[00:00:09.220] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.520] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.030] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.430] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:14.800] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With" a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have been happening in our businesses over the last seven days. Now, for those who haven't joined us before, we both run web design companies. And I am also a magician. And once again, it's been a very busy week.
[00:00:35.650] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:00:36.220] - Gordon
And thank you to you, if you've left us comments, or said anything, or shared these videos. The more people we see, the more questions we have that we'll be able to talk about on this show. So let's start with you this week, Taylor. What's been going on with you?
[00:00:56.200] - Taylor
So this week I have been making changes and updating quite a lot of my current clients, and they either have things they want to add to the websites, so new pages, or there's things that people have noticed that kind of need fixing, or just a general upkeep with updates and things like that and backups. And one thing that has happened in the last week is, there has been a malware kind of attack, which is where someone kind of injects bad code that is dangerous to your site, it can harm your site, not only to the visitors of your website, but also it can damage your rankings on Google.
[00:01:45.760] - Gordon
So that's quite interesting. Should we just explain a little bit about, first of all, how that could happen in the first place and secondly, how it can affect your website and your visitors? So first of all, how can it happen to someone's website?
[00:01:59.830] - Taylor
There are lots of ways that it can happen. One of the most notable is WordPress, which is what, a lot, 35% of the Internet is built with, and with WordPress you have things called plug-ins, which are kind of like add ons that people have written for WordPress that can basically extend the functionality of the core WordPress. But with that comes the security risks, where if it's not coded properly, if there are backdoor entries, if the actual person that's submitted the code is, has bad intentions, then you can cause damage to your website.
[00:02:46.240] - Gordon
Yeah, and it's not just plug-ins either. It's also themes, and anything else that has code in it, but also it's plug-ins that haven't been updated recently. Now that's whether they've been updated in your site, so there's been newer versions and you just have chosen not to update them, or the fact they've just not been supported and they've not been tested with the later versions of the software. We always recommend you keep your software up to date because of this very reason.
[00:03:21.010] - Taylor
Yeah, and it's the same, there's another way that you can have malware or get attacked, really, is by having kind of bad user management. So this is very common in the workplace, in an office environment, is basically training your staff to be wary of, it's normally emails that they normally do training on. And, you know, if you get a dodgy email, just don't click any links, really. But it goes the same with your website, you know, making sure you've got a secure password. You know, people that use the same password for multiple different logins, is the worst thing you could do, really.
[00:03:59.140] - Gordon
Do you know what the number one password that's used is?
[00:04:03.430] - Taylor
Password?
[00:04:04.190] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:04:04.760] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:05.680] - Gordon
Well, password is one of them. That's not the number one though. The number one password used is "123456."
[00:04:13.180] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:13.900] - Gordon
I mean that's asking for trouble, isn't it?
[00:04:17.230] - Taylor
Yeah. Because you're not making it secure and you're not, you know you're, it's essentially having a house and not putting a lock on the front door.
[00:04:27.190] - Gordon
So we will talk about in the future, password managers.
[00:04:31.810] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:32.050] - Gordon
Because I think that's very worthwhile talking about. And something that everyone should be doing if you're not already. But yeah, malware is a big problem. So now someone's managed to get in through a security problem or a bad password. What do they do to the website?
[00:04:49.870] - Taylor
There are a couple of different ways. One thing is you want to make sure you always have a backup of your website. This can be for numerous reasons. It can be if you've got, if you have a malware attack, if you want to move your website to another host.
[00:05:06.190] - Gordon
It's always good to have a backup of the site anyway. Because you've no idea what's going to happen to it.
[00:05:10.450] - Taylor
Exactly. And making sure it's, you know, sometimes in a different location to where your website is hosted.
[00:05:16.960] - Gordon
And the number of times that you back up is dependent on how often the content changes on your website.
[00:05:22.750] - Taylor
Yes. So, for example, if you have an e-commerce website, then you're going to want to update that kind of maybe hourly, hourly, maybe because you've got orders that are going to be being placed.
[00:05:33.280] - Gordon
Or even real time.
[00:05:34.030] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:05:34.600] - Gordon
Yeah. But say somebody has now got into your website. Someone has got malicious intent. They've managed to get into your website. What can they now do? There's two that I can think of, main things that they can do to the website, right?
[00:05:48.640] - Taylor
Well, you can restore from a back up.
[00:05:50.320] - Gordon
No, no, no, no. This is the hacker. What are they going to do to your website? Why do they want to get into the site?
[00:05:57.950] - Taylor
I'm not sure.
[00:05:59.040] - Gordon
So, one thing they can do is, they can have any visitor that comes to the site being sent off to another website. So maybe they're monetising a site. And the more people they get going to that site, the more money they earn. That's one way of doing it.
[00:06:15.100] - Taylor
Or stealing data.
[00:06:16.690] - Gordon
Stealing data is another reason. If you've got an e-commerce site and there's credit card information on the site, yep. That is something that they might be after. It might be that they just want to use the website as a way to send out attacks on other websites, or emails.
[00:06:38.830] - Taylor
So spoofing.
[00:06:39.460] - Gordon
Spoofing, spamming, that sort of thing that is coming from the owner's website rather than the hacker's website, because that makes it very difficult to trace.
[00:06:50.750] - Taylor
Yes, so it's like a VPN where you spoof your location to come from a different location to access different things, really.
[00:06:58.480] - Gordon
But the most common malware is when you have a website that's been defaced in some way. So it could be that they've put their own content up, or they've put, you know, porn websites or gambling websites, or something replacing your website.
[00:07:15.730] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:07:16.540] - Gordon
And that's that's one of the biggest issues that you can have. And once your website gets to that point, it's really quite difficult to clean it up. Ideally, you want to restore one of your backups, your latest backup. But not just do that, because that's going to take it back to the point at which it was then vulnerable. You've now got to then...
[00:07:42.580] - Taylor
Secure it.
[00:07:42.580] - Gordon
Find the issue and secure the site, which is much more tricky and very specialist knowledge needed for that.
[00:07:50.350] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely. Because, you know, when it happens, you don't know what the cause is. It could be someone's got a weak password, but it could be a plug-in hasn't been updated, or all the plug-ins are up to date and it's a security risk or a vulnerability that hasn't been found yet.
[00:08:07.210] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:08:07.630] - Taylor
And that's the worst bit.
[00:08:09.640] - Gordon
And personally, we have packages that we offer that secure sites, clean up any malware and harden security to prevent it from happening. It's a lot better to prevent somebody getting into your site than it is to try and clean it up afterwards.
[00:08:31.120] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:31.420] - Gordon
Prevention is much better. And in fact, that's what we've done with one of your customers recently.
[00:08:37.090] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:08:37.750] - Gordon
So we had a customer that Taylor has which had hacked website. What was the issue with their one? What did they see?
[00:08:45.670] - Taylor
I can't remember. It was a couple of files, or I think the core files had been changed, but we don't know what the cause was. And so we...
[00:08:53.140] - Gordon
But it's now clean. It's been cleaned up, the security has been hardened and we are now monitoring it.
[00:08:58.240] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:58.510] - Gordon
So that should it happen again, we will be alerted, and we can go in and take action immediately. And that's what you want, because if you've got a website down for any period of time, it's not doing what it's supposed to do.
[00:09:10.360] - Taylor
And it's also dangerous to your visitors and to your SEO because...
[00:09:14.260] - Gordon
Oh, yeah.
[00:09:14.650] - Taylor
Google ranks you down if you've got an insecure...
[00:09:17.800] - Gordon
Well, it doesn't want to send traffic to your site, if it's going to cause issues, it could be passing on a virus. That's another thing that malware could do. So Google don't want to do that. So, yes, it's really important if you get malware to get an expert to look at it, because just trying to clean it up yourself without knowledge is going to be very, very tricky.
[00:09:37.960] - Taylor
Yeah. So what about you this week then?
[00:09:40.810] - Gordon
So this week, I want to talk about something I've been dealing with recently, which is the rebuilding of my website. One of the things I decided early on is that I wanted to employ a professional to to do part of the site that I don't have skills in, and that is copywriting. So I'm not a copywriter. I have a good idea of the sort of copy that, I'm looking for.
[00:10:10.070] - Taylor
The language that you want to use.
[00:10:11.120] - Gordon
The language.
[00:10:11.790] - Taylor
And how you want to speak to your visitor in terms of...
[00:10:15.900] - Gordon
Yes.
[00:10:16.370] - Taylor
Different ways of different audiences.
[00:10:18.030] - Gordon
Yes. And I also have a good idea of things that I've tried in the past that have worked and the things that I've tried that haven't worked. So I have a good idea of what I want. But, as is always the case, it's much better to get a professional that you trust to come in and do this particular job. Now, in fact, I've been speaking with two different copywriters.
[00:10:42.620] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:10:44.240] - Gordon
And the the decision that I came to is slightly different than, you know, actually.
[00:10:52.130] - Gordon
So I spoke to a copywriter and said, "look, the site hasn't been redesigned yet. We can see what's up there now. And the reason I'm redesigning it is because of what's up there now."
[00:11:03.150] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:11:03.940] - Gordon
"And what I'd like to do is to work on the site, get the design working the way I want it to work and design the whole site, and then sort of come to you and say, 'this is the site, I've put placeholder text in. Can you now write copy for this section, this section, this section?'" And just what you would normally do is put 'lorem ipsum' text in, which is Latin placeholder text.
[00:11:29.510] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:11:30.080] - Gordon
So if you ever see 'lorem ipsum' somewhere someone has not gone back and replaced the text with actual text, that's why it's there. But she said, yes, that's fine. This is something that she does a lot. And in fact it's probably easier this way because that way I'm, because I'm designing the site and I'm building the site, I can do that part of it and make the aesthetic and the look and the feel how I want it to look and feel. And then she can come in and replace all the text with with copy that's going to work well for me. Now, having said that, I also have another, copywriter who is very, very new at copywriting. They've recently taken courses and they've decided this is something they'd like to do. So what I've agreed with them, is that they write the copy as I'm building the site. So again, I'll do a page and then say, "right, this is the page. Can you please write copy?" They've brought the copy in for me and I'm putting that in instead of the 'lorem ipsum' placeholder text. Now, because this person is very new to this, even though they've done courses and so forth, it's not something they've done professionally before. So it's a really nice way for them to sort of get a grip on how the whole process works and sort of get some experience with working with a client. And by the end of working with this person, I will have a website with copy on every page in every place. And I can then go to the the professional copywriter that I was talking to originally, tell her what's happened. Say, "this is what's happened, you know, I had someone else write it," and have her go in and tweak or change stuff as she feels is necessary.
[00:13:22.640] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:13:22.970] - Gordon
With her experience.
[00:13:24.070] - Taylor
So it's similar to kind of what I do, and what you do, is where you'll build a website and, you know, we'll do as best we can and then we design it and you make changes and stuff, and then you give it to another web designer, or another web developer, and you say, you know, "just..."
[00:13:40.230] - Gordon
"Have a look over it."
[00:13:40.230] - Taylor
Yeah. Just you know.
[00:13:41.150] - Gordon
Because we do that for each other.
[00:13:42.480] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:13:42.830] - Gordon
That's one of the main advantages we have with our companies and working in the same place, but having different customers.
[00:13:50.510] - Taylor
And we have different views on things so...
[00:13:52.370] - Gordon
We do.
[00:13:52.730] - Taylor
I, you know, I come to you and say, you know, "I've done this website, what do you think? Give me your feedback." And, you know, you give me feedback. And I don't always take it because I think the way I do it, the way I want to do it was better or I just prefer it that way. But then there's some things that you overlook and you don't think about which the way you're doing it with the copywriting is really good, because you can get, you know, the new copywriter to get experience, they can, you know, and you can use that. And then you're basically using the other copywriter to just fine tune everything and take what's been done and just make sure everything's up to scratch.
[00:14:26.390] - Gordon
Yeah. And I think that's a good thing to do. I think having a professional to do is a good thing. Even though I am a photographer, the photographs on the website have been taken by a professional photographer in a studio, or at an event that I'm at. And I'm doing that because I can't take photos of myself performing. There's no way, I have to concentrate on one or the other. So getting a professional in to do the job makes a lot of sense. And this is a website I'm hoping will be around for the next five years. You know, I might update it with new photos to keep it looking like me.
[00:15:05.540] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:15:06.560] - Gordon
But, you know, five, six years, that sort of length of time before I look at it and decide whether it needs changing or just upgrading. It all depends on...
[00:15:17.850] - Taylor
The way the website.
[00:15:18.510] - Gordon
On the website, yeah, whether it works for a start.
[00:15:20.820] - Taylor
Where the Internet goes as well, because, you know, you have.
[00:15:23.270] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:15:23.940] - Taylor
You know, the Internet changes and so do design styles.#
[00:15:26.850] - Gordon
And so does my business.
[00:15:28.140] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:15:28.830] - Gordon
And it may not reflect my business in five, six years down the road.
[00:15:32.120] - Taylor
You may have new services, you may not offer some things, or you may go into something completely different area.
[00:15:37.330] - Gordon
Yeah. So this website has to portray me really well because it's the only advertising I do currently. I don't advertise in magazines or newspapers or television, radio, don't do any of that. I don't have flyers or leaflets. I have a business card and I have the website and that's all I do. The rest is word of mouth for me. And so it needs to be good. It needs to convey what I do very well. And I don't want the website to give a false impression of me. So I don't want to have it claim that I can do something that I can't do, because I mean, that's setting myself up to fail that is. Sadly, there are people who have websites that are amazing, and then you employ them and find that they don't live up to their website. And that's a really bad situation to be in because you'll get lots of new customers once, but you'll never get repeat customers. And for me, that's where I earn the most amount of my money from repeat customers, whether it be the design company or the magician side of what I do. Everything is repeat customers. So they're really important to me.
[00:16:48.330] - Taylor
Yeah, it's the same kind of with me where, you know, with an agency, when people go to an agency and they kind of...
[00:16:54.870] - Gordon
Excuse me. [Sneezes] I do apologise, sorry.
[00:17:00.490] - Taylor
So yeah. So when people come...
[00:17:01.950] - Gordon
Live recording.
[00:17:02.850] - Taylor
When people go to an agency, you're kind of just another customer and you don't get the same, in my opinion, you don't get the same personal feel and personal communication that you would when you come to, so I mean...
[00:17:15.790] - Gordon
Well, you might talk to different people every time you call them.
[00:17:18.330] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, for me especially, you know, each customer really counts. And, you know, I rely on doing a good job, making sure the customer is fully satisfied with the work I've done.
[00:17:30.720] - Gordon
Overly satisfied.
[00:17:31.750] - Taylor
Exactly.
[00:17:32.310] - Gordon
Yeah. Raving.
[00:17:33.480] - Taylor
Before I'll finish a project, you know. I will make changes just before we go live if it needs it, because at the end of the day, if the client isn't happy, then, you know, I'm not happy because I want the client to be as happy and proud of the website they have, that I've built.
[00:17:50.760] - Gordon
And that's all down to positioning yourself as well, which again, is another topic for another episode - positioning. That's a really important thing. It's a good way to make more money than your competitors without doing anything different.
[00:18:04.800] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:18:05.220] - Gordon
We shall talk about that again.
[00:18:06.620] - Taylor
It's kind of like showing value, isn't it?
[00:18:08.260] - Gordon
It is. So that's pretty much it. Oh. Do you want to tell everyone about your new purchase?
[00:18:16.800] - Taylor
So I bought the new MacBook Pro, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. And it arrived. And so I've been using that, setting it up which took a while, and using it. And it's been really good. It's been...
[00:18:30.060] - Gordon
Actually your whole work desk has changed recently. Not only have you got a new Mac, which is a lot faster, I mean a lot faster from just the few tests that you've been doing over the last few days. But you've also got an enormous screen now right?
[00:18:48.720] - Taylor
Yes. So for my birthday, I got a new monitor, so I was originally using it...
[00:18:54.570] - Gordon
You were going to buy it for the business yourself.
[00:18:56.400] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:18:56.760] - Gordon
And then someone offered to buy it as a present and you went, "oh yeah, OK. Lovely."
[00:19:02.610] - Taylor
Yeah. So I was using a 22 inch monitor. The colours weren't great. It was more of just there to kind of as a second display to put stuff on. I didn't use it for colour or design as the colours weren't great. I just used it as a space to put reference things on so Google and emails and things like that, things that don't rely on colour or any good quality graphics. And I upgraded to a 34 inch ultra wide monitor, which is a 21:9 ratio, and from left to right is 84cm wide.
[00:19:39.780] - Gordon
I mean that's very close to a metre, I mean just, a metre long monitor. I mean that's just madness.
[00:19:47.160] - Taylor
So it's really nice. I can get three decent sized browsers across the whole screen and then I've got obviously my laptop as well so that makes four kind of...
[00:19:59.460] - Gordon
Spaces.
[00:20:00.240] - Taylor
Spaces in essence. And it's really good because it helps me and I can have lots of reference material open without having to flick back through and kind of change applications, really. Which, although it doesn't seem like much, when you do it a lot, it adds up.
[00:20:16.360] - Gordon
How's your neck?
[00:20:17.620] - Taylor
It's not too bad. I'm getting used to it.
[00:20:21.220] - Gordon
So what? To look at the left hand side, show me the position of your head?
[00:20:24.700] - Taylor
Well, for people that are listening to podcasts, they're going to have no idea what I'm doing.
[00:20:27.700] - Gordon
No, of course not but.
[00:20:28.920] - Taylor
It's about from here...
[00:20:30.160] - Gordon
30 degrees to the left.
[00:20:31.210] - Taylor
To about there.
[00:20:31.900] - Gordon
To about 30 degrees to the right. It's an enormous, enormous span. It's like watching a tennis, I refer to it as watching a tennis match all day.
[00:20:41.350] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:20:42.330] - Gordon
It's enormous.
[00:20:42.820] - Taylor
You know, you get used to it. And it's really helped me because, one I've got this more powerful computer to kind of power it. And also I've got a lot more space to get more work done.
[00:20:53.350] - Gordon
Yeah, it's true. Always invest in your equipment and your staff.
[00:20:58.720] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:20:59.090] - Gordon
I think that's what we're saying there.
[00:21:00.760] - Taylor
And your craft.
[00:21:01.780] - Gordon
And your craft, yeah skills. People, skills and new equipment. Yeah.
[00:21:07.270] - Taylor
Wonderful.
[00:21:07.990] - Gordon
That's it I think. So, thank you very much for joining us. As always, we can be found on YouTube and Facebook. The links for those are on the screen now.
[00:21:18.430] - Taylor
And you can also go to our website: thisweekwith.co.uk, which has all of our past episodes on it. And it has the video, audio and also the show notes on there as well.
[00:21:28.570] - Gordon
Well, the show notes will be there after the episodes. 'Cos we stream live at 1pm on a Friday, on both YouTube and Facebook. So you can join us live, or you can watch it on the website or on those two at any other time, any time after. And the show notes go up about an hour or so after, providing I haven't got an urgent deadline I'm working on. Because I go back through the video and make notes for them so we know what's going on. So thank you for joining us. If you have enjoyed it, please share and like and tell people about it. And we will see you again next week at 1pm on Friday. Until then, it's goodbye from me. My name's Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:22:11.920] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:22:14.440] - Gordon
Goodbye
[00:22:14.920] - Taylor
Bye.
