10 ways to prevent or remove viruses

In the past two weeks, I’ve seen a half-dozen clients and friends get hit with some seriously yucky computer viruses. One virus had infected over 1800 files on a website. Another had infected thousands on a personal computer. Viruses can ride in on emails or be delivered by visiting infected sites on the net.

If you want to prevent or remove a virus, here’s 9 of my favourite tricks and tools to make it just a bit easier. IMHO.

1. Avast Antivirus: Offers a free, powerful home version that you can download. Avast allows you to scan right from the boot which is one of the best ways to get rid of a nasty bug. Unfortunately, the boot scan doesn’t work on 86bit computers, but the rest of the program will work. You can run Avast after you’ve been hit with a virus as well and it often can clean things up. For a real first scan, it’ll take hours, so don’t try to use your computer until it’s done. http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download

2. Malwarebytes: This hasn’t let me down yet. And the free version does a great job. This caught the big keylogger virus that infiltrated my entire network and website a couple of years ago. I call that time the dark ages. There’s two options. Buy it for about $25 or download the free version. http://www.malwarebytes.org/

3. FireFox: I rarely use Internet Explorer anymore. Firefox often blocks infected websites with a warning message. On a side note, it’s great for web developers. I only return to IE when I’m using my Sharepoint since IE and Sharepoint get along better with each other.  http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

4. Panda Antivirus: This software was loaded up by one of my computer guys and it did catch some stuff that Avast didn’t. But then Avast caught bugs that Panda didn’t. Panda doesn’t offer a free version. http://www.pandasecurity.com/canada-eng/homeusers/downloads/

5. HostGator: I host various websites on dedicated servers with HostGator and they have by FAR the best tech support. When one of my client sites was infected last week, I fired off an email to tech support, they scanned the site, found a bunch of bugs and redirects, removed them, and all was well. No extra charge. Replies within an hour at the most. I can’t say enough about the tech team there. And then on my end, I was able to follow up with another scanning of email and file directories using my hosting admin area (cPanel)’s pre-loaded virus software. In less than 8 hours, this gigantic site was good to go. http://www.hostgator.com/

Competition makes you better (ouch)

You love your tribe, your fans and followers. You’ve worked crazy hard for eons to stand out from the rest and build relationships with clients that go beyond a contract and a cheque. You know their kids names, their favourite sushi restaurant, their life or business goals…

And then a competitor (a real competitor – someone who pitches the exact same niche and product/service line) swoops in and you see a few of your favourites defect or at least embrace the new guy whose sole purpose is to crush their competition – which they’ve identified as you.

How could they?!, you ask yourself. I thought they loved me!, you whine. Even though common sense should prevail (because let’s face it, you’ve been around this particular block a few times), it still feels like you’re in the middle of a hostile takeover.

And immediately you hit the drawing board. You brainstorm. You collaborate. You dust off ideas you never had the time or resources to make happen. You plot what you could do with another 40 hours in each week, what you can afford to invest in, how you can create an even bigger wow factor. You even kick yourself (hard) for letting things slide that you shouldn’t have.

You become better. Overnight. You know you’ll overcome and dim the competition’s self-powered (with oodles of new money and energy) spotlight. Why? Because what you offer is better, it’s unique, and you’ve spent years fine-tuning it. AND because you’re about to step it up again.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t feel like you just got kicked in the gut. It’s okay to take business personally. Your clients will always win as the result – which is what they, and you, both want. And so, in the words of immunization nurses everywhere; this will only hurt a bit.

Surviving & profiting in the age of instant communication

Whether you’re a social media addict or not, it’s a safe bet that your clients are used to being able to reach whoever they want, from wherever they are, at all times. And that could mean clients expect to reach you in the same instant-communication fashion that they’re used to from their BFFs.

With instant access to everyone and everything from the palm of your hand, companies who are most “connected” are the same companies who get first dibs on a ton of potential revenue.

Question. How are we all supposed to run our businesses, stay in contact with current clients, get in touch with potential clients, and yet not spend all day attached to our computers?

Here’s a few things I consider whenever I’m about to go into communication-overload…

Autoresponders – good and bad

When I send out an email blast, I tend to get over a hundred autoresponder messages from wedding experts who are on vacation,  out of the office or just plain busy.

Most autoresponders are professional, to the point, and say something along the lines of “We’re out of the office until whatever date. We’ll get back to you when we return.” Others say “We’ll get back to you within 1-2 business days” and are always turned on. Meh.

But what a client is hearing is probably more along the lines of “Please wait – for days, maybe a week – to give us your business. We’ll get back to you.“  What if all of us measured how many potential clients moved on to a competitor insteading of waiting? What would the tally be? 1 or 2 weddings a year? $500 or $5000? More or less?

It’s hard to know. But what I do know is a fabulous autoresponder when I see one. I love seeing entrepreneurs who use their autoresponders not just as a way to field calls and emails while they work, but also as means to send a real message.

A quick, fun family Valentine’s Day activity

Brian picked up these fabulous Valentine’s Day cookie kits which our kids LOVED. Each of these kits came with 12 cookies, icing in red, white and fuschia pink, and adorable little decorations to dress them up.

Resolve to lighten up

I love LOVE! my job. It’s the only explanation I have for purposely taking on the endless hours and stress that goes with running a big fat awesome company. I also love  LOVE! my company. The problem with loving what you do is that it’s oh so easy to become completely consumed. If I’m not careful, days and weeks can go by with me glued to the computer as the things I love to do, for myself and my family, get pushed off to the sidelines. Especially when I’m up against a big deadline.

The truth is, there’s always another deadline, a fire to put out, or another great idea. But time isn’t a renewable resource and knowing when to call ‘uncle’ is always a good idea. That’s why I made some pretty big (big for me, at any rate) resolutions for 2011. Here they are, in no particular order…

1. Get back to the kitchen, woman! I always enjoyed baking when I was younger. I’m going to spend some time in the kitchen with my hubby and little ones (see #3). My five year old is a big fan of all things sweet – cake, cupcakes, you name it. So I’m going to enlist her help in this area. And Brian is the chef in the house, so I’ll need is help for sure.

Administering Joomla with iPad

As promised, it’s day four and I’ve just pulled myself away from using my iPad for Facebook (and pulled the kids away from using it to watch crazy frog videos and play the burp and fart piano app) so that i could try out the Joomla! administrative capabilities of the iPad. Instead of risking an embarrassing or irreversable mistake on my own corporate Joomla! website, I opted to test using the Mosets Hot Property demo site. Long story short, from what i can tell, it was all systems go. In fact I’m having a harder time blogging in WordPress than I had adding a module or changing config options in The Hot Property back end. Next step? Googling security concerns. If I find none, it looks like iPad will be making life a lot easier from now on. Now if on,y it would run Adobe Master Suite and make text selection eons easier… But I guess I can’t have it all, can I?

iPad resistance was futile. Now, is this a toy or a business tool?

I can’t count how many times i denied how completely i was dying to get my hands on an iPad over the past few months. But my family knew me better. I was dy.ing to have one for myself. Every Mashable.com daily feed taunted me with reviews, tips and must-have apps lists. So, somehow hiding it entirely from me, the family went in on my birthday gift together and now, here I am, one day later, having already needed to recharge once and testing my first blog post out, from the comfort of my couch. I have no idea how to select and correct areas of text but I can tell you that the keyboard is more than big enough to keep up my light-speed typing.

So far, my theory was right. It’s a bit of a tease. You can do so much, so easily with an iPad that it feels like I should be able to open Adobe InDesign and edit some magazine layouts. But I can’t. What I can do is watch news, surf my own websites, and with a variety on annoying spelling mistakes, blog. I can play a kick-ass game of solitaire too but that would make this the most expensive card game ever… SO the plan is to attempt to access and update a Joomla website or two, edit a task on my Sharepoint server, and finish loading up a mountain and configure my email.

My goal is to see if this is just a wicked new toy or if it actually has business applications I’ll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck! Sorry about the horrid formatting and spelling.

Headway Themes Update: The jury is still out for client or corporate sites

I still use Headway Themes on a handful ofnwebsites but u fortunately, because they’re client websites, I haven’t been able to report on the real usability of it for client site. The problem I face is that during one of their updates, it caused some major issues that clients wouldn’t have been fond of. I actually had to revert to the previous version because I couldn’t (and didn’t have time to) mess around with it and figure out the bug for myself. After all, that’s why one would use headway Themes in the first place – to avoid coding! So anyways, Headway Themes has done a number if seemingly cool updates since then, but I just haven’t had the time or trust to try them out. I still recommend the software for personal sites, but not sure on client or corporate sites. Note: Posted using my iPad. Please ignore blaring errors and bad formatting!

Trying Headway Themes

Okay, so I’ve started using Headway Themes for a couple of websites who’s clients needed some authoring and widget functionality but who I didn’t think needed to plunge into the deep end with something as big as Joomla.

I installed Headway with no problem. Fell in love with the ability to literally grab chunks ofthe site such as the header, footer, widgets and content areas and move and resize them any way that I like. Seriously, someone pleeeeease do this with Joomla!

So far I’ve used a number of it’s built-in widgets including random image widget, custom footers and headers, and a photo gallery (very slick). I’ve used Headway to switch up my menu, completely change the layout of the divs, and do crazy-easy (and quick) text style mods.

It’s rediculous that it doesn’t have an automatic option for rounded corners or body background images when it has so many other more complicated functions BUT alas, having to use the text editor for a line or two won’t kill me I guess.

With the price and the pure hours of time saved on css modification for layout, Headway’s looking like a great buy so far. Check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me.

Anyways, neither of my sites are launched yet, so once I’ve achieved publication, I’ll update this with my final vote for or against Headway.