Blog Archives

At Point and Stare we have been predominantly designing and developing WordPress based projects since 2008.
At the top of the list comes security – most attempts to break into a site are via the login page using simple user names like ‘admin’.

The obvious advice is to never use ‘admin’ as your username.
When users are created they are giver a sequential number and another route for hackers is to use ?author=1 as an example.

So, we have 2 issues to sort out before we do anything else – create a user not named ‘admin’ and with a random number, not 1, 2 etc.

There are many ways you can do this but the easiest/ quickest way I have found is this:
1, Set up a fresh install of WordPress as usual and when you’re asked to set up the admin, go ahead and use anything simple – ‘admin’ and ‘password’ is totally fine at this point.

2, Once you’ve completed the install, log in as usual and download a plugin called “Add Multiple Users for WordPress” – ignore the “not updated for 2 years” message, it works fine.

3, Before you go any further, create a simple text file with as many fake users as you want (I have a sample file you can have if required – just ask).
The file needs to have the following on a single line:
Username,password,email address,role (I set all these to subscriber),First name,Last name

Create a few entries, all on a single line, then copy/ paste, changing some random characters – around 30 or 40 entries is fine:
jefhgfk,kj4R,jfkgfk@gil.com,subscriber,Bob,JJJe
jefk,kj4kg78jR,kjhg2lkjh@lkjkjh.com,subscriber,ff,Ke
jef6ijhgfk,kjhg78jR,jeujhgfk@gkjhgmjakjhil.com,subscriber,Je,ne

Make sure all the names and emails are unique.

4, When ready, go to AMU > Import CSV Data and copy/ paste all the details into the “Or paste your CSV data in the box below” – click ‘Next step’.

5, Click the blue “Skip form and Add Users’ button – voila! A ton of fake users created.

6, Now add a real user – Your preferred username/ password (a better, more secure idea would be to use a ‘pass phrase’).
Hint – For random passwords, I use Strong Password Generator.

7, Now it’s time to log out and then log back in using your real details.

8, Once logged in, remove the AMU plugin and all the users except yourself (obviously).

You should now have a clean user account not named admin and not a low number.

Of course, if you’re still using ‘admin’ as your login, get in touch with us and let’s get you secure.

The meteoric rise of social media means that today we have an array of platforms immediately available at our fingertips. For many, this rise has been a godsend, as the freedom of speech offered by channels such as Twitter and Facebook has even sparked dramatic social change during events such as the Arab Spring of 2010–12.

For other folks, however, it can be difficult getting up to the electric speed of the Internet age. For small businesses who want to harness the marketing potential of social media, it can be a headache deciding which social platform will bring you and your brand the most success. Here’s our guide to social media platforms, allowing you to decide which ones will pack the best punch for your business in the online world.

LinkedIn
With over 500 million members LinkedIn is a business and employment-oriented service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Founded on December 28, 2002, and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their CVs, see Point and Stare’s dedicated LinkedIn page.

Facebook
As the largest social network, by the end of 2013 Facebook had acquired an astonishing 1.23 billion monthly users. Brands on Facebook are able to update their followers on exciting news, promotional offers, and new competitions; they can also offer insights into the business with pictures and information. With the famous “like” and “share” buttons used billions of times per day all over the Internet, Facebook is a must for all businesses if simply due to the sheer scale of the giant that the company has become.
You can, naturally, follow Point and Stare via our Facebook page.

We have only touched the tip of the iceberg in Part I, so make sure you tune into Part II of this post to discover what Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram can do for you in the social media world.

The Internet and social media can often be frowned upon by older generations as a dimension which seemingly has no bearing on reality. According to this view, nothing that takes place in this virtual world impinges on the world we live in, and instead gives youngsters a warped view of the world.

A recent and wildly popular hashtag, #ChangeTheName, suggests otherwise. There has been uproar on Twitter denouncing the nickname of Washington’s American football team, the Vikings (known as the ‘redskins’), as deeply offensive and belonging to a world long left behind. On Sunday 2 November alone, when Washington took on Minnesota, the hashtags #ChangeTheName, #NotYourMascot and #NoHonorInRacism were used no less than 24,000 times and they forced the topic into mainstream headlines and onto the national agenda.
Not only did the subject wind up in the media, but an estimated 5,000 people took to the streets to protest against the name.

Events such as these truly emphasise the astounding power of Twitter to reach and inform people all over the globe. It is this power that we tap into at Point and Stare. For centuries, businesses have been seeking better ways to attract and remain in touch with clients. Now we have such a tool, we think it is imperative that businesses use what is, for us, the most purposeful, impactful and effective marketing tool on the planet.

We specialise in optimising social media as a means of marketing your company. The Point and Stare team constantly have their finger on the pulse of the world of social media, and we can ensure your marketing campaign targets the right people and accesses the true potential of social media. Our state-of-the-art technology is a valuable asset to any event you are planning to hold—having our live, fully branded and moderated Twitter or Instagram walls at your event reminds attendees to use social media, inspires them to interact during the event, and extends the reach far beyond the walls of your venue.

To learn more about how your event can tap into the marketing power of social media, contact Point and Stare today. We’d be happy to help.

We all remember that person in school who everybody wanted to befriend. They were cool, good looking, intelligent and immensely popular, and we all had little tricks up our sleeves to try and coax that person into becoming our friend in an attempt to convince our peers that we were cool.

In the same way that you might have nonchalantly (but rather reluctantly) offered up your favourite lunchtime snack to your admired classmate, when you are designing your website you must make sacrifices – well, just savvy decisions really – to seduce the God of all Internet Gods, Google, to become your best friend and rank you highly in its all-empowering search engine.

The higher you rank on Google, the more accessible you become, and this means the more business comes swinging through your doors. Sound good? Read on.

Search engine-friendly code
Firstly, you need to develop a website with code that Google will not be able to get enough of, equipped with a strong URL, an easily navigable interface and organised content. These attributes are but a selection of those that Google simply loves to feast on, and they are crucial in your path to having a website that will rank well.

This can be a complex process, and employing a professional is often the best way to rest assured you can achieve your goals. At Point and Stare, search engine optimisation (SEO) and visibility are central to our project brief and we ensure that our clients are ticking all of Google’s boxes.

Kingly content
Once you have your brand new, dazzling, professionally designed website, you will need some kingly content to put on that throne. The importance of investing in relevant, engaging, original and entertaining content for your website cannot be stressed enough as Google simply adores fresh content.

While you want to be dastardly and sneak in a good selection of keywords that will place your website in the searches where you want to appear, ensure that you write like an interesting, informative and professional human being and not like a tediously robotic creature trying to lure people to the website by using an overload of supposedly ‘important’ keywords.

Moreover, be intelligent and creative with your titles, as these should catch your readers’ attention and pull them onto your new website. Think about what people search for, how they phrase it and how your title might match what people are looking for.

Ultimately, if you want support with any or all of the above, at Point and Stare we’re here to help. Feel free to get in touch with us today.

Today, as much business is conducted online as offline, and online advertising and social media strategies are an integral part of most businesses’ marketing plans. For start-ups, this means creating an outstanding website is an essential part of establishing your brand, raising awareness of your products and services, and ultimately, generating revenue.

At Point and Stare we know a thing or two about building engaging, effective and attention-grabbing websites. Here, we’ve compiled our top web design tips specifically for start-ups, to help you make the most of the vast reach and power of the Internet.

1. Keep it simple: As a new company, you’re introducing customers to your offering for the very first time, so make sure the website is simple, easy to navigate, and very user-friendly. This way, users won’t be deterred by having to sift through dozens of pages or figure out complex navigation to determine what your business does.

2. Don’t DIY: Unless you happen to be a fully trained web developer with an in-depth knowledge of online marketing, do not attempt to build your website on your own. Engage the professionals who can make your website modern, visually appealing, and user-friendly.

Collaborate closely with your web developer every step of the way to ensure the website accurately conveys your brand image and what your company is all about.

3. Ensure your website is responsive: Having a responsive site means it can be used without any hiccups across the full range of different devices, from desktop computers to mobile phones and tablets. This is critical today, as a rapidly increasing number of users access websites on their mobile devices rather than desktops.

4. Get social: Having an active social media presence is now just as standard for today’s businesses as having a website, so ensure that your business is on all the relevant social networks with a well-crafted social media strategy (if you need any help with this, Point and Stare has you covered). Then, allow users to interact with your site more easily by integrating all relevant social media connections onto your site. Fortunately, with WordPress websites, this can be done easily using widgets and/ or plugins.

5. Stay secure: Small businesses that don’t have fat budgets to dedicate to web security must make the extra effort to keep their website safe from hackers and off Google’s blacklist.

With WordPress sites, there are various first-class security plugins to help keep your site secure, but these must be regularly updated and properly managed by your website administrator.

It can be frustrating to have to grapple with so much technology when all you want to do is run your business. Luckily, Point and Stare have the knowledge and expertise you need to design, develop and maintain a stand-out website that will get your start-up noticed in both the online and offline worlds. For more information, contact us today.

If you’re a business owner, then you’re well aware that your business needs to be on social media, and more than that, it needs to have an actual social media strategy. That’s right—having a Facebook page isn’t going to elicit any ‘oohs!’ and ‘ahhs!’ from your target audience anymore, and neither is having Twitter accounts, a YouTube channel, Pinterest boards or a Tumblr page. Today’s tech-focused consumers expect nothing less from businesses and this has left many entrepreneurs and marketers somewhat stumped: ‘What next?’ seems to be the phrase on everyone’s lips.

Fortunately, the ever-evolving Internet doesn’t lend itself to stagnation, and there are always fresh online trends hot from the social media oven, just waiting to boost your marketing morale and reinvigorate your social media strategy—and since we’re social media specialists at Point and Stare, we’re here to tell you all about them.

Share quality content and drive interaction
First things first: sharing a status update or a tweet is not enough to get your products or services noticed anymore. Online users are more discerning than ever, and businesses have to earn their attention by sharing quality content that users actually want to see. Secondly, the main thrust behind successful, dynamic social media campaigns today is interaction. You want your target audience to do the promoting for you by using your custom hashtags, interacting with your content, and so on.

Social media ‘bribes’
One of the most avant-garde ways of using social media today is in exchange for actual goods or services. The trend is slowly starting to catch on, with a Marc Jacobs pop-up shop in Covent Garden inviting shoppers to take and tweet photos of the shop using the hashtag #mjdaisychain in exchange for a free keychain or free manicure. Earlier this year, frozen food brand Birds Eye launched a pop-up restaurant in London that encouraged guests to share photos of their meals on Instagram with the hashtag #BirdsEyeInspirations to get their meal on the house. These off-the-cuff social media tactics are bold, attention-grabbing, and exactly the burst of social media energy that most businesses need.

Photo and video chain challenges
Similarly, viral photo and video challenges have proved immensely successful, with the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS and the No-Makeup Selfie for breast cancer both raising millions of pounds for charity and garnering global attention over just a few weeks. Any business can undertake a similar initiative, using chain challenges in which social media users are nominated to keep paying it forward; what matters is that the challenges are engaging so that people will want to participate.

Call in the specialists
If you think your business’ social media strategy could benefit from a fresh new approach with inventive tactics, contact us at Point and Stare today. We have the expertise and experience to help you navigate the complexities of online marketing and create a powerful online presence for your brand.

If there had been social media in Biblical times, David would have had no need for a well-aimed slingshot to take on Goliath; all he would have needed was 140 characters of well-crafted Twitter ammunition to bring Goliath to his knees. Case in point: the brief but detrimental Twitter battle that took place recently between McDonald’s and the How Things Work Twitter accounts, in which How Things Work was the indisputable victor, all because of an imprudent tweet by the fast-food powerhouse.

https://twitter.com/ThingsWork/status/506475134845452289

McDonald’s vs. How Things Work
After How Things Work tweeted a GIF showing how unappetisingly McDonald’s chicken nuggets are made, McDonald’s decided to hit back four days later (the equivalent of a decade in social media time) with the following snarky response: “#FALSE Please stop spreading this bad information about our good food.” The reply included a link to a McDonald’s-prepared clip of how their nuggets ‘actually’ get made – what McDonald’s embarrassingly failed to realise was that the clip was the very same one used by How Things Work to create the offending GIF.
Once this was promptly pointed out by How Things Work, there was yet another long, awkward silence from McDonald’s followed by a weak reply accusing the GIF of not showing the full picture.

https://twitter.com/ThingsWork/status/507929856114720768

Leave social media marketing to the experts
While not a cataclysmic Twitter war, the incident serves as yet another example of how carefully corporate social media accounts need to be handled. While Twitter, Facebook and Instagram can be a business’ best ally, they can also be their worst enemies if not used as part of a well-structured and properly implemented social media strategy.

To avoid making a similar Twitter faux pas, it’s important to develop targeted, purposeful social media marketing campaigns, where tweets and status updates are crafted with a specific marketing goal in mind, not just haphazardly or when a business needs to go on the defensive.

At Point and Stare, we specialise in making the most of social media. Not only do we help businesses of all sizes raise awareness of their brand at promotional events, but we help craft highly targeted and effective marketing campaigns using the full reach and impact of social networks. We also take social media to the next level using innovative live feeds on sleek display screens that can be placed throughout events to show tweets, posts and status updates in real time, adding a dynamic flair to any corporate event. Importantly, we ensure that all live feeds are moderated, allowing any offending content to be dealt with before appearing on screens for all the world to see. This is what it means to do social media right, with care and skill.

To learn more on how Point and Stare can use social media to pack extra punch in your marketing efforts or to generate hype before, during and after your corporate event, contact us today.

The argument about which is better, social media or more traditional media forms, has almost become inconsequential. It’s not uncommon nowadays to see news teams pick up their stories from topics that have been trending online, or to encourage their audiences to participate in the conversation using a hashtag.

One of the most recent examples of this was the #fatkini movement, which saw plus-sized women posting pictures of themselves to Instagram in their bikinis in order to challenge traditional beauty norms. The story was quickly picked up by a number of mainstream news outlets, and made its way onto our televisions. Why is it, then, that social media has become such a big influence on the way we consume our information?

Conversation
Unlike when you read a newspaper, or watch the television, social media allows us to instantly react and engage with other people who are interested in the same topic. There are fewer barriers within the world of social media, whereas sometimes mainstream media can be a little one-sided.

Immediacy
Although news outlets are quick to report information to their audiences, social media is quicker. All you need is one person with a smartphone at the scene of an event, and suddenly the whole world can be privy to breaking news as and when it unfolds.

Tailored
There’s much more choice when it comes to social media. If you’re particularly interested in tech news, you can curate your Twitter feed to be full of all your favourite technology news feeds. It’s easy to filter out the information that you aren’t as interested in – something that isn’t as possible with the mainstream press.

Although social media might not have fully replaced traditional media yet, it is increasingly being used as a way to react to the mainstream. For now, it seems that the two will continue to work together; however, it’s increasingly important that your own business is up to date with how social media can be used to your advantage. To learn more, get in touch with the Point and Stare team.

In what looks to be a savvy move from Twitter, the social media giant has decided to change its advertising model in order to look more like the one that Facebook currently uses. Rather than using the cost-per-engagement model that they previously had, they will instead be allowing advertisers to pay for specific actions.

These actions will include app installs and follows, meaning that Twitter is essentially promising results from their advertising space in a way that they have never done before.

The advertiser only pays up when a user takes an action that furthers their campaign. For example, if you were looking to gain more followers and your advertising leads to this, then that’s when you’d start to pay.

Blatant advertising of this sort has been used for a while now on social media platforms; however, it’s not for everybody, as it’s a little too close to the traditional advertising model that we’re used to on TV and billboards. Not only that, but if you’re a smaller business or just starting out, then you might not be able to afford to pay. The secret to great advertising is arguably when the end user doesn’t know they are being advertised to.

There are plenty of ways that social media platforms can be used as an effective advertising space without paying for the privilege, and without potentially irritating followers. Simply by engaging with your audience and posting great content, you can easily build up a loyal following. Creating a brand that inspires loyalty takes time, but is ultimately more effective in the long run. Twitter and Facebook might be powerful online platforms, but the human touch is still appreciated.

If you’re looking to reach out to more people online, or are looking for an interesting way to market your brand at an upcoming event, then Point and Stare could be for you. We offer a unique social media experience, allowing you to share your social media feeds in any venue. To find out more, get in touch with the team today.