How Does Your Site Appear in Firefox?
Sometime ago, I received several email complaints that links in my newsletter and on the site were triggering DOWNLOADS of the linked pages to a “temporary directory” instead of opening NPT in the Firefox web browser.
This is what it looked like:
Note, this was ONLY happening in Firefox.
The links were all formatted correctly so I spent a number of hours going back and forth with different folks, then on the Firefox support forum. None of the suggested solutions worked.
Finally, I passed it on to Steve Hetrick, the braniac over a DataWebPro who runs my servers, and he had it resolved lickety-split.
Solution - he added the following line of code to my .htaccess file.
Action application/x-httpd-php “/php/php-cgi.exe
I was lucky to get those comments from site visitors about the Firefox issues, otherwise I wouldn’t have known.
Have you checked your site in the Firefox browser lately?
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 3% [?]
Are You Using Joomla CMS?
I received an email from Steve Hetrick at DataWebPro that will be of interest to anyone running the JOOMLA content management system on their servers.
Both Joomla and Mambo have come under attack in the past few weeks - a serious issue that can result in site
defacements to more serious account and server security breaches.
Steve recommends that you upgrade to the latest version of Joomla, 1.0.10, which involves only a few mouse clicks when you use Cpanel’s Fantastico.
Apparently most of the hacks are coming through outdated or compromised plugins.
For a list of the plugins and more information about the problem, visit http://www.datawebpro.net/alert.
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 6% [?]
Are You Losing Visitors to Your Newsletter Signup Process?
Hey All!
Did you know that you may be losing site visitors - and therefore potential customers - when people sign up for your newsletter?
A very kind NPT reader let me know (and then I learned about the same problem later at the Underground) and now I’m sharing the info with you.
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 4% [?]
Are You Still Using Frame Sets?
If you are using frame sets (framed pages), you may be losing commissions.
Here is a portion of an email that I received from one of my merchant partners.
There are still some affiliates who use frame sets to generate their revenue.
When a frame set is used, we cannot track referals to you which means that you won’t get credit for sales or leads generated. There’s nothing we can do about this. Our recommendation is that you not use frame sets.
For those who don’t know what a frame set is, a Frame Set is a way to display more than one web page in the browser window simultaneously. The window is divided into rectangular columns and rows, called Frames, where each Frame contains a different web page.
Here is an example of a framed page at HTML Goodies.
Take heed and don’t get framed!
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 4% [?]
Gone in the Blink of an Eye!
An article published over at Nature.com confirms that we humans DO generally judge books, and web sites, by their covers.
Basically, first-time visitors arriving from search engine will decide in only 50 milliseconds whether or not your site is worth their time.
Here’s what Michael Hopkin had to report:
“Like the look of our website? Whatever the answer (and hopefully it was yes), the chances are you made your mind up within the first twentieth of a second. A study by researchers in Canada has shown that the snap decisions Internet users make about the quality of a web page have a lasting impact on their opinions.
We all know that first impressions count, but this study shows that the brain can make flash judgements almost as fast as the eye can take in the information. The discovery came as a surprise to some experts. “My colleagues believed it would be impossible to really see anything in less than 500 milliseconds,” says Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University in Ottawa, who has published the research in the journal Behaviour and Information Technology1. Instead they found that impressions were made in the first 50 milliseconds of viewing.”
So, does your site suffer from long load times? Sick colors? Graphic mania? It might be time to read more…
Popularity: 2% [?]
