I received 2 sets of complimentary WINGStands recently, so this is a short review of what exactly they are. Basically a WINGStand is a little plastic ‘clip’ that simply attaches to your apple wireless keyboard. This enables you to then insert an iPad, iPhone or other compatible device on top. It’s a pretty neat idea—and rather than babble-on about it, I took some photos of them so you can see how they work:

Above: The WINGStand comes in both black and white.

Above: The stand comes out of the box as one unit, but splits down the middle into 2 separate stands.

Above: This shows the WINGStand upside-down. As can be seen, the circular sections attach easily to the apple keyboard.

Watch the WINGStand Video

WINGStand Montage from The WINGStand on Vimeo. The WINGStand is an adaptable mount that integrates an iPad, Smartphone, or Tablet with a Apple Wireless keyboard. For more info check out www.wingstand.com.

After using this product on my iPad, I can frankly say that this is a unique and quirky solution to typing on you tablet or smartphone. They are easy to attach and very travel-friendly due to their small size.

To purchase these, please visit the WINGStand Shop (this is Not an affiliate link).

Disclaimer─This is not a sponsored post. I received 2 complimentary WINGStands for an impartial review.

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall

If like myself, you were told that a random password (using special characters) is better than using just words, then think again. According to an article entitled “Why the password “this is fun” is 10 times more secure than “J4fS!2” by Vivekgirotra.com, this simply isn’t the case.

The main gist of the article explains how hackers may target your site, and how they get hold of your password. All my passwords are at least 20 characters in length including special characters and chosen at random. The article explains, however, that choosing a few random nonsensical words can be just as effective.

I’m not going into the article in detail, but if you have a WordPress blog or any other site that is important to you, I suggest you take a look. It gets quite technical, but it’s easy to get their point on the matter.

Ever since my blog was hacked last year, I regularly keep up-to-date with matters such as this. I now have many security plugns installed on my WordPress installation and use every security measure possible.

Since reading the article a few months back, I’ve still been mixing random characters into my passwords (hold habits die hard), but I no longer choose ridiculously long ones that take me 5 minutes to type in! I recommend taking a look at the article and do what’s best for you.

Further Reading: 6 WordPress Plugins that Protect Your Blog from Hackers.

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall

I really like these Starbucks Cups that have been used as blank canvases. Designer Johanna Basford has done a stunning job creating interesting paper art designs and patterns on these paper cups. Johanna explains:

It’s no secret that I have a rather large soft spot for those clever coffee brewers at Starbucks [...] What I’d really like though, is the chance to get my hands on the infamous Red Starbucks Christmas Cup! Imagine sipping your Gingerbread Latte from a festive cup, adorned in intricate tangles of holly and mistletoe, peppered with illusive robins, stuffed stockings and beautifully wrapped parcels?! A crisp print in white, against the signature Rudolph Red cup – even Mr Claus would be lining up for a quick Mocha before the night shift! [read more]

The designs on these Starbucks cups remind me a little of what I sketched in my moleskine. On a rare to trip to Starbucks, I may try this myself. I’ll try and make sure I have a black pen at the ready.

More Sketched Starbuck Cups

Credits: All images are copyright © Johanna Basford. Please visit the related article on Johannabasford.com for more images and information.

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall

Whilst researching keywords on the Google Keyword Tool for a post on Design Soak, I somehow stumbled upon a very depressing fact:

There are 135,000 global monthly searches for the term “Free Logo Designer”.

How little respect people have for designer’s like myself who try to make a living from our skills.

The term ‘Free Brain Surgeons’ doesn’t get many queries. Funny, that…

Recommended:

Why professional logo design does not cost $5.00 by Jacob Cass
What’s your logo worth? by David Airey
Cheap Logos: Not Worth the Cost by Freelance Switch

Rant over. Your thoughts?

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall

Just a quick post about Google Plus.

I’m now on the new social network—and it would be great if we could connect on Google.

→ To add me, please go to gplus.to/andrewkelsall

Free Google+ Icon Set

There’s an excellent Free Google Plus Icon Vector set available for free download over on Bold Perspective. I even used one of the set for the image above!

One More Thing

To support my site, please could you click the +1 button on any post you think is decent (and also the sidebar version for the entire site). This will help AndrewKelsall.com continue churning out great stuff for you. Cheers…

PS: The button for each single post appears after my Author profile lower down.

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall

After months of preparation, I’ve finally launched my new design magazine Design Soak Magazine. It’s more like a blog than a magazine at the moment, but I have future plans…

What’s Design Soak?

Design Soak is the result of some experiments I’ve been working on over the past year.

The Failure

It all began with a sub-directory in my blog, which was named “Free Stock Photos”. You may have seen some links to these posts if you follow me on Twitter. Basically, I gave away free high-resolution images for download. You can see some example posts here, here and here.

The “sub-blog was successful in attaining backlinks, and I referred more than 100 people to Dreamstime Stock Photography (and earned next to nothing!), but it gained me very little traffic. I have now integrated these 100+ posts into andrewkelsall.com.

The Success

After this, I setup another sub-blog directory named “Spectacular”. These posts were of anything related the design and photography. Again, you may have noticed the tweets! Unlike my previous efforts, these posts were very successful and got me 400,000 pageviews of traffic over the past 2 months. I then decided the 301 all these posts to a new blog named Design Soak.

Advertising Deal

I only officially launched the “live site” on June 9th (just a week ago), and has already received 60,000 pageviews (helped along by about 100 301 redirected posts). I also negotiated a great advertising deal with Wix, so Design Soak and this site currently display their banner ads.

In a nutshell, Design Soak is an inspiration blog that features design, illustration, architecture, product design and anything else I like and think others will like too.

About the site name

Naming the site was super-hard! Every single name that I thought would be unique was actually taken. My favourite idea was IvoryNoteBook.com. Guess what? Taken; along with 10 others. Here is a list of names I considered after weeks of head-scratching:

• www.quartznotebook.com
• www.concretenotebook.com
• www.starcardig.an
• www.expresss.so
• www.galveti.ca
• www.designpersu.it
• www.designpersuit.com
• www.starcontender.com
• www.atomicnotebook.com
• www.onyxnotebook.com
• www.desibix.com
• www.dezinox.com
• www.galvanax.com
• www.starcardi.com
• www.inspiredeck.com
• www.galvanetika.com
• www.galvanetix.com
• www.galvanetica.com
• www.fluorinestar.com
• www.designhose.com

Yes, now I look at some of them, I’m glad I ended up with Design Soak. Yes, it’s nothing outrageous, but I think it conveys the site content really well and doesn’t need an explanation. If I ever want to sell the blog, it should be more sellable than, say, a site name such as starcardi.com.

Please Support Continued Success

It would be great if you could support my sites by subscribing via RSS or Email, and also sharing the posts that may have interested you. I’ve also re-launched my other blog, Pure Christian Graphic Design, too. As you’ll see, all my sites are now based upon the same template, but with major differences.

Here are the Subscriber links:

Andrew Kelsall Design: RSS | Email

Design Soak: RSS | Email

Your Thoughts?

If you have any thoughts, suggestions or remarks about Design Soak, please let me know.

PS, when time permits, I’ll be adjusting the width of both blogs to accommodate the Wix ads width.

Oh BTW, here are some recent posts from Design Soak:

Dalton Ghetti Pencil Sculptures
Phenomenal Urban Bird Houses
Cycles and Seasons Calendar
Stunning Chewing Gum Art
Astonishing Stockholm Subway Art
Top 10 Joysticks from Past and Present

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall

Here is the new one (for the benefit of all you RSS readers):

Why did I change it again?

My October redesign was a redesign of a redesign… of a redesigned redesign, that I just redesigned the heck out of, basically.

Needless to say, there was just too many complications due to the amount of modifications I made to the theme. There was plenty of redundant CSS and PHP that would just take too long to put right.

I thought it would be a lot simpler to just redesign the site, which is an Obox theme that I purchased and modified. This time, I’ve gone for a clean-cut and simple style. There’s still room for improvement, and I managed to fit an image in of a VW camper van, which I think are just cool. I hope to buy one at some point and have many camping trips.

PS, I started a previous design featuring a VW Camper van on my Dribbble profile. You can see the abandoned concept here.

Site Server and CDN

I’m now on a Media Temple 4.0 DV server (affiliate link) — and the site also utilises Max CDN. The site, for the most part, is running much faster than normal.

I’ve had some downtime issues, as well as 8 random old posts appearing in my RSS feed (which for some reason had Google ads in them?). Strange, I know. Apologies for the inconvenience.

I’ve also nearly completed a new venture of late, which I’ll write about in due course.

What do you the of the new design? Do you have any suggestions to make?

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall

Ever since blogging in WordPress, I’ve used to use the All in One SEO Pack. This has been considered to be the best plugin for SEO purposes that can be installed. However, recently I’ve switched to the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin, which is more advanced.

Here are the main benefits of this plugin (from the Yoast site):

• Post titles and meta descriptions
• Robots Meta configuration
• Canonical
• Breadcrumbs
• Permalink clean up
• XML Sitemaps
• RSS enhancements
• Edit your robots.txt and .htaccess
• Clean up head section

The major benefit that I have found is that the plugin actually does-away with other plugins you may have installed (maybe up to 4 or 5). It not only replaces the All in One SEO Pack, but also Google Sitemaps, any breadcrumbs code, RSS footer plugins and permalink redirects.

The great thing I’ve found it useful for is seeing how your search results will look in Google search. There’s a full description of how to install and setup this plugin over at wpbeginner. I reckon this is worth-while installing if only to get rid of a bunch of older plugins and let Yoast WordPress SEO do all the work and speed up your blog!

Do you use the All in One SEO Pack? Do you think you will switch to Yoast? Please leave your comment below…

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall

Ever since my own WordPress site’s were hacked last year, I’ve researched into various ways to protect WordPress Blogs. I’m by no means an expert on the matter, but after much research and experimentation, here are my top WordPress Plugin recommendations (that I have installed and use):

1: Secure WordPress

This plugin has some simple yet powerful functions that is easy to use and will just run in the background for you. The plugin does the following:

1. removes error-information on login-page
2. adds index.php plugin-directory (virtual)
3. removes the wp-version, except in admin-area
4. removes Really Simple Discovery
5. removes Windows Live Writer
6. remove core update information for non-admins
7. remove plugin-update information for non-admins
8. remove theme-update informationfor non-admins (only WP 2.8 and higher)
9. hide wp-version in backend-dashboard for non-admins
10. Add string for use WP Scanner
11. Block bad queries
12. Validate your site with a free malware and vulnerabilities scan with SiteSecurityMonitor.com

[info from the author site]

Visit the download site here.

2: WP Security Scan

This plugin scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions:

1. passwords
2. file permissions
3. database security
4. version hiding
5. WordPress admin protection/security

Visit the download site here.

3: WordPress Exploit Scanner

This plugin searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames.

Download the latest version here.

4: WordPress Firewall Plugin

This plugin searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames.

This WordPress plugin investigates web requests with simple WordPress-specific heuristics to identify and stop most obvious attacks. There exist a few powerful generic modules that do this; but they’re not always installed on web servers, and difficult to configure.

It intelligently whitelists and blacklists pathological-looking phrases based on which field they appear within in a page request (unknown/numeric parameters vs. known post bodies, comment bodies, etc.). Its purpose is not to replace prompt and responsible upgrading, but rather to mitigate 0-day attacks and let bloggers sleep better at night. Its features include:

1. Detect, intecept, and log suspicious-looking parameters — and prevent them compromising WordPress.
2. Also protect most WordPress plugins from the same attacks.
3. Optionally configure as the first plugin to load for maximum security.
4. Respond with an innocuous-looking 404, or a home page redirect.
5. Optionally send an email to you with a useful dump of information upon blocking a potential attack.
6. Turn on or off directory traversal attack detection.
7. Turn on or off SQL injection attack detection.
8. Turn on or off WordPress-specific SQL injection attack detection.
9. Turn on or off blocking executable file uploads.
10. Turn on or off remote arbitrary code injection detection.
11. Add whitelisted IPs.
12. Add additional whitelisted pages and/or fields within such pages to allow above to get through when desirable.

[info from the author site]

Download the latest version here.

5. Block Bad Queries (BBQ)

This script checks for excessively long request strings (i.e., greater than 255 characters), as well as the presence of either “eval(” or “base64” in the request URI. These sorts of nefarious requests were implicated in the September 2009 WordPress attacks.

[from the Author site]

Download the latest version here.

6. Login Lockdown

Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range. This helps to prevent brute force password discovery. Currently the plugin defaults to a 1 hour lock out of an IP block after 3 failed login attempts within 5 minutes. This can be modified via the Options panel. Admisitrators can release locked out IP ranges manually from the panel.

[from the WordPress site]

Download the latest version here.

Bonus: WordPress Database Backup

I don’t think any plugin can make your blog 100% hacker-proof, however, if all else fails make sure you continually and automatically backup your databases:

WordPress database backup creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database.

Download the latest version here.

I know of other plugins such as AskApache Password Protect, but this is for the more advanced WordPress user in my opinion. I set it up and it continually locked me out of my own admin panels, for example!

Have you tried any of the plugins above? If you know any more more great security plugins out there which are worth a try, please let me know in the comments section below…

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall

What is Designmoo? Their site states:

Discover and Share Quality Design Resources: Designmoo is a community for discovering and sharing free PSDs, vectors, textures, patterns, fonts and more.

I have 7 invites to give away. However, I will only give them to people who have their own website with a decent portfolio. If you would like one, please contact me or leave a comment below.

If you’re already on Designmoo,why not  follow me if you’re into free texture images.

NB: Regarding my previous post, I don’t have any Hello Bar Invites left now, sorry. It was first come, first serve

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Andrew Kelsall | Creative Designer - Graphic Design Blog of Andrew Kelsall