Is your site secure?

A few years ago Google started favouring sites with secure certificates (SSL). For those of you who don’t know, an SSL (Secure Sockets layer) puts HTTPS in front of a website address, rather than the standard HTTP.

It’s fairly common knowledge that any site that asks you to input sensitive data (address or credit card details for example) should run on HTTPS otherwise there is a greater risk of the data you entered being hijacked.

Google started putting more weight behind these sites and favouring them with higher rankings in their search listings over non secure sites because they want safer and better quality sites to be more prominent as part of their results.

In July, Google Chrome browsers will begin flagging every website that does not use HTTPS encryption. Any website that contains input fields, asks for passwords or any other sensitive data, or is visited in incognito mode, will be marked as ‘not secure’ if it does not have an SSL Certificate. This will be prominently highlighted in the address bar. With the majority of internet browsing across desktop and mobile devices now carried out on Google’s Chrome browser, this means that any site not running on a secure certificate will be deemed unsafe and consequently fewer people will be willing to visit.

So this is really just a friendly bit of consumer advice from the friendly Datapartners team. If you don’t already have an SSL Certificate, speak to your hosting company and get one. If you are a Datapartners customer already, you will already have been made aware of this. The choice is yours but you’d be damaging your web presence if you don’t get one.

What are the best blogging sites?

The Datapartners Daily Blog about blogs: 10 of 10

For someone like me who designs and builds websites for a living, I could build my own blogging platform. In fact I did have a blogging app at one stage but it was one of many things I shelved because I simply couldn’t compete with the big players.

So what are the best blogging platforms out there? The most popular ones are Wordpress and Google’s Blogger and there are benefits to using both. Wordpress allows you to build a much more professional looking website and there are a huge number of mobile friendly templates out there. My only complaint with Wordpress is the admin is verbose, unintuitive and I think it’s a tiny bit crap. I’ve used Wordpress a number of times over the last few years for a handful of projects and I usually end up swearing a lot.

I prefer Blogger (well, that’s obvious isn’t it?) Firstly, I’m a big advocate of everything Google. Secondly, whilst it is a lot simpler and not as good looking as Wordpress, it does exactly what it says on the tin. Also, with the blogging network, it’s a lot easier to get found by other bloggers.

Of course there are others. The likes of Wix, Squarespace and Tumblr all offer some good features. Plus Networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn also have the ability for you to write notes and articles so that is always worth considering. The advantage of doing it through a social networking site is because publishing it automatically shares it with your network.

My personal recommendation is Blogger, especially if you want to earn some pocket money. Google’s AdSense is by far the best and biggest pay-per-click advertising medium out there and it’s very quick and easy to get ads hooked onto the site. The trick is getting people to click on them without violating Google’s terms of service. So please don’t click on the ads on this blog… #ReversePsychology

How long should my blog be?

The Datapartners Daily Blog about blogs: 2 of 10

Guys, have you ever actually asked a woman whether size matters or not? Me neither but I’m sure different women would give you different answers. The nice ones will lie just to make you feel better about yourself.

Anyway, the point is that it’s the same answer to this question. Some people like short and sweet, others like it long and substantial. In truth, it doesn’t matter how long a blog is, as long as it’s good quality. If a blog is badly written, it’s less likely to get much in the way of interest. Unless it’s so badly written it goes viral for its utter ridiculousness, but you probably don’t want that.

Having said all that, I would personally never want to write a blog longer than a thousand words. This is because I wouldn’t want to read a blog that is over a thousand words. If I wanted to read copious amounts of text, I’d read a book. On the flip side, I wouldn’t personally write a blog that is less than two hundred words. This is because anything under two hundred words is barely a sentence.

It’s really a matter of preference but I’d say a good guide was between 200-1000 words. As long as the content is good and engages the reader.


This blog is 242 words. Oh and for the record, I’m hung like a genetically modified horse.