I’ve thrown some quick-fire questions at the poor blighter, and these are his answers :

1) Describe yourself in a tweet (140 chars)

Like in an email, but with slightly worse grammar. In other words, random!

2) What made you get into web development?

I loved the interactivity you could get just with a simple set of hyperlinks and from there it exploded to learning PHP (creating html on the fly?! omg!) to having my own blog style website to full blown website applications. (Coming soon!)

3) Rumour has it you don’t drink tea or coffee, is this true?

Indeed it is, hot drinks in general are out – it’s always water when working, I find it helps when looking at screens all day.

4) Mini Cheddars, Hula Hoops or NikNaks?

NikNaks – Rib ‘n’ Saucy flavour, it used to be all about the Scampy ‘n’ Lemon then I grew up!

5) Stairs or Lift?

Stairs where possible, I don’t consider myself to have a phobia, but they are quite enclosed spaces aren’t they?!

6) Mac or PC (careful now )

Mac when working, browsing, twittering – PC for games.

7) Jazz or Death metal?

Hello, and welcome to Jazz club. Great!

8) Favourite colour

Vermilion – it’s a shade of red so close to orange but not quite. Think Space Marine Blood Angels red and you’d be close.

9) What your biggest goal for 2013?

To move from “small fry” to “chip of the old block” at Codepotato!

I promised in my webinar to make my slides available to others to download, so go ahead and click the first slide below to download to your machine.

And finally, have a great weekend all!

Ignoring my own emotions on the software, I cannot see the logic behind their decision. Sure, more people probably use Photoshop but without putting to fine a point on it, Fireworks was MADE for the web, where PS has simply been shoe-horned into being a tool that *could* be used for designing on the web.

Before the fan-wars start again, Photoshop is primarily a bitmap image editor. That’s as clear as day, and thats it’s heritage. Fireworks has always been a vector-based image editor, with export tools that made it much more applicable for web design than tarting up photos of kittens shot on your Nikon.

The announcement from Adobe was this :

Over the last couple of years, there has been an increasing amount of overlap in the functionality between Fireworks and both existing and new programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Edge Reflow

Say what? You are joking right?

Ignoring Photoshop for a moment, Illustrator is a step in the right direction as it’s vector based with non-destructive filters and so on, but lacks the export prowess that Fireworks has always had, from the Macromedia days. It’s a great tool, but again more suitable for illustrators (go figure, eh!) than web designers.

They then suggest using Edge reflow; a product that isn’t even finished! Without sounding like a broken record, it simply isn’t ready to be used day-to-day by professionals. Given that it’s still in development, it’s very likely to change and there’s a possibility that it might never get finished either. Or at least that’s how I feel now. How long until Photoshop gets dropped in favour for their next-in-line?

This is a really sad day for those in the community that have been proudly using Adobe Fireworks (and accepting the abuse from Photoshop fan-boys!) for all these years.

The light at the end of the tunnel is twofold; from next month I’ll be cancelling my creative cloud subscription with Adobe and taking up a separate licence with Typekit (the only other aspect of my CC subscription that I use).

I’ll also be converting my web agency to use Sketch.app from Bohemian Coding from now on. I’ve already been using it for a little while now, and it’s speed and ease-of-use make up for the smallish learning curve required for those familiar with Adobe Fireworks.

Thanks Adobe for pushing me to support a smaller, more responsive and agile designing partner that actually gives a fuck about it’s users.

Great news; I’m on the hunt for the first proper employee of codepotato!

The time has finally come to grow the business and some lucky so-and-so is going to land themselves one amazing opportunity if they’re made of the right stuff.

Codepotato has been growing at an unbelievable rate over the last 18 months and the need has arisen to take on a Junior PHP developer. If you know a bit of php and want an opportunity to shine then strap yourself in, this is going to be an amazing blog post!

What am I after?

Good question! I need someone who is comfortable with the basic syntax of PHP. If you know the difference between an array and an object, hurrah, you’re #winning. If you also have experience with WordPress or PHP frameworks of any kind you’re full of what Charlie Sheen would refer to as “tiger blood”. Legend.

More important than your current skill-set is your desire to learn and your passion for the web. If you are driven and have a natural interest in the web, but think you maybe lack on knowledge at the moment, no problemo, you’re equally welcome to apply.

What will you be doing?

Not only will I teach you how to make a killer coffee using a french press, you’ll also be working day-in-day-out on some pretty awesome projects.

We work within a super-cool niche and the projects vary from WordPress sites (that push it to it’s limits) to custom-coded web applications that revolutionise our clients’ businesses. In short, you’ll never have a dull day!

You’ll also be helping out on some top secret [codepotato] projects but I can’t talk about that, as they’re top secret.

Where would you work?

You would work with me in our swanky shared office-space in sunny Emsworth. With 8 pubs within walking distance, kick-ass sandwich shops that deliver and award winning butchers literally around the corner you’re guaranteed to get fat and enjoy working in Emsworth.

Our office has a fully operational kitchen, a full-size fridge freezer (for chilling your diet coke and Fab lollies) and a view straight on to the mill pond. We even have a shower in case you want to cycle in to the office, too.

Parking is limited locally, but you can park across the mill pond like the rest of those that commute to Emsworth.

What would you use?

How does a 27″ quad-core iMac with a 2.1 creative speaker setup, DJ headphones and an ergonomic chair sound to you? Not forgetting the low-profile Apple keyboard and magic mouse combined with a gaming mousemat. Beast just doesn’t quite do it justice. This’ll be your day-to-day workhorse.

The important stuff

By now you’re probably dreaming of BBQs by the mill pond in the summer and that beast of an iMac, but you need to understand what you’re going to be paid for ensuring the stunning location and kit!

This role is full-time, and will have a salary of around £15,000 a year (depending on experience) with 25 days holiday.

How to apply

It couldn’t be simpler. Just email sayhi [at] codepotato [dot] co [dot] uk and introduce yourself. If you’ve got links to work you’ve completed, feel free to include that on the email. I’m not a lover of the traditional CV, so feel free to innovate in what ever way you want.

Closing date is 14th May 2013. Good luck!

If you’re a creative in and around Emsworth and like curry, this could be for you!

We were wondering how many of you lovely creative types would be up for meeting up at Spice Village in town to knock back a few beers (or diet coke’s for the dev’s around us) and numerous plates of “Ruby Murray”.

If this sounds like your kind of thing, leave a comment or pop me an email to gareth@codepotato.co.uk and we’ll work out the demand and possible dates between us all.

So what’s the problem, and what is a botnet attack?

Some bored teenager has written a virus that has infected a number of PCs around the world. This virus doesn’t delete your files once installed on your PC but instead sits there idly topping up it’s sun-tan until it receives instructions to do something.

In this case, the instruction it’s received is to try and crack into WordPress sites on the web. It does this by visiting the login URL (wp-login.php) and then pre-populates the username with “admin”. The virus then makes multiple attempts to log in using standard dictionary words. If it gets in, it simply records that it has and does nothing else, yet. If it can’t, it simply moves on to the next site on it’s list.

This initial botnet attack doesn’t do anything malicious but that doesn’t mean that it wont eventually. Acting now will secure your site from similar attacks in the future.

Golly, how do I fix this, or check if I could be cracked into?

Easy as pie!

First of all, if you login to your WordPress site with the username “admin” you’re doing it all wrong! You’re what I’m going to casually refer to as a high-risk category.

If you don’t login with the username “admin” it would still be worth checking if a user exists on your site with that username, and getting rid of it.

I log in with the username “admin”

Put down that cup of tea, and run through these instructions :

1. Log in to your WordPress website with your current login details. 
2. Go to the “Users” tab, and click the “Add New” button.
3. Create a new user with a different username and importantly, set the “Role” of that user to “Administrator”. Once again, choose a secure password!
4. Once the user has been created, log out of your WordPress site.
5. Once you’re back at the login form, log in with the user you just created.
6. When you’re back in your site, go to the “Users” tab again and click on “All Users”.
7. This time, delete the “admin” user. It’ll ask you who you would like to assign the pages and blog posts you’ve written under that account to, and select the user you just created.
8. Sit back, and finish that cup of tea. You’re protected!

I don’t login with the username “admin”, what do I need to do?

By this point you’ve probably finished the cup of tea you were drinking on the first instructions, so stop working for a moment and follow this :

1. Log in to your WordPress website with your current login details.
2. Click on the “Users” tab and use the search tool to see if a user exists with the username “admin”.
3. If an account exists, check to see if there’s another account on the site set to the role of “Administrator”. If so, go ahead to point 4. If not, follow points 2 and 3 above.
4. Delete the “admin” user. It’ll ask you who you would like to assign the pages and blog posts you’ve written under that account to, and select your account, or another user with the role of “Administrator”.
5. You’re done!

Parting thoughts

It’s worth mentioning here that you should also keep an eye on any upgrades that are available to your WordPress site. WordPress is frequently updated to improve it’s security and add new features. Having an up-to-date site is half the battle won against hackers.

If you need a hand with this, talk to your super-duper web developer!

Hang on, Powerpoint? Office? Links to Newsletters?

The first thing I would like to say is that I am in no way whatsoever having a dig at any particular adviser, but instead just giving my thoughts on technology usage in general within the industry.

Now the disclaimer is out of the way, let’s get to the crux of the matter.

Everyone’s survived the certain black-death that was RDR, and this year more so than normal should be about reinventing what it is to receive or provide financial advice. Where last year and years gone by were the equivalent of digestive biscuits, this year & the years going forward should be chocolate caramel covered hobnobs.

I’m going to go all out and guess that practically every adviser uses Powerpoint, or Microsoft Office tools to “present” to their clients. It’s not revolutionary any more. It doesn’t do anything to set you apart from your competitors so you might as well be providing a list of the other local advisory businesses whilst you’re at it.

RDR was about making firms compete like proper businesses. Competing on service, price and other metrics like other businesses do. Part of that journey is finding ways to stick out above the competition. I’m going to say it again, for clarity’s sake; Powerpoint and MS Office isn’t revolutionary.

The article that surrounding the comment I’ve pictured was discussing the use of technology with high-net worth clients using wonderfully simple percentages and surprise surprise the figures don’t look pretty.

40% of 3477 clients were satisfied with how advisers used technology.

That’s painting it in a pretty light, let’s try this.

60% of your clients are less than satisfied in how you use technology with them.

Wow, 60%. What happens when you become un happy with your telephone supplier or utility provider? Do you sit there and continue to take the poor service, lack of customer loyalty, high prices and poor internet performance for the rest of your life? No? So what do you think your clients would do?

Now I’m just going to jump in here and say that I don’t think it’s the fault of the average adviser. In fact, I’m going to suggest that it’s perhaps the lack of innovation and affordable technology available or marketed to the average adviser. Sure, there’s systems out there that do this, that and all the rest, but unless the adviser knows they exist, how can they improve their game?

Technology is huge in other industries and the financial services profession is several years (if not decades) behind the bleeding edge. I appreciate a lot of this is due to regulation, but there’s still plenty of options out there to innovate and pull ahead of your competitors.

Advisers shouldn’t necessarily be looking at the larger technology providers to supply the next best thing as quite frankly, innovation isn’t as important to them any more. They’re not as “grass-roots” as they used to be and they can’t innovate so quick. I’m all for the romantic thought that advisers could work together to drive the innovation that they want and need. As if by magic, a discussion was started yesterday on Twitter about designing and developing a back-office system from scratch, based on the *actual* wants and needs of advisory firms. Imagine that!

By the end of 2014, using Powerpoint simply won’t be enough. It’s time to do something about it.

In an age where the general consumer has become more tech-savvy and nearly always attached to the internet, it’s a good time to launch something that keeps your potential clientele “stuck” to a service you’ve delivered, rather than one of your competitors.

Biased as I am, I still feel that the web is under-valued and under-used in the financial services industry. The web is a lot more than just a static website; just look at the popularity of services such as twitter, trip advisor, expedia and online banking. I think 2013 is going to be the year that this changes (a little!).

Enough of the chit-chat, on with the predictions.

Prediction 1 : The percentage of financial advisers WITHOUT a website free-falls.

I know, I know, this statement gets bounced about a lot but I so wish I had figures on this for me to throw actual numbers at you. All I can work on is what I’ve heard from others who have access to stats from their own customers and I’m confident that in 2013, companies will realise that now is the time to launch onto the web and expand their marketing efforts.

Prediction 2 : Providers will move away from the “app” culture and more into the “web-app” camp

This prediction is purely driven by cost.

With the launch of multi-touch devices like the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy there was a lot of buzz about building “apps” that advisers could download and stay connected with the provider through. Whilst that’s great, the difference in quality and user-experience between the mobile app and the provider’s website is often jarring. The number of tweets I saw last year from advisers venting something like “Oh my gosh, tried to log in to [provider_name]‘s website and can’t even find the register button” or “Pah! This portal only works in Internet Explorer 8, but i’m in Google Chrome!” pretty much sums it up.

I think that in 2013 more providers will attempt to make their own adviser portals more user-friendly and (hopefully!) even mobile-friendly, thus cutting out the need for a dedicated iPhone app (and the costs that go with it). Trust me providers, it’ll pay to smarten up your adviser-facing tech.

Prediction 3 : More consumer & service focused web-apps will launch

It was quite an eventful year last year with the ol’ direct-to-consumer web-app news, the most notable being that InvestorBee.co.uk got snapped up by Interactive Investor (great work guys!). Moneyscope also received a hefty re-design and focused a lot more on it’s marketing efforts too.

2013 will see more of these advanced web sites, that I call “web-apps” launch, providing advisers with more tools to use with their clients and a healthy dose of competition too. I think a number of advisers will see the value in converting their own proven techniques into products that other advisers can benefit from. Worth keeping an eye on http://thetechnologycoach.net for peer-reviews on what tech is worth looking at the moment, curated by @theinvestcoach.

I still see an opportunity in the market for adviser > consumer project management web-apps and lower-end CRMs that work for the smaller advisory businesses.

Prediction 4 : Social becomes the new word-of-mouth for advisers

Social media is one of those words that I reckon drives a vast number of advisers to sleep, but there’s a reason that it keeps being brought up. In 2011 and 2012, social media was used by a few advisers (in relative %) to boost their business profile and connect with other peers. My prediction is that more firms will embrace social as a primary way of gathering enquiries for their business.

I’m a twitter tart, and everyone knows that, but it’s not all about Twitter. The awesome chaps at VouchedFor have created the first “open” review-based directory of advisers. I can see their site (and others) gaining traction as the “trip advisor” for financial professionals, and this will be propelled more-so when / if they launch a more dynamic “widget” that advisers can place on their site. I think that their widget needs to be able to pull in recent reviews, and average scores but that will come, I’m sure.

Consumers love “social” and advisory firms are being pulled kicking and screaming into this too, but it’ll work a lot better for those that embrace it than those who try and hold back from it.

Props to the first adviser who actively pushes their clients to leave reviews on services like vouchedfor.co.uk each time they complete a project for them. I have a feeling it would do wonders for your business!

Prediction 5 : Template website providers will have to innovate to stay relevant

From my experience, template websites (in the financial advisory industry) have always been more attractive to the network members, but I wonder what effect RDR will have on their popularity.

One of the key principals of the whole RDR shift from my understanding was that advisory firms need to be more like a traditional business and compete on the services they deliver to their clients. The catchword here is differentiation.

Often the lure of a template website is the pre-written content that they ship with but with RDR, having the same content as hundreds of other sites doesn’t really help you stand out. Right?

If you end up having to write your own content to stay competitive and want something on a budget most open-source content management systems like WordPress or Concrete5 (which IFA Portals uses) are free and pre-designed themes can be applied at a fraction of the ongoing cost of template websites. N.B. This is not me promoting using template websites / pre-designed themes, but I’m just making you aware of the options out there. You would get far better value from something that is unique to your business, but if your budget can’t stretch that far, this is the second best.

Prediction 6 : One or more of these predictions won’t happen

I’m almost certain of this prediction, but there’s a chance it might not come off!

What do you think of my predictions? Have I missed one that is glaringly obvious? It would be interesting to look back at the end of 2013 to see how many of these actually came off.

The last two plus years I’ve been (very happily) working like a mad-man-possessed at building what I think is a successful foundation for a future-proof business. 80% of all new businesses fail within 2 years and approaching this so-called holy grail of business it’s apparent that [codepotato] is starting to work on it’s own; demanding new skills and new systems to help keep the momentum up.

Having dappled in the past with freelancers I’ve experienced first hand how wonderful and challenging the experience can be at times. Going forward, when the time comes to hire staff properly, these challenges will still be there in bucket loads but its challenges that I crave.

The past two years have been massive not only for [codepotato] but for Samantha (my wife) too; having finally got married after many, many months of Sam’s faultless planning. However, the time has come to make a big change in the way that I approach [cp]. Having spent a lot of my ‘free’ time working ‘in’ the business, it’s time to spend less time, more efficiently, working ‘on’ the business.

My plan for 2013 is to hire at least one lucky soul part time initially with a view to make them full time before the year is out. That person will be local to where I work, and will work with me in person, so that I can guarantee the work is at the standard that my clients have grown to love and expect.

In order to do that, I will need to have some form of working space that allows both me and the new employee to focus on what’s at hand, without distractions. The space I need is an office.

The hopeful side-benefits of getting an office is that I will be able to claw back some of my ‘free’ time that I’ve not experienced in literally over four years (including the time I spent building the business outside of full-time work). It’s this time that I plan on re-investing with my wife, friends and family – the people that have faultlessly supported me and the crazy idea that was [codepotato].

It’s an exciting time, more so than ever, as I think a lot will change in a relatively short amount of time.

I’m planning on kicking 2013 off with a big bang. Here’s to an upcoming office-warming party! Exciting times ahead!

A healthy number of firms entered the competition but there was one clear winner in my eyes, and that was Freedom Financial Planning (@freedom_fp).

Nick Heys, a financial planner at Freedom, took over a classroom at their local school to teach 10 – 11 year olds the basics of financial planning; savings, pensions and budgeting.

Lyn Nevett from Freedom explained the lesson :

“To really ensure the lesson conveyed the idea of saving and understanding financial planning, get our message we set some homework which took the form of a PDF Survey Quiz displayed on the front page of our website which the children could download, if they wanted to.

This quiz asked them to do some research within their family about what their Parents and Grandparents spent their pocket money on and indeed if they saved it. It also asked whether the children saved their pocket money. Once the survey quiz was completed and returned to us, we sent them a £4.99 Postal Order to save or spend as they wished!”

I was thoroughly impressed with their approach and the fact that they plan to roll this out to others schools in their local area. It was brilliant that they targeted the younger generation, and by the sound of it the children really enjoyed the lesson and were engaged in what was being explained. Great work!

Their brand spanking new Nexus 7 is on their way and I look forward to hearing more about their efforts with other schools in the future.

Well done to everyone who took part in Financial Planning Week!