WordPress site and install a free theme in a few hours.

There’s nothing to install on your computer either. It’s all hosted online and you can access your WordPress admin from almost anywhere with a computer and an Internet connection.

5. Expandability

WordPress really is a fantastic platform for your small-medium business’ website. Not only can you control everything on it from the admin but there are plugins for almost anything you can imagine. If you decide you want to sell a few products online there are ecommerce plugins, if you want to sell or giveaway tickets to your workshops, just add an events calendar with the required functionality – there are so many out there. WordPress really can grow with your business.

So, there’s plenty of reasons we think you should be using WordPress! If you want to find out more – contact us!

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