1st Nov 2021
COP26 is officially underway. Now is the time that we want to see world leaders make real commitments to reducing carbon emissions. Amongst other means, two proposed measures to achieve this are to accelerate the phase-out of coal and encourage investment in renewables.
There will need to be some bold pledges from those in power, and waiting for them to take action can leave us feeling a little powerless. However, as we know, every change can make a difference.
In our world of web design and website hosting, we know of a few ways that small changes to our online activities can collectively have a big, positive impact.
Here’s what we all can do:
Why should we do these things?
Despite the internet appearing to be an intangible thing, it is very much made up of physical resources and consumes huge amounts of energy, 24 hours a day. Read more about this in our previous articles...
How using Green Hosting can help reduce carbon emissions and exercise consumer influence
Reducing Waste in Our Digital Lives
16th Apr 2021
We talk a lot about the environmental credentials of Green Hosting but we know there are other, arguably more important, things to consider when it comes to choosing a web host.
Being an online business ourselves we completely understand that entrusting your website with anyone is a big deal. You need to know that the service is secure and reliable and crucially that you can access technical support when you need it.
How do we know this? We've been providing web hosting for 16 years and so we've definitely got the experience behind us to know what clients really want the most.
When clients tell us how happy they are with our clear communication and straightforward support, that they were relieved at how smoothly we transferred their website and e-mails or or that they appreciated the quick set up, this shows us what matters to you.
Here are a some of the things our clients said about us:
"Thank YOU for providing such a brilliant service! Honestly, before starting Ethical Revolution all those years ago I used to provide web solutions for businesses and so I have had plenty of experience of web hosts. Even without the amazing green credentials you guys are the best!"
Sam Attard
ethicalrevolution.co.uk
"I'm really impressed with the service I received from Green Hosting. I was nervous about moving my site over in case anything got lost or broken but they guided me through the whole process, answered all my questions in plain English and kept me updated at every stage. They handled the whole switch over for me and it went smoothly. Not only have they made my site more sustainable but it's actually much faster now too!"
Sian Conway-Wood
ethicalhour.co.uk
You're a dream, thank you, best service I've ever had in my life from a hosting company!
Holly Rose
hollyrose.eco
We’d REALLY recommend Green Hosting as they’ve been fantastic throughout this whole process.
Sarah Webb
unlimited.earth
"So great to know that my website won't be running on fossil fuels - and to top it off they were incredibly quick and helpful with set-up"
Rachel Baker
theethicalcopywriter.com
If you are looking to move your website to Green Hosting then do get in touch. To see other websites using our Green Hosting, take a look at our Clients page.
Please note that Wix, Squarespace & Shopify are all closed web platforms and websites built with these systems are not able to be moved elsewhere.
26th Mar 2021
Did you know that we have Green Hosting badges for our clients to display on their websites?
If you are using our hosting service, go ahead and tell the world that you have chosen to power your site 100% by the wind!
We have a range of different sized badges and an option of full colour or grey and white. To use a badge, hop over to our support page and copy the code for the badge of your choice. If you would like some help then do get in touch with us through our helpdesk.
19th Feb 2021
Social media is pretty much a standard part of most businesses’ online marketing by now but users’ experience of it is far from standardised. This could be due to the content itself, how it's posted, or both. For people who have disabilities it may be difficult to access social media in many ways, which at best could be frustrating and at worst be a complete barrier.
With some forward planning and a few adjustments to the way we prepare and post, we could be providing a whole different and much more inclusive experience to many users.
This is a whistle-stop tour to highlight the different aspects of our social media posts we could (should) be making more accessible and inclusive. I'll say right now that we are learning too and will be implementing these things in our posts going forward.
At the end of this article I've added links to some really great guides and deeper information by the experts in this subject. There's a video from AbilityNet, which is very much worth a watch too.
Images are a big deal in our social media, especially in Instagram where it’s all about that engaging picture. For visitors who cannot see images, a useful and concise description is needed in the form of ‘Alt Text’.
Facebook creates automatically generated alt text, which you will need to check and edit, for Instagram and Twitter you can add alt text:
Editing alt text in Facebook
Adding alt text in Twitter
Adding alt text in Instagram
In some instances, alt text may not be sufficient to describe your image, especially if your image includes text (more about that below). In these situations you could add an image description into your post text or link through to the full information on your website.
For podcasts or audio-only content, a transcript should be included. If this isn’t possible within the post itself then you could provide a link to the full transcript wherever it is available online.
Transcripts can also be added to YouTube videos as can closed captions. Google provide useful guides on adding your own closed captions and creating a transcript file for YouTube videos.
Subtitles vs Captions?
Subtitles covey only the dialogue in the video and captions convey all of the essential audio (e.g. sound effects, music etc as well as dialogue). So you need to decide which will be most useful for the video you’re publishing.
AbilityNet have a great guide on this and adding captions to various platforms, which in the video is discussed at 26:50 and is on page 9 of the transcript document.
An audio description is useful for videos where visual content conveys meaning or information. However, you may be able to plan your video in advance so they’re not needed.
The W3C provide clarification on audio descriptions, when to use them and how to add them
Custom fonts
Custom fonts, which aren't included as standard on the social media platform can be difficult to read, due to the letter forms. Additionally, on social media custom fonts are are ignored by text readers and assistive technology. Using the fonts as provided means a better user experience and reduces the risk of your content not being read at all.
Text in images
If possible it's always best to avoid using text in images at all. However, it is a great way to make an impact, especially on Instagram. When using text in images, it is important to use a legible font that won't become illegible when zoomed to a much larger size. Also choose a simple or sans-serif font, where individual characters are easily distinguished. And importantly, ensure that the font colour and background colour contrast well so that the text is clear and strong. WebAim provide a very useful colour contrast checker which helps you easily choose highly contrasting colour combinations.
We can get a little carried away with hashtags sometimes, trying to hit as many key tags as possible. However, we need to take care about how we use them. Camel caps not only make hashtags much more legible but also allows text readers to distinguish individual words within the tag. To demonstrate camel case vs non-camel case, see the following:
#ThisIsCamelCase
#thisisnotcamelcase
Disability Rights Fund also advise putting hashtags in comments, separate from the post text. However others suggest hashtags within the post are OK if used in context within the sentence.
How we love an emoji to bring personality to our posts! However, for some people emojis can make the caption too ‘busy’ and difficult to read. They can also problems for those using text readers if used excessively and in the middle of sentences. This is because the text readers announce the name of the emoji and as you can imagine may make a post seem nonsensical. AbilityNet provide a brilliant example of this in their example video of emojis being read aloud (at 11:33).
This is a huge topic in itself and not as clear cut as making technical adjustments. However, two important things to be aware of are:
Here are some very useful resources which provide much more detail:
WebAim - People with Disabilities on the Web
Ability Net - How to Do Accessible Social Media (webinar and Q&As)
UK Government Communication Service - Planning, creating and publishing accessible social media campaigns
RNIB - Making Your Social Media Accessible
Disability Rights Fund - Creating Accessible Social Media for Those With DeafBlindness
Hootsuite - Inclusive Design for Social Media
W3C - Making Audio and Video Media Accessible
Emojipedia - See all of the different names of emojis
Self-Defined - A dictionary of words which may be not be inclusive
Gov.UK - Inclusive language: words to use and avoid when writing about disability
Stroke Association - Accessible Information Guidelines (Making information accessible for people with aphasia)
5th Feb 2021
Many of our clients use WordPress, it's an extremely popular platform allowing much flexibility and creativity, without requiring coding experience. Very often clients who want to use our hosting service have an existing WordPress website, which they want to keep, but prefer an enviromentally conscious host - that's us!
We understand that the idea of moving your website from one host to another can be incredibly daunting, so we offer a service that takes the work off your hands. We can transfer your existing WordPress website (and e-mails) from your current host or from wordpress.com (where WordPress itself is the host) over to us. This is done with the utmost care and minimal disruption to ensure everything switches quickly and safely.
Sian Conway from #EthicalHour
"I'm really impressed with the service I received from Green Hosting. I was nervous about moving my site over in case anything got lost or broken but they guided me through the whole process, answered all my questions in plain English and kept me updated at every stage. They handled the whole switch over for me and it went smoothly. Not only have they made my site more sustainable but it's actually much faster now too!"
Holly Rose
"You're a dream, thank you, best service I've ever had in my life from a hosting company!"
Laura Turner from Fuzzfox
"Thank you, I'm so happy to be powered by the wind now! So lovely to deal with real and wonderful people too who went above and beyond to make the whole process of switching a breeze (pun intended!)"
Sam Attard from Ethical Revolution
"Thank YOU for providing such a brilliant service! Honestly, before starting Ethical Revolution all those years ago I used to provide web solutions for businesses and so I have had plenty of experience of web hosts. Even without the amazing green credentials you guys are the best!"
If you're thinking of switching your WordPress website to us, feel free to drop us a line first so we can take talk it through, take a look at your website and get a good idea of what needs to be done. If you've already made your mind up that's great too - Go ahead and sign up for a hosting plan and let us know you'd like to switch.
The next step is to agree a good a day and time to do the work. We agree a mutual time so that we can be in contact with you during the transfer if we need to and ensure everything runs smoothly. We'll ask you to change some settings for your domain name, or we can do that for you too if you prefer. The transfer will be handled by us and we'll let you know when everything is complete.
The price starts at £25 for a website transfer and varies depending on whether you'd like to transfer e-mail accounts too and if you're coming from another host or wordpress.com. Get in touch with us and we can let you know the price for your transfer.
Because WordPress is such a hugely popular platform (with around 400 million users) it can be a rife target for exploitation from hackers. However, there are ways to boost your website's security by using a few techniques to make it difficult for them to gain access. We have a provided some guidance on how to add these security measures but if you'd like us to do it for you, that's no problem, just give us a shout.
If you don't already have a website but would like to have WordPress installed for you with the security features, then we can do that too.
Hop over to our Clients page to see who else is using Green Hosting and for some more lovely feedback about our service.
Green Hosting works handsomely with:
Auto-installer now available on all accounts
