Watch Out for Ads! Disqus Comments Have Gone 'Premium'

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I've always been a big advocate for Disqus as a commenting system.

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I've even written blog posts about why I use it instead of native commenting systems on WordPress and Squarespace, or other comment system apps!

However, last month the company has changed their settings so that you can no longer disable advertisements for free. This means that if you DON'T want these huge ugly spammy adverts to display above or below the comments section on your blog or website, you need to sign up to their monthly 'Plus Plan' of around £8 per month.

Not cool.

I'm really disappointed about this, obviously. As a business owner myself I understand that they need to make money and this is how they have been planning to monetise their platform, but I think it is a shame that they've gone about it with these types of ads and not things that could be relevant for readers that they could still use to monetise.

Anyway, at the moment there seems to be a small loophole for 'small, personal, non-commercial' sites which means you can upgrade to the Plus Plan and remove the ads for free. You can find this option when you scroll down the plan bullet points.

However I'm not sure how they will be enforcing this as I sign up for this option without any verification process, so this probably isn't a long term solution!

If you're concerned and you want to change back to WordPress' native comment system for the time being, follow the steps in this article to do that, and check out this article for some recommendations of other comment apps for WordPress.

I'm yet to find an article on migrating old Disqus comments back to Squarespace's native comment system, but hopefully there will be some help on this soon.

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How do you manage your blog's comments?

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A Few Recent Projects & Updates

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This has been my first month back and publishing content on my blog in a long while!

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Life got in the way, and for the last few months, blogging just hasn't been a priority for me. It actually takes a surprising amount of time to come up with content, do research, write articles, create sharable images for the articles and promote to your followers, and sometimes your time is simply better spent elsewhere.

However, with a bit of newfound focus and a clearer direction, I'm back with some updates and recent projects to share!

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Recent Projects

Below are a few recent projects I've been working on that have launched over the past few months! 

Lucie Rose Donlan

Cornwall-based surf and lifestyle model, Lucie, wanted a fresh new look for her portfolio website. It was also really important that she'd be able to upload new images and make edits herself quickly and easily. I love the minimal clean look of the new Squarespace site!

Tracy Short & Co

Tracy asked me to help her design a fresh brand and website for her new executive search and career coaching agency, and as soon as we completed the moodboard, I knew I was going to love working on the design. I also love how quirky and unique the website turned out too!

Anchor & Sea

After working on another brand for Neil last year, him and his partner came back to me to work on a modern, adventure-inspired logo and brand for their new surf jewellery/lifestyle brand. I instantly fell in love with the brief as it's exactly the type of items I would buy for myself, and I was excited to work with the coast and ocean as my inspiration!

Images via: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9

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A New Focus

After taking some time to review where my biggest creative blocks were coming from, and evaluating what I truly love doing in my day to day business, I've decided to put more focus on website design.

I still am truly passionate about creating great-looking modern brands for small businesses, but I have scaled down my brand service to a simplified 'Logo Design package', which will provide my clients with the essentials they need to get started with their branding (ie. a core logo, colour palette & fonts). This not only makes my services much more accessible for freelancers and startups, but also means I can focus on my true love... Squarespace website design!

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This Blog & My Content

Between 2016 and 2017, I consistently published at least one full-length, high value post each week here on this blog. That's a year of incredible content and determination on my part! But it was taking hours out of my week, and my ability to conjure up new and well-researched content that regularly burnt out in Summer 2017 - hence the lack of posts since then.

So I'm scaling this down too. I'll be publishing the occasional 'portfolio' post to alert my followers of my recent work, but other than that I will be keeping things short and sweet here! I'll be posting industry news and things I think my clients and following should know and will find interesting, and yes maybe I will write the odd long-form in-depth article every now and then! But I won't be putting any pressure on myself to do this, instead so that I can focus on my work and projects and the things I truly love doing.

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do it with passion or not at all.

= my new mantra

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HTTPS Encryption: A Necessity for Your Website

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Securing your website with an SSL certificate is now more important than ever.

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For years, Google has been pushing all website owners to adopt HTTPS encryption, marking HTTPS websites with a green 'secure' padlock icon in browsers to show users that the website is secure.

It started out with being a necessity for online shop owners and any website that had a 'login' system that required people to enter sensitive information like passwords or credit card data. However, for the past couple of years, Google has been encouraging all website owners to move over to HTTPS, and has even been favouring secure websites in search rankings.

So it's already been important to secure your website for SEO reasons, but Google have just announced that their Chrome browser will be marking non-HTTPS websites as 'not secure' from July. This means that if your website doesn't have an SSL certificate, Google Chrome will be essentially warning users that your website isn't trustworthy. NOT GOOD!

If you haven't already, you should therefore be be prioritising getting your site secured as soon as possible. Luckily, if you're using Squarespace, you don't have to do anything! SSL certificates are included with all of their pricing plans and are already set up as standard when you buy or connect your domain with your Squarespace website.