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The O’Brien Media Digital Insider Blog

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The O'Brien Media Insider

Welcome to the O’Brien Media Insider – Your Go-To for Digital Insights and Business Know-How

The O’Brien Media Insider is your behind-the-scenes look at all things digital, creative, and business-focused. From web design trends and SEO tips to small business insights and local Swindon highlights, our blog covers a bit of everything – just like we do at O’Brien Media.

Whether you’re a client, collaborator, or curious visitor, this is the place to catch up on the latest from our team, explore practical advice, and get inspired to grow your digital presence. Dive in and see what’s new!
WordPress
Chris O'Brien

Keep your plugins and themes up to date

A question we get frequently from clients (and prospective clients) is “Do I need to install updates for WordPress, plugins, and my theme?” The answer is an unwavering  “Yes!“, and it’s because updates do the following:

  1. Increase the security of your website
  2. Fix bugs that could cause unintended behaviour of your website
  3. Add features and functionality to your site

Web applications such as WordPress are software, just like your operating system (Windows or Mac OS) or smartphone apps, and and in the same way you need to upgrade those periodically WordPress also needs some attention to keep it up to date and running at it's best. Let’s take a quick look at why keeping your WordPress website up to date is important.

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Chris O'Brien 29th August 2016 6:42 am
Branding & Marketing
Chris O'Brien

3 reasons why your business should have a client portal

Client portals can give companies a significant competitive edge by saving money through reduced overheads and streamlined business processes. Client portals also allow for a greater two-way flow of information for businesses looking to create stronger relationships with their clients, customers or partners. In this article, we'll cover the top three reasons why your business needs to introduce a client portal.

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Chris O'Brien 24th August 2016 6:42 am
WordPress
Chris O'Brien

Upgrade today: WordPress 4.6 “Pepper” now available

The latest version of WordPress, version 4.6 (named “Pepper” in honor of jazz saxophonist Park Frederick “Pepper” Adams III), is now available to download via the WordPress website at wordpress.org. There are some exciting new features in WordPress 4.6 to help you to focus on the important parts of running your website along with enhancements to simplify some of the the day-to-day administrative tasks you perform on your website.

WordPress upgrade service

We can upgrade your WordPress website for you with our cost effective WordPress upgrade service. Contact us for more details or if you're an O'Brien Media website hosting customer you can view your Drupal version information and request an upgrade via Client Connect, just log in and access the "My products" section for more information. 

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Chris O'Brien 18th August 2016 1:01 pm
Microsoft
Chris O'Brien

Microsoft Office 365 E5 Now Available

Many of our customers already experience the benefits of Microsoft's Office 365 cloud based solution, combined with the just-released Office 2016 apps means there’s never been a better time to get Microsoft Office 365 E5, the most comprehensive Office 365 offering. 

Always have the latest versions of:

Word  Excel  PowerPoint  Outlook  OneNote  Publisher  Skype for Business  Access

Version updates are included in your subscription and new features are rolled out to Office 365 customers regularly.

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Chris O'Brien 20th July 2016 12:38 pm
Microsoft
Jenny Howell

New OneDrive for Business sync client for Office 365 users

Microsoft have listened to customer feedback, and have delivered a new sync client for OneDrive for Business designed to make OneDrive for Business for Office 365 users faster and more reliable.

This update provides a much improved sync experience so that you always have the latest version of your files accessible from any device.

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Jenny Howell 13th July 2016 11:01 pm
Find out the latest news from Google
Jenny Howell

Google’s Chrome browser will soon label non HTTPS websites as “Unsafe”

After Google announced that it had started considering HTTPS as a metric when deciding the pagerank of a given website (giving higher priority to SSL secured websites over their non-SSL counterparts) it was only a matter of time before they took the next logical step and started further penalising websites without SSL (HTTPS) support. 

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Jenny Howell 8th July 2016 3:43 pm
Drupal
Chris O'Brien

Drupal 7.50 has been released

Drupal 7.50, the latest release in the Drupal 7 series as of 8th July 2016, is now available for installation on websites running the 7 series of Drupal. Drupal 7.50 contains a variety of new features, performance improvements, security-related enhancements, and bug fixes – the 7.50 release itself includes no security fixes (although if you haven't installed previous updates the 7.50 release will include previous security fixes).

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Chris O'Brien 8th July 2016 3:21 pm
Code and Development
Chris O'Brien

Fixing photo orientation on images uploaded via PHP from iOS devices

Below is a great function (created by Wes over on Stack Overflow) that can be used to automatically correct the image orientation when uploading images (the main culprit for weird orientation related glitches being iOS based devices) – simple call the correctImageOrientation() function after uploading the image and voilla the rotation/orientation of the image is corrected!

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Chris O'Brien 6th July 2016 2:50 pm
Microsoft
Jenny Howell

Efficiency in the Cloud with Office 365

Cloud based services offer businesses the opportunity to subscribe to the latest software technology without having to pay out every time you need to update your software or move to a new platform.

Microsoft are juggernauts in the software industry and are making strikes in the cloud based software marketplace. With Office 365, you and your staff can have Microsoft's world renowned office suite right at your fingertips anytime, anywhere.

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Jenny Howell 21st June 2016 6:37 am