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Three Ways to Share Confidential Info (More) Safely

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I often need to get sensitive information from clients: domain registrar login, FTP credentials, hosting account login, etc. Sending this kind of info by email is not a good idea, it’s too insecure (although it’s hard to keep clients from doing it anyway sometimes).

What should you do instead? A phone call to share long passwords is not that helpful. But there are some online tools that are built to ‘self-destruct’ once they’re read or after a specific short timeframe. Here are three.

QuickForget.com

This is my go-to tool for sending secrets online. You can attach files, and set it to delete the message after a set number of views or a certain number of hours. The sender types or pastes their sensitive info, selects options and saves, then sends the recipient the link. Very easy to use.

OneTimeSecret.com

This one allows you to set a time limit as short as 5 minutes (virtually a self-destruct on reading) and a password (or generate a random one).

privnote.com

Similar to the first two, privnote also has some other features. By default it asks for confirmation by the recipient before showing and destroying the note (which you can disable). You can also send yourself, the sender, a note when the private message has been destroyed. And you can set the message to self-destruct immediately after reading.

Any of these tools is a much safer option than using email to send confidential info.

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Weekly Links Roundup – WordPress History, Domain Names, Tracking Clicks, Product Photos

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

I know it’s been a long time (about 6 weeks!) since the last post. Today’s post I hope brings an end to that unplanned break.

It’s been a crazy summer that included a death in the family, a broken elbow and hand, a sad lack of paddle boarding, and a badly-needed vacation. But now that things have settled down, I plan to get back to weekly blogging (or thereabouts).

Just for fun – here is the history of WordPress in 4 minutes. If you’re a long-time WordPress user, you’ll get a kick out of this. Maybe. I did.

Looking for a domain name for your new business venture? It’s more important than you might think to make a solid decision. Learn about domain names and how to choose the best one for your organization.

Tracking link and button clicks in your site is an important part of understanding site traffic, yet Google Analytics doesn’t let you do this very easily. Setting it up to track in Analytics is a tedious process. This tutorial shows you how to use the MonsterInsights plugin to track those clicks. This will help you do things like track clicks on a phone number or on a link that goes outside your own site.

Finally… The importance of having high-quality product photos for your ecommerce site can’t be overstated. Learn how to take great product photos that really entice your visitors to buy.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Email Marketing Images, Heatmaps, Map Plugins, PDF Plugins

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Ever really think about using images in your email newsletter? And what kind of an impact those images might have? If not, take a look at this post about images in email marketing, you might learn a thing or two about selecting and using them more effectively.

Here’s a nifty new addon tool from Google Analytics – read this guide to using the Page Analytics Chrome plugin to see heatmaps of any website. A heat map can show you where users linger on your website – where they tend to spend the most time. Learn what sections and elements your visitors are interacting with, and which they are not.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business (or a number of them) you can use a map on your website. Maps add a great visual component and can help users find your location easily. But there are so many map plugins for WordPress – which should you use? Here’s a review of 8 WordPress map plugins to help you decide which is a good fit for your site and needs.

Finally… if you have a lot of documents on your site, you may want to check out PDF Poster. This free plugin displays PDF files right within your WordPress pages and posts and supports file downloads. See the complete review.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Lazy Loading, Tracking Downloads, Page Speed, Email Marketing for Bloggers

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Here’s an easy performance win – implement lazy loading on your site. Lazy loading means not loading images that are off-screen; they eventually load when the user scrolls down to them. Learn more about lazy loading and here’s the plugin I like for this task in WordPress sites.

If you offer white papers or other kinds of downloads on your site, did you know that you can use Google Analytics, which you’re most likely already using, to track downloads? Though GA doesn’t natively track this kind of interaction, you can set up this tracking in either Google Tag Manager (easier) or a plugin like Monster Insights, or you can add tracking code manually to your download links (harder and not recommended unless you only have a couple of downloads). Learn more in this thorough post on how to track downloads with Google Analytics.

This is cool… since Google made page speed a search engine ranking factor last year, websites in 95% of the world’s countries have become faster. In addition, we all know that a slower site tends to get abandoned more often. Turns out the opposite is also true – faster sites mean lower abandonment rates! If your WordPress site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, try our WordPress Performance Optimization service.

Do you have a brand new blog, and are you out to change the world? While you’re working on gaining loyal subscribers, learn how to build trust by using the 5 types of emails new bloggers should send to their subscribers.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Store Locator Plugins, Plugin Roundup, Social Media, Screenshots Tool

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

If you have multiple brick-and-mortar locations, a really useful feature you can add to your WordPress site is a store locator – a map showing pins for each of your locations. Clicking on a pin opens up address and other info about that location. Here’s a small roundup of 5 top store locator plugins. I’ve used Store Locator on a few sites, pretty easy to use, but these other plugins also look promising.

And speaking of WordPress plugins, here’s a big review of the single best plugin across many categories. While I agree with many of the selected winners, the one I differ with is the best forms plugin. IMO it’s Gravity Forms, and has been for years. Gravity Forms is a commercial plugin currently priced at $59/yr for one site.

If you’re evaluating your social media strategy – or just jumping in with social media for your business – this post on choosing the right social media platform for your business might help. You can’t do everything; this post and infographic can help you decide how to spend your time efficiently. Reviews Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.

Finally… here’s a neat tool I was introduced to in a tech support chat this week. Snaggy is a great free tool for creating and sharing screenshots, perfect for chat.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Ashburn VA, Adobe Apps, Forms, Remarketing

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Ever noticed, if you’re like most Google Analytics users, how much traffic you get from Ashburn, VA? Turns out Ashburn is a big technology center – 70% of the world’s Internet traffic flows through there; about 2.2 trillion Google searches per day.

Adobe’s app subscriptions are undeniably expensive. Photoshop by itself is $33.99/mo for businesses (right now). The first time I bought Photoshop it was in a box with a bunch of other Creative Suite apps for around $600. But anyway, there are alternatives for everything. Here’s a post on 27 free alternatives to Adobe subscription apps. I can also recommend the Affinity products – not free, but solid photo and illustration tools at a low cost.

Here is an interesting post on how form length affects conversions – and it’s not just form length that can have a negative impact. Sometimes longer forms do better, it all depends on a mix of factors.

You’ve probably heard about remarketing (if you’re not using it already) – but you may not be so sure what it is. This is a great intro – learn how to get started with remarketing using Google Ads and Facebook. Basically, remarketing is like getting a second chance to connect to potential customers who already know who you are, such as people who visited your site but didn’t make a conversion.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.