Blog | Ari Salomon: WordPress Expert

How to remove a Google account from “Choose an account” page list

By Ari Salomon | Published: March 15, 2014

Here’s a quick tip on something very simple that I could not figure out for the longest time. One of those bugs that was somehow thought to be a feature at some point in the development process over at Google. Too busy not doing evil, I guess…

The graphic above is very straightforward and familiar to anyone who uses more than one Google account. Easy to add or remove accounts, right? The tricky part is that if you are logged into any of these accounts then you will not see the “remove” button. Instead, it will look like this (with just “add an account”):

add account - no remove

Add and Login to Remove?

In other words, to remove an account you have to log out of a different account but it doesn’t tell you which account you are logged into. And to find this page in the first place you have to “Add account” from the top right menu – so you have to add an account and then log out of an account in order to remove an account.

There are many ways to end up on this page I suspect – jumping between Google services such as Adwords or Google Analytics, for example. These are some of the URLs that will bring up the “Choose an account” list:

How to log out? visit accounts.google.com/logout and Google will log you out — then the remove button will be visible.

Some of the keywords I tried to find an answer online:

How to remove a Google account from your list of accounts on the “Choose an account” page?
How to remove sessions from Google accounts?
Google account +remove button missing

What’s the difference between a logotype and a logomark?

By Ari Salomon | Published: February 10, 2014

When clients ask me to design a logo for their business I always start with this discussion of what kind of “logo” they need. A “logo” is often made of a logotype and a logomark. But not every business needs both.

A logotype stands for words or the name of a business that is designed in a customized way.

A logomark is an identifying mark or symbol that doesn’t contain the business name, like a drawing or image that represents the business.

Logotype

The letter “IBM” written in a certain number of blue stripes is a logo. The blue is very specific and there are a different number of stripes depending on the size of the logo.

Usually when using the word “logo” people are thinking of logotype. A logotype is the name of a company that is designed in a visually unique way for use by that company. It may be displayed in a preexisting font that is customized to some degree or another. Or it may be built from geometric shapes that abstract letters for a specific effect. There can be other specifications associated with the design of a logotype that are referred to more broadly as corporate identity elements. These include PMS colors and how much empty space is required around a logo.

It’s not necessarily needed to use a symbol or icon to effectively create a good logo, and that is the idea behind logotypes. When it is done correctly, using only typography to create a logo can be an extremely effective branding weapon. What normally happens is that this form of logo uses a special typeface and letter styling, which becomes associated with a brand.

Famous examples of logotypes

Logomark

An apple with a missing “byte” out of it is the logomark of Apple Inc.

A logomark or “symbol” does not generally contain the name of the company — it more abstractly represents that company. It may or may not always sit next to the logotype and there may be a few types of marks in the corporate identity system that get used in different contexts. These rules will be spelled out in a brand usage document.

Logomarks can be very useful, because they can enhance brand identity. It can help consumers identify what your business is about, especially if your logomark is a pictorial representation, such as a having camera for a photographer. They can be used as consistent graphic elements on marketing materials, wearables, and signage. A logomark can sometimes be more identifiable than a logotype, such as the apple symbol for Apple Inc.

Do I need a logomark?

How to decide if you need both a logotype and a logomark? It depends on how you will use your logo and what business sector you are in. Designing a logomark can add a significant cost to your brand development process so budget can be a factor too. Some new businesses will start simple and add a mark after the business grows and perhaps gains more (or sometimes less – meaning broader) focus.

It’s important for all logos to remain equally readable at each zoom/ scale level. You may not be buying a giant billboard but printing a logo a few inches across on a brochure is a much higher resolution environment than on a website.

Famous examples of logomarks

To see some logos I’ve design head on over to my logo design portfolio or just download my updated identity design portfolio PDF.

Posted in Design | 2 Responses

Embedded tweets in WordPress

By Ari Salomon | Published: January 15, 2014

It was a great idea when introduced just a year or two ago but at this point it seems it’s a feature that is no longer supported. Some users report that it only works sometimes. Twitter is famous for having its servers become unavailable so perhaps it’s not ideal to rely on “oEmbed” anyway. Embeds work just fine for YouTube and other sources however.

SOLUTION #1

My team wrote a simple twitter oEmbed plugin that works with a shortcode. So instead of putting in the full tweet URL:
https://twitter.com/helloari/status/423594413600690177
Just put in a shortcode like this:
[twit id=”423594413600690177″]

SOLUTION #2

Another solution is to grab the “full” embed code from twitter. It looks something like this:

<blockquote lang=”en”><p><a href=”https://twitter.com/freshbooks”>@freshbooks</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/search?q=%23status&src=hash”>#status</a> paypal payments are not working. paypal says it's a known issue with freshbooks today. please give us an update.</p>— ari salomon (@helloari) <a href=”https://twitter.com/helloari/statuses/421349608422264832″>January 9, 2014</a></blockquote><script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

Remember to put that in the “text” (not “visual”) tab of your post editor.

Here’s where to get the code:

and finally, here’s what it will look like

Embedded tweets in WordPress: It was a great idea when introduced just a year or two ago but at this point it see… http://t.co/cmRTDaPYVb

— ari salomon (@helloari) January 15, 2014

UPDATE: JANUARY 23, 2014
WordPress v3.8.1 seems to fix this issue

Posted in Web Design | Leave a comment

Stripe, Gravity Forms and WooCommerce

By Ari Salomon | Published: November 20, 2013

I have more and more clients who are enjoying using Gravity Forms and Stripe or Braintree to build order forms and take payments on their own sites. Note that the Stripe Add-on for Gravity Forms is free – no yearly fees for the software – if you host your WordPress site with me and/or have me build your site.

Here’s some other notes about the benefits of using Stripe and why it can replace PayPal, Square and many other tools.

Stripe Account Management: Mobile (iOS)

Control for Stripe (formerly Pay Pad) $Free
Mobile account management for Stripe

Create new charges (credit card reader via the device camera)
View recent activity
Analytics & Reports
Rich push notifications
Recurring invoices: See the plan a customer is on

The big feature is the ability to accept payments from your iPhone into your Stripe account – there is no hardware for swipes like the “Square” or “PayPal Here” but instead you use the iPhone camera.

Paid for Stripe $Free (formerly 5.99)

Enter payments manually (no card reader)
Monitor, refund and retry payments. Email or delete customers.
Clean interface. Nice Dashboard.

Card Readers

AppNinjas – The iOS app if free but there is “a monthly fee of $15 (includes 1st terminal) and $9/mo for each additional terminal”. There is no minimal time commitment so you could pay $15 for one month’s service and still get the free card reader – but after that month you would not be able to use the card reader. Works with many gateways including Braintree. If you want to use Stripe or Braintree or your own existing merchant account make sure to start from this page.

Innerfence – The App and Card reader is free but this service requires a monthly fee plus a transaction fee. Min of $9/mo +1.9%. Yes, they add percentage on top of the Stripe percentage – not a very good deal but comes with extra features: location based sales tax, maps, and online access to manage your account.If you want to use Stripe or Braintree or your own existing merchant account make sure to start from this page.

CardFlight – this seems to be only for app developers. Now they have an app too: SwipeSimple but you first need a SwipeSimple account — only sold through resellers, providers of merchant account services.

WooCommerce and Stripe

One great feature Stripe offers for the WooCommerce WordPress ecommerce plugin is “saved cards”. If users make WordPress accounts in your web store, the user will be able to view saved credit cards when they come back. At payment, they are setup in stripe as a customer and at their next order they will be able to checkout using the same card. A big timesaver for returning customers. Stripe also supports the Subscriptions extension.

Posted in WordPress WooCommerce | Tagged Gravity Forms | Leave a comment

Feet+wheelchair=Staircase

By Ari Salomon | Published: October 18, 2013

What an amazing idea – take a wide staircase and “overlap” a ramp for wheelchairs. Makes me want to think out of the box about using phrases like “think out of the box”.

For everyone who has ever gotten around in a or pushed around a baby stroller, you know how frustrating it is to encounter a building with stairs and no ramp. Almost as bad are the steep, poorly-designed ramps that were simply tacked on later. The McCormick Tribune Campus Center in Chicago made a stylish compromise between stairs and ramp with this staircase that incorporates a zig-zagging ramp with the stairs.

via 15 More! Crafty Metal, Wood & Spiral Staircases | En Derin.

Posted in Inventions | 2 Responses

Google Apps vs Outlook.com for free email hosting at your domain

By Ari Salomon | Published: September 26, 2013

UPDATE: outlook.com no longer supports custom domains:

After July 2014, domain administrators will no longer be able add or remove email accounts in your domain. Domain administrators are encouraged to move to Office 365 to get enhanced features and capabilities for modern enterprise-class mail, collaboration and communications.

Back at the end of 2012 Google’s big announcement was that they no longer offered a free version of Google Apps. Google Apps is basically a free Gmail account but at your own domain instead of at gmail.com. If you pay for the pro version (“Google Apps for Business”) you get more storage, support and a few other features. Nonprofits can get it free by request.

Google Apps is a great product but who can we turn to now for domains that have simple email needs and no budget? I host most of the sites I build but I no longer host email on my server in order to keep it safe and speedy for my WordPress managed hosting clients.

What is outlook.com?

Outlook.com is the successor to Hotmail. If you have a Hotmail address, you can upgrade to outlook.com. Note that Office 365 is more of a direct, enterprise-ready competition for Google Apps. It gives you an Exchange account, and web versions of all 8+ office programs (not just the 5 free “SkyDrive” ones). But Office 365 is not free – there are 3 service levels.

Google Apps vs Outlook.com

Here is a comparison chart between Yahoo, Outlook.com and Gmail (all of which are free). They are all really similar in terms of feature lists – and all allow forwarding to other email accounts (Outlook.com allows forwarding to just one address but Google apps allows for more than one). The key thing this chart doesn’t address is the experience of using the web-based interface. The interfaces are all very different – with Yahoo being a distant 3rd in terms of usability. Of course all 3 offer many ways to access your email without every using their browser-based interfaces. Some other take-away notes:

Outlook.com didn’t offer IMAP till very recently.
Outlook claims “virtually” unlimited storage.
Outlook shows ads (more that mail) BUT it doesn’t target them based on your email content – in other words, it’s robots don’t read your email.
You can get free email in the form of x@outlook.com or you can use your own domain free. (Gmail/Google Apps no longer offers a free option for using your own domain name)
Outlook.com has web-based versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint so you can work with those kinds of attachments directly. It is like Gmail and Google docs + Google Drive. See image below.

Look in the Sky – It’s a drive!

How to set up free outlook.com for your domain

Now that I’ve done this process a few times I can offer some tips:

Start with this LifeHacker article.
Note that you can have multiple administrator accounts for your custom domain. Each administrator must register the domain on the Windows Live Admin Center website and enter a unique MX record that authenticates that user (an MX record specifies which server in your domain should receive incoming email) that’s associated with that administrator at your registrar or Domain Name System (DNS) provider’s website.
The Domain administration interface at live.com / outlook.com is much much simpler and has hardly any features compared to Google Apps. But that can be a feature in itself. Basically just add new user accounts and go on your way.
Check e-mail at http://mail.live.com or you can set up your own subdomain just like Google Apps does via a Cname DNS record
Where to make more accounts for your domain? You can make up to 50 email accounts for free.
Start here: https://domains.live.com/ and click “get started”
Note that you have to log in as the new user in a browser in order to confirm the account before using it. Live will ask you for a captcha to confirm you are a human and there are two other simple screens to proceed through before you can start using the new account.
Important note: Please sign in at least once every 365 days—otherwise your account looks inactive and could be deleted. I’m not sure how that compares to Gmail these days but there are a few levels of security you have to go through in activating a new Outlook.com email account.
Also see: answers.microsoft.com FAQ
To use Apple Mail (or any other IMAP client) read these instructions. Here’s the most relevant part: “For incoming mail server settings, make sure that the account type is set to IMAP, then enter “imap-mail.outlook.com” as your incoming mail server. Enter your real Outlook.com e-mail address and password in the username and password fields.”see: ActiveSync and POP settings

Are there other free email options?

The short answer is Zoho. They offer a similar suite of tools and a free option – with email at your domain. But I have not used it.

For free (and paid) email/webmail Wikipedia has a useful table with many options:

Lifehacker has a great article about alternatives.

…or just pay for Google Apps!

PS: here’s a tip if you are having issues with the outlook.com (and hotmail.com) spam filter. it’s pretty agressive and only has two settings. There is no way to turn off the spam filter. For those that don’t use the web interface and want to use some other spam filter this can be a real problem. solution: set up a filter

Go to the gear icon, go to “more mail settings”
Then find “Rules for sorting new messages”
Finally, add a new rule of the form “Sender’s Address” “contains” @ then select “Move to Inbox”

UPDATE: After struggling with some senders being blocked I am “downgrading” Outlook.com and am motivated to try out Zoho’s service.

UPDATE 2014: Well, I have not tried Zoho yet but I have a couple commentors that seem to be happy with it.

Posted in Web Design | 11 Responses

Gravity Forms FreshBooks Add-On and Recurring Payments

By Ari Salomon | Published: September 18, 2013

Gravity Forms and FreshBooks — my two favorite services (software is a service, of course) — now play nicely with each other.

Let me start with the bad news: the invoice that can be generated is not sent automatically (it is only added to FreshBooks in Draft mode) and there is no provision to send recurring invoices currently.

But there is lots of good news too:

Automatically add clients to a FreshBooks account when any kind of Gravity Form is submitted
You have the option of asking for a PO number that gets passed to FreshBooks
Automatically create invoices and estimates from a form submission (draft mode only – the invoices are not sent out)
Update existing client details when new forms are submitted

Sample project

See the public view of the form I set up: http://www.artsadministration.org/register/

Here is a screenshot of the feed:

Recurring Payments… on the Titanic

This Gravity Forms plugin can’t set up Recurring Payments in FreshBooks. But that research led down a rabbit hole that I want to share with you now…

This gem below came after a very long talk with PayPal customer support where they were not sure if it would work. And then FreshBooks support also was not sure if it would work. FreshBooks support is usually great but I know that the PayPal API is a big mess – they keep old versions around which is nice for backwards compatibility but they don’t organize their APIs clearly and their site in general has gotten very confusing and bloated. Titanic… well there is some joke here about how PayPal is just rearranging deck chairs instead of getting to the heart of the problem and revamping their whole site. I know Gravity Forms is considering dropping support entirely for PayPal in favor of Stripe.com which offers a wonderfully clean and simple experience.

Here’s what I found out:

FreshBooks works with the “Payflow Edition” of “Website Payments Pro”. With this kind of account PayPal is both gateway and processor. FreshBooks says it requires “PayPal Payflow Pro” (where PayPal is the gateway and a separate bank account is required as processor – $10/mo extra fee, other fees, a very different kind of account) for recurring payments. By testing directly myself, I confirmed Website Payments Pro Payflow Edition works for recurring payments.

Update: a reader reminds me that Gravity Forms can initiate recurring payments – if done directly with Stripe and not via FreshBooks. Gravity Forms Stripe Add-On supports recurring payments – but you need to buy the Pro version ($49/yr) and always remember to enter API keys for Stripe (right after you turn the plugin on) or the form elements won’t work and other “bugs” will appear.

Posted in WordPress WooCommerce | Tagged Gravity Forms | 1 Response

Google Apps – 3 options for forwarding email via filters and groups

By Ari Salomon | Published: September 12, 2013

Here’s some instructions on how to add and subtract people’s email from a forward or a list. First decide if you want to forward to one person or set up more of a list that forwards to multiple people (who can be in your Google Apps domain or outside of it).

There are 3 options:

1) If you just want to forward to one person you can use the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab in the Settings section.

1forwarding-emails-2013-09-07

2) But if you want to forward to multiple addresses you want to use filters – as it says at the bottom of the screenshot above.

To make a filter that catches all emails fill in something random in the “doesn’t have” section:

Posted in Web Design | Leave a comment

Tint for social mashups and connect pages

By Ari Salomon | Published: September 6, 2013

An interesting new option for a very visual way to ‘mash up’ any social feeds.
http://www.tintup.com

The video on the front page is pretty good at explaining what it is.
Here’s a quick test I did just importing my Facebook page and Pinterest profile
http://www.helloari.com/connect/

It choked on my LInkedIn profile and I didn’t take time to troubleshoot it but I can see it’s a very powerful and easy to use tool to make a dynamic view of your social and other media. You can make two connections with a free account but pricing jumps to $50/month from there for extra theme options and more

You can aggregate and curate from ANY Facebook profiles/pages/groups/hashtags, Twitter accounts/hashtags/favorites, Instagram accounts/hashtags/locations, Youtube channels/playlists, Pinterest accounts/boards, Google + accounts/hashtags, and any RSS into one beautiful hub. And them embed it into a site, app, Facebook Page etc etc etc…

Editor:

Screen Shot 2013-09-06 at 3.46.21 PM

UPDATED 2016:

OTHER SIMILAR SERVICES

Tagboard.com: no pricing listed on their site – starts at $250/mo. It’s free to set up a “board” but embedding cleanly requires a paid account. Very similar to Tint: paid accounts can curate/approve content before it gets displayed. Real time user generated content with good control – they offer a kiosk/live event kind of service in addition to Web embeds.
Juicer.io: two sources/1 embeddable feed free, 5 sources for $20/mo. This is a simpler but much more affordable service.

OTHER PLUGIN-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA FEED SERVICES
Here’s some inexpensive options that do something similar – and give you control of the code to fully customize it. Not many of these let you follow hashtags so if you need that option choose carefully.

WordPress Social Stream by designchemical (at codecanyon)
Social network tabs – similar idea all in a tabbed widget
WordPress Social Timeline – retrieve status/posts/videos/images from different social networks in a timeline format
ManageWP has a good list of social media feed plugins

Posted in Product Reviews | 1 Response

WCSF: Notes From WordCamp 2013

By Ari Salomon | Published: August 4, 2013

Sadly, I missed WordCamp this year since I was still in Japan. But I did watch the State of the Word Video:

…and I have two take-aways…

1) Stats

First is the statistic that I keep focusing on — because I am always using it with my clients — how many sites use WordPress?

WordPress powers 18.9% of the internet

…up 2.2% from last year. And over the past 12 months, WordPress was downloaded a total of 46 million times.

See below for a nice infographic with more stats. And follow the stats over at w3techs (up to 21% as of 1/2013)

2) MP6 Interface for WP 3.8

The other project Matt mentioned is the new admin interface designed — developed under the ‘codenamed’ MP6 plugin. I chekced it out and wanted to share some screenshots in case you want a peak at the future interface we 18.9% will be working with.