This month's menu

Just off the wire

5 myths about using stock photography.

Blot Links

Have you changed to HTTPS?

Apologies if this sounds like a broken record.

Last month we directed you to our article about how the Google Chrome browser is going to start labeling certain pages as 'Not Secure'.

Well, October is the month that is is going to happen. If your website still uses HTTP, any page that has text input fields will be labeled by the browser as 'Not Secure'. And in Incognito mode, all HTTP pages will be labeled in this way.

The way to fix this problem is to change your site to HTTPS, as many Blot customers have done over the last month.

If you do nothing, it may or may not have an impact on your site depending on how concerned your visitors are when they view the label.

Ultimately though, if you are looking for people to contact you through the website, HTTPS will become a necessity.

Read the article…

Top Live Chat products

One day, it seems, we will get our support from 'chat bots' - intelligent software that will answer your questions from a knowledge database.

Until that time, a service I really like is Live Chat - where a real human answers your queries through chat windows.

One of the reasons I think they work better than perhaps a phone call, is that you actually need to write down the actual problem, so it is much easier to resolve. And there is a record of the conversion.

For a medium sized company, it's a solution worth considering because you don't necessarily need dedicated support staff.

Yes, you need knowledgeable staff to answer the queries, but the software can be quite smart in contacting a pool of staff only when queries have been made.

There are a lot of good products out there and the article selects a top 11.

Read the article …

Wordpress drop React

For slightly obscure legal reasons, the world's most popular blogging platform (Wordpress) has dropped the world's most hyped Javascript platform (React).

The React platform is a great piece of software that allows developers to build highly interactive applications and has been adopted by many companies (including Blot) as a mainstay in their development arsenal.

Owned by Facebook, the React legals include a patent clause designed to 'protect Facebook from meritless litigation'.

However, some companies feel it places more risk on the licensee than it should. This is inconsistent with their other licenses, so Wordpress has decided to stop using it.

Will Facebook change tact? Will Wordpress change their mind? Will it matter?

Only if it slows the adoption of React, which it probably won't.

Read more …