Unfortunately the idea of designing a mascot posed a problem for me – I’ve stated many times that I am a designer and NOT an artist. My creative character skills stop and start at a very basic level. I had to reluctantly pass this one over.

This did however get me thinking – of all the mascots I’ve seen over the years, which can stand alone without the need for a logo to back them up?

For example, think about Ronald McDonald without the McDonald’s golden arches – even though these branding elements have been kept separate for a while, you know that Ronald is more than just some freaky clown, he has his own identity and purpose.

Below are some examples of this which sprung to my mind – some more recognisable than others. See what you think:

Ask Jeeves

Twitter

SEGA

MailChimp

Freelance Switch

Are My Sites Up?

WooThemes

SliceJobs

So there you have it. A few examples of mascots the brands they help to promote.

If however it would have been THIS site or one of my client sites I would have been in serious trouble.

What happened

Both of the sites in question were running old versions of WordPress with modified themes that I hadn’t developed from scratch. I’d simply made new CSS/images over an existing framework.

Baconmusic was attacked by link SPAM

Turns out both of these themes had security holes, as did the version of WordPress (2.5) each of the sites were running.

These exploits allowed an evil spam bot to hack in and insert some dodgy code into the WordPress theme header and footer files.

How did I find out

An email arrived in my inbox – the weird thing was initially I thought it was SPAM. The subject was something along the lines of “Your website has been removed from Google..”

Google warning message, courtesy of spamcheckr.jungleg.com/about

“Yeh, sure… whatever…” I thought. Then I read the message and quickly got worried.

After trawling my website code it was obvious something was wrong. Literally 100s of hidden links were embedded into the header and footer of each site. You can imagine the type – viagra, dating, weight loss, money making… all that rubbish.

How I fixed it

First thing I did was fire up SpamCheckr a great service which will use Googles own algorithms to look though your site and report on the problem. Both sites came back with 1000s of issues and a Spam Score which was off the charts (eek!).

The next step was to look into my WordPress theme and find the damage – and after logging in it was obvious where the problem lie: header.php and footer.php where awash with nasty encrypted PHP code.

The easiest way to fix this problem was to re-upload my theme files from a local backup. Therefore overwriting any changes – phew!

After this I upgraded WordPress to the latest version on both blogs. Ran a few security checks and installed a couple of security hardening plugins.

I then gave SpamCheckr another run to make sure everything was clean. My Spam Score was now a truly delightful ZERO

Thankfully my MySQL database was secure. If not the bot could have hacked in and added lines of code to every single post/page/comment in my WordPress database. This happened recently on the CoolSmartPhone website and caused it to go down for a couple of days – nasty stuff!

Immunisation

Upgrading WordPress and checking for weird code in themes is the best measure to ensure this never happens again.

Plugins are also a risk – like themes always download from the official WordPress site or a site you know and trust.

I also run SpamCheckr once a month on every site I manage – just in case – they actually have a service which can do this for you automatically but I have yet to sign up.

IF you’ve never ran this on your site please – do it now.

The first was an intervention by Iconfactory who had noticed I had inadvertently been using an unlicensed icon pack in my base6 re-design back in May (doh!).

Because of this I was forced to remove around 12 icons from my site. This was no mean feat because I had embedded them so deeply into my new design. In the end I decided it was easier to completely re-work the layout of my site template as well as do some general housekeeping.

The second thing was my attendance at this years WordCamp UK where I realised that my skills as a WordPress developer should no longer be promoted as simply “website design” - My work at base6 has been pretty much 100% WordPress-related since I started the business back in 2005 – I had just never really made that big a deal of it. It was time for this to change.

These two elements alone weren’t enough to ignite my desire to re-work the base6 service structure but together they were hypergolic.

Say Goodbye to Print and Identity services

The Print design industry is saturated with high quality designers working at low cost printing houses. It is almost impossible to effectively compete with their experience and efficiency and recently I have found myself passing over print and identity work to non-web-specific freelancers simply because they have access to tools to get the job done more productively that I ever could.

I also find that sites such as VistaPrint and Printing.com offer adequate online templates and design solutions that are more than enough for most clients on a small budget.

In the works…

Over the next 2 weeks I will slowly re-work the base6 service structure which will result in a homepage overhaul and a couple of new sections being added (as well as a few being removed).

Along the way I will be doing some A/B testing a bit of extra SEO work and some general back-end housekeeping.

Please bear with me and keep a look out for the updates!

If you’d like more information, feel free to contact me using this online form.

Sticky Issue

Last year I fell in love with the mouthwateringly excellent ‘Stricker Icon Pack‘ designed by David Lanham. So much so in fact I used them as the main icon set when re-designing the base6 design website back in May this year. You can clearly see them littering the site on the base6 homepage and in the site footer – I even dirtied up the icons to add to the slight-grunge effect I’d implemented in the new design – this is all detailed on my section ‘About this website‘.

Turns out, by doing this, I’d violated the terms of the icon pack and today I received an email from Iconfactory asking me to remove the icons asap, bummer

From the terms:

They are intended for personal desktop use ONLY. They may not be disassembled, reverse-engineered or otherwise modified, in part or in whole except for personal desktop use.

Lessons learned

As a GPL fanatic I often fall into the trap of assuming that releases such as the Sticker Icon Pack are ‘free’ as in ‘FREE’ to use, re-distribute and modify as long as you quote or at least contact the source designer/developer.

When it comes to icon packs and other ‘free’ graphics that are promoted around the web this is often not the case. Its clear to me now that the bulk of these resources are designed and released for personal use only and should never be used for quasi-commercial purposes.

My advice – check the terms. If you downloaded the icons from one of those popular ‘6000 FREE COOL ICONS’ articles as I did then use Google to find the original source and contact the publisher before using them in a live design. Don’t be blinkered by the prospects of a juicy freebie as I have been in this case.

Next step

I’ve never been great at designing high quality icons. I find the process of designing something so small and pixel-dependent a real challange. Its a black art akin to the video game sprite designers of the 70s and 80s which I have always admired.

So my plan is to spend the next few days trawlling through IconDock and Graphic River to find some suitible replacement icons and re-working the base6 site around this.

Finally

I hope this has served as both a warning to my peers and an appology to David Lanham for being so naive. I was blinded by the outstanding quality of the icon pack which was presented to me. Its a shame I can’t use them on this site for much longer, let the time they have served here stand as a tribute to their caliber.

My Google Analytics for the past 20 days are an interesting read. Over 80% of the hits base6 has received are from referral sites, almost all of which are CSS galleries.

I have mixed feelings about these results. The data proves that you can’t guarantee solid client leads using gallery and design sites as marketing tools.

They are great to get you noticed by your peers and excellent for feedback but chances are the people who visit these sites are like-minded individuals who don’t want to purchase design services.

What next?!..

1. Update your passwords

It’s generally good practice to change your online account passwords (email, blogs, personal websites, etc) every 6 months.

So, while your thumb twiddling waiting for twitter to return why not jump over to those frequently visited sites (gmail, digg, reddit, facebook etc…) and update your password to a new more secure version.

2. Make your own twitter with P2!

Check out this video from the guys at Automattic:

P2 (previously known as Prologue) is a quick-fire micro-blogging platform that can be installed as a theme within WordPress.

It allows for twitter-style/liveblog updates right out of the box. It’s also fully AJAXed, has live tag suggestion and allows for threaded comments.

3. Fire up some scheduled tweets

Scheduling tweets can be a great way to keep your followers happy while you are off the grid.

Sites such as tweetlater and hootsuite are great for this so why not sign up and stick a couple of tweets in for when twitter returns!

4. Text message some of your ‘real’ buddies

Your mobile phone isn’t just for updating twitter. It can also be used to send SMS messages to real flesh and blood people.

You remember the guys who don’t follow your geekish bleets? Well they need love too, so drop them a line. Even if its to say:

•  "is twitter down for you???"

5. Watch ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley’

Why? becuse its a very cool flick. Also I watched it again last week for the 4th or 5th time

For those unfamiliar with the movie the best part can be seen here on YouTube:

Just take a look at the number 1 search result on Google when searching for “zizzi”:

Oh dear. Something seems to have gone wrong

3 weeks into the re-design it had evolved from a simple visual upgrade into a full site re-think. I not only re-branded the entire design, I changed my business model and re-structured my service offerings.

As you can imagine all of this took a LOT longer than I expected, but it was worth it. The new base6 site is a massive improvement on the last effort. It is, by far, the most polished website I have ever designed for myself.

Let’s take a tour of the new design…

New sections
Clearly defined services, portfolio and about areas:

Updated logo
It’s written that you should never change your logo but even the base6 logo couldn’t escape being grunged:

Fresh homepage with BIG service links
The homepage now has an instant impact and uses icons and brief descriptions to get the message across.

3 ‘Core Values’ on show throughout the site
Part of my new business mantra:

Dynamic portfolio section
Each portfolio item has a funky jQuery powered image gallery as well as a brief description of the project:

Client testimonials
Selected at random on page load:

Love to the tools
WordPress, jQuery, 960.gs and FLIR all get a mention on the ‘About This Website‘ page:

TWEETS!
Yep,I finally got my twitter account sorted out:

Run-down of what’s new:

• Modern, stylish, grungey-grid based design
• Clearly defined sections for Web Design, Identity and Other Services
• Kick-ass Contact Us forms
• Lots of back-story and information in the About base6 pages
• Information on my core business values plastered all over the site
• An actual working BLOG (your reading this right now BTW)
• Client Testimonials
• Advanced Portfolio section – includes funky jQuery-powered sliding galleries
• Twitter updates
• Improved SEO
• BIG FOOTER design and site-map for improved navigation and findability

What I hope to achieve with the re-design

I guess the main goal for the re-design is exposure. The old base6 site was functional but not beautiful so I’m hoping the new visual flair will help me gather speed and gain new clients.

The base6 old site also lacked content . Everything I have since learned about SEO, web marketing and online networking starts with good quality, honest content. This is the major reason for my addition of a design blog and twitter feed to the site.

Of course the re-design is only the first of a couple of marketing exercises I hope to put in place in the next few months. Expect to see some base6 Google Ads/BuySellAds soon and hopefully some link love from my more friendly peers. Local advertising in print and via mail-outs is also on the cards. I just need to pick the right time to organise this so I can fulfill any follow-ups.

Thanks for reading! I’m now off to add the site to a few CSS Galleries – Please take a moment to leave a comment and if you find any bugs, let me know

Cheers!

So come back in a few days, we can talk, maybe over coffee.

For now, all I can say is, enjoy the Bank Holiday weekend, perhaps subscribe to the RSS feed and check me out over at Twitter and by blog.

See you soon!