#answering both in 1 ask to reduce spam

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

The opposite happened to me v2 ultrakill made me realize I’m a lesbian

Becoming more and more convinced there are hidden subliminal messages in the game that press the remix button in ur brain

this image remains true.

[katyspersonal]

Continuation of the previous post about SOTE adventures from today! (More like the end)

1) So, after finally trying to fight on Torrent and beating Tree Sentinel very quickly without even getting hit myself, I've gotten a BRILLIANT IDEA to try and battle Gaius like this too. That was really pointless. In fact, I just spent the next hour pushing for it and not getting further than reducing his HP to like 60%... Because you know, doing the same thing over and over and OVER hoping that this time the result will be different is definition of insanity. XD

2) Eventually I gave up and tried something else. In this case, to relocate my stats; I have 80 Int as sorcery user, but here it was useless, so I relocated these stats and some extra in those I needed more.

So, uh... Good news: turned out that Int reduces magic damage, so my 80 Int was crucial for surviving his attacks. Bad news: I wasted 2 Larval Tears to learn this lesson. 🤡🤡🤡

3) I tried to do more stuff and the very last thing I tried was to give Mimic Tear Morgott's blade to spam fire attacks, while I have shield and stab him with Scarlet Rot. I've already noticed that fire was dealing much more damage, but by that time @jarognieva whom I asked for help answered me!! So, we cooperated!

4) .....

Turned out that she forgot to change her name from МАМКА ТВОЯ)))0)0)0)0) АХАХПЖПЛАОП

(It says 'your mum' XDDDD)

5) Jara also confirmed that this boss WAS weak to fire and holy, so that sealed the deal with Morgott's blade! I legit didn't have a better fire skill weapon on hands.

6) We made a great attempt at first, she is very strong with holy attacks! We only lost because earlier I relocated all flasks to Crimson, so I ran out of skill and could not use it again because I didn't have any Cerulean (🤡🤡🤡)

7) BUT WE WOOONNN OH MAN WE WON

(Damn, how does Messmer keep attracting so many friends? I read it as both them being cursed and being close with THE war person (Radahn) were important here)

@jarognieva YOU ARE SUPER HELPFUL HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT GDHYGGHTGFH AAAA I WAS SUFFERING FOR GOOD HOUR AND MORE ON THIS BOSS!!!!!! POWER OF FRIENDSHIP BITCHES!!!

(Also it was the second time we started to aggressively smash jump button after beating the boss XD It should become the running gag now! Or should I say..... the jumping gag? *gets shot*)

8) I was ready to go for the day since it is late and I need to cherish what little sleep I can have, so for the last instance I decided to go and check new stuff at Enia's!

Not much to add here, though seems like it would be a good spell for my random surprise Faith build moments! Though two overlapping stalks repeating the Erdtree pattern did remind me of that overlapping serpents symbol from previous post.

I was JUST questioning what weapon would actually WORK while I am fighting on Torrent! Thank you king xd

So he invented that cool sorcery while trying to prove Radahn that he was a better sorcerer!

9) Interestingly enough, first at Enia's I only could find Gaius head, chest and arm pieces but not the leg one!

I wondered if something was wrong with that! The description did mention that he was one with his boar after all! My assumption was that simply his set was not going to have the legs piece, but... it did!

10) So, outside of the area where we battled him, surprisingly there was an ALBINAURIC WOMAN! Just a normal one, riding a wolf and all!

And she dropped... this:

Ohhhh boy. So Albinaurics can't wear boots and pants, now? Oh boy. Well, I told that Loretta was likely not an Albinauric, but the girls didn't believe me. 🌛 This feels like it confirms this! Like I said, she is oddly similar to Dung Eater in cosplaying the species she is protecting vghhggh What a realization....

11) So Albinaurics were pretty much servants for Carians (like Pidiya), and Rykard straight up tortured them, so that makes the fact that one was like an older brother for Radahn interesting..? Perhaps, a glimpse on the "kinder former self" of Radahn that presumably was "lost" to war-mongering (if not some corruption due to wrestling with the Stars)? If Miquella yearning for younger version of Radahn (as far as I got spoilered) is any indication?

12) Another one for that type of talismans is also found nearby:

13) The reward at the end was 5 Scadutree Fragments! Yaaay!!! All scattered near 'Scadutree Chalice'. What an object 🤔

_____________

So yeah, a lot of optional stuff was tackled today! It is so satisfying to finally adapt to a hard boss and defeat them, really. For real, Soulsborne games do not need difficulty selection.

[chandantripathi889]

Top 25 Machine Learning Interview Questions in 2025

The field of machine learning is constantly evolving with the onset of rapid technological advancements over the past few years. This has made it an extremely exciting yet challenging field. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fresher or an experienced professional, jobs in the field of machine learning are booming, and you could be the one who lands one of the best offers!

However, before landing a job, comes the tasking feat of answering the machine learning interview questions you’ll be definitely asked once your application makes it through. These questions assess your theoretical knowledge as well as your practical experience and ultimately decide if you’re the candidate they should really hire for the role. This blog covers the top 25 machine learning interview questions that will help you ace your next interview.

1. What is machine learning?

This is one of the machine learning basic interview questions that every candidate should be prepared for. Understanding the fundamentals of machine learning is key to tackling more advanced questions.

Answer: Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that enables computers to learn from data without being explicitly programmed. It involves creating algorithms that can improve their performance over time as they are exposed to more data.

2. What are the different types of machine learning?

Another fundamental question in machine learning interview questions for freshers. The answer to this question will test your understanding of the primary categories in ML.

Answer: There are three main types of machine learning:

Supervised learning: The algorithm learns from labeled data to make predictions.

Unsupervised learning: The algorithm works with unlabeled data and identifies patterns.

Reinforcement learning: The algorithm learns by interacting with an environment and receiving feedback from actions taken.

 *InterviewBit

3. What is the difference between classification and regression?

One of the common machine learning algorithms interview questions that assess your knowledge of basic ML techniques.

Answer: Classification is the task of predicting a discrete label (e.g., classifying emails as spam or not), while regression involves predicting a continuous value (e.g., predicting housing prices).

4. Explain the concept of overfitting and underfitting.

This is a common topic in AI and machine learning interview questions because it is essential to evaluate a candidate’s understanding of model performance.

Answer:

Overfitting occurs when the model learns the noise in the training data, causing it to perform poorly on new data.

Underfitting happens when the model is too simple to capture the underlying patterns in the data, leading to poor performance on both training and test sets.

5. What are the different evaluation metrics for classification problems?

Evaluating classification models is a critical step in ML, and this question tests your knowledge of metrics used in machine learning interview questions.

Answer: Common evaluation metrics for classification include accuracy, precision, recall, F1 score, and ROC-AUC.

6. What is cross-validation, and why is it important?

Cross-validation is often tested in machine learning interview questions for freshers as it is a basic yet crucial concept in evaluating model performance.

Answer: Cross-validation is a technique used to assess how the results of a model generalize to an independent dataset. It helps reduce overfitting by using multiple data splits for training and testing.

7. Explain the bias-variance tradeoff.

The bias-variance tradeoff is a critical concept that often comes up in machine learning basic interview questions.

Answer:

Bias refers to the error introduced by approximating a real-world problem with a simplified model.

Variance refers to the error caused by the model’s sensitivity to small fluctuations in the training data. The tradeoff is about balancing the two to achieve the best model performance.

8. What are decision trees, and how do they work?

Decision trees are one of the most fundamental machine learning algorithms. They often appear in machine learning algorithms interview questions.

Answer: A decision tree is a supervised learning algorithm that splits the data into subsets based on feature values. It builds a tree-like structure with decision nodes and leaf nodes that represent the output predictions.

9. What is a random forest?

This question is commonly asked when discussing machine learning algorithms, interview questions and tests your knowledge of ensemble methods.

Answer: A random forest is an ensemble of decision trees that work together to improve the accuracy of predictions. It reduces overfitting by averaging the predictions of multiple trees.

10. What are k-nearest neighbors (KNN)?

KNN is another common topic that often comes up in AI and machine learning interview questions.

Answer: KNN is a supervised learning algorithm that classifies a data point based on the majority class of its k-nearest neighbors. It is simple but effective for classification tasks.

11. How does gradient descent work?

Gradient descent is a critical optimization technique and a key part of many ML algorithms. This question is frequently asked in machine learning interview questions.

Answer: Gradient descent is an optimization algorithm used to minimize the cost function by iteratively adjusting the parameters of the model in the direction of the steepest gradient.

12. What is the difference between L1 and L2 regularization?

This is a machine learning basic interview question that assesses your understanding of techniques to prevent overfitting.

Answer:

L1 regularization adds the absolute value of the coefficients to the cost function.

L2 regularization adds the square of the coefficients to the cost function. Both techniques help reduce overfitting by penalizing large coefficients.

13. What is the role of a confusion matrix?

A confusion matrix is essential for understanding the performance of a classification model, and this question is often asked in machine learning interview questions for freshers.

Answer: A confusion matrix is a table that shows the true positive, true negative, false positive, and false negative values for a classification model. It helps evaluate the accuracy and other metrics.

14. Explain the difference between bagging and boosting.

Machine learning algorithms interview questions often test your understanding of ensemble techniques like bagging and boosting.

Answer:

Bagging involves training multiple models independently and then combining their predictions, which helps reduce variance.

Boosting trains models sequentially, with each model learning from the errors of the previous one, helping to reduce bias.

15. What is the purpose of support vector machines (SVM)?

Support Vector Machines are frequently tested in AI and machine learning interview questions due to their widespread use in classification tasks.

Answer: SVM is a supervised learning algorithm that finds the hyperplane that best separates the data points into different classes. It works well for both linear and non-linear classification tasks.

16. How would you handle missing data in a dataset?

This is a practical question that tests your ability to preprocess data, commonly asked in machine learning interview questions.

Answer: Missing data can be handled by:

Imputing with mean, median, or mode.

Using algorithms that support missing values.

Dropping rows or columns with missing data, depending on the extent of missing values.

17. What is feature selection, and why is it important?

Feature selection is a crucial part of machine learning and is often covered in machine learning interview questions for freshers.

Answer: Feature selection is the process of choosing the most important features for your model. It helps improve performance by reducing overfitting, simplifying the model, and decreasing computation time.

18. What is principal component analysis (PCA)?

PCA is an essential technique for dimensionality reduction and is often tested in machine learning basic interview questions.

Answer: PCA is a statistical technique that transforms high-dimensional data into fewer dimensions by finding the principal components that capture the most variance in the data.

19. Can you explain the term "Deep Learning"?

Deep Learning is an area that is becoming increasingly relevant in machine learning interview questions.

Answer: Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that uses neural networks with many layers to model complex patterns in data. It is especially effective for tasks like image and speech recognition.

*LinkedIn

20. What is the role of neural networks in machine learning?

This is another common machine learning interview question that evaluates your understanding of advanced machine learning techniques.

Answer: Neural networks are used to model complex relationships between inputs and outputs. They are particularly useful for tasks involving unstructured data, such as images, audio, and text.

21. How would you deal with imbalanced datasets?

In many practical machine learning problems, datasets are imbalanced, and this question tests how you approach such scenarios in AI and machine learning interview questions.

Answer: Techniques for dealing with imbalanced datasets include:

Resampling techniques such as oversampling the minority class or undersampling the majority class.

Using appropriate evaluation metrics like the F1 score or balanced accuracy.

Using algorithms like Random Forest or XGBoost that are less sensitive to class imbalance.

22. What is transfer learning?

Transfer learning is an important concept in deep learning, and this question may appear in machine learning interview questions for freshers.

Answer: Transfer learning involves using a pre-trained model on a new task. It leverages the knowledge gained from the original task and adapts it to a similar but different task, reducing the need for a large dataset.

23. How do you assess the performance of a regression model?

In machine learning basic interview questions, candidates are often asked to evaluate the performance of regression models.

Answer: Performance of regression models can be assessed using metrics like Mean Squared Error (MSE), R-squared, and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE).

24. What is the difference between a generative and a discriminative model?

This is a more advanced question you might encounter in machine learning algorithms interview questions.

Answer:

Generative models model the joint probability distribution of the input and output data (e.g., Naive Bayes).

Discriminative models focus on modeling the conditional probability of the output given the input data (e.g., logistic regression, SVM).

25. What are some common challenges in deploying machine learning models?

Finally, this machine learning interview question tests your ability to move from the theoretical to the practical side of machine learning.

Answer: Common challenges in deploying machine learning models include handling real-time data, ensuring model scalability, model interpretability, and managing the lifecycle of models in production.

Final Thoughts on Machine Learning Interview Questions

Machine learning continues to evolve rapidly, and staying updated with the latest techniques and theories is crucial for success in 2025. The interview questions on machine learning discussed above cover fundamental concepts, algorithms, and practical applications that will be key to your success in any machine learning role. Preparing for these questions will give you the confidence to handle the most common challenges you may face during your interviews.

If you are looking to enhance your machine learning knowledge or need assistance in preparing for your next machine learning interview questions, consider enrolling in the Advanced Certificate Programme in Machine Learning, Gen AI & LLMs for Business Applications – IITM Pravartak Technology Innovation Hub of IIT Madras, offered in partnership with Jaro Education. This programme will provide you with a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know about machine learning. All the best!

[fidelmartin007]

All You Need to Know about a Customer Self-Service Portal

A customer self-service portal, as the name suggests, is a website or an application that allows customers to help themselves. Businesses leverage customer portals to help their customers find answers to their common queries and questions easily on their own. Customers may also place orders, raise complaint tickets, track their progress, etc. without any need for human support.

It is a win-win situation for both your organization and your customers. Because for you, it takes away the hassle of handling redundant queries and complaints. For customers, it helps solve most of their problems themselves which saves their time and engages them.

Elements and Features to Consider When Building a Customer Portal

When you build a customer portal, there are a few elements and features you can not miss!.

1. Online Community

When you build your own customer portal, having an online community for your customers is important. This way, you allow them to discuss your products, their features, and share their experiences via forums. User-generated content can be a great way to boost your credibility via good reviews and recommendations.

One thing you need to make sure is to moderate the content after regular intervals. Check it for any spams and violation of language guidelines, respond to your customers’ frequent queries, questions, or complaints.

2. Ticket Generation

Your portal should provide your customers with the ability to generate support tickets. When you build a customer portal, it should allow customers to generate a new support ticket, track an existing ticket’s progress, and post relevant comments on a ticket if required.

3. Product Documentation

Online product documentation (primarily user manuals) is a feature you can’t miss out on when you build a customer portal. This is because no customer likes to wade through the long paper manuals that come with products.

As the complexity of a product increases, you can also provide other forms of media like videos on common issues, top-used features, feature-wise use cases, etc. to supplement it.

Well-maintained online product documentation reduces not only your customers’ but also your work.

4. Online Training

The concept of online training has lately been highly popular. Make sure that you provide online training to customers when you build a customer portal. The ways to provide the online training can vary but online training is a must.

You can develop an entire e-learning environment or create small tutorials and how-to videos about implementation steps, troubleshooting issues, etc. However, keep your language and training material generic and easily consumable.

Remember – your purpose is to simplify your customers’ work, not make it complex. So, stay away from excessive technical jargon and technical language while preparing your training material.

5. Search Box

A search box is a crucial feature to include when you build a customer portal. It helps save a customer’s time and redirects them to what they are looking for. One thing to note here is that the customer’s search should return the exact match of their search.

It can be a community post, product manual, a release note, or anything depending on what the customer types. This implies that a search operation shouldn’t always redirect a customer to a knowledge base but to the best relevant match.

6. FAQs

When you build a customer portal, an exhaustive list of frequently asked questions is a must. FAQs let customers click on the link to a particular issue they are facing out of the list available and get the solution.

Keep revising your FAQs timely to keep them updated and relevant. Filter out the questions pertaining to products that are no longer in use or very old versions of a product. You can also find out details like most common search strings and top-used articles to create useful FAQs.

7. Decision Tree

A decision tree is basically a series of indexes to help customers narrow down content options and get what they need fast. For example, you can keep product names in the top tier. The second tier could comprise options like implementation, configuration, etc. for each product. The third tier could consist of more options specific to each product.

8. Chat Bots

AI-based chatbots are getting popular with each passing day. Virtually every site and service portal provides a chat bot option to help customers connect in real-time today. Chatbots have natural language processing capabilities which help them learn with more interactions with customers and enhance their quality of replies.

Looking to build a customer portal with the best features to suit your business logic? With CRMJetty by your side, you can stay assured of getting the best-fit portal for you.

Contact Us

Original Source: https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/how-build-a-customer-portal/

[shinidamachu]

15 Questions to Get to Know me Better

1. What is your favorite food and beverage?

Catupiry and chicken pizza with Coca-Cola (or Guaraná Antarctica, I keep going back and forth between the two). Any kind of pasta (or carbs, really). I’m also a salty, sour and spicy food enthusiast.

2. What is currently your favorite fandom?

Inuyasha. I know it sounds contradictory, considering how unhinged the fandom has been since the sequel was annouced. And I debated for good five minutes if I should just answer “Inukag” instead, because it’s the part of the fandom I engage with the most.

But despite how much the fandom has changed (not for the better) there are other aspects of it, other than Inukag, that I really love, so it didn’t feel right to reduce it to Inukag, even though they are the main reason I’m here.

The Inuyasha fandom was the first I wrote fanfiction for. And I love the events we create, the fanworks, the friends I made here. From all the fandoms I’ve been a part of, it was by far the one that gave me more reasons to leave but at the same time it was the one I simply couldn’t quit.

3. What shows are you currently watching?

None. Professional life has been overwhelming and I’m not really in the place to start a new show, so I just rewatch the ones I love. Again. For comfort and white noise. Today was Jane The Virgin day. 

I’m also trying to catch up with the ones that are still running, like Brooklyn Nine-Nine (this new season is on fire, by the way). The last “new” show I started was Community and I was loving it. Hope to get back to it soon and finish the whole thing.

4. What’s your strength?

Interesting question. Gotta go with kindness for this one. At least that’s what I try to be.

5. What’s your weakness?

Oh, boy. Where to begin? I’m egocentric. I’m anxious. I have the attention spam of a golden fish. I tend to avoid conflict at all costs and sometimes people walk all over me for it. I’m a procrastinator who is also somehow a perfectionist. Low self steem, intimacy issues: you pick one.

6. Pet peeves?

Well, I feel like people who lick their fingers to turn over a page are attacking me, personally, and should all rot in jail. They don’t belong in society and never will.

7. What’s your ideal type?

Must make me laugh, must see me at my worst and still want to be with me. I love being on my own, so my ideal type is someone I enjoy being around as much as I enjoy being by myself. Or even more. Also, kids are a deal breaker because I don’t want any. And our political instances have got to align, at least in some key issues.

8. The last food you ate?

Cuscuz and scrambled eggs, dinner of the champions.

9. Favorite animes?

Inuyasha

Yu-Gi-Oh!

Dragon Ball

Pokemon

I know! I’m pretty basic, anime wise. And chances are I’m gonna keep it that way for now.

10. Regular pastimes or hobbies?

Writing, reading, blaming capitalism for all of my problems.

11. Favorite characters?

Dude. It’s impossible to list everyone. I’ll keep it simple and stick with the characters I’m currently more invested in.

Inuyasha and Kagome.

Zuko and Katara.

12. All-time favorite show?

A hard one, but the answer couldn’t be different. I have yet to watch something better than The Good Place. 

There’s no such thing as perfection, especially when it comes to tv shows, but to me it is the one that gets closer.

It was both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Funny, fresh, beautifully written. The cast was talented and diverse. The characters were unique, relatable and flawed. Their development was substancial and satisfatory, not only as individuals but also with each other.

I keep coming back to it whenever I need comfort. Or to restaure my faith in humanity. I have no doubt we witnessed the creation of a timeless, iconic show.

13. What are you doing right now?

Listening to music, replying to this ask game and trying to get some work done.

14. How are you?

Ordinarily okay. Like, as okay as one can be as a 24 years old in this time and place. Everything feels urgent and unimportant, hopeful and hopeless at the same time. It’s like I’m watching my life pass by as I wait for it to click together.

Physically, I’m just getting over a little bit of a cold. Mentally, I like to think I’m doing fine. Totally clueless, yes, but I’m really trying to do my thing and become the person I aspire to be. 

There are so many things to be grateful for, even if not everything is how I wished it was. I’m just trying to focus on the good for now.

15. Favorite rest time activities?

Sleeping after daydreaming about super vivid scenarios, mostly about fictional characters, that will either never happen or leave me alone unless I write them down. Going to the beach. Listening to music. Watching movies, tv shows or football games. Haging out with my family. Scrooling through Tumblr. Check out number 10 for more.

@higurashi-shrine​ this got really long and really personal, so I just decided to make my own post rather than pilling up on the original. Hope it’s cool. And thank you so much for tagging me. I loved reading your replies!

ANYONE WHO HAS READ IT THIS FAR: YOU ARE NOW OFFICIALLY TAGGED TO REPLY THIS GAME YOURSELF. I MEAN IT. TAG ME SO I CAN READ YOUR REPLIES AND GET TO KNOW YOU BETTER!

[fdd700]

Words: a lot idk (2,930) Characters: Logan, Roman, Patton, Virgil, Janus, Remus Pairings: Patton and Virgil are brothers (pat is older), the creative twins are, you guessed it, twins with Logan as their older brother, platonic and romantic dukexiety and roceit Trigger warnings: curses (minor), pain, pineapple on pizza (yes, disgusting, ik)

Virgil felt it the second his brain was connected, the dull ache in his right hip. He barely managed to let out a groan, trying to shift off his bad hip and onto his back. He let out a sharp breath as he hit his back. It was one of those days.

He hated those days.

The days when he was all but reduced to his bed before the sharp pain in his hip refused to be quelled. He knows he should get up, to try and stretch it out, but the very thought makes him nauseous.

“Kiddo?” He groans. “You okay?” Patton opens the door slowly, peeking in at the boy. “Bad day?” Virgil nodded and he’d never been so glad to have a brother like Patton. Patton, of course, was aware of these bad days. When Virgil was 10, he got diagnosed with a rare bone condition that affected his bones and left him in so much pain, to the degree that he was basically immobile for a year. He got over the condition fine with a lot of medicine but with lack of mobility for a crucial year in his growth, his muscle weakened and got inflamed a lot, meaning he was constantly on new exercise regimes to re-stretch and re-work the muscles into submission. His right hip muscles, the ones joining his two bones, was currently inflamed and was sticking his bones (Though this confused Patton, wasn’t that what connective muscles were supposed to do?)

“I really just want to sleep all day,” Virgil said.

“We both know I don’t want to give you The Speech,” Patton said, causing Virgil to groan loudly.

“Please, not the speech.” Patton chuckled. 

“How about a compromise?”

“No,” Virgil whined. “Your compromises suck! it's like ‘do these tiresome, painfully stretches for like an hour and then I’ll give you an extra five minutes for a nap’. I would rather The Speech.”

“In that case-”

“No! I was joking, not The Speech,” Virgil said. ‘The Speech’ was an inside joke among the two. When their parents passed away, Virgil was barely 17, so 20-year-old Patton had to help Virgil navigate all his pain alone, with only Logan, Patton’s boyfriend, as a supporter. On one of Virgil’s bad days, he had tried to rouse Virgil to get through his exercise by saying anything and everything off the top of his head. When he was about ten minutes in, Virgil had snapped, saying; “Fine! I’ll do the exercise, just please, Pat, for the love of God, shut up!”. Since then, ‘The Speech’ had been the threat to get Virgil out of bed. Virgil sighed, bringing Patton back to the moments.

“Okay then, smarty-pants, how about I help you through your exercises and then we can chill for the day, I’ll even call off work.” Virgil looked like he battling himself. One side of him wanted to be selfish and spend the day with his brother, but he also knew that his brother didn’t get a lot of days off. Patton seemed to sense this. “Or, I can sit in my office all day and spam you with texts, getting no work done.” Virgil smiled before extending his hands. Patton helped him sit up, carefully and slowly, making sure not to bother the hip too much. He helped Virgil lie down on the floor (the bed was too soft and would mould to his back, meaning he wouldn’t be able to accurately do a lot of the exercises). He placed a pillow under his head, stuck on a playlist, and started the exercises.

“I hate this, I want to stop.” Patton continued to hold Virgil’s leg in place (his right ankle was placed on his left knee, and his legs were drawn up, forcing his right hip to rotate.)

“10 more seconds,” Patton said. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ″ Slowly, his leg was lowered back down. Virgil let out a large breath. “Only four more exercises to go.” Virgil shook his head, tears springing to his eyes.

“pat please, I can’t do five more.” Patton gently took his brother's face in his hands.

“You’ve done the hard ones, Virge, and you’ve done so well. C’mon, you only have to do three reps of thirty seconds for each one.” Virgil let out a shaky breath, a few tears escaping his eyes, which were quickly wiped away by Patton’s thumbs. “Come on, we can do this.” Virgil snorted slightly.

“This isn’t a ‘we’ situation, Pat, I don’t see you crying from pain,” he joked. Patton would be offended, he’s tempted to pretend to be, but he knows Virgil hates feeling vulnerable and uses humour to cope.

“Well, I don’t see you having to threaten your baby sibling to do his exercises,” Patton said, helping Virgil through the next exercise (place his right thigh over his left, and angling his knee at ninety degrees to stretch the muscle).

“’m not a baby,” Virgil said.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over your baby speak,” Patton said, letting go of Virgil’s leg to stretch it between exercises.

“I’m a man,” Virgil said, making his voice deep to hear his brother laugh. Patton shook his head, re-positioning his leg for him.

“Sure, you are. I’m sure big bad men have to have their crusts cut off their sandwiches.”

“No one wants to eat hard bread, Patton,” Virgil said.

“Is that so, Virgil?” Virgil nodded before he flopped his leg out of his brothers’ hands.

“Why are you positioning my leg for me, I’m not paralysed.”

“I don’t trust you to not give up early,” Patton said immediately. Virgil let out a scandalised gasp.

“Oi! You’re right, but hey!” Patton laughed, picking back up his brother's leg and finished the last exercise on his back. 

“Okay, turn over. You’re gonna have to hold these yourself,” Patton said.

“I thought you said you’d help me!” Virgil whined.

“I basically just did your exercises for you!”

“Basically and literally are not the same thing,” Virgil said. “You’re dating Logan, you should know this!” 

“Hush you, and finish up, I’m hungry.”

“And I’m not?” Patton gave Virgil ‘The Look’. Virgil sighed. “I’m sorry for taking my frustrations out on you, that isn’t fair.”

“Thank you. And I’m sorry if I’m making you feel rushed.” Virgil sighed.

“It's fine. And hey, only two more to do.” Patton nodded. The hardest, by far, was the first one. it was an awkward position, making it hard to take deep breaths, and it hurt the most. Patton coached him through his last two before Virgil sighed, flopping down onto the ground. “That sucked.”

“Pancakes?”

“Uh, yes. With blueberries?”

“And maple syrup.” Virgil hollered before slowly standing up. He walked (hobbled) down the stairs and into the kitchen. “So, coffee?” Virgil nodded using a chair to lift himself onto the counter, not trusting his arms or hip. Patton grabbed a glass and a pain pill before handing both to his brother. “30 minutes before your meal please.” Virgil rolled his eyes but took the pill and swallowed it down. Patton began on the batter, getting all the ingredients into the bowl before handing it to his brother. “I’m gonna call work on the landline.”

“What excuse you gonna use.”

“I’m deciding between ‘I’m sick’ or ‘fuck you and your contract hours, I got more important shit to do’. Which is more convincing?” Virgil laughed.

“That’s two dollars in the swear jar.”

“How many times have I forgiven you curses?”

“Me? Curse? I’m an angel.”

“No, you’re a pain in the behind.”

“Pattooooooon!” Patton shook his head and grabbed the landline. 

“Mix,” he instructed before dialling the number and leaving the room. Virgil stuck his tongue out at his brother but began mixing.

“Alexa, play Patton’s breakfast tunes at volume 4 please.”

“Playing ‘Patton’s breakfast tunes’ on Spotify now,” The machine replied. ‘Dog Days Are Over’ by Florence + the machine began to play through the kitchen speakers. Virgil had just about combined the ingredients by the time Patton came back. 

“Any troubles?”

“Nope, Jessie answered the phone, and he’s chill with anything. He said he'd called Katie and she could take my shift, I just had to take her shift next Tuesday but I definitely needed to be in tomorrow - something about a big meeting, ah well.” Patton said. “This looks nearly ready. Finish that off, imma just get the pan.” Patton walked away before noticing the clock. “Later than I thought,” He mumbled. Virgil looked at the clock. It was about half one.

“How long did I sleep for?”

“I went to wake you at like half twelve, so I guess the timing does make sense.” Virgil nodded, handing the mixed batter to his brother. The two silently made breakfast - well, Patton made breakfast, humming alone to his playlist, while Virgil watched before getting up and setting the table. He yawned again, the pain in his hip moving from a stabbing pain to a dull ache. He plopped down on his chair - the only chair with a cushion for times like these. Patton smiled, handing him his plate as the two tucked into their lunch. Virgil had tried to offer to clean up, but Patton insisted he stayed sitting.

“It hurts whether I stand, lay or sit,” Virgil said. “I might as well help.”

“It's okay, I can handle this.” Virgil sighed but moved to the sitting room, setting up Disney+ on the TV. “What are we watching?” Patton asked, returning to the sitting room.

“Princess and the Frog?” Patton giggled.

“You just wanna stare at Prince Naveen,” Patton teased, handing Virgil an ice pack.

“Well, duh,” Virgil said. “Also, the songs are awesome.”

“Can’t argue there.”

-x-

The credits rolled around 4 pm and Patton was napping on Virgil’s shoulder as Virgil had switched off the current move for Black Cauldron. Patton stirred awake slowly at around 5 pm.

“Oh shoot, what time is it?” Virgil looked up at the clock beside him.

“About 5 past 5.” Patton nodded before sitting up and stretching. “What has you so tired?”

“Stayed up watching Parks and Rec,” Patton said.

“Haven’t you memorised that show by now?”

“Just about-” The doorbell rang, causing Patton to pause. Confusion took over his face before he cursed.

“Damn it, I forgot I asked Logan to come over yesterday for dinner,” Patton said and this was followed by more intense doorbell ringing. Virgil groaned.

“And I was supposed to go to the movies with the twins and Janus!” They both looked at each other, debating whether to open the door before a key turned in the lock. “Logan has a key?!”

“No!” Patton said. “I just, uh, told him where the spare key was.” Virgil shook his head but soon the house filled with Janus, Remus and Roman, screaming and Virgil for not responding to their texts and Logan asking Patton if he was ready to go to dinner. The group entered the room, noticing the two boys' guilty faces.

“Uh, Lo, about tonight-”

“No Pat, you go, I can, uh, just watch a movie and order pizza,” Virgil said.

“Virge-”

“It’s fine pat, I’ll take another pill and-”

“Oh, is your hip acting up again?” Logan asked and Virgil’s face burned. He kinda maybe hadn’t told the others about his hip issues. In his defence, he hadn’t had a bad blow out in months and it usually only lasted for two to three months maybe twice a year. He was also good and hiding bad days but today was too bad to hide.

“Your... hip?” Roman asked, looking down to the melted ice pack. Patton looked at Virgil and quickly realised he hasn’t told them.

“Yeah, he’s got a bad bruise there!” Patton said, trying to cover for him.

“Oh, okay,” Roman said. Logan shook his head.

“No, this is the muscle issues caused by his childhood condition. Why are you lying Patton?” Logan asked. Virgil wanted to bury himself further into his hoodie but he couldn’t because that would involve moving his hips.

“Logan,” Patton said softly, taking the boys arm. “let’s go to the kitchen?”

“Oh no, I said something-”

“No, sweetheart, it's okay.” Patton took the melted ice pack, gave Virgil a look that said ‘call me if you get scared’, and gently guided Logan into the kitchen. There was silence in the room.

“So,” Janus said.

“What did Logan mean?”

“Funny story actually, so uh, I had this like... bone thing when I was and it meant I was in a lot of pain so I didn’t really walk, like, at all for a year. It went away which is good, but it means that because of that, my muscles are weak and just like, throw up a fuss a lot, so it’s sort of a bitch and there’s nothing I can do a lot of the time. On bad days, I just have to stay put and not move for as long as possible.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Janus asked and Virgil couldn’t meet his eyes, he just couldn’t.

“Uh well, with Patton, it just sometimes feels like it’s all we talk about and with you guys-” he gestures to where he thinks they’re standing "- It’s different. Because you didn’t know, you weren’t always asking me and while I love it when Pat does it, it makes me feel overwhelmed and like the only thing people see is this ‘poor kid’. I know it’s not an excuse, but it’s all I’ve got.”

“Well, if I’m honest, I’m not mad. I’m a little upset you didn’t trust us-”

“It’s not about trust. I trust you all with my life, but it’s... it’s different. I know you all wouldn’t see me differently but... I don’t know how to explain it, it’s like, I know, logically, it wouldn’t change anything, but there are days like these where I am not fun to be around and am in bad moods, and people take that personal. Or people think I’m lying because I could go nearly a year without my muscles getting inflamed. It’s not a constant pain, it’s more of a recurring problem with my muscles that gives me pain.” There was silence,

“I know you’re very anxious right now, but I hope you know you’re a dumbass,” Remus said. ���What?! He is sometimes.”

“What Remus is trying to say-”

“I know what I said Jan,” Remus pointed out.

“Shut up, you loch ness monster,” Roman said.

“Okay, Prince Charming from Shrek,” Remus said.

“Very specific insult must’ve taken you months due to a lack of brain cells,” Roman quipped back.

“At least I haven’t got your face!”

“We’re twins-”

“I have a moustache-”

“I will kill you-”

“I’d like to see you try-”

“GUYS!” Janus said, shouting over the pair. “Ignore those two dumbasses, we know this is a scary thing so we’re - well, I’m not mad. I get why you didn’t say anything.”

“It’s like, the less I talk about it, the less I’m worried about it,” Virgil explained.

“Okay, now that I get,” Remus said.

“You’re a dunce,” Roman said, shaking his head. “But yes, hot topic, we’re not mad. Also, the movie we were going to see what awful, why did you let Janus pick?”

“Because it was my turn.”

“Well, who wants to watch a movie about cults?”

“For the love of god Remus, a ‘cult classic’ doesn’t mean an actual cult,” Janus said, holding his head in frustration.

“Sounds fake, but okay,” Remus said, trying to get a rouse out of the other two, who were staring at him dumbfounded. he winked at Virgil causing the boy to laugh.

“You are a dunce,” Virgil said.

“Noooo, don’t say that you have to love me!” Remus said, throwing himself (somewhat carefully) onto the emo.

“Get off me,” Virgil said, laughing. Patton reappeared with cups and soft drinks at that moment.

“Okay, since Logi-bear-” the twins giggled at the nickname, but were met with Logan’s glare behind Patton’s back “-was your ride, we figured we’d order pizza and watch movies here.”

“Sounds good,” they all said.

“As long as Virgil and Remus share a pizza. Virgil will want peppers and Remus will want pineapple and I was that kind of neggies vibes AWAY from me,” Roman said dramatically. Both boys giggled.

“That’s okay with us, princy.”

-x-

It was an hour later by the time their four pizzas arrived - Logan and Patton’s vegetarian, Janus and Roman with a chicken, pepperoni and mushrooms and finally with Virgil and Remus’ Hawaiian pizza with chicken and peppers. It wasn’t until they were all curled up (Logan resting his head on Patton’s shoulder, their hands intertwined, Roman with his head on Janus’ lap as the boy played with his hair and Virgil on Remus’ lap) and safe that Virgil let the relief and love that surrounded the room.

Yeah, he hated those days, but he loved his friends. He loved Patton, and Logan, because they had always felt like his parents. He loved Janus, who always knew the right thing to say, and Roman, who always knew the right thing to get Virgil out of his head, and Remus, who knew how to make him laugh so hard he forgets to breathe.

“Why have you got that dumb face?” Remus asked.

“My face isn’t dumb,” Virgil whispered back. Remus rolled his eyes. Virgil only smiled, letting the sleepiness catch up as he fell asleep.

Today wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be.

Uh,, so this was my rant post and also a lil’ one shot i had. It’s based on personal experience, so if it’s confusing, sorry. I spend like a week on this lol, so enjoy!

[florence839]

Many small business owners will here listen to the term’search engine optimization’ (or SEO) from friends in the company community or perhaps competitions and might consider it as a path to increasing earnings, but what’s SEO? Alternately, a company owner might have attempted’SEO solutions‘ previously and found it didn’t do the job as well as anticipated or has been functioning, but not as successful – this report explains what SEO is, and also why’brand new’ SEO is operating better than everbefore.

I’ve been working in search engine optimization and ranking site marketplace, until it was called SEO. Here are the modifications in SEO because the beginning of the new century and exactly what you ought to be searching for at the search engine optimization services your SEO Agency provides or supplies.

We have a look back in SEO during the years and clarify what SEO is now and how to utilize it for our site.

SEO in 2000

Back at the beginning of the Millennium that the’large’ search engines that many folks were using were both Lycos and Excite.

Websites were just one or 2 pages with basic information to permit them to load fast (within 20 minutes ). Search engine optimization practices back then were to��conceal’ as many key words on a page as you can, so the site was found for all those hunts without making the page seem to spammy to people.

Back in 2002 Google found something called’AdWords’ and it had been called the passing of SEO, as individuals could cover prominence, on the today the number 1 site for beginning searches.

Google began to pin down on’junk’ clinics and sites. At precisely the exact same time Google realised the’AdWords’ weren’t likely to kill SEO and in fact the’natural listings’ invited people back to their own search engine stage. Google began to reevaluate’specialist SEO’ pros and encouraged great SEO instead of spamming SEO.

2004 saw the very first site’banned’ in the net as Google took actions against sites which were spamming them. In addition they took legal actions from the”SEO Company” accountable.

To rank a site in 2006 you simply desired links back to your own site and so purchasing links / link building has been the rage and many sites had a web page where they’d list businesses and links to their own site (I’m still amazed how many sites continue this practice).

Between 2004 and 2008 Google, was the sole”participant” in the search engine world, began taking action against inferior linking practices and businesses and began tightening up on junk and purchasing links. The’Noughties” finished with “gloomy” SEO practices being nearly made out, as Google focused on rank sites based on their articles and it’s significance to the research being completed.

SEO in 2010

Between 2010 and 2015 we began to find that the search engines take note of’Social Media’ websites and shortly the outcomes were full of Twitter’tweets’ from the outcomes. (I could still see the surface of one of my clients when searching Google for his small business, and the first page of their search results were published with tweets of a Twitter dialog that two members of staff were having about how awful the firm was!)

Videos and pictures were also brought into the research results using the Google’Caffeine’ upgrade.

Google introduced”search results” using all the sites shown from the search results according to your past searches and sites you’d seen previously. This triggered a’little stir’ from the search engine optimization world as clients claimed their sites had been”high in Google” for almost any search they did connected to their business, simply because they’d seen their particular site many times previously, therefore Google naturally fed them back the site for all applicable searches. This may still be a little bit of a problem until you show them the brand new’Google Incognito hunt’.

The concentrate on rank sites was found for BIG key words. A’Plumber’ in Bristol would need to rank for this hunt, so that has been the attention.

At precisely the exact same time Google introduced”no trace links” allowing sites to provide pertinent links to other sites and data without penalising both party. It was the beginning of”protected linking”. Quality and appropriate content has been now the secret to rank in search engines.

In ensuring that consumers got the ideal experience Google started rank mobile responsive or friendly sites (in which the site automatically changes its format and size to fit the display ) greater in the ranks.

The united kingdom people were using their cellular phones for local searches, and local businesses could gain an edge over the big corporates or even’national’ businesses online.

The debut of’semantic search’, in which Google brings websites at the outcomes not depending on the key words, but the articles onto a webpage, again altered the manner SEO agencies looked in working on sites. Position for its’Big’ key words, for example’Plumber Bristol’ became important, as net users became more informed with their hunts. ‘long-tail keywords’, as numerous as possible, began to grow website traffic and what’s more, conversions.

What’s the SEO Process Now?

It’s probably right to state that the procedures or practices associated with search engine optimization have out grown the word’SEO’

In years gone by functioning the material and construction of a site was sufficient. An improved description of this service could be’digital advertising’.

Old practices, as stated previously, supposed’large’ key words were crucial to rank. A focus on a single keyword each page or perhaps for a complete site would rank the company and back then it was about’positions’.

Old Method of doing SEO

Now there are a range of elements to think about in regards to SEO.

A good instance of this is to choose the’Plumber Bristol’ instance. A couple of years back you’d have focused on rank the company for”Plumber Bristol”,”Plumber at Bristol” and possibly”Emergency Plumber Bristol” – but this still is true for companies offering a remedy for’distress buys’ (where time plus an alternative outweigh the demand for advice and information ) better practice during a web site would be to include content that provides advice and guidance also contains’long tail key words’ (4 or 3 word searches) for example”Emergency plumber with free callout at Bristol” or”Reviews to an Emergency Plumber close me”. Google needs the consumer to have the very best experience and locate the relevant information immediately, and semantic search accomplishes this. Additionally, this is sensible to get a company owner. Can you rather your site had been found by a searcher searching for”Plumber Bristol” where they might be following advice, looking for a job, searching for a plumbing service which you might not provide, or to get a particular and targeted search such as”finest emergency Plumber nearby BS7″?

Concerning key words this is the greatest change Google have made and it’s here to remain. SEO or electronic marketing is no more about where you rank, however the number of different search phrases you’re able to be found for their conversion into paying clients.

Website Content

A couple of years back (and just two or three years back ) Google indicated to specialist SEO Agencies which 300 words onto a webpage was adequate content.

Every day I’m asked to examine a web site by a prospective client – and the majority of them have between 150 to 250 words onto a webpage. Either Google needs to alter it’s expectations because most sites don’t satisfy their tier or a different way to check at that is as a simple way to jump the contest simply by adding articles to your site. Can you think Google will reduce it is expectations or anticipate sites to enhance for their own standard? Google published the’mobile friendly’ update understanding that somewhere around 80 percent of sites would have to be updated – and they did it anyhow as it gained over 50 percent of users. Quality articles impacts 100 percent of the customers.

I suggest to our client roughly 800 words each page.

Great practice would be to have:

Page Title – state exactly what the page is all about (‘Big’ Keyword if you need to ) Headline – requesting a query Initial paragraph describes briefly explains the articles / alternative Picture / or movie Longer description of this answer Take our Emergency Plumber at Bristol, for instance:

That’s precisely why our client testimonials and opinions say we’re the very best emergency plumbing service in your region. Call today on… Picture of the van or the Plumber appearing skilled

Longer description: Things they could mend, common issues they solve, a few of the quotations from their clients etc.. This has a range of advantages.

Primarily, those men and women who only need a Plumber will read the first paragraph, then see the picture of this van (build professionalism and authority ) and telephone the Plumber. Other folks would want to have more information that they may find farther down the page. Is this cheating in SEO? Absolutely NOT. The content is organised and composed on a webpage is your”brand new” SEO.

In the event that you have been a Plumber could you rather be seen for one enormous keyword or several relevant customer converting key words?

Old practices were to make site content to the search engines. Now you need to create content to give value for clients. This is a simpler process than you may think.

What were the past 5 client enquiries to your small business? What was the difficulty they had been attempting to solve? Write about the issue and your solution.

Link Building

This season we’ve an extremely large firm contact us in their SEO and they were horrified when we proposed they had to eliminate their 1.4 MILLION hyperlinks back to their own site since they’d spent a lot of money over the years purchasing the hyperlinks. Inbound links, and the further you have the more damaging it’s, highlights to Google that the irrelevance of your site – no matter how important it may be.

Nowadays, a couple of, related links is much superior than a Million hyperlinks back to your site. Nowadays, links need to be constructed through participating relationships. Accepting our Plumber once again, a connection back from the’Gas Safe enroll’, a local pipes facility or toilet showroom, and a couple of regional sites which enjoy his advice would be sufficient.

Social Media

Though we still get some companies similar to this today, a couple of years back when we proposed companies ought to be on Facebook I had been generally told”Facebook – which is for teens is not it? That isn’t our economy”. If performed well, Facebook can induce more visitors and paying clients to your door compared to your site.

Facebook Users India Era

Unlike testimonials on your own site which prospective customer may see should they see your site, an overview on Facebook is viewed instantly by each the users buddies and when their buddy’enjoys’ the remark – all their pals, buddies. Increasingly more of our clients are receiving leads from Facebook. Folks are asking their friends for tips on companies to utilize and obtaining heaps of ideas back – if you’re on Facebook you’re more inclined to acquire a direct link for your contact info.

Live streaming! Twitter has bought a business called’Periscope’ that permits you to live stream video in the mobile phone. “What exactly?” I hear our Celtics ergency plumber’ inquiring. When I had been a Plumber I’d be live streaming my job since I fix a issue, together with the movie going out live to every one my buddies and their buddies – my own tv station that’s free-to-air across the entire world.

Video Marketing

There aren’t any’older’ SEO methods for video since it simply didn’t exist when YouTube started out it had been for displaying funny videos of cats and so on.

Now that’s changed. YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine on the planet and can be owned by Google. YouTube has more than 1 BILLION users globally and each moment, 300 hours of movies have been uploaded. It might take you about two years to see all the movies which are going to be uploaded within another hour. Google’s own statistics state that by 2018 73 percent of searches put to an internet search engine is going to bring about the individual seeing a movie. Consider it a different way, in a few years after 10 people hunt the web to your goods or service – 7 of these will watch a movie, two will go to a web site. That’s the reason why I create videos to our clients as part of our’digital advertising service’.

[kinhnghiemsovn]

Google Review Stars Drop by 14%

Posted by Dr-Pete

On Monday, September 16, Google announced that they would be restricting review stars in SERPs to specific schemas and would stop displaying reviews that they deemed to be "self-serving." It wasn't clear at the time when this change would be happening, or if it had already happened.

Across our daily MozCast tracking set, we measured a drop the morning of September 16 (in sync with the announcement) followed by a continued drop the next day ...

The purple bar shows the new "normal" in our data set (so far). This represents a two-day relative drop of nearly 14% (13.8%). It definitely appears that Google dropped review snippets from page-1 SERPs across the roughly 48-hour period around their announcement (note that measurements are only taken once per day, so we can't pinpoint changes beyond 24-hour periods).

Review drops by category

When we broke this two-day drop out into 20 industry categories (roughly corresponding to Google Ads), the results were dramatic. Note that every industry experienced some loss of review snippets. This is not a situation with "winners" and "losers" like an algorithm update. Google's changes only reduced review snippets. Here's the breakdown ...

Percent drops in blue are <10%, purple are 10%-25%, and red represents 25%+ drops. Finance and Real Estate were hit the hardest, both losing almost half of their SERPs with review snippets (-46%). Note that our 10K daily data set broken down 20 ways only has 500 SERPs per category, so the sample size is low, but even at the scale of 500 SERPs, some of these changes are clearly substantial.

Average reviews per SERP

If we look only at the page-1 SERPs that have review snippets, were there any changes in the average number of snippets per SERP? The short answer is "no" ...

On September 18, when the dust settled on the drop, SERPs with review snippets had an average of 2.26 snippets, roughly the same as prior to the drop. Many queries seem to have been unaffected.

Review counts per SERP

How did this break down by count? Let's look at just the three days covering the review snippet drop. Page-1 SERPs in MozCast with review snippets had between one and nine results with snippets. Here's the breakdown ...



Consistent with the stable average, there was very little shift across groups. Nearly half of all SERPs with review snippets had just one result with review snippets, with a steady drop as count increases.

Next steps and Q&A

What does this mean for you if your site has been affected? I asked my colleague and local SEO expert, Miriam Ellis, for a bit of additional advice ...

(Q) Will I be penalized if I leave my review schema active on my website?

(A) No. Continuing to use review schema should have no negative impact. There will be no penalty.

(Q) Are first-party reviews “dead”?

(A) Of course not. Displaying reviews on your website can still be quite beneficial in terms of:

Instilling trust in visitors at multiple phases of the consumer journey

Creating unique content for store location landing pages

Helping you monitor your reputation, learn from and resolve customers’ cited complaints

(Q) Could first-party review stars return to the SERPs in future?

(A) Anything is possible with Google. Review stars were often here-today-gone-tomorrow even while Google supported them. But, Google seems to have made a fairly firm decision this time that they feel first-party reviews are “self serving”.

(Q) Is Google right to consider first-party reviews “self-serving”?

(A) Review spam and review gating are serious problems. Google is absolutely correct that efforts must be made to curb abusive consumer sentiment tactics. At the same time, Google’s increasing control of business reputation is a cause for concern, particularly when their own review corpus is inundated with spam, even for YMYL local business categories. In judging which practices are self-serving, Google may want to look closer to home to see whether their growing middle-man role between consumers and businesses is entirely altruistic. Any CTR loss attendant on Google’s new policy could rightly be seen as less traffic for brand-controlled websites and more for Google. For more tactical advice on thriving in this new environment, there's a good write-up on GatherUp.

Thanks, Miriam! A couple of additional comments. As someone who tracks the SERPs, I can tell you that the presence of review stars has definitely fluctuated over time, but in the past this has been more of a "volume" knob, for lack of a better word. In other words, Google is always trying to find an overall balance of usefulness for the feature. You can expect this number to vary in the future, as well, but, as Miriam said, you have to look at the philosophy underlying this change. It's unlikely Google will reverse course on that philosophy itself.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[scambusternow-blog]

How to online date safely as told by match.com

There's some very good useful information here. As well as resources where to file a complaint for a perspective scammer account if you've been victimized.

How to Date Safely

Match.com is responsible for more dates, relationships and marriages than any other dating site. At Match, user safety is a priority. We understand that meeting someone for the first time whether online, through an acquaintance or on an outing is intriguing and exciting, however, your safety is very important and because you are in control of your Match experience, there are certain safety steps that you should follow while dating – both online and offline.

We ask you to read the tips and information below, and strongly urge you to follow these guidelines in the interest of your personal safety and well-being. However, you are always the best judge of your own safety, and these guidelines are not intended to be a substitute for your own judgment.

Online Behavior

Finance: Protect Your Finances & Never Send Money or Financial Information

Never respond to any request to send money, especially overseas or by wire transfer, and report it to us immediately – even if the person claims to be in an emergency. Wiring money is like sending cash: the sender has no protections against loss and it’s nearly impossible to reverse the transaction or trace the money. For more information, click on the video below to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's advice to avoid online romance scams, also available here: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0004-online-dating-scams.

Online Romance Imposter Scams

Imposters promise romance to users of online dating sites to trick them into sending money

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Protect Your Personal Information

Never give personal information, such as: your social security number, credit card number or bank information, or your work or home address to people you don’t know or haven’t met in person.

Note: Match will never send you an email asking for your username and password information. Any such communications should be reported immediately.

Be Web Wise 

Block and report suspicious users. You can block and report concerns about any suspicious user anonymously from any profile page, email or messaging window. Keep conversations on the platform. Bad actors will try to move the conversation to text, personal email or phone conversations.

Report All Suspicious Behavior

Additionally, please report anyone who violates our terms of use here. Examples of terms of use violations include:

Asking you for money or donations.

Requesting photographs.

Minors using the platform.

Members sending harassing or offensive messages or emails.

Members behaving inappropriately during or after meeting in person.

Fraudulent registration or profiles.

Spam or solicitation, such as invitations to call 1-900 numbers or attempts to sell products or service.

Offline Behavior

First in-person meetings are exciting, but always take precautions and follow these guidelines to help you stay safe.

Get to Know the Other Person

Keep your communications on the platform and really get to know users online/using the app before meeting them in person. Bad actors often push people to communicate off the platform immediately. It’s up to you to research and do your due diligence.

Always Meet and Stay in Public

Meet for the first few times in a populated, public place – never in a private or remote location and never at your date’s home or apartment. If your date pressures you, end the date and leave at once.

Tell Your Friends and Family Members of Your Plans

Inform a friend or family member of your plans and when and where you’re going. Make sure you have your cell phone charged and with you at all times.

Transport Yourself to and from the Meeting

You need to be independent and in control of your own transportation, especially in case things don’t work out.

Stay Sober

Consumption of alcohol and/or other drugs can impair your judgment and potentially put you in danger. It’s important to keep a clear mind and avoid anything that might place you at risk. Be aware that bad actors might try to take advantage of you by altering your beverage(s) with synthetic substances.

Health

Match welcomes everyone and empowers our community of users to create and cultivate relationships. An important aspect of any healthy relationship though – whether formed on Match or otherwise – is ensuring proper sexual health and safety. And as an essential member of the Match community it is your responsibility to make sure you do the following, if you choose to engage in sexual activity.

Protect Yourself

You and your partner should use proper protection. Condoms and other mechanisms can significantly reduce the risk of contracting or passing on an STI, such as HIV. However, you can still get certain STI’s, like herpes or HPV from contact with your partner’s skin even when using a condom. To be effective, however, protective measures must be used consistently.

Be Open and Honest

It is completely reasonable to have a conversation with your partner regarding sex and sexual contact before actually having it. All issues ranging from the number of partners each of you has had, to the last time each of you was tested for STI’s are fair game. Many STI’s are curable or treatable. If either you or your partner has an STI that is curable, you both need to start treatment to avoid becoming re-infected. It is important to be completely honest in these conversations.

Vaccinate

The risk of contracting some STI’s can be reduced through vaccination. Talk to your doctor or a professional at a sexual health clinic to learn more.

Know Your Status

Know your status. Some STI’s don't show symptoms. Regular testing is critical to staying on top of your health and helping prevent the spread of STI’s After testing, always ask for a copy of your test results so you are sure of your status.

For Further Help, Support or Advice

In the case that something has happened, immediately call 911. Emergency situations include a recent threat of violence or sexual violence, recent act of violence or sexual violence or if your health or someone else’s is in danger.

If something has happened and you’re in need of help, support or advice pertaining to physical or sexual assault, please call the below 24hr hotlines.

Rape, Abuse and Incest National Hotline

1-800-656-HOPE I www.rainn.org

Planned Parenthood

1-800-230-7526 I www.plannedparenthood.org

National Domestic Violence Hotline

1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or 1-800-787-3224 I www.thehotline.org

Additionally, if you are aware on anyone who violates our terms of use please report them here.

About The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA)

The National Cyber Security Alliance is a non-profit organization. Through collaboration with the government, corporate, non-profit and academic sectors, the mission of the NCSA is to empower a digital citizenry to use the Internet securely and safely protecting themselves and the technology they use and the digital assets we all share. NCSA works to create a culture of cyber security and safety through education and awareness activities. NCSA board members include: ADP, AT&T, Bank of America, EMC Corporation, ESET, Facebook, Google, Intel, McAfee, Microsoft, PayPal, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Symantec, Trend Micro, Verizon and Visa.

About STOP. THINK. CONNECT.

The campaign was developed by the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Messaging Convention, a public-private partnership established in 2009 and led by The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) and National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) to develop and support a national cyber-security awareness campaign. In October 2010 the White House, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Messaging Convention launched the campaign. The Department of Homeland Security provides the Federal Government's leadership for the campaign. Industry, government, non-profits and education institutions participate in STOP. THINK. CONNECT.

STOP. THINK. CONNECT.™ is a trademark of the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Messaging Convention, Inc. The logos and artwork connected with the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. trademark are copyrighted, 2010-2011. All Rights Reserved. The trademark and logo may only be used in accordance with the license provided at www.stopthinkconnect.org/license

STOP. THINK. CONNECT.™

Help/FAQFind your way around Match.com and get your questions answered.

SuggestionsWho knows our site better than our users? Use this form to submit your suggestions and ideas on how to improve Match.com and make your experience even more rewarding.

How to Report a User

[pepplemint]

Ok I’m am TERRIBLE at responding to asks so I have made one of these answer-all-at-once so I won’t spam people’s dashes. I have tried to make it as comprehensible as possible without actually making a table of contents. Which I almost did. Because that’s 100% how I am.

Being called Anti

Answer: I have expressed that I am uncomfortable with turning that one scene into something romantic aaaand I have called shippers pretentious assholes before that in another situation (when they were bashing on other ships and calling themselves the only valid ship) whoops. Though to be fair I have never once said anything negative to anyone or tagged it with ship names. I answered to one post about the scene in question because there was several people both ignoring the context and spreading untruths to support their own perspective and because the original meaning was very important to me, I had a panic-attack. I regret it and I already regretted it 20 minutes later. Not much I can do about it. So yeah no, I don’t like it and I am uncomfortable with it being inserted into canon but I don’t give a shit as long as it doesn’t harm anyone. I got a couple messages calling me an anti and acting like I was “pretending” not to be one but honestly? These are the exact same people that if they were on the other side of the fight would scream pedo. They latch onto a word with majorly negative connotations and toss it anyone they doesn’t agree with. All ships got their assholes. Klance and Shieth just happens to be the biggest ships and they have the most belief their ships will absolutely be canon, so they have the most of those assholes I am not an anti, and that can be proved by if nothing else that antis are just as pissed off by me lol

About the Lance’s Room-Comic

Answer: ahahahahaa I’m glad I could portray something even close to what I saw in my head when I first realised

About me thinking Klance have the most potential of becoming canon

Answer: i have not seen/heard that video! Though the fact that it’s apparently titled “illegal Jeremy video” is hilarious lol. It can be something, it might be nothing. It does bring out hope of representation though (and yeah I do hope it’s Lance) As for whether my opinions are good or not, they’re less opinions and more conclusions hahaha. We’ll see.

About Allur/ance

Answer: I did realize after this that I have been focusing pretty heavy on Allura! But you’re absolutely right, it would not be good for Lance to be the reduced once again to the second choice. However, after seeing this quote by Lauren Montgomery for Hypable I feel a lot more secure that they will handle it ok:

About Bunnies/Watership Down

Answer: As parents tended to think all animation is for kids, you betcha I watched it as a kid lmao. I live with 8 rabbits and I completely stand behind this statement. I hate that movie.

Answer: Not yet, really! My siblings came over and my baby sister named them Leo, Ros & Rosetta which.... uuh.... And my brother renamed Leo to Echo. Which I think might stick.

Alternative Hanahaki-Disease

Answer: 1. THAT SUCKS WHAT 2. YOU STARTED OF THAT SAD AND THEN IT GOT HILARIOUS. Where’s all the fic with pollen allergy hanahaki? I demand them!

Actual questions

Answer: I don’t have anything to put in a store

Answer: I personally don’t really like the way I draw Keith so I don’t think so..? But I am glad you like it

Answer: Yep! So actually pretty good we had an extra clone-Shiro, right? lol The EPs said the two Shiros more or less merged into one

People being wonderful

Answer: You people are literally the best and purest on this entire site and I love you <3

Answer: 

[newstfionline]

The town that gave the world Spam is proud to be ‘autism-friendly’

By Amy Ellis Nutt, Washington Post, September 23, 2018

AUSTIN, Minn.--The tall teenager with the buzz cut opened the museum door, extended a large hand and said cheerily, “Welcome to the Spam Museum.”

Samuel Ehret is an official “Spambassador” at the museum, a hot spot for tourists who have a taste for the much-mocked canned meat that has been made here by Hormel Foods for 81 years.

Samuel is also autistic, and he got this job because he loves all things Spam--its taste, its history, and especially the museum’s showpiece: a motorcycle that runs on bacon grease.

He also landed the job because Austin is an autism-friendly town. Ten years ago, it became one of the first in the country to launch a community-wide effort both to reduce the disorder’s stigma and make local businesses aware of the special needs of autistic customers. It is also probably the only small town in America to employ a community autism resource specialist.

The mission was “a grass-roots effort to improve our community,” said Mary Barinka, an employee of the nonprofit Hormel Historic Home, where she serves as an autism resource liaison for Austin. She is also a former Hormel marketing executive, and the mother of a 16-year-old daughter with autism.

For someone like 18-year-old Samuel, the town’s attention to the condition has been invaluable.

“When he was an infant, he would just lie there, no crying,” said Sarah Ehret, Samuel’s mother. Her son failed to reach expected milestones on time and she was at a loss as to why. When someone anonymously placed a magazine in her mailbox, it suddenly made sense. One of the articles was “Top 10 signs your child has autism.”

“This is my son,” she said to herself.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by delayed language, repetitive behaviors, sensory sensitivities and difficulty with social skills. Although the symptoms of autism can overlap with other developmental disorders, such as learning disabilities and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, it has distinctive characteristics, including narrow, intense interests and routines and occasional emotional meltdowns when those routines are disrupted.

More than 3.5 million Americans have been diagnosed with this disorder, according to the Autism Society. In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised the estimate of those with the disorder to 1 in 59 children, four years after it was set at 1 in 68. Most experts attribute the increase to more-precise diagnostics and enhanced awareness of the disorder, particularly in black and Hispanic children.

Austin, with a population of 26,000, is the kind of place that still has a video store, where the one coffee shop in town is called “The Coffee Shop,” and a yellow traffic sign near a nursing home carries the warning “Dear Crossing.”

Fifteen businesses in this Midwestern hamlet carry the official designation “autism-friendly.” Among them: the Paramount Theater, Mid-Town Auto, two dentists, two ophthalmologists, two hair salons and three summer day camps.

To qualify as autism-friendly, a business must make an effort to minimize sensory overstimulation--lowering lights, turning down or eliminating loud music, and shielding the individual from others’ cross talk.

Business owners must fill out an application and then, along with their employees, go through educational sessions. They learn about the difficulties people with autism experience, including their triggers--a sound or a smell or an unfamiliar situation that may cause a meltdown. They also learn how to interact by speaking slowly, in a clear voice and in short phrases. Most important, they are shown the value of learning to be patient and flexible.

Jackson Schara has been to dentist Catherine Guy a number of times, and his first visit was so surprisingly comfortable that he made a YouTube video explaining why other people with the condition shouldn’t be afraid to go to an autism-friendly dentist.

Standing next to Jackson on a recent visit to her office, Guy described what she did for him that first time:

“It’s a sensory thing, so I told him about the armrests, the bib around the neck, that the chair will move. Then I offered him a bear or a weighted blanket on his chest for comfort.

“I also show them the special toothpaste, let them smell it, and do two or three teeth at a time. I let them experience the suction device, and even do a practice run.”

Sunglasses protect the patients from the harsh lights used to peer inside a mouth. A mirror is also available if they want to watch the dentist at work.

The value of these autism-friendly efforts is incalculable, families say, because it not only makes the lives of those living with autism easier, it also allows them to have experiences that those without autism have routinely. Best of all, they are lessons in communication, one of the chief skills that many children with autism must work especially hard to develop.

Jackson’s mother, Heidi Schara, remembers well a breakthrough moment she witnessed when her son came home from school one day.

“He said, ‘I think I talked too much about something or other.’ Then he said, ‘How was your day?’?”

That Heidi’s son was able to turn his attention from himself to his mother made it her “best day ever.”

She credits these eureka moments, in part, to Austin’s unusually open environment.

“Having this autism-friendly movement--it’s incredible to have people who want to understand,” she said.

For Jackson, who has a love of Japanese monster movies and is eager to talk about all things Godzilla, the experience at Guy’s office as well as at a hair salon in town have been revelatory.

“I am surprised at what I’ve done. Legitimately surprised,” he said.

Jackson was so comfortable getting his hair cut at the Style Lounge that he made a video of it.

Austin’s autism-friendly program began a decade ago, when a retired Hormel executive, Gary Ray, telephoned Barinka, a family friend, and asked whether her autistic daughter, then 6, was able to participate in any town activities, such as summer camp.

“No, not really,” Barinka remembers answering. “We’d like to take her to camp, but you have to explain her frequent needs and hire someone as a helper.”

Austin is small enough that Ray and his wife, Pat, were familiar with Barinka’s struggle to find appropriate recreation for her daughter.

“What if [Pat and I] gave you a small contribution of $5,000?” Ray said. “Could you start a camp?”

It didn’t take long for Barinka to say yes. She is a woman with a keen ability to advocate and organize and a seemingly bottomless reservoir of energy. Her job as autism resource specialist is part time, just 10 hours a week, but Barinka regularly puts in 40, often fielding questions and requests from other parents: “A new business wants to become autism-friendly, can you give a presentation to employees?” “How do I find the best speech therapists in town?” “The local community college wants to start a special autism program. Can you help out?”

To date, the Rays have contributed more than $100,000 to fund autism-friendly programs in Austin. One of the more successful is the monthly respite night, when children with autism are dropped off at the Hormel Historic Home--a site for weddings and tours as well as community events--and parents or caregivers are given a few hours of free time.

The children might do an art project, or go out to a restaurant, bowling lanes or the YMCA to swim. The lifeguards are taught to get their attention by calling their name instead of blowing a whistle. The Y sponsors swim teams for children with autism, and they occasionally compete against other teams with disabilities, including at the Special Olympics.

Autism-friendliness has also reached into the schools, where a peer program pairs high schoolers with autism with similarly aged student volunteers. The program is so popular that there is a waiting list of student volunteers.

Word of Austin’s unusual autism-friendly services has resulted in at least a half-dozen families moving to the town.

Carolyn Dube grew up in Austin, but she spent much of her life elsewhere, primarily in Phoenix, where the resources for her son, Alex, diagnosed with autism at 2½, were lacking.

“There were a lot of behavioral issues with him,” Dube said about life with her son in Arizona. “He threw things, was increasingly violent and too hard to predict.”

A new job brought her to a suburb of Minneapolis, about 90 minutes from Austin, and Dube began to pick up stories about her hometown’s transformation.

“We’d hear amazing things,” she said. “And that’s when we started realizing how special some of Austin’s autism programs were.”

Dube’s family moved back to Austin when Alex was 4. He’s in high school now and takes mostly mainstream classes. He is especially talented in math and science, and because autism is a spectrum disorder of varying degrees of disability, Dube fully expects him to go to college and study engineering.

“Now Alex is almost a new person,” she said.

Other parents say they’re seeing progress they never thought possible before Austin became autism-friendly. Barinka’s 16-year-old daughter used to bite the chain-link fence at her older sister’s softball games and throw tantrums. Today, she is on her high school dance team and plays the trumpet in the band.

Barinka has received calls from Salt Lake City and Flagstaff, Ariz. inquiring about how to set up their own autism-friendly programs, furthering a trend of entrepreneurship and innovation by individuals in the autism community. In 2015, for example, Pennsylvanian Topher Wurts, a marketing and technology executive who has a son with autism, founded a virtual Autism Village. It’s an app that works a bit like Yelp, locating nearby autism-friendly places and businesses and letting users rate and review their experiences.

How Barinka helped create her own bricks-and-mortar version of an Autism Village included not only the Rays, but also the Hormel Foundation, the Hormel Historic Home and numerous members of the community, both paid and volunteer, who make the programs run.

Because of such contributions, Austin is able to offer services at vastly lower costs than those in places where camps can run as high as $800 or $900 a week, according to Barinka. Austin’s autism day camps cost just $150, and many of the more than 50 campers receive scholarships, bringing the price down to $25.

[stopwebformspam]

Here are tips to help you reduce the amount of spam you receive in your contact form

Stop Web Form Spam - Our team is passionate about creating the best StopWebFormSpam stop spams for your business. Here are tips to help you reduce the amount of spam you receive in your contact form

Are you getting a large number of spam messages through your contact form? This can be really annoying and time-consuming to handle.

The good news is there are automated ways to prevent spam in WordPress. In this article, we will share different ways to reduce and block contact from spam in WordPress.

Why You Need to Stop Contact Form Spam

Contact form spam is almost always automated. It’s a problem even for small, little-known websites as it’d be carried out by “spammers” that automatically send unwanted spam.

These spambots are bots that crawl websites and look for insecure forms, so they can send you spammy links. They may also try brute force attacks to break into your login forms. This is why it’s so important to have a strong password.

Sometimes, they can also look for vulnerabilities in your website’s forms, so they can use them to send malware or spam to other people. Spam isn’t just annoying. Those spambots can be dangerous to your website, reputation, and business.

Spam is an enormous issue with contact forms on WordPress sites – both the sites we design and on a global scale. As the most mainstream free WordPress contact form plugin, Contact Form 7 is exceptionally focused on spammers. Spam contact structure entries can be a tremendous issue for WordPress sites with high traffic, getting many spam emails every day. These are badly arranged and make it hard to recognize the authentic messages among the spam.

How To Stop Contact Form Spam?

Let’s take a look at some proven methods to prevent spam on your website.

1. Use ReCAPTCHA

The reCAPTCHA part of your contact form is where site visitors click to prove they’re human when submitting your form. It will block spam submissions by verifying that a human is filling out your forms and blocks most spam attempts. Visitors tend to feel better when they see it because they see you’re serious about security for your site, and it can increase form conversions.

It’s also simple for people to utilize as well. The first CAPTCHA security efforts were here and there hard for even people to get right, so Google switched things up in v2. Instead of typing a word or string of text, people can mouse over the checkbox, and the tool understands that it’s not an automated spam bot. If you use the v2 Invisible version, visitors are presented with an image-based question to make sure they’re not a spambot.

There’s also a reCAPTCHA v3 available, which uses a behind-the-scenes scoring system to track user behavior on your site and detect abusive traffic without asking visitors to do anything. Every user to your website is assigned a “spam score” based on what the tool considers suspicious activity (such as the user only navigating to the contact form and not looking at any other part of your website).

While using v3, there’s a chance you’ll prevent legitimate visitors from filling out your contact form, so you may want to use reCAPTCHA v2 instead to stop contact form spam.

If you don’t want to use Google’s anti-spam service, you can also add a custom CAPTCHA to your forms, where visitors will answer word-based or math questions before submitting their information.

2. Use A Custom CAPTCHA

With a custom CAPTCHA, you add custom word-based or irregular math inquiries to your form to battle spam form entries. Visitors should respond to your custom inquiries accurately to submit their forms. Here, visitors are asked for the answer to 2 + 8 before they can submit their form information.

With a WordPress contact form plugin, you can add a few custom word questions that are cycled through randomly on the form with each page load. The irregular numerical problems may work a little better to stop spam, so you may want to consider changing these on a semi-regular basis, for example, monthly (if your site is high-traffic) or quarterly (if it’s not). It’s up to you.

3. Use Google Invisible ReCAPTCHA

Some website owners don’t want their users to have to check a box in order to submit the contact form. This is where invisible reCAPTCHA comes in.

Invisible reCAPTCHA works just like the regular reCAPTCHA, except there’s no checkbox.

Instead, when the form is submitted, Google will determine whether it might be a bot submitting it. If so, Google will pop up the extra reCAPTCHA verification. If you want to see how it works.

You can use invisible reCAPTCHA on your WPForms contact forms. It’s very similar to the process above for using a reCAPTCHA checkbox.

The first difference is that you need to select a different option when setting up reCAPTCHA with Google. Instead of picking the ‘I’m not a robot’ checkbox option, choose ‘Invisible reCAPTCHA badge’.

Next, when you go to WPForms » Settings and click the ‘reCAPTCHA’ tab, you’ll need to select the ‘Invisible reCAPTCHA v2’ option:

When you add the reCAPTCHA field to your contact form, it’ll now use the invisible reCAPTCHA. When users come to your form, it’ll look like this:

The reCAPTCHA logo will always be on the bottom right of the screen.

If the user wants to know more about reCAPTCHA on your site, then they can click that logo. It’ll expand to show links to Google’s privacy policy and terms of service. You should also update your own site’s privacy policy.

4. Use The Honeypot Antispam Method

The honeypot method is another invisible way to protect your contact forms from spam. It hides a field in the code of your form that’s invisible to human visitors but is visible to spambots because they’re usually looking at the code of your form. These spambots are tricked into thinking it’s a valid form and so they fill it out. But your form knows that this particular field is the honeypot and rejects any submissions with it filled out (or when they’re filled out incorrectly, depending on how you’ve set it up).

Site visitors love it because it removes some of the friction they might feel when they see a challenge question, and it increases your form submission rates. There’s also the warm, secure feeling they get when they see the Google terms of service badge, which is the only thing they see when you enable this method on your form.

WPForms enables the honeypot method by default, so check your specific form builder’s settings in WordPress to make sure it’s enabled.

5. Use WordPress Antispam Plugins

You can also use antispam plugins like Akismet, WordPress Zero Spam, Antispam Bee, and JetPack that protect your entire site from spam entries.

These often work independently from your forms, protecting your website from spam comments and contact form submissions. (typically your comments and contact forms). They compare submissions to blacklists of words, names, and email addresses while some antispam plugins also let you add a CAPTCHA or other antispam method to your contact form. So before you start using any of these plugins, it is a good idea to go through their instructions and details.

6. Block Copy And Paste In Your Forms

Another way to protect your contact forms from spam is to disable right-click functionality on your WordPress site. This method will only protect your contact forms from human spammers who are copying and pasting their information into your forms. Also, you’ll have the added benefit of preventing others from stealing content from anywhere on your site.

One way is to download and install a plugin that disables right-click everywhere on your sites, such as WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click and Disable Right Click For WP.

7. Block Traffic By IP Address

If you’re noticing a lot of spambot action on your site, you can also block traffic from the IP addresses they’re coming from to protect your content form. While it also adds an extra layer of security to your site, it can block legitimate traffic from these IPs, so use this one at your own risk.

Add the IPs you want to block to the Comment Blacklist field on the Discussion settings page of your WordPress admin panel. Advanced site owners can do this through their web host cPanel or security plugin like Sucuri.

In the end, to reduce contact form spam in WordPress, you can use a website security service like Stop Web Form Spam to add security measures fields. This will help to keep your contact form spam-free and secure.

The post Here are tips to help you reduce the amount of spam you receive in your contact form appeared first on Stop Web Form Spam.

https://www.isitwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/stop-contact-form-spam.png https://www.stopwebformspam.com/here-are-tips-to-help-you-reduce-the-amount-of-spam-you-receive-in-your-contact-form/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=here-are-tips-to-help-you-reduce-the-amount-of-spam-you-receive-in-your-contact-form

[fixhackedsite]

Here are tips to help you reduce the amount of spam you receive in your contact form

Fix Hacked Site - Malware Removal and Website Security Service. Here are tips to help you reduce the amount of spam you receive in your contact form

Are you getting a large number of spam messages through your contact form? This can be really annoying and time-consuming to handle.

The good news is there are automated ways to prevent spam in WordPress. In this article, we will share different ways to reduce and block contact from spam in WordPress.

Why You Need to Stop Contact Form Spam

Contact form spam is almost always automated. It’s a problem even for small, little-known websites as it’d be carried out by “spammers” that automatically send unwanted spam.

These spambots are bots that crawl websites and look for insecure forms, so they can send you spammy links. They may also try brute force attacks to break into your login forms. This is why it’s so important to have a strong password.

Sometimes, they can also look for vulnerabilities in your website’s forms, so they can use them to send malware or spam to other people. Spam isn’t just annoying. Those spambots can be dangerous to your website, reputation, and business.

Spam is an enormous issue with contact forms on WordPress sites – both the sites we design and on a global scale. As the most mainstream free WordPress contact form plugin, Contact Form 7 is exceptionally focused on spammers. Spam contact structure entries can be a tremendous issue for WordPress sites with high traffic, getting many spam emails every day. These are badly arranged and make it hard to recognize the authentic messages among the spam.

How To Stop Contact Form Spam?

Let’s take a look at some proven methods to prevent spam on your website.

1. Use ReCAPTCHA

The reCAPTCHA part of your contact form is where site visitors click to prove they’re human when submitting your form. It will block spam submissions by verifying that a human is filling out your forms and blocks most spam attempts. Visitors tend to feel better when they see it because they see you’re serious about security for your site, and it can increase form conversions.

It’s also simple for people to utilize as well. The first CAPTCHA security efforts were here and there hard for even people to get right, so Google switched things up in v2. Instead of typing a word or string of text, people can mouse over the checkbox, and the tool understands that it’s not an automated spam bot. If you use the v2 Invisible version, visitors are presented with an image-based question to make sure they’re not a spambot.

There’s also a reCAPTCHA v3 available, which uses a behind-the-scenes scoring system to track user behavior on your site and detect abusive traffic without asking visitors to do anything. Every user to your website is assigned a “spam score” based on what the tool considers suspicious activity (such as the user only navigating to the contact form and not looking at any other part of your website).

While using v3, there’s a chance you’ll prevent legitimate visitors from filling out your contact form, so you may want to use reCAPTCHA v2 instead to stop contact form spam.

If you don’t want to use Google’s anti-spam service, you can also add a custom CAPTCHA to your forms, where visitors will answer word-based or math questions before submitting their information.

2. Use A Custom CAPTCHA

With a custom CAPTCHA, you add custom word-based or irregular math inquiries to your form to battle spam form entries. Visitors should respond to your custom inquiries accurately to submit their forms. Here, visitors are asked for the answer to 2 + 8 before they can submit their form information.

With a WordPress contact form plugin, you can add a few custom word questions that are cycled through randomly on the form with each page load. The irregular numerical problems may work a little better to stop spam, so you may want to consider changing these on a semi-regular basis, for example, monthly (if your site is high-traffic) or quarterly (if it’s not). It’s up to you.

3. Use Google Invisible ReCAPTCHA

Some website owners don’t want their users to have to check a box in order to submit the contact form. This is where invisible reCAPTCHA comes in.

Invisible reCAPTCHA works just like the regular reCAPTCHA, except there’s no checkbox.

Instead, when the form is submitted, Google will determine whether it might be a bot submitting it. If so, Google will pop up the extra reCAPTCHA verification. If you want to see how it works.

You can use invisible reCAPTCHA on your WPForms contact forms. It’s very similar to the process above for using a reCAPTCHA checkbox.

The first difference is that you need to select a different option when setting up reCAPTCHA with Google. Instead of picking the ‘I’m not a robot’ checkbox option, choose ‘Invisible reCAPTCHA badge’.

Next, when you go to WPForms » Settings and click the ‘reCAPTCHA’ tab, you’ll need to select the ‘Invisible reCAPTCHA v2’ option:

When you add the reCAPTCHA field to your contact form, it’ll now use the invisible reCAPTCHA. When users come to your form, it’ll look like this:

The reCAPTCHA logo will always be on the bottom right of the screen.

If the user wants to know more about reCAPTCHA on your site, then they can click that logo. It’ll expand to show links to Google’s privacy policy and terms of service. You should also update your own site’s privacy policy.

4. Use The Honeypot Antispam Method

The honeypot method is another invisible way to protect your contact forms from spam. It hides a field in the code of your form that’s invisible to human visitors but is visible to spambots because they’re usually looking at the code of your form. These spambots are tricked into thinking it’s a valid form and so they fill it out. But your form knows that this particular field is the honeypot and rejects any submissions with it filled out (or when they’re filled out incorrectly, depending on how you’ve set it up).

Site visitors love it because it removes some of the friction they might feel when they see a challenge question, and it increases your form submission rates. There’s also the warm, secure feeling they get when they see the Google terms of service badge, which is the only thing they see when you enable this method on your form.

WPForms enables the honeypot method by default, so check your specific form builder’s settings in WordPress to make sure it’s enabled.

5. Use WordPress Antispam Plugins

You can also use antispam plugins like Akismet, WordPress Zero Spam, Antispam Bee, and JetPack that protect your entire site from spam entries.

These often work independently from your forms, protecting your website from spam comments and contact form submissions. (typically your comments and contact forms). They compare submissions to blacklists of words, names, and email addresses while some antispam plugins also let you add a CAPTCHA or other antispam method to your contact form. So before you start using any of these plugins, it is a good idea to go through their instructions and details.

6. Block Copy And Paste In Your Forms

Another way to protect your contact forms from spam is to disable right-click functionality on your WordPress site. This method will only protect your contact forms from human spammers who are copying and pasting their information into your forms. Also, you’ll have the added benefit of preventing others from stealing content from anywhere on your site.

One way is to download and install a plugin that disables right-click everywhere on your sites, such as WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click and Disable Right Click For WP.

7. Block Traffic By IP Address

If you’re noticing a lot of spambot action on your site, you can also block traffic from the IP addresses they’re coming from to protect your content form. While it also adds an extra layer of security to your site, it can block legitimate traffic from these IPs, so use this one at your own risk.

Add the IPs you want to block to the Comment Blacklist field on the Discussion settings page of your WordPress admin panel. Advanced site owners can do this through their web host cPanel or security plugin like Sucuri.

In the end, to reduce contact form spam in WordPress, you can use a plugin like Fix Hacked Site to add security measures fields. This will help to keep your contact form spam-free and secure.

The post Here are tips to help you reduce the amount of spam you receive in your contact form appeared first on Fix Hacked Site.

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[chelseaartlab]

Rāpare (9.2)

Discussion of independent - artists collected?

“Constructive Criticism” > I like this and I would do that differently...

Hanne Lippard

Performance artist? Reading… faux fur, tinsel, red lippy, a celebration? ‘cheap,’ trashy?, everyday.

Her rhythm of language came from typography - decided that spoken voice has more ‘persona’

Translating text to sound

“Taking words out of cold state”

Seeks spam mail as degenerate; ‘b-language’ > b-movies

Cheap and trashy language

Using film presents the sounds/actions of receiving SMS - communication that is neither what we hear or who we meet, but still an instant message

Methods:

Audio installations, writing books (typography), audio as live performance (reading) - with ‘music’ accompaniment - rhythms,

Body language in film - how you read faces etc

Collecting fragments of language (from all over the place)

Use of words - ‘tongue twisters’ (known phrases); individual words listed for rhythm/sound rather than meaning; but also translations of words based on meaning; repetition; degeneration of words.

Using found language (eg. online personality/stress tests) as the leaping off point…

Things “we” do… things I do…

Art an come from our habits/obsessions eg. writing lists

Comfort and discomfort - sibilance sssss’s - mouth noises - (misophonia - can’t tolerate mouth sounds) - “the tongue is warm in my mouth” - visceral qualities of speech.

What language do you think in? - what/who is the voice in your head?

George Dickie - definitions of art : limits of language and thought - see also Wittgenstein language games - basic principle is that words have meaning because of the context and the ways we use them. Art works have a meaning because of where we see/experience them eg. in an institutions (they might have a different meaning in another place); conversely words can change and/or lose meaning if we use them in ‘different’ ways.

Words = meaning : the hallucinogenic quality of words (test yourself on the ‘stroop effect’)

Words have meaning if there is someone to hear/read them (metaphysical question posed by George Berkeley - “If a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear, does it make a noise?)

Can words get in the way of thinking?!

When you ‘say’ things out loud you find out whether or not they mean anything/what you meant.

For Hanne speaking is an act of making

She doesn’t refer to her work as poems/poetry: is she appropriating poetry for ‘contemporary art’?

Hanne asks questions but not for you to answer - rhetorical questions.

Hanne makes eye contact through the screen - acknowledges a distant (mediated) audience. In theatre : “breaking the fourth wall”

Performance is ‘taking on a persona’ : she also ‘plays the role of artist’

Stress of being constantly ‘connected’ - constant tones of message arrival.

Contemporary icons (iconicism) iconoclastic

Her tone was distracting - there is a ‘blandness’ to her persona, shows up how hard it can be to attend/concentrate/hear.

Douglas Rushkoff : https://rushkoff.com/books/present-shock/ - now we commercialize people’s attention - “attention economy” - meta-data collecting

Media Studies / Spoken word poetry / Artist’s books / automatic text generating (https://app.inferkit.com/demo)

Task: using auto-text function of text message app. Start with a found text, add 5 words from auto-text suggestions, and one word of your own choosing - continue this sequence till your ‘done’ (task was given 10 minutes)

her set ups or stage props are usually common house hold items. ones that are reoccurring are fans and wires.

I think her work is sort of like white noise that we are meant to listen to.

she uses a soft voice when she speaks. sounds like she is hypnotizing us.

I found that the apple ringing tone although associated with stress was edited to sound more relaxing. I think this speaks to egnoleging your stress and changing your environment to de stress.

I also see a correlation between the feeling of zoning out to the sound of my alarm and listen to Lippards work.

Hakiar

sound in general, language, muilt lingual, coming together to listen to a person speak (the actual act of her work is taking you away from your phone), listening, appreciating communication,

Rebecca Ann Hobbs

New Zealand artist

I liked:

Measured the bridge - measuring by dance

But it wasn’t accurate enough to really say yr measuring the bridge

What is being measured? Does

Video is 2’48” - a whole 2” over.

Was the walk actually to measure because she didn’t start or finish at the beginning or end of the bridge

It takes 2’33” to ‘measure’ in her own time

There is a difference in experience/travel between dancer and camera - she might get left behind

Dance & walk - expressive motion

Appropriating dance culture > hip-hop; ‘dancehall’ - Jamaican origins now in Aotearoa.

Place: bridge over the Manukau - good place for fishing - between Onehunga and Mangere Bridge - ‘south Auckland’ - Māori and Pacifika neighbourhoods.

Dancer is wearing headphones - makes her isolated from other occupants of the space.

Removes items of clothes being stripped off

Part of a series - perhaps things become clearer if you watch more…

Is it “sexualised”? In some ways yes and other ways no…

Dancehall - night clubs etc. suggests sexualised environment

What is the relationship between removing (reducing) the sexualising aspects of Dancehall and the (objective, empirical act of) measuring.

Is this international black identity (politic) > overarching response of shared experience by people of colour - particularly the expression via hip-hop.

Maungataketake: efforts gone in vain to rebuild/replace Maungataketake - volcanic cone that was quarried (in the 1930s… i think)

Polystyrene is bad environmental material

Futile activity

Lack of communication

Why 15 minutes? - it’s so long and unedited - the effort takes a ‘long’ time - endurance performance.

Is 15 minutes a long time? - relative time - the average amount of time spent with an art work in a gallery is 6”.

Endurance: looked heavy and difficult, doing the same movements over and over.

Connections: isolated feeling - wide open space - not being noticed - location (Maungataketake is also south Auckland… near the airport - part of Ihumātao area) - the first is a journey (a to b) but the second is ‘pointless’, just keeps going in the one place - the camera angle is similar even though one moves like journeying, the second is still like sitting - both share a movement in and out of the frame (tension of miss framing) and wide angle landscape format - appearance and action in/on the landscape, it is segmented eg. broken by dance movements; sliced in polystyrene; what is the political implication?

Martin Awa Clarke Langdon & Qiane Matata-Sipu are both Māori. Rebecca calls herself a “mozzie” - Māori diaspora in Australia.

Performance and critique of colonial land practices - occupation and dispossession, land confiscation and surveying (subdivision into privately owned “unit title”)

measurement is such a strict action to do, it dose not rely on an individuals interpretation, it's even across the board

she personalizes measurement, the woman moves across the bridge in her own way another person would do it different, but they are both walking the same distance.... everyone lives the same day but each do something different with it.

hip hop is a dance discipline that doesn't have the same hard rules as styles such as ballet. it was created from people who didn't fee like they could express themselves in society. its a fitting style because it encourages individuality.

south auckland used to be one of the lower income parts of auckland, it represents the Maori and pacific people of an urbanized and westered country. She is encouraging self expression to these Maori and pacific.

in relation to Hakari:

she celebrates movement, culture, expression of self, expression of culture, being proud of who you are, not allowing yourself to be oppressed, recognizing the hard ships one can go through being part of minority, not caring what people think,

Independent:

Practice: Hanne Lippard

- make another text work

- make a new one

Practice reading/performing it. Film/record yourself (this is as documentation but also reflection - how could you say/perform differently - see “spoken word” )

Be ready to perform this in a breakout next class

Make a Rebecca Ann Hobbs related work

Copy these notes into your ‘workbook’ - add, extend, correct: append to each section ideas in relation to Hākari eg. what is being celebrated.

You have full access to the library - use a mask on-site please

Digital access to Google via library - tips on using Google well: https://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=94140fe5-18e3-45ce-a0a5-05201d2ab91c%40sdc-v-sessmgr02&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLGNvb2tpZSx1cmwsdWlkJnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=100259629&db=ers

Referencing: please note Artists name, title of work, year, media… sometimes very useful to know where exhibitied/performed - website citation &/or book citation.

[digitrainers]

Email Marketing: 7 Tips for Successful Campaigns!

As a digital marketer, I see that websites often do not get the most out of email marketing. Email is still one of the highest converting online marketing channels. In this blog I give you 7 tips with which you can start successful email marketing campaigns!

 Tip 1: Come up with a strategy/objectives

 In my opinion, the starting point of every online marketing channel is a well-thought-out strategy with objectives. By starting to formulate clear objectives, you will notice that a strategy follows easily. Below are some sample questions that I think you should always ask yourself before you start email marketing:

·       What do I want to achieve by sending newsletters?

·       Who is my target audience?

·       Do I only email B2C or B2B or a combination?

·       Which message is relevant to my target group?

·       Do I focus the message in my newsletters on promotions, content and/or sales?

 Last but not least, it is important that your newsletters comply with privacy and telecom legislation. Be clear with the buttons or text links you place at the bottom of your email. For example, choose a text link where your customer can manage his/her newsletter preferences or where he/she can unsubscribe from all mailings. Convince your customer not to unsubscribe from all newsletters, but keep him/her for targeted/relevant mailings. 

 Tip 2: From mass to personalized and segmented

The biggest change in email marketing in recent years has been the shift from mass mailings to (mostly automated) campaigns that are personalized and segmented. Therefore make sure you say goodbye to the following mailings:

·       Send a newsletter with offers on women's clothing to your entire database (including men…).

·       An email with curling irons to people who are bald.

·       An offer for a sports watch that your customer bought the day before at the same websites for the original price.

 They are probably open doors, but the above mass mailings are still sent daily. It goes without saying that the above email marketing campaigns yield less results. In fact, it will lead to irritation with the customer and a higher number of unsubscribes.

Therefore, make sure that it is not you, but the customer who determines which content he/she receives and at what time. By using automated campaigns you ensure more relevance when sending your newsletter. A good example of an automated campaign is the birthday campaign. For example, based on the dates of birth in your system, a birthday email can be sent every day at 8 a.m. to all email addresses in your database that have a birthday on that day. The birthday email is guaranteed to be relevant and personal!

 Tip 3: Check, check, double check

Nothing is more important than properly checking and testing your email marketing campaigns. By taking the following steps before an e-mail campaign is rolled out, the number of reactions/complaints can be kept to a minimum, which of course ensures more results:

1.      Create a flowchart with all the functionalities your campaign should include

2.      Test the campaign yourself by putting yourself in the visitor's shoes

3.      Send the campaign to colleagues (preferably both online marketers and non-'onliners') and ask them to critically go through the mailings

4.      Select a part of your database where you will test the campaign

5.      Are all tests positive? Then turn off your email marketing campaign under the complete database!

Run the above tests on multiple devices and mail clients & check both the newsletter and the loading pages on the different devices.

You will notice that setting up an automated campaign is a significant (time) investment. However, performing the 5 tests above provides a better result in the longer term, so that the investment pays off twice as much.

 Are emails opened more often on mobile? E-village's 2016 email benchmark shows that the number of mobile vs desktop opens is approximately 50% / 50%. In 2015, 49.79% of emails sent were opened on a mobile or tablet, the remaining 50.21% were opened on a desktop. It is expected that in 2016 the number of mobile opens exceeded the number of opens on a desktop for the first time. Therefore please note that:

·       The above tests are performed not only on a desktop but also on the tablet and mobile phone

·       Your landing page also functions well on tablet and mobile

 Tip 4: Automate and reduce comments/complaints

Reducing manual actions and automating processes is sometimes underestimated. Still, it's a good way to make your email marketing campaigns more successful. If you spend 30 minutes every day answering questions and making changes to your database, this will obviously be at the expense of your time to improve the result. Therefore, invest time to look for a structural solution.

 Tip 5: Optimize based on KPIs

You have set objectives, mapped out a strategy and 'started' the campaign. Then it's time to take a closer look at the results. By making smart use of quantitative and qualitative input from customers, your email marketing can be lifted to a higher level. But which KPIs do you follow to determine whether your email marketing campaigns are successful? I usually start optimizing my newsletters based on the following metrics:

·       click-through rate

·       Conversion

·       forward rate

·       Delivery rate

·       Total ROI

Click-through rate After your newsletter has been opened, you can read the degree of relevance from the number of clicks to your website, among other things. Tracking clicks is a good way to determine if your newsletter is successful. If you see a drop in the click-through rate per newsletter, it is time to rethink the content of your email marketing campaigns. Provide measurable links in all buttons, text links, titles and images so that you can analyze not only the different topics but also the type: button, text link, title or image. I work with Google's UTM coding, which makes it easy to read in Google Analytics which topic resulted in what and which image resulted in click-throughs/conversions.

Conversion Of course, the number of conversions you get from a newsletter is an important KPI. However, don't focus on the number of direct conversions you get from email marketing. The moment of sending has a major influence on the number of direct conversions. What 'mood' is your customer in when he sees your newsletter?

Forward ratio Many newsletters do not have the possibility to forward the mail, yet forwarding can yield a lot of results. After all, how nice is it when your newsletter is forwarded? In addition, the ability to forward the email from a newsletter subscriber to a non-newsletter subscriber is good for file growth. Your e-mail database is not only growing quantitatively but usually also increasing in quality.

Delivery ratio The delivery ratio is determined by dividing the number of emails sent minus the bounce by the total number of emails sent. With a delivery rate below 99%, I advise you to look for reasons why a large part of your database does not receive your e-mails. Possible causes are a noreply e-mail address, which I strongly advise against, a domain name from which a lot of mail is sent and/or the content of your newsletter that is assessed as 'spam'.

Total ROI Email is one of the online marketing channels that should improve your (online) results. With a well-designed Google Analytics account, you can determine whether your email marketing efforts are profitable and ensure more (online) sales. The above statistics provide insight into this result and help you to continuously improve and optimize email campaigns.

 Tip 6: File Growth

Sending emails always leads to unsubscribes. If you do not take any action to grow your database, the number of email addresses you write to will decrease. You can increase your database by:

·       Build in an option when ordering/requesting on your website (easiest method for file growth!), see the example below from Profile Car & Tire Service

·       Offer give-aways (for example: 20% discount when subscribing to the newsletter)

·       Identify the benefits and transmission frequency of your newsletter

·       Make use of your LinkedIn connections

·       Keep the registration process accessible by, for example, only asking for the e-mail addressmailadres

·       Use mind-tricks like 'don't miss our last actions'

·       Start an (offline) action where the email address must be left

·       Asking for an email address in branches, for example to send the invoice

 Please note that you always collect e-mail addresses based on the opt-in principle. I myself am a big proponent of the double opt-in principle whereby the customer registers via, for example, your website and then confirms his registration by clicking a link in his/her email. You will notice that this positively influences the quality and loyalty of your mail database.

 Tip 7: Enrich data

 Also clearly define what you want to know. For example, in Profile I made a distinction between 'must-haves' and 'nice-to-haves':

must have

·       Mailable email address with opt-in (of course!)

·       License Plate

·       First Name

Nice to have

·       Preferred location

·       Sex

·       Prefix and surname

·       Dates about scheduled appointments/orders

 Conclusion: Draw up a clear strategy with concrete objectives and judge whether your email marketing campaigns are profitable based on the most important KPIs. Then test and optimize to make your email marketing even more successful!