Thank you

I want to thank you for reading our blog and visiting our self-harm awareness website.

It means a lot to me, to have engaged and interested visitors. It means a lot to Jules and me when we hear back from members or visitors who tell us that our stories, articles and information has affected them, that they recognise themselves in our words, and we've made them think.

I hope FirstSigns provides fantastic inspiration and information. Obviously, we don't give advice or tell people what to do - that would be awful, after all, I still struggle with the urge to self-injure, and even when I haven't hurt myself for a year or so, that doesn't mean I've got all the answers.

Answers come from within, from you yourself. And I'd love to hear some from you.

Would you care to use the comments system below to tell us how you feel about FirstSigns and the information we provide? What could we do to improve our services?

Thanks for visiting, please let us know your thoughts.


Wedge

Happy 6th Birthday LifeSIGNS!

As you know, this month LifeSIGNS celebrates its 6^th Birthday; how much do you know about our little organisation?

I remember LifeSIGNS back in the early days when I was a member of the first Message Board. I can't remember my username back then, but I do remember the name Wedge! Of course I never knew at the time that one day I would be working alongside the man himself, but even from the beginning I knew that LifeSIGNS was something special, and it's certainly had a huge impact on my life.

I'd spent so many years struggling with my own self-injury, but I was in a silent and lonely world where I didn't even know the words self-injury existed. It wasn't until I discovered LifeSIGNS that I realised I wasn't alone, I wasn't the only person hurting themselves, and there was help and support out there. Because of LifeSIGNS I felt empowered to face up to my own self-injury, 'come out' to my loved ones and seek support. So you see, I am living proof that not only has LifeSIGNS been in existence for 6 years now, but it has been helping people all that time too. Literally tens of thousands of people.

I've not been a constant at LifeSIGNS for all these six years. I've left and re-joined three or four times over the years. But I always felt myself drawn back, whether it was for some extra support, some ideas for distraction techniques or simply because it was somewhere I always felt I belonged and would be welcomed. The one reassuring factor each time I returned was the presence of Wedge. LifeSIGNS has changed so much over the years, but Wedge has always been here, and that in itself makes it all the more special.

The last time I rejoined two years ago, it was for a specific purpose, and that was to finally give something back to Wedge and his organisation that had done so much for me. It took me a while to persuade him that I wanted to help, but I was so proud when I first accompanied Wedge to a conference last year as a Director of LifeSIGNS and heard him speak, and I'm both proud and honoured to be here now working alongside him for LifeSIGNS as we celebrate our Sixth Birthday.

Thank you LifeSIGNS and, more importantly, thank you Wedge – for without you the LifeSIGNS we all know and love today would not exist.

Please do join us for our 6^th Birthday Facebook Event – you don't have to go anywhere or do anything – it's just a show of support.

Happy 6^th Birthday and I hope I'm here to celebrate the next six too!

Anger

Anger is a valid emotion, and something we can use to help us direct our energies - but it's also the cause of a great deal of stress and it can sometimes seem to control us.

The Mental Health Foundation have launched a little website to tackle anger management, and you may well enjoy going through their quizzes and videos: www.yourboilingpoint.org.uk

The April edition of our Newsletter, LifeSHINES, will also discuss anger, so I hope you've signed up to receive our beautiful, popular and free e-newsletter?

At LifeSIGNS, we believe that self-expression (and even 'venting') are incredibly important, and we help people express themselves just a little by providing our Message Board, and publishing people's art work and videos, as well as their letters.

So get creative and don't let anger be the defining characteristic of your life!

SIAD causes strain on our little server

You know that websites are hosted on a server yeah? And you get that, when a surfer clicks on a web page, the page is sent from the server to the person's browser, and that the 'sending' uses up maybe 80 - 200KB of data bandwidth? (Y'know, web pages are computer files, and files have a certain size measured in Kilobytes [KB].)

Well, with all the extra people searching for Self-Injury Awareness Day and self-injury information, LifeSIGNS has had loads more visitors than usual! In fact, hits are up by about 40% over January's statistics - we've had so many extra visitors in February that, just now, as we approach SIAD (1st March) our little server is beginning to struggle under the weight of demand!

We often deliver nearly a Gigabyte of web pages each and every day, but throughout February, we've been having loads of days that consistently require a Gigabyte of bandwidth or more each day! Just to put that in perspective, A Gigabyte is about a thousand Megabytes, and you know how many files you can get on a Megabyte don't you? (A Megabyte is about a thousand Kilobytes).

So, at the moment, it's as if our little server is delivering 8,500 MP3s a month - that's how much data is being served to our visitors.

Of course, our little server has to look after a lot of the LifeSIGNS services, we've always kept it busy; it makes our Message Board work, manages our large Newsletter Mailing List, and looks after our main website and all the videos, documents and art that our site offers. So it's kept pretty busy.

I'm happy to pay for our server, and happy to look after the little fella, it's my contribution to the LifeSIGNS voluntary organisation.

If you'd like to help me pay for future upgrades to our little server, (who, bless it, is under some stress) then please make a donation to LifeSIGNS and use the 'note' section to say "for the little server" :)

Wedge

Google loves LifeSIGNS more than ever!

I just noticed, after years of Google giving LifeSIGNS a PageRank score of 4 out of 10, we've just gone up to 5!

Check for yourself!

Only the largest, most popular websites have a PageRank of 9 or 10, for LifeSIGNS to get 5 must mean that some decent, high-quality websites are linking to us - sites like the BBC and other well-known trusted sites.

Every website that links to LifeSIGNS at www.lifesigns.org.uk helps let Google know where to place us in its search pages, and I'm dead excited to see that we've gone up to 5 now - I never expected to get above the very respectable 4 :)

Why is this so exciting? OK, it isn't really, but as the webmaster for the LifeSIGNS Voluntary Organisation, I like to see our website progress, and I respect Google's systems.

Read more about what PageRank is.

The Best Message Board

We have the best Message Board! We really do, and here's why.

1. We've got a large, vibrant and friendly community of supportive people who understand self-injury – and we've got a great Moderator team to run the Board, keep it safe, and to help Members around the forums;

2. We've just upgraded the software of our Message Board; it's brand new and top quality. Here are some of the features you'll find on the LifeSIGNS Message Board that you just won't find elsewhere:

• Accessible and easy to use on any screen-size, even your mobile phone;

• Upload images directly within your post, have them shown as 'attachments' or as clickable thumbnails within the body of your post;

• Privately add 'Friends' to your profile so you can quickly find out what they've been up to and keep in touch;

• As well as images, you can insert Flash into your posts and signatures;

• Avatars and Custom Ranks come as standard of course;

• 'Update messages' when you are replying to a post, so you know if someone else is replying at the same time;

• Private Messaging has been overhauled and improved like you wouldn't believe; you can customise your folders and choose your own settings;

• You have a personal ‘user control panel’ from where you can easily access all areas of your account;

• Members can easily 'flag' a post as inappropriate to Moderators, helping keep our Board safe and saving you time sending PMs. It also means that the first mod online will deal with the issue, rather than waiting for the specific mod you PMed to log in;

• Extra features for Mods and Admin which will enable us to keep the board, and you, especially safe;

• No spam, no fake accounts, just friendly support every day of the year – there's almost always a few people online (in the UK and abroad).

Wedge

Why we've banned hotmail and msn

Well it's not that we've banned hotmail and msn email, it's just that they don't work for us anymore.

Microsoft have implemented some new email controls called 'Sender Policy Framework' (SPF) to help combat spam and protect Microsoft from the deluge of unwanted emails flying around the world; SPF is a good idea, but Microsoft have stuck it on to hotmail and msn without much consultation with other email providers around the world.

LifeSIGNS emails, ones that end in @lifesigns.org.uk, are no longer delivered to hotmail and msn addresses – this isn't about personal spam filters, our email doesn't even get that far, they're simply undelivered. We have checked with our own email providers and they have not installed SPF and are evaluating it alongside other 'authentication' systems.

I can say with confidence that SPF is negatively affecting hundreds of thousands of small companies and organisations, probably millions.

Lots of people email LifeSIGNS, think how awful it will be when a hotmail user doesn't receive a response from us – they'll assume we're ignoring them! Well, there's nothing we can do about that, but we can help our members keep in touch with us by asking you to change your email on our Message Board to something other than hotmail / msn and to re-register for our Newsletter, LifeSHINES, as soon as possible.

We suggest people sign up for a free Gmail account from Google; it's an exceptional service that will not only give you great email, but it may well help simplify your life as its unique inbox offers a lot of tools for keeping on top of email without any stress.

“But Wedge,” I hear you cry, “I can still get LifeSIGNS emails from the Board OK, and I use hotmail!” Well, I'm sure that's true, but Microsoft has thousands of email servers around the world to manage your hotmail and msn, and we might imagine that SPF has only been installed on 82% of them – but SPF will one day be installed on 100% of Microsoft servers, so you'll soon lose the ability to accept LifeSIGNS emails; without warning. So, you'll lose touch with our Newsletter, and you could even lose your Message Board account.

So, please change your email on the Message Board, and please re-register for the Newsletter now. Yes, when you change your email on the Board your account will be auto-deactivated for a short time – no need to panic, your account will be reactivated within about 20 hours – usually a lot less.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but we didn't invent SPF, and we didn't roll it out across the world without warning, Microsoft did.

Wedge

Google and LifeSIGNS

This blog post is from Danny, and we're very grateful to him for taking time to do some work for us and for writing it all up.

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On Thursday night I was invited to attend a conference laid on my Google and MediaTrust, and was able to have a peek at Google UK headquarters (which you would love Wedge, the place is so you, you need to apply for a job there!!) and it was a really cool place. Was originally a bit perturbed as I arrived rather casual as Google does not have a dress code but all (most) of the other delegates were very smartly dressed; so I just sat at the back, had some wine and watched the proceedings.

I was sat next to a lovely lady called Kate from Education for Choice, a charity that enables people to make informed choices about pregnancy and abortion. We had very involved chats about self-injury and aspects of abortion, which was informative on both parts.

It was a really cool looking building and inside seemed very informal, quite a few beanbags dotted around the place, and some deckchairs!

The evening kicked off with an introduction from the CEO of Channel 4 and then followed by some talks from Googlies ( I think that is what they called themselves… something very similar…) giving advice about how to use Google Tools and tips on how to raise awareness and build support as well as information on Google Grants. There was also some information on how Google searches are performed, which is cool to know as I am not too hot on making webpages (Wedge, all the things I picked up, I am sure you know already!)

I also got interviewed by the Community Channel with a video camera and a great big fluffy microphone… wasn’t quite prepared and don’t want to see the interview on TV, thank god I don’t think I have that channel.

So information gained includes:

Google Grants

Budget available for each grant between £1000-50,000

Grant allows for “free advertising” on google.co.uk and other international Google websites. Didn’t quite understand until the end that the grants are actually to pay for advertising and not actually real money. So it is basically just another way of giving free advertising…

Eligibility is for all non-profits

There is a lengthy application through the Google website, that takes 3 months to process the application as they are sifted through by volunteers (later learned that the volunteers are people who work for Google but they operate something called 70/20/10. This is where they do their main job 70% of the time, and then other things for 20% and 10% of their time, so some Google employees use their 10% to assess applications. Sounds good to work at Google…)

Key things to think about during application is

Who are you key audience

What is your message

What is the purpose of the grant/advertising

Basics of a natural search

Two main factors decide how page is searched

Page content

Page rank

This score is given by counting impartial links from other websites which effectively “vote” for your website.

Good way to increase rank is to post about your own site on blogs and other web mediums

Ways to find site easily

Page needs to have the right content for the search to find it

Name each page ( don’t name it as page 1 etc give it a proper name such as SIAD day on the http link)

Vary title between pages, don’t call them all home page as otherwise search is less accurate and not indexed as easily

Text body

Think about key words that need to be found by Google when writing the body

Google bots are able to find and read text but cannot read flash or images, so if there is a page with just images or flash then just type something below the image so it can be found by Google

Meta-tags (???) apparently don’t rely on Google to rank according to these

Improving accessibility

Apparently it is shown that there is a 10% drop off rate per click, so reduce the amount of clicks that need to be made before you find what you are looking for

There should be the minimum number of actions needed in order to perform major tasks

Structure pages

If page makes no sense without images then you need to enter “alt text”

Limit fancy effects

There is something called subscribed links I didn’t quite understand but apparently you can find out more about it through google.com/coop (co-op)

Some ways to improve websites

Google.com/webmasters à webmaster guidelines and resources

Can give information as to number of your pages that are linked, specific pages in Google index etc. Need to register first

You can test different copies on your landing page to improve the look and accessibility and this is all through the above website.

Google analytics

This can help you find out about converted users

Who they are

Number of converts

Where they are from

Which pages they spend most time on

What language they speak

Also helps you find out about that ones that didn’t convert and why this was

Increasing awareness and building support

Youtube

Used to engage and contact users

Can keep interactive with users by allowing them to post comments and responses

In order to use this service it is important that you have enough content (i.e. enough videos) in order that you can refresh regularly and keep users interested

Videos on your site can effectively be “hubbed” through youtube

Videos can then also be embedded on your sites. Good thing to choose option to allow others to embed the videos on their own sites in order to extend your reach

Google maps

Can be a way to organise events and meet-ups etc as you can create your own maps where photos can be added and such.

There is something called API that allows you to put the map (i.e. embed it) back onto your own site. Example was given where when pledges are given, users can add a marker to the map to say where they are from. Could be a good thing for LifeSIGNS members so you can get an idea of coverage and also good way to build community

These maps are updated real-time

IGoogle

Not really useful for LifeSIGNS. Just a way of embedding gadgets onto your own personal Google page

Danny

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Many thanks to Danny for his work, good stuff!

It's LifeSIGNS, only faster

The home page of the LifeSIGNS website is a bit busy I admit; there's a lot going on and I sometimes wish it was a bit less complex; but then, there's so much on offer!

Anyway, while I haven't simplified our homepage yet, I have made it load faster for you! It now displays in your browser in half the time, yep, it's 50% faster now thanks to some streamlining I've done.

Hope you like the new faster us!

Also, here's a little graphic that shows the main areas of our home page.