Insights by Justin Downey

September 2014

DuckDuckGo is what Google was

I’ll never forget the day I fell in love with Google. With my US Robotics dial-up modem tying up the phone line, I discovered their elegant and uncluttered home page. A search box and a logo–what else do you need? A lot has changed since that day and Google’s no longer as clean and trustworthy …

1,388 Views

August 2014

A Brief History of IE Compatibility Mode

Microsoft introduced “Compatibility Mode” to allow really old websites built for Internet Explorer (IE) to display correctly in more standards-compliant versions. Since then, IE users and web designers have had the almost impossible challenge of “backwards compatibility.” Here’s a brief history of how we got stuck with Compatibility Mode.

5,096 Views

August 2014

JDM Offers Clients Free WordPress Update

WordPress and Drupal have both released a big security update to prevent XML Quadratic Blowup Attacks. Everybody is reporting on it, but nobody seems to want to help. JDM Digital is offering clients a FREE upgrade. Nir Goldshlager, a security researcher from Salesforce.com’s product security team, has discovered an XML vulnerability that impacts the popular …

1,394 Views

August 2014

SSL Google Ranking Signal Silliness

Security is important, sure. However, Google has announced they are now rewarding sites using secure, encrypted (SSL) connections a search ranking boost. That’s fine, but it’s misleading. HTTPS only encrypts data in-transit. In no way does it guarantee the security of a website. I first heard about the Google announcement on NPR this morning. Then …

1,823 Views

August 2014

Pretty Permalinks using IIS

We never recommend clients use IIS hosting for WordPress since “pretty” permalinks require mod_rewrite, and IIS (common on Windows servers) does not support mod_rewrite. If you are using Apache 2.0.54, on Windows, mod_rewrite may work, provided it is enabled in apache\conf\httpd.conf.

2,134 Views

August 2014

Important Update to Google Analytics

According to some reports, one-third of all web traffic is from bots. Google has just made a small, but important update to Google Analytics that now offers an option to exclude traffic from known bots and spiders. Announced on Google+ and reported by Tech Crunch, the change finally makes it easy to exclude bots and …

1,837 Views

July 2014

State of the Word(Press) 2013

In his State of the Word 2013 address, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg reveals WordPress is now powering 18.9 per cent of the web, up 2.2 per cent points since last year. That and more data from a survey conducted to help focus future development of the WordPress core.

1,360 Views

July 2014

Change Default IIS Page

If you’re using a windows small business server for email (Exchange, probably), you’ve noticed that the default page is pretty boring (see above). Here’s how to change that.

13,675 Views

July 2014

Web Design for Wearable Tech

The tech world is buzzing about wearable tech, like the Apple Watch. But what does this mean for responsive and adaptive web designers? It means simplify, simplify, simplify. Check out Thomas Bogner’s “iWatch” concept (below) designed for Mashable last year. I think you’ll see just how simple web design for wearable tech is going to …

2,278 Views

July 2014

Your Sidebar is Garbage

Dumping a bunch of stuff into a sidebar doesn’t make you a blogger. Nor does it make your website or blog more useful. Ditch your sidebar. It’s garbage. I read this article on Medium a while ago when we were building our new website. As we built it, the goal was clear: simple is beautiful. …

1,759 Views

July 2014

The Process behind our Rebrand

JDM Digital is proud to announce we’ve launched a new flat, metro-inspired brand and website. Since our founding in 2006, JDM’s brand has undergone just a handful of real rebrands, but never anything as drastic as this one. Here’s a little background on the design process that got us from there to here. Flat & …

2,816 Views

June 2014

Cometrics is out of BETA

It seems like just yesterday we launched Cometrics BETA. Today, we’re proud to announce that it’s finally out of its BETA phase and it’s already growing at more than 300%.

1,507 Views