St Louis web designer tip of the week.

It happens to us all, we call a consumer company whether it be a credit card company or a computer company and our quest to talk to a real person is thwarted by intricate automated phone systems.
Did you know that to bypass the Dell automated phone system (800‑624‑9897) you can press “0” at each prompt and get to talk to a real person?!

A whole database of these “secret codes” can be found on a database at GetHuman

Here at Indigo Image our web design team can always be contacted directly without any of those annoyed automated systems!

The eyes of a st louis web designer.

As a web and graphic designer my eyes are my ultimate tools and never take a break.
This can be a good thing especially when ambling around my garden in flip flops taking photographs yesterday. I was about to stand in my compost heap to get a better angle for my photograph when I spotted Missouri’s most dreaded snake, the copperhead, neatly coiled on top.
A trip to the emergency room avoided by the eyes of a St Louis web designer!

St Louis Web Designer tip of the Week: Email Spam protection

Over the last week or so I have been bombarded with “spoof” emails which claim to have been sent to me but have been returned. All of these emails have had attachments infected with viruses. I have the situation under control now but thought I would write today about a few simple steps you can take to protect yourself aginst spam….particularly those with have virus attachments.

1. Use anti virus software
Install anti virus software and have it set up to scan all incoming messages to your computer. This is how I caught the troublesome messages I have been recieving. It is important to keep the virus defintions up to date to ensure you are protected against the newest threats.

2. Use your web email filtering
You can easily configure your web email to “junk” unwanted emails. Most web email accounts have filters to sort messages with attachtments.. blocking EXE, COM, PIF, SCR, VBS, SHS, CHM and BAT file types will take care of messages with many known viruses. You can also apply filters wfor particular words or from specific domains. By adjusting my filters this week I have ensured my “spoof” emails are immediatley deleted and do not get downlaoded to my local machine.

3. Use a firewall
You can get free firewall fron Zone Alarm

4.Stay up to date with software patches
Configure your computer so this is done automatically.

5. Back up data regularly.
If the worse happens and you do get infected with a virus your files are safe.

100 years old

A little off track for a blog entry today but I can not let the 100th birthday of my Great Uncle Dai go without a mention.

He celebrated yesterday with a party in a pub with 200 guests including local TV stations.

Uncle Dai is a keen gardener and puts his good health down to remaining busy, eating lots of fruit and having a spoonful of Black Mountain honey every day!
View a TV news Interview here

What is SEO?

A good web design company will never bombard their prospects or clients with techo jargon … and the industry of creating web sites is full of it.

One such technical term I have been recently asked about by confused prospects is SEO.

SEO is an acronym of Search Engine Optimisation ..which often poses just as many questions from my prospects!

Search engine optimisation is the process of increasing the ranking of a web site in the search engines. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. In simple language a web site that ranks on the first page of a search is likely to get more visitors than one that ranks on page 5.

Search engine optimisation is a vital component of a web project. If you are looking to improve the postition of your site in the search engine give us a call today for a free anaylsis of your site
Call: 636 273 6746