Ecosia - a search engine that plants trees
There is something simple that you can do to help counteract the climate emergency that we are experiencing - change the search engine you use. Ecosia is an easy-to-use and effective search engine that uses the money it makes to plant trees all over the world. All search engines make money from adverts placed on the search results pages and Ecosia is no exception. What makes them different is how they use that money. Find out more about Ecosia and how to make the switch (it's simple). You can feel good about every search you make, knowing that trees are being planted because of that simple action.
Read moreHow to avoid the image licence trap
Most organisations want to have images on their websites to make them more appealing - nothing wrong with that. However, many people (including me) make use of stock images from online image libraries. Again, nothing wrong with that. However, it is important to understand the licencing issues with stock images and these can vary from one image library to another. If you get it wrong, you may end up being fined for copyright infringement. Find out more about the different licences and how to stay legal.
Read morePassword mistakes you could be making
Passwords are, at the moment at least, an essential part of our online life both in a work and in a personal context. They are like keys to a door, but instead, they give access to our email, our social media accounts, our bank accounts, our websites. However, many people still tend to use passwords that can be easily guessed or cracked and so put their private information at risk of being discovered by hackers. In this article, I discuss 10 ways in which you can protect yourself on line using simple techniques that can increase the security of your passwords.
Read moreSpeedy does it. Why website speed matters
As users, we expect a lot from a decent website. We expect it to look good, be easy to navigate, give us the information we are looking for AND for it to load quickly. Waiting for a web page to load is something that nobody wants and few are prepared to tolerate. So, if your web pages don't load quickly, you're going to lose visitors. However, the position that your pages have in the Google search results will also suffer if they're slow, as they penalise poor page load performance.
Read moreWant to save the planet? Start with your website
The data centres and telecoms networks used by the internet consume a huge amount of power, roughly the equivalent of all the electricity used by the UK. If we thought of the internet as a country, then it would be the 7th largest polluter in the world. Clearly, that's not OK. However, if you have a website, there are actions you can take to reduce the power consumption of the internet. Changing one website isn't going to make an impact, but neither is recycling one plastic bag. The impact becomes significant when we all take action collectively. And the effort involved in reducing the energy used by our sites is small. In this article, I'll talk about a number of ways in which you can make a difference.
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