Dia Media

Comments Off … Radio Silence

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Drawing from my daily project where I draw first thing in the morning before turning my phone off.

I just turned comments off on this blog. If you want to get in touch use the contact page, or visit us at goodybank

No doubt I should, and likely will, simply re-direct this site at some point, but for now there *is* some trickle of juice, a smidgen of value that keeps me hanging on.

Also I want to transfer over some of that g0ogle juice over to the new site, once I find make the time. I wrote about time once or twice.

There is a brutal efficiency in just lopping off comments that is quite satisfying and helps literally retrieve time, by no longer moderating spam.

I’m going to write an article about what to do with old sites, re-design, re-align (hey wait I already wrote that in 2014!) but it’s 2019 baby and times have changed. Several projects have shown their fragility (2 clients, 3 ours) and I’ve noticed many sites in general that really need re-vamping, so I think the time is ripe to write about what to do when faced with the perils of obsolescence (also written in 2014). But tearing that bandaid off is hard. I know. That’s why this site is still here. For now.

Soon Come. Soon Come.

Email overlays how do I loathe thee…

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Let me count the ways.

Daylight  Savings Time has rolled around again, and I’m feeling ranty.

Okay – so I gather some studies suggest that email overlays (a pop-up box that takes over the content, which darkens to help focus on pop up area) are effective in generating more leads.

I’m not a statistician, though I love statistics, so I don’t know how accurate said studies are. What I do know, is what Mark Twain said “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”…

It would seem that pop-up overlays have become a go-to marketing feature on numerous websites, where you want users to subscribe to your newsletter, gather emails, give them a “Free Gift” and so on.

Top irritating factors with pop-up overlays.

  1. Le pop-up itself.

    Thought these died off years ago.

  2. Timing.

    If you must use them, are you seriously thinking 1.5 seconds is enough time to “engage” me as a viewer and thus want to subscribe to your newsletter/offer? At least let me read a few sentences, if not a few paragraphs—then you might, perhaps—just perhaps,  infer I’m interested and then you can let your pop-up hi-jack my screen.

  3. Re-asking for what you already have.

    If I’ve clicked on a link from within your e-blast, (which is tracked up the yin-yang by whatever opt-in software you use), why, oh why, must you insist on asking me for my email address again? I’ve seen this way too often. Just stop. It has a repellent effect, not an attracting one.

  4. Mobile First!

     Non mobile-friendly overlays are a sure sign that not only will I go running in the opposite direction, but I will think of you with daggers in my eyes, especially if you are witholding content until I click that “x” in the corner, which if it isn’t mobile friendly, I can’t. So I leave your site, and if you’re lucky I don’t say anything bad about you on ye old social media.

    Note, you might think your pop-up is mobile friendly because the fonts shrink down and all seems to behave nicely, but if you leave only the teeniest margin between the overlay and the frame of the smartphone, that little close “x” in the corner is exceedingly difficult to click, and my even with long, slender fingers (ahem) I’m still suffering from fat finger syndrome when it comes to clicking.

  5. Lose the Attitude.

     If I decide I don’t want to give you my email address (either for the first or the 20th time) or that I’m not interested in your “Free gift” that will magically explode my business, my career, or make my hair really shiny, please don’t insult me with some cutesy, kooky askance negative comment like “No, I really don’t want to grow by business” or “No I really don’t want to succeed” etc. Keep it in your pants.

Email Overlay Annoyances

 

Email Send Limits – or Why Spammers Should Be ….

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This week I spent about 8 hours wrestling MailMan to the ground. I got an A in wrestling during my first semester at college, which means I should be good at this, eh?

MailMan is free software for managing electronic mail discussion and e-newsletter lists. I started down the garden path of looking at MailMan for a client was sending out a mass email and bumped into the send mail limit of the hosting provider.

I’m not sure exactly when these limits have been applied or more accurately, strictly enforced, but it seems that they apply pretty much across the board on most web hosts, and even with gmail. The average is about 100 emails per session, or email. We’re talking about number of emails sent from a mail client, if you send from within gmail it’s a higher limit.

MailMan has a lot of features and is pretty decent, all things considered, but as the tech support on the phone told me “it’s not my favourite software”. Mine neither. It feels very dated, like something from the 90s. The 90s were great, but not so elegant.

It seems to me when you are sending through an authenticated account, that you should have a higher limit than 100, but I’m presuming this is the way to keep spammers at bay.

I think I’ve lost a year of my life to dealing with incoming spam, blocking spam, writing SPF records, sifting through junk mail for valid emails, handling comment spam and the like.

There was  a bill passed here in Canada, Apparently the fines are intense, up to $10 million dollars for corporations,  but if it’s had an affect I don’t think anyone’s noticed.

I wonder how many individuals and/or corporations have been fined for sending out spam here in Canada, and what are the stats like for our neighbours in the South? And, when they have been fined, how much was it for, and was the money received?

Canadians receive 68.5% of spam.

Source: http://www.emailtray.com/blog/infographic-email-spam-phishing-trends-2011-2012/

 

 

SPF record – aka anti email spoofing

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I set up SPF records for 4 domains 4 days ago. An SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record “is an email validation system designed to prevent email spam by detecting email spoofing, a common vulnerability, by verifying sender IP addresses” (WikiPedia)

Since we’re using Media Temple DV server, I followed their guidelines. (which they’ve since updated with a correct link to an SPF wizard btw – the old wizard link didn’t work so they helped me on the phone which was great ).

On diamedia.net I was getting about ~5-10 spoofed emails a day (that appear to be coming from your own domain ie: accounting @ diamedia.net etc). On the other domains about 3 a day. But some days it could be higher.

How long does the SPF record transition take?

DNS records take about 24-48 hours to update. I’ve always thought this was exaggerated, however that was using the lens of how long it takes local servers to update to switching hosts, for example. I was never thinking about servers in Russia or Italy.

I set up a temporary folder in my email to move these emails (moved them manually) to keep track.

Day 1: 8 spoofed emails
Day 2: 5 spoofed emails
Day 3: 1 spoofed email
Day 4: 1 spoofed email

So, it appears to be working. I used a soft-fail (accept and tag any non-compliant mail) which is different than hard-fail (bounce any mail that doesn’t comply) so this is how the Day 3 and Day 4 are getting through. Actually Day 4 used google servers, which I have set up to allow google to be a mail server. I might switch this.
[ v=spf1 a:example.com/20 include:_spf.google.com ~all ]

I also will probably switch to a hard-fail once I am 100% sure about what this entails.

This was something I have been wanting to do for ages, but kept on putting off because it seemed to be gobbledeegook. Now I can cross that off the list and not add it to New Year’s Resolutions for 2012.

It’s Christmas Eve. Back to helping out Santa’s Elves.

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others. —Orson Welles

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