Adding a security certificate to a WordPress website

1) In the htaccess file, replace the text with this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

</IfModule>

2) In the wp-config file, add this:

define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);

3) Force SSL across the site by setting this in wp-config too:

define('WP_HOME','https://example.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','https://example.com');

Artballs helps bring aPIERtite success – 10,000 attendance for Easter weekend

The eye-catching branding and illustrations we produced helped bring 10,000 people to the event win Hastings Pier on the Saturday.

Artballs produced the branding, illustration and design for aPIERtite on Hastings Pier event.

Following this success, more events are now planned for the coming months and we will be designing more artwork for these events.

Watch this space!

aPIERtite on Hastings Pier, design by Nathan at Artballs
Showing how eye-popping the poster design is, even on a drab day before the event!

Bat for Lashes in Pitchfork Magazine

Pitchfork Magazine have these amazing feature articles. This is perhaps one of the simplest, but also my favourite. The Pitchfork design is eminently readable online. The choice of font/size etc make reading long articles very easy. The gentle manual movements in the photography/illustrations really enhance the whole experience of reading these articles.

This article is a couple of years old, but still one of my favourite designed pages on the web.

http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/bat-for-lashes/

Jetpack contact form placeholders

Jetpack is rapidly zooming beyond its early reputation as the slow boat to China, and becoming a plugin to be reckoned with – as a suite of goodies rather than a single function plugin.

Today I tried out the contact form in Jetpack. Previously, I have almost always used the magnificent Contact Form 7, and the premium Gravity Forms for meatier interactive form content.

The Jetpack form is really easy to construct (or use the default form), but I wanted to use placeholders instead of labels. Leaving aside the controversial issue of accessibility (which is improving all the time), there appeared to be no easy way to do this in Jetpack.

In the end, a simple JQuery solution did the trick. This will actually work on other forms, but the previously mentioned ones already have built-in placeholder capability.

jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
 $('#my-field-id').attr('placeholder', 'My placeholder text');
 });

The above checks that the page is loaded, then dives in and looks your ID or class with the attribute of placeholder and puts in your text.

You can hide the labels if you want, with a bit of CSS. This is best done with a minus text-indent, or the trendy new clip technique. Ideally, don’t use display:none as this will completely hide the label from screen readers, meaning especially blind or partially sighted people using specialist browsers probably won’t be able to use your form.