LeGa Design Group

web design for nonprofits + small businesses

Where can I get high quality stock images for free?

In many cases my clients don’t have the budget to hire a photographer to shoot their own website images so affordable stock imagery is a great fallback option when you need high resolution images for impact on your website.

Here are a few of my favorite free (and affordable) resources for stock images:

Unsplash (recently purchased by Getty images)
Pixabay.com
Pexels.com
StockSnap.io

Image by PicsbyFran from Pixabay

Death to Stock – This site has a paid subscription model but if you scroll down to the bottom of the homepage, there is a place to sign up for occasional free photo packs. I have accumulated several of these photo packs over the years and they have come in handy when I am looking for less “posed” photos.

Death to Stock photo – Slow Down pack

Eye for Ebony has some great affordable options if you are looking for beautiful stock images featuring people of color. Most of their themed packs are $15/each for 25 high quality images.

Do you have a favorite stock image website I haven’t mentioned? Feel free to share it with me.

Spam Alert! Contact Form message recommending SpellScan.com

I’ve seen several notifications recently like the one below posing as a “helpful” website comment:

“It looks like you’ve misspelled the word “compacity” on your website. I thought you would like to know :). Silly mistakes can ruin your site’s credibility. I’ve used a tool called SpellScan.com in the past to keep mistakes off of my website.

The misspelled word varies per email and is never a word I have found anywhere on my sites. The names have included Karen Allen, Beth Collins, and Randy Shields and all are accompanied by fake email addresses.

Ignore this message – it’s spam.

Sharing passwords securely

When working with clients, I often need access to hosting accounts, domain registrars, premium plug-in sites, and other password-protected accounts. Sending these logins over email and text is not recommended but sometimes a phone call isn’t feasible as passwords can be long and complicated and too easy to write down incorrectly.

I use LastPass to manage all my user names and passwords but what if my client doesn’t have an account with them?

I recently discovered a free website service called Reveal It! that can be used for exactly this purpose. Simply type your message into the box and the website generates a link for you to send to the recipient. As soon as that person reads the message, it’s deleted from the system. Only the person with the link can access the message and it can only be viewed once.

I’ll be using this service more frequently in the future when it comes to sharing sensitive login information with my clients.

Typeface x-height vs. point size

I came across an article recently from MyFonts.com that helpfully explains the differences between ‘point’ size – which includes the ascenders (e.g., d, f) and descenders (e.g. q, p) – and x-height which is the standard height of the main letters (e.g. a, e, o, s).

The x-height variation among font types can greatly effect the readability of a specific font at certain sizes – which has important outcomes for site design. Download the PDF below to read more.

Download the PDF.

Something a little different: online catering order forms

Last week I was contacted by a Golden Corral franchisee owner to create online order forms to help them bring in some much needed revenue as the restaurant has been closed for eat-in dining for several months due to COVID.

My client didn’t need a complicated or expensive online ordering system, they wanted to keep it simple with downloadable PDFs for each day of the week with variable menu options and specials.

I used Adobe InDesign to create the PDFs with clear instructions and plenty of space to hand-write names and contact information. If you are in the market for some printable online order forms, please contact me.

Phishing Scam Notice (Joe Miller from DomainWorld)

Two clients have recently contacted me after receiving the following email / contact form submission from “Joe Miller” requesting payment for an e-book submission. The email includes multiple links to make a “secure online payment” and mentions the target’s URL multiple times with the word cancellation in all caps to make it seem like they need to pay this person to keep their domain.

I have included a sample message below, your version may vary but the gist will be the same — urgency and confusing language. Please ignore this message if you receive it or contact me if you have questions!

From: Joe Miller <info@domainworld.com>
IMPORTANCE NOTICE
Notice#: 491343
Date: 2020-08-30    

Expiration message of your [URL]
EXPIRATION NOTIFICATION
CLICK HERE FOR SECURE ONLINE PAYMENT: https://gohostingdomains.com/?n=[URL]&r=a&t=1598733535&p=v1

This purchase expiration notification [URL] advises you about the submission expiration of domain [URL] for your e-book submission.

The information in this purchase expiration notification [URL] may contains CONFIDENTIAL AND/OR LEGALLY PRIVILEGED INFORMATION from the processing department from the processing department to purchase our e-book submission. NON-COMPLETION of your submission by the given expiration date may result in CANCELLATION of the purchase.

ACT IMMEDIATELY. The submission notification [URL] for your e-book will EXPIRE WITHIN 2 DAYS after reception of this email.

Update on October 2, 2020: I received an email from a worried website owner asking me if ignoring this email will somehow harm their website. It won’t. I recommend going to this link: https://whois.domaintools.com/ to make sure you know where your domain is registered and when it expires as well as where your site is hosted. It’s good to have this information handy to help figure out which emails are legitimately related to your domain.