Where to Place WordPress htaccess Directives

WebmasterWorld Members discuss how best to use, and where to place .htaccess with WordPress sites.

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Oracle Deprecates Java Browser Plugin

Developers should move to Java Web Start.

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Facebook Opens Up Its Audience Network (Beta)

Facebook is opening up its Audience Network (beta) to over 2 million advertisers and to mobile.

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The High Price of Free

Doing business in the web industry has unbelievably low start-up and fixed running costs. You need little more than a computer and an internet connection. The overheads of freelancers and small agencies that build websites and applications for other people, or develop a digital product, are tiny in comparison to a traditional business. Your training can be free, as so many industry experts write and teach and share this information without charging for it. Even the tools you use to build websites can be downloaded free of charge, or purchased for very little.

As an industry we have become accustomed to getting hundreds of hours of work, and the benefit of years of hard-won knowledge for free.

My free time in the last couple of years has been put into looking at the Grid Layout spec. I start most days answering emailed questions about the examples I’ve posted, before I get down to the work that pays the bills.

I’m not unusual in that. Most of my friends in the industry have tales of invites to events where no payment is offered, a queue of issues raised on their personal project on GitHub, or people requesting general web development technical support via email.

What pays the bills for me, and enables me to spend my spare time doing unpaid work, is my product Perch. Yet we launched Perch to complaints that it wasn’t open source. There are very good reasons why someone might want, or be required, to use software that has an open source license. However, when we ask about it, people rarely cite these reasons. When they say open source, they mean free of charge.

I’ll be 41 this year. I don’t feel 41, but the reality is that at some point I won’t be able to keep up a pace of work that encompasses running a business, putting together talks and workshops, writing books, and contributing as much as possible to the industry that I love being a part of. I need to make sure that I am building not only a body of work and contributions that I’m proud of, but also financial security for when I can’t do this anymore. Yes, that free work does sometimes result in someone trying my software or offering me paid consultancy, but not as often as you might think. Despite having very marketable skills, I don’t own a home, much less have a pension and savings in place.

I wondered how other independent and freelance web workers dealt with this conflict between earning money and contributing back. I also wondered if I was alone in feeling that the clock is ticking. I put together a survey (the responses to which probably will be the background to several other pieces of research), and a few things stood out immediately.

Of the 211 people who responded and said they worked for themselves, 33% said they had some provision but not enough to fully retire, while 39% said they had no pension or retirement savings at all. In fact, 30% of the 211 said that they live pretty much “month to month” without so much as a contingency fund. Even filtering out the under-40 age groups, those percentages remained roughly the same.

I asked the question, “Are you involved in open source projects, writing tutorials, mentoring, speaking at events-that you do free of charge or for expenses only?” 59% said they were not involved, with 27% of those people citing time constraints. Some people did explain that they were involved in volunteer work outside of the web. By the time I filtered out the under-40s, the non-involvement figure rose to 70%.

We know that not paying speakers and not covering speaker expenses causes events to become less diverse. The ability to give time, energy and professional skills free of charge is a privilege. It is a privilege that not everyone has to begin with, but that we can also lose as our responsibilities increase or as we start to lose the youthful ability to pull all-nighters. Perhaps we begin to realize how much that free work is taking us away from our families, friends, and hobbies; away from work that might improve our situation and enable us to save for the future.

If you are in your early twenties, willing to work all night for the love of this industry, and have few pressing expenses, then building up your professional reputation on open source projects and sharing your ideas is a great thing to do. It’s how we all got started, how I and the majority of my peers found our voices. As I get older, however, I have started to feel the pressure of the finite amount of time we all have. I’ve started to see people of my generation taking a step back. I’ve seen people leave the industry, temporarily or permanently, due to burnout. Others disappear into companies, often in managerial (rather than hands-on) roles that leave limited time for giving back to the community.

Some take on job roles that enable them to continue to be a contributing part of the community. The fact that so many companies essentially pay people to travel around and talk about the web or to work on standards is a great thing. Yet, I believe independent voices are important too. I believe that independent software is important. For example, I would love to see more people who are not tied to a big company be able to contribute to the standards process. I endorse that, yet know that in doing so I am also advocating that people give themselves another unpaid job to do.

The enthusiasm of newcomers to the industry is something I value. I sit in conference audiences and have my mind changed and my eyes opened by speakers who are often not much older than my daughter. However, there is also value in experience. When experience can work alongside fresh ideas, I believe that is where some of the best things happen.

Do we want our future to be dictated by big companies, with independent input coming only from those young or privileged enough to be able to work some of the time without payment? Do we want our brightest minds to become burned out, leaving the industry or heading into jobs where the best scenario is contribution under their terms of employment? Do we want to see more fundraisers for living or medical expenses from people who have spent their lives making it possible for us to do the work that we do? I don’t believe these are things that anyone wants. When we gripe about paying for something or put pressure on a sole project maintainer to quickly fix an issue, we’re thinking only about our own need to get things done. But in doing so we are devaluing the work of all of us, of our industry as a whole. We risk turning one of the greatest assets of our community into the reason we lose the very people who have given the most.

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Critial XSS flaws in Magento leave millions of ecommerce sites at risk

If you run a Magento website, you should update it now!

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New "Brave" Browser Blocks Online Ads and Tracking

Brave is the name of a new web browser which blocks ads and ad tracking, but serves users with anonymous ads.

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John Mueller: Title tags "not the most critical part of a page"

WebmasterWorld Members discuss a recent comment about page titles.

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Google's New Real-Time Ads For YouTube, Apps and Display Network

Google to test its Real-Time Ads (beta) at the forthcoming Super Bowl.

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Zero Day Vulnerability Discovered In Linux Kernel

This three year old vulnerability on servers and smaller devices running Linux needs patching soon.

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Bing Keyword Planner Now Enhanced With Version 2

Bing has announced an enhanced version, V2, of its keyword planner.

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Motion with Meaning: Semantic Animation in Interface Design

http://ift.tt/16fiYnL

I solved a problem today and figured that I’d document it for the rest of the world. Every time someone left me a voicemail on Verizon, I would get a cryptic text from Verizon at 900080006202 that looked like “//VZWVVM:SYNC:ev=NM;id=1;c=1;t=v;s=1XXXXXXXXXX;dt=18/01/2016 13:40-0900;l=13;dev_t=5” or “//VZWVVM:SYNC:ev=MBU;dev_t=5”.

Here’s what happened. It turns out that Verizon has three kinds of voicemail: basic voicemail (free), basic visual voicemail (also free), and premium visual voicemail ($2.99/month). I have a Nexus 5X and I recently switched from an unlimited Verizon data plan to a different plan (long story).

As part of that shift, it looks like Verizon switched me to visual voicemail. I suspect a lot of phones that you get at a Verizon store have some sort of visual voicemail app pre-installed. That app probably intercepts those cryptic texts and uses them to show a voicemail indicator. Ever wondered how the voicemail indicator disappears so fast after you call voicemail? I suspect that’s also because of a Verizon text that is interpreted by your phone.

But a Nexus 5X doesn’t have Verizon’s voicemail app, so it just presents texts from Verizon. To fix this issue, I stopped by a Verizon store and had a rep change me from “basic visual voicemail” to “basic voicemail,” and that fixed the issue. I don’t think you can toggle that setting yourself on Verizon’s website.

Nexus 5X rocks!

By the way, I love my Nexus 5X. It fits well in my hand, the camera is superb, and the fingerprint reader is blazingly fast. Also, the speed and accuracy of voice recognition on the Nexus 5X is amazing.

A final nice feature is that you can insert a Nano SIM card from any of the major carriers in the US. I often switch my Nexus 5X over to Google Fi in various situations; for example, Fi is great if you’re traveling outside the US.

HD Voice

One last tip if you’re still on Verizon: you can get HD Voice for free, but you have to enable it. HD Voice works via Voice over LTE, or VoLTE. HD Voice should have much better audio than a regular cell phone as long as both phones support it. On Verizon’s site, go to My Verizon->My Plan & Services->My Plan->Products & Apps->Manage Products & Apps and then click Free Products. Enable HD Voice on all your compatible lines on the website.

Then you need to enable HD Voice on each of your phones. On recent Android phones, look for Settings->More->Cellular networks->Enhanced 4G LTE Mode. On iPhones, look for Settings->Cellular->Enable LTE and select Voice & Data. More info on HD Voice and Advanced Calling on Verizon is in these FAQs.

What phone are you rocking right now, and how do you like it?

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This week's sponsor: Code School

CODE SCHOOL’s experienced instructors and engaging content have helped over a million existing and aspiring developers learn by doing.

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Microsoft Will Not Support Upcoming Processors Except On Windows 10

Today Microsoft announced that going forward, new processors will only be supported on Windows 10

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Detecting and Managing Sophisticated IP Spoofing

WebmasterWorld Members discuss the topic of IP spoofing and detection techniques.

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This week's sponsor: O’Reilly Design Conference

Join designers, innovators, and leaders as they explore new ways to shape the future. Attend the January 20-22 O’Reilly Design Conference​, sponsors of A List Apart.

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Google SERPs Showing Hijacked or Hacked Sites

According to reports, some Google SERPs showing what appears to be hacked sites.

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Microsoft Support for Older IE Browsers Ends Today

Microsoft has ended support for older versions of Internet Explorer affecting versions 8, 9 and 10.

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Back to the Future in 2016

This week's sponsor: ALA via email

A LIST APART’s mailing list. Stay in the game—and ahead of the curve. Never miss an article for people who make websites.

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Google Updates and SERP Changes - Jan 2016

WebmasterWorld's monthly look at Google's SERPs changes.

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Report: Twitter Working on Extending 140 Character Limit By End of Q1

Longer tweet capability could soon be coming to twitter.

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Blending Modes Demystified

Bing Search and Ads Now On AOL and Properties Worldwide

Bing has confirmed that it's now driving search and ads for AOL properties Worldwide.

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Microsoft Says Windows 10 Now On Over 200 Million Devices

Microsoft shares the latest Windows 10 milestones.

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Google Says IPv6 Now Exceeds 10pct of its Users

...for the first time the percentage of users accessing Google over IPv6 exceeds 10pct.

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