High Bounce Rate? Here’s How to Fix It

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bounce rateGoogle defines bounce rate as the “percentage of visitors” that leave your site from a landing page “without interacting with it.” Watch this funny and educational video by Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, calls bounce rate the “sexiest metric ever” and is a huge fan of it. As Avinash mentions, bounce rate is important for your inside pages also, not just your homepage.

A high bounce rate is often a sign that the user experience needs improvement. If your site isn’t getting the engagement you want, try these tips for lowering your bounce rate: Continue reading →

Introducing Project Force Field: Protect Your Website!

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WordPress Plugin Project Force Field Save your WordPress sites and servers from certain death during brute force attacks with Project Force Field by Orion Group!  Install the plugin and start protecting your website in under 10 seconds!

The developers at Orion Group bring superior brute force attack protection to WordPress with our new plugin, Project Force Field. By tracking failed login attempts and taking advantage of Apache’s mod_rewrite module, Project Force Field stops Brute Force Attacks from bogging down your sites and servers. Continue reading →

Freshen up your old XP computer with Linux Mint

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Linux_Mint_12_On_ASUS_Eee_PCWith Microsoft ending support next month for their Windows XP and Office 2003 products there are not a lot of options available for people still using this software. If you have the money, you can always purchase a new computer with a newer operating system on it. You could also keep your computer as is, and hope that invasion of new malware waiting to be released after the deadline doesn’t come knocking on your door, well it wont knock, it’ll sneak through that open window left by lack of security updates from Microsoft. So you can either pay money or sit on a ticking time bomb? NO! There is another option, and it won’t cost you a dime! You can install a Linux-based operating system on your computer. Linux is a free and open-source operating system that was developed in the early 90s by Linus Torvalds.  Without getting too technical Linux-based operating systems are community driven, meaning that many top IT companies and professionals donate their time and efforts to create the software.

Continue reading →

The Hidden Costs of Economy Web Hosting Part 1: The SSL Debacle

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Hosting fees would have been greatly reduced if they went with the Orion Group!Besides building great WordPress websites for customers throughout southeastern Wisconsin, the Orion Group provides secure, cloud-based hosting. Recently an Orion web design client opted to use an economy web hosting provider who charges less than $5 a month for web, database, and email hosting. With a promised yearly price tag of less than $60 (the cheapest web hosting I’ve ever heard of), our client immediately saw how much money they would save compared to hosting with the Orion Group, but that price greatly increased over the 3 weeks that followed the launch of their new site.

In the following three posts, I will lay out what $5 monthly hosting actually cost our client in relations to their SSL Certificate, Database Integrity, and Hosting Environment. Continue reading →

What’s New With Orion. And What’s Up With You?

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What’s New With Orion:

Bill’s Double Knee Replacement

Thanks for your patience as Bill has been unable to reply to emails or phone calls due to recovering from surgery. It’s been slower progress than hoped for, but he’s almost at 100% mobility again.

Newer, Faster Website Hosting

We’ve been moving website from our old Red Anvil web server to our new Cartika server. It’s such a large project that we’ve hired a contractor, Jon, to work non-stop on it for the next 6 months. If your website is hosted with us, you will be hearing from Jon.

And . . . What About You?

I’d love to hear what you’re up to. Has business been good for you? Do you have big business plans for 2013? What are your marketing goals? Continue reading →

Milwaukee WordPress Meetup: October 2012

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The Milwaukee meetup group for WordPress convenes on the third Tuesday of each month. This meetup has taken place at numerous locations throughout Milwaukee. In more recent months it has found its home at Bucketworks, a collaborative/co-working space near the historic Third Ward.

The group is co-lead by Scott Offord, director or internet marketing at Orion Group, and Dustin Filippini, lead web developer at Orion Group.

This meetup focused on various issues regarding updating WordPress sites and keeping them safe from viruses and attacks, among other topics.

The evening’s discussion covered specifics like:

  • when to trust a plugin that might not be compatible with the latest core release,
  • how to go through the update process and
  • which variation of WordPress – the pre-installed content management system (CMS) or self-installed – will best suit a site builder’s needs. Continue reading →

Deciding between Windows and Linux for your web site

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Often, we get asked by clients which technology platform is best for their site or application: Windows or Linux. Unlike some development houses, we keep an open mind and realize that both platforms have something to offer. In fact, we excel in developing with PHP on Linux as well as we do with C# and ASP.NET on Windows. We strongly believe in using the right tool for the job.

So how do we answer that question? Instead of basing it on personal preference, there are a few factors that we consider when making a recommendation. Perhaps this list will help you make a decision on your project as well. Continue reading →