creative briefing

It came to my attention in the last few days that a handful of people had been experiencing some errors when viewing this site. Many visitors had the site return a 404 Page Not Found error page, while others had their browser crash completely. One individual even reported that their anti-virus software had thrown a red flag while visiting this site. My first instinct was that one of the site’s plugins were causing the errors, but upon further investigation, I have found what I believe to be the catalyst: googlerank.info.

Before I begin describing the issue, I want to state that I do not have a permanent fix (though I do have a temporary one). The purpose of this post is to document my findings for anybody who has experienced the symptoms or is interested in helping me find and fix the underlying issue. I’ve found very little documentation on this problem thus far, so I’m hoping to provide some clarity to all others who may be searching for it.

Overview

A hidden <iframe> that points to googlerank.info has been found embedded into a handful of files that are associated with a WordPress installation. The <iframe> always appears at the very bottom of the source code, just before the </body> tag. It is possible that WordPress presents a vulnerability that allows an unauthorized user to access and alter files, thereby compromising the security of the site owner as well as the site’s visitors.

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A few days ago, I wrote about the making of Creative Briefing and touched briefly on how the notepad sketches that you see on the top left of this site came to be. I’ll now go more in depth and offer a quick and easy tutorial on how I produced the image using Adobe Photoshop.

It should be noted that much of the work in this tutorial can be replaced by simply purchasing stock photos of notepads. However, if you’re not into spending money or aren’t able to find a stock photo that suits your needs, then this tutorial is for you.

The Goal

Here’s what this tutorial will help you achieve:

Let’s get started!

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User-generated content is not uncommon to websites today and its popularity has grown over the years with the public’s demand to have control and input over what they’re seeing on websites. Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and countless others will typically offer a form on the front-end of their website for users to submit content for immediate publishing, enhancing user interactivity and overall experience.

For WordPress users, this is usually a problem because the post and page-writing functionalities are hidden away in the back-end admin panel of WordPress. Not only that, but users are required to have a registered account before being able to access these functions. Add on the fact that logging into the admin panel exposes the user to a different interface and visual environment, and you’ve got yourself a bad user experience and little incentive for the user to want to submit content.

So how do you create a site that offers a usable front-end form that will allow users to publish content immediately onto your site while still taking advantage of the powerful publishing engine of WordPress?

This tutorial will break down one way of overcoming this obstacle using cantwaitforchristmas.com to illustrate examples.

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When you see a .doc, you know exactly what kind of file it is, and you probably know what company is behind it. Why shouldn’t this form of brand recognition transcend into the online realm? Why should we be constrained to the .html’s and .php’s of today’s web world?

This third installment of How to brand your website’s URL continues to show you how you can and should be customizing even the slightest details of your website’s URL by using your own cutomized file extensions.

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One aspect of branding your URL, or anything for that matter, is to make it as easy to remember as possible (recall Part 1’s branding discussion). A long and complicated sentence will never fly as a company’s tagline because nobody would ever remember it. If nobody remembers it, the value is lost. Likewise, a long and complicated URL makes it difficult for your visitors to remember it, and inevitably, it makes it difficult for them to access the content they’re looking for quickly. Not only that, but it looks ugly in a browser’s address bar.

For site publishers/owners looking to take an extra step in branding their website, here’s the second installment of how to brand your website’s URL, this time using friendly URL structures.

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