Web – Moonpup Productions

Meet Kendall Powell

Jackie Hobbins — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 19:18:25 +0000

Kendall Powell is an experienced freelance writer living in Colorado. She came to Moonpup looking for a portfolio website that could showcase her experience and passion for both writing and the sciences.

What do you do?

My name is Kendall Powell. I’ve been a freelance writer and editor for 15 years. I mainly write journalism articles about advances in the biomedical sciences.

What is your message?

I wanted my website to convey that I’m a writer who specializes in telling tales about biomedicine, life science, and the scientists who make these discoveries. I hoped to get the message across that I’m a writer trained in biology who likes to craft engaging stories about scientific discovery—and of course, also that I’m a professional who is open to new clients and collaborations. I also wanted a place to showcase my portfolio of clips, or published articles.

How has your work with Moonpup impacted your overall work?

Moonpup designed an amazing site for me that I think conveys all those messages above. I’m thrilled with the art, logos and other design elements, which clearly conjure up my love of both science and writing. I also like the utility of how my Portfolio of published articles is set up so that potential clients can browse through the entire list or by category. I now have a professional site that I’m proud to point prospective clients to and will be sure to bring me more business in the future.

“Moonpup did a great job of listening to what I wanted my site to do for my business and fulfilling that vision. They were also great at guiding the process and were responsive to any needs or little problems that came up along the way. And finally, they were very patient and accommodating to my changing views as the site evolved!” -Kendall Powell

Web Strategies 101: Interview with Moonpup

Jackie Hobbins — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 17:54:37 +0000

Late in the summer, Jackie Hobbins (owner of Moonpup Productions and the original Moonpup) was interviewed by the founder of Dynamic Communicators International (DCI), Ken Davis. Ken and DCI have been helping authors and speakers create concise, persuasive messages through their SCORRE^TM and Launch Conferences for over 30 years. Jackie has been working with DCI and many of their clients for over eight years. Have a listen as Ken and Jackie chat about websites, what makes them work and how to best get your message out to your audience.

Click below to hear more:

http://traffic.libsyn.com/dynamiccommunicators/TAABOPS116_-_Websites.mp3

Meet Sarah Beckman

Jackie Hobbins — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 09:00:51 +0000

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“My name is Sarah Beckman. I’m madly in love with my husband of 24 years, and adore my three teenage kids. I have a giant, white dog named May, and I think life is better with a house full of people. Better still when they’re eating at my table..”

What do you do?

I’ve been a stay-at-home-mom for 20 years, and mostly loved it, despite the days I longed for a “real job with a real paycheck.” But now that my littles are changing to big, I love watching them blossom and grow. And I find myself doing a bit of the same as an author and speaker.

How long have you been doing this?

I’ve been writing a blog for about 8 years, and I speak and write about life and God and family and marriage and loving our “neighbor”, whether they’re in our homes, down the street or across the globe. I dreamed of writing a book someday…Someday happened.

Alongside: A Practical Guide for Loving Your Neighbor in their Time of Trial is about loving people well—in the face of life’s greatest hardships. And I think we can all use a little help in that venture, myself included.

What is your message?

I want my readers to know that I’m with them in this journey of faith, and as they try to love the people in their life well, I’m trying to do the same. We’re in this together.

How has your work with Moonpup impacted your overall work?

Moonpup has allowed me to focus on what I need to do to grow my business – writing, connecting, creating- instead of getting bogged down in the technical aspect of running a business. Their design work beautifully wove together my vision and new tagline to create a compelling brand that represents who I want to be going forward. Even if I can do something, it doesn’t mean I should spend my time doing it. Jackie and her team allow me to be free to do what only I can do – focus on creating quality content for my readers.

“I am happy with the way Jackie and her team take my somewhat frazzled visions and make them a reality in beautiful graphic design and artfully crafted code. Their patience is unmatched, and the value they’ve added to my website is invaluable. People LOVE it!”

-Sarah Beckman

“I want to be hacked!” -said no one ever.

Jackie Hobbins — Sun, 29 Jan 2017 05:43:32 +0000

Photo by Wesson Wang.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a hacking situation, you are not having a good day. Not only do you have to deal with an unfamiliar and urgent technology problem but, as a result of your predicament, your business may take a hit too. In addition, kind folks will email and text you repeatedly to inform you about the issue, keeping it in the front of your mind for days.

A long-time client of mine, Michele Cushatt, recently sent me this text:

“I’m soooooo sorry to bother you on a Saturday. My website/mailchimp was hacked and someone sent out an email to my entire list promoting Viagra. Ugh! People are unsubscribing and marking me as spam. Can you help?”

If this is your day today—I’m sorry, I feel for you. Michele is a blogger and speaker who has worked for years to gain over 7,000 subscribers. A drop in subscribers as a result of a hack can be confusing and disheartening, but on the bright side, I also have some tips for you to make this process as painless as possible and prevent it in the future.

First, let’s talk a little bit about WordPress. WordPress is an excellent platform for a website because it is an easy to use content management system and it’s free. That said, it has been around for a long time and has some issues. If you’re using WordPress—as Michele does—it’s really important that you keep it updated. WordPress and plugin updates are not just about adding new features, but about adding vital security patches that can prevent you from getting attacked in the first place. The same principles also apply to other website platforms like Joomla.

In Michele’s case, she had three installations of WordPress on her server for two different sites. The first was for her main website, the second was on a site backup and the third for a book launch site for her last book, Undone: Making Peace with an Imperfect Life . (The irony of this book title in this post is not lost on me.) Since the book launch, the site had been largely neglected and contained an old version of WordPress. Though we don’t know for sure if this is how the site was accessed, this was definitely a point of weakness on her site.

After looking through the site, we found malware files that not only created that lovely, little-blue-pill-promoting blog post, but also hid it from her in the content management system. So even though the Viagra post was sitting there, ready to be mailed out to her all her subscribers, there was no way for her to know it was there. The first time she saw it was the same time as all 7,000 of her subscribers.

While Michele did a great job at patching up any confusion with her readers, we removed the malware and scanned the site for issues, using a security service called Sucuri,* which scans customer’s websites every day and emails them with alerts to any suspicious files or activities on their sites. After the initial clean-up of the site, my experience has been that clients rarely have recurring issues after installation. The basic package on Sucuri is $199 a year, and in my opinion is absolutely worth it. Another great plugin to install is one that limits the number of login attempts. This will protect your site against Brute Force Attacks, where login attempts are repeatedly made until access to the site is gained.

An additional area that frequently affects site security is password sharing. Everyone has to share passwords these days, but you do not have to share your passwords over email or social media. By that I mean, DO NOT SHARE YOUR PASSWORDS OVER EMAIL OR SOCIAL MEDIA. Everyone knows they aren’t supposed to do this, but everybody still does, it’s just easy, but it is absolutely not secure. Also, don’t use the same password for everything. If someone dodgy gets one of your passwords, they’ll test it out on a few common platforms and soon enough, take over your online presence and hold it for ransom!

Unfortunately, I’m not joking. Online ransom is serious business with high stakes. A while back, a fellow who works with a friend of mine, and who runs a sizable online company had his email hacked. After the dubious party accessed his email, they simply searched for the word “password,” and were thus able to access his Facebook and Paypal accounts. They cleared out his Paypal balance and then sent him a message on his own Skype account offering to return the money and tell him how they did it, if he paid them $500. Folks, this new internet economy is not always pretty.

To prevent password faux pas and have a great place to store them, I’ve been using Lastpass* for years. With Lastpass, you only have to remember your login credentials for Lastpass and the program securely remembers the rest. On a free account, you get random password generation, password storage and secure sharing. You won’t even have to think about what to make your password at WhatsThisRash?.com, because Lastpass will make it up for you and store it securely. Hopefully, you won’t need to continue visiting that particular site, but if you do, you can do it with Lastpass. And Lastpass isn’t the only option— 1password also gets great reviews.

One other feature that is so useful in password sharing programs is the unsharing feature. During all the drama with Michele’s hack her hosting provider notified me that the number reason for sites being hacked is a former disgruntled employee looking for a little payback. While I hope that no one reading this has string of unhappy discarded co-workers, I do hope you’ll stop and think before throwing your login credentials around to anyone and everyone.

One last area to keep your eye on is input forms. Any input boxes you use on your site in contact forms, email collection or commenting can be used for ugly things if they don’t have validation built into them. Validation sanitizes any entered data of dodgy contents and encrypts it before it is transferred to your site. This can prevent forms from being used to add snippets of bad code to your site. Ninja Forms is a great option for adding forms to sites and includes that crucial validation step.

Site security is so important. It’s like having a door with a lock on your house. You wouldn’t just go out of town and leave the door wide open, would you? Don’t do that with your website either. It is website is your business, it is your investment, and it is your responsibility to protect it.

To recap:

Keep your site software–Wordpress, Joomla, themes and plugins–updated.
Add a security feature to your site, like Sucuri* and a plugin that can protect against Brute Force Attacks.
Do not share passwords over email or social media. Use a reputable password storage program instead, like Lastpass* or 1password.
Do not add any forms or input fields to your site that don’t include validation.

Need Help with Site Security?

* In the spirit of full disclosure, this is an affiliate link, which means that I may get a commissions if you decide to purchase anything from this particular vendor. That said, I only recommend products & systems that I use and love myself, so I know you’ll be in good hands.

Meet Bruce Bradley

Jackie Hobbins — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 20:42:50 +0000

“My name is Bruce Bradley. I’m a former processed food marketer who’s on a mission to get people eating healthier, real, less processed food.”

What do you do?

Although I’m a business strategy and marketing consultant by day, I love to blog and speak about making healthier food choices and inspiring people to ditch their processed food habits any time I can.

How long have you been doing this?

I’ve been blogging since 2011. It all started when I wrote my novel, FAT PROFIT$, a suspense-filled thriller that brings to life in an entertaining way how big, processed food companies often put profits ahead of healthy food choices. Since launching FAT PROFIT$, I’ve become even more passionate about helping people live healthier lives so I’ve been busy blogging, sharing recipes, and making public appearances all in hopes of encouraging people to take simple steps toward eating better.

What is your message?

It’s hard to know what’s really healthy to eat these days. Food companies like to mislead us with all different kinds of health claims. Crazy as it may sound, food companies are even claiming brownies, cookies, and bars are healthy!

I like to end the confusion by telling the truth about what’s really in your food and sharing recipes made with real ingredients. No judgment. No scare tactics. Rather, it’s all about inspiring people to take simple steps toward healthier eating.

How has your work with Moonpup impacted your overall work?

Moonpup has helped bring a more professional look and feel to my website. Also, I honestly don’t have the time or technical experience to deal with minor glitches that can develop from time to time with my website. That’s why it’s so important to have someone I trust to help me when something goes wrong. The whole Moonpup team is great to work with, and I’ve been really pleased with all the work they’ve done and how responsive they are!

“I’ve loved working with Moonpup Productions. From providing creative advice to making it all seamlessly come together on your site, Jackie and her team can do it all!”

-Bruce Bradley

6 Things To Do Before Starting Your Website

Jackie Hobbins — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 22:39:17 +0000

1. Write what you do.

Before you build a site, you need to know what it is you do. Now, this might sound like an easy task, but as a small business owner, I know how challenging it is to divide what you’ve done in the past, from where you’d like to go in the future, all while focusing on the strengths and shtick of your company. This is important not only for you, but for anyone else that is working on your team. Below are some of the questions we ask our clients to help us learn more about what they do. A simple conversation helps us get to know our clients and their business, allowing us to focus our work on communicating an effective and succinct message:

What exactly does your business do?

How did you get into this line of work?

What excites you about your work?

What are the core principles of your business—things that rarely change?

These four questions are a quick, but effective start to developing your elevator speech. The project or product you talk about to your clients may change over time, but the core of what you do—which does not change much or often—is what you need to build your brand around. Identify that, and you’ll lay an excellent foundation for a snazzy website and cohesive brand.

2. Register your domain name.

Domain name registration is (without getting into too much nerdy detail) where you pay a company to match your domain name with an IP address that folks will use to access your website. So for example, when I pay my registrar each year, they pair an IP address with my domain name: moonpupproductions.com. This allows folks to access my website.

Okay, here are the genuine details you need to know:

Go to a domain name registrar.
Find out if the domain name you want is available.
Purchase said domain name. It should cost around $10-$15 per year.
Save your login details for the domain name registration company. Nerds like me will need them shortly.

3. Secure a website hosting plan.

Hosting is the other really geeky part of setting up a website that you need to know at least a little bit about. When you purchase a hosting plan, you are paying a company to store the files that make up your website on their server. A server is a computer that is on all the time and manages access to your site.

There are a lot of options for hosting plans and packages, but often times a basic package will do the trick. Here are some hosting companies we recommend checking out.

4. Branding brainstorm, baby!

Here at Moonpup, we have found that identifying what your company does only takes you so far in the branding process. After years of projects, with special attention to interviewing each client, we’ve found that the other half of the story is your personal style. These two things together, your business ambitions paired with your personal aesthetic, have helped us create countless brands that look great and work for you.

So, start checking out websites. What do you like and what don’t you like? Write it all down with a list of website addresses or start a Pinterest board if that’s your thing. Either way, having this information ready will set you up for success as we begin your site.

5. Create content.

The content on your site is really, really important. Each person that reads your site is a potential customer and you don’t want to waste their time by providing them with sub-par content that is poorly written. Take your time writing and make sure it says a little bit about you and the personality of your company. Every bit of your marketing and brand should send a consistent clear message, be it visual graphics or words on the screen.

6. Get Pumped.

Now it’s time to get excited! A fresh new website, with clear communication and stellar graphics can do wonders for your business. With all the bones in place, you are ready to take your company to the next level!

Let’s Get Started!

PNG or JPG?

Jackie Hobbins — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 23:08:14 +0000

When should you use pngs and when should you use jpgs? What is a png anyway? Here is a concise, but handy guide to help you decide what type of images are best to use for different types of projects. For now, we are going to focus on three main file types:

JPG – Joint Photographic Experts Group
PNG (24-bit and 8-bit) – Portable Network Graphic
GIF – Graphical Interchange Format

Before we get to the nitty-gritty on these file types, let’s go over a few concepts so we are all on the same page. Here are some important things to know before we move forward:

Lossy vs. Lossless

– When an image is lossy, it means that as the image is compressed, pixel data is thrown out and the image cannot be re-enlarged without losing some clarity. When an images is lossless, you can compress it without losing any data or resolution from the original image.

24-bit vs. 8-bit

This refers to the spectrum of colors that are supported on a certain image type. For example, 24-bit images support 8 bits on each channel, which can generate 16.7 million colors—plenty to choose from. On the other hand, 8-bit image files have access to a total of 256 colors. One thing to keep in mind: the more bits on the graphic, the larger it will be as the fourth channel adds more data to the image.

RGB vs. CMYK

– RGB (red, green, blue) refers to the primary colors of light. These three colors make up all the colors you see on a computer screen in an additive process the starts with a dark screen. All images used on screen should be in RGB color mode. CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key-Black) refers to the four colors used in printing to create a full spectrum of colors. Images or designs set up for print purposes should be in CMYK mode.

Now, here is the scoop on each file type:

When formatting images or graphics for web or print, you need to keep in mind that there is a real balance between the quality of the image, and the size of the image. For example, if your website is full of really great photos, but no one has time to wait for them to download, then you’ve missed the mark. Or if your print design uses the wrong color mode, it doesn’t matter how great the design is if the colors are off. Keep the above graphic handy so you can get it right—every time.