Older versions of Wordpress are being attacked.

CHCS customers who use Wordpress should make sure that their copies of the software are up to date. This is something that you need to do, as CHCS does not have access to your administrator accounts.

Click here for information about the attack and how to protect your site.

Yesterday morning, I got a rather breathless update from a friend who was actually counting the hours until Internet Explorer 8 became available. I got to thinking: does anybody care?

It's my experience that many users don't even know they're using a web browser ("I just go on the internet"). People like that aren't going to upgrade unless Microsoft makes it an automatic update.

And from what I read, they aren't going to notice much change, although it may feel slower. That's not going to make MSFT any friends.

Of course, as a web developer, I need to make sure that the sites we make look good in all major browsers and operating systems. Browsers have proliferated recently, so that job is getting increasingly complex.

I haven't experimented with IE 8 yet (where am I going to put it? It doesn't coexist with IE 6 or IE 7), but hopefully, it won't break anything. Let us know if you find any problems!

CHCS is planning a series of webinars for our customers on affordable ways to improve websites. We'll be advocating balancing content, navigation, graphics and programming.

What would you like us to cover in these webinars?

Here are some of the responses we have already received from our friends on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Please add your suggestions!

Mary Warsinske said at 12:22pm December 10:
usability studies (user paths, GUI design, etc.) Recommend testing!!

Chris Benedetto said at 12:36pm December 10:
Multi language support and support for those with disabilities

SpinnakerGuy said at 17:30 December 10:
Usability and search-engine-friendliness. Also a mention of analytics to what works and what doesn't.

Wimsey Cherringon said at 1:20am December 11
Integrating web site and email marketing.

Users of the CHCS content management system are already aware that Microsoft Word (and Outlook) creates a lot of unwanted formatting on the web. There's a new online service that cleans up this formatting. For more information, see Lifehacker and the CHCS Content Management System help.

Several CHCS customers have been testing a brand-new version of our content management system since late 2007. After a lot of hard work by Martin and the CHCS staff, and a lot of very helpful feedback from our customers, we're just about ready to make the new version available to everyone. During the beta testing period, several of the tools we use as part of the content management system -- notably the TinyMCE editor and the EXT framework for displaying and manipulating menus and windows -- have been updated. We will be able to include these updated versions in the final product. Stay tuned for more, and thanks for your patience. The final version will be available very soon!

When you use the CHCS content management system to edit your web site, you'll get the best results by adding as little formatting as possible. That way, you'll let your site's style sheet do your work for you. Here are some tips: * DO format your text using headers from the drop-down menu. Header 1 is reserved for page titles, but use Header 2, 3, etc. for subheads. Body text should be formatted as Paragraph. * DON'T copy and paste text directly from Word or Outlook, as these programs add unwanted formatting. See our Knowledge Base for instructions on how to avoid this. * DO check out the troubleshooting tips in our Knowledge Base.

We have written some instructions for using the new CHCS content management system, version 2.0. To see the instructions, plus other new CHCS Knowledge Base entries, go to the Knowledge Base search page and look under the "New Entries" list.