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Why we should embrace the new normal of remote work

June 3, 2020 by ben_erjjio Leave a Comment

Working remotely isn’t a new trend but with Covid-19, companies have been pushed towards a new normal of remote work. People are now discovering that many of their long meetings can be summarised in emails. And that you no longer need to reserve a board room when Zoom meetings are just a few clicks away. It is clear more than ever that remote work is the new model we should be embracing.

Here are five benefits of remote work and why you should make the transition towards the digital workplace.

5 benefits of working remotely

1. Remote work increases productivity and performance

According to a 2020 Airtasker survey report of 1,004 workers’ daily habits, people who work remotely are more productive than their office counterparts. Without the hassle of commuting or the distraction of socialising over long coffee breaks, people have more time for their work.

People can focus better since they are given the responsibility to track their own time. You have more control over your time and boundaries than in an office. No one is around to hover around your desk or distract you from the tasks at hand.

2. Having a more flexible work schedule

Struggling to trust whether your employee is working? The key to working remotely is to promote transparency and trust within your team. Your team can still clock in with eight hours a day from the comfort of their own home. Flexible work schedules allow employees to put in their 8 hours depending on their productivity body clock – whether they are a night owl or an early bird. This ensures lower rates of absenteeism and increased productivity.

Technology has made it easier for us to stay connected without constant supervision. You can use time monitoring software online to help you manage remote staff without micromanaging. At erjjio, we are powered by an amazing remote team and we use Hubstaff to track and analyse the time we spend on our work. We also use Trello and Basecamp to collaborate and discuss progress on our projects. 

3. More time for fitness goals and healthier days

When you are working from the comfort of your own home you have fewer chances of catching communicable diseases. You won’t have to spend five days a week cramped inside trains or buses getting to the office and risk infecting others. Instead, you are at home and only a few steps away from your desk. So, lesser sick days! 

With a good routine and productive workflow, you’ll have more free time in your hands than usual. And you can use it for your health! Which is especially important when you spend 8 to 9 hours sedentary, working on your tasks.

Use your extra time and squeeze in a workout session after or before your shift. Compared with an office setting, you can stand up and find ways to move around more. And you can finally enjoy healthy home-cooked meals! No more fast-food cravings as an excuse for a long lunch break.

4. Remote working is budget-friendly

Speaking of fast-food cravings, you have more control over your spending habits working at home. No more expensive lunch breaks or frequent coffee breaks at Starbucks. On average, UK workers will save up to £44.78 per week by not spending money on fuel and commuting. 

Having trouble picking out an outfit to work? Remote work will also lower wardrobe expenses, especially for offices with a strict dress code. For employers, you can save money on office materials and building maintenance. Fewer people at the office means less energy and waste consumption. It’s easier to budget each month with fewer expenses.

5. Environmental benefits of remote work

Twenty-four per cent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions stem from transportation. Remote work means no commute and fewer hours on the road, which helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Global Workforce Analytics study above estimated that if companies allowed remote work for half the week, we can reduce emissions by 54 million tonnes every year. 

With everyone at home, the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a positive environmental effect across the globe. The strict social distancing restrictions in China have led to a 25% drop in the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. And with fewer vehicles on the road, Los Angeles is experiencing the longest continuous period of clear skies in decades.  

Embrace the new normal of working remotely

According to the Office of National Statistics, UK workers transitioning into remote working schemes has increased by nearly a quarter of a million over the past decade. 

The digital space is the new workplace. Technology and the Internet have enabled us to find ways to stay productive, away from a traditional office setting. Software and apps have made it easy for us to work from the comfort of our own home. With all these benefits, it’s clear that remote work is here to stay.

Filed Under: Environment, Tools

The Internet’s environmental impact & how you can help

April 10, 2020 by ben_erjjio Leave a Comment

We all spend a large amount of our time online these days and there’s no doubt that the Internet has made our lifestyles easier. We connect wirelessly with our friends, family and colleagues all over the world; we stream our favourite music, films and TV shows on-demand; data syncs instantly across our various devices.

The Cloud sounds fluffy, light and innocent – a dreamy, virtual world with limitless storage, fast WiFi connections and no apparent machinery.

It’s no surprise therefore that most people overlook the Internet’s environmental impact. Few people are aware of how the Internet actually works, or how it contributes to climate change. It’s easy not to think about the impact our endless stream of data is having.

The reality is that digital technologies account for around 4% of global carbon emissions, which sounds relatively small but is actually similar to the aviation industry’s contribution – and if the Internet were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest polluter!

How is this Internet pollution created and what can we do to help tackle it?

In this article we explore the opportunities to reduce our digital carbon emissions, with a particular focus on measuring and reducing the carbon footprint of websites.

The reality of our connections

The Internet is powered by a vast network of physical infrastructure. From data centres to transmission networks to the devices we hold in our hands, the transfer and mass storage of our data requires an enormous amount of energy. 

Data centers serve as factories of the information age; their 24/7 operation makes online browsing, streaming and communication possible, but delivering all this data requires a tremendous amount of electricity. The explosive demand of internet-based platforms and services has fueled a dramatic expansion in both the size and number of data centers, making them collectively one of the largest sources of new electricity demand globally.

Greenpeace ‘Clicking Clean’ campaign

The problem is that many of these data centres get their electricity from dirty fossil fuels rather than renewable sources, and the energy consumption of digital technology is increasing by 9% every year.

Over the last few years, several giants like Google, Facebook and Apple have committed to powering their data centres with 100% renewable energy, which is a good start. Unfortunately, Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s biggest cloud services provider, hasn’t yet made the same commitment – and the same goes for many other web hosting providers. 

Most people choose their website hosting company without realising that they use dirty fossil fuel energy.

Understanding your Internet carbon footprint 

Every time we use the Internet, data gets transferred between our device and the server that the website or software is hosted on. A server is essentially just a computer disk, which is usually stacked in a rack alongside thousands of others in a high-tech building called a data centre.

Each server is kept switched on and working 24/7, which requires electricity and air conditioning to keep it cool. Imagine leaving the computer at your office desk continuously switched on – most of us try to avoid this as we know it uses energy.

The difference with servers is that there’s no computer screen to look at, and they’re generally a lot more powerful and efficient than desktop computers.

The more data that is sent and stored, the more electricity and energy is needed. Even though this is relatively small at the individual level, when this is multiplied by the billions of people globally that are now connected to the Internet, it really mounts up fast.

So the key is to be mindful and aware of the amount of data we use. 

By far the most significant contributor to our individual Internet carbon footprints is our use of online video, which generates 60% of world data flows and over 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year.

Ideally we should all be trying to consume less video online and chilling our Netflix habit, but that’s much easier said than done – particularly while we’re all cooped up at home during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Here are some simple and relatively painless opportunities to reduce your own footprint:

Trash files and photos that are no longer useful

Sometimes we abuse our cloud storage because we have no idea how much it impacts the environment. Well, now you know. Delete anything you don’t need anymore, to avoid the servers they’re stored on using energy unnecessarily.

Delete apps that are useless

We sometimes have a habit of leaving applications on our phones that we don’t actually use anymore. Run through your phone; are there any apps that you haven’t opened in three months? Delete them.

Use your phone more than your laptop

Your computer has a bigger screen and uses more power. It’s more efficient to use your phone, and isn’t a big inconvenience – particularly if you’re only doing quick searches etc.

Unsubscribe from email newsletters and mailing lists

We all get marketing emails and newsletters that we never open or read – particularly in our personal inboxes. The carbon footprint produced by the transmission and storage of each of these emails really stacks up over time. Try getting into the habit of unsubscribing when you receive an email from a sender that you’re not interested in.

Use Google Drive and Google Photos for cloud storage

Google operates some of the most energy-efficient data centres in the world, and is the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy, which makes Google Drive a great choice for storage of your files and photo archives.

Website carbon emissions

At erjjio we’re on a mission to power the world’s websites with clean, green energy and dramatically reduce the carbon emissions they produce.

There are some simple steps that can be taken to reduce a website’s emissions, yet very few people are aware of this problem and its solutions. 

There are 3 key questions to ask when assessing the emissions a website produces:

  1. Is the website hosted in a data centre that uses fossil fuel electricity, or renewables?
  2. How much data gets transferred when the web page opens?
  3. How many times are the website’s pages viewed by its visitors over time?

It’s clear that switching to renewables is vital, but the impact of a website’s page size is more subtle and less widely known or understood – this is something we’re working hard to address.

To help explain the above relationship between the variables a little further: a website page which has very high carbon emissions each time it’s viewed, but very few visitors, is less of a problem than a website with only moderately high carbon emissions per page but a huge number of visitors. 

So it’s particularly important that big businesses, with their huge numbers of website visitors, pay attention to their website emissions. 

You can use a free tool called SimilarWeb to take a look at the number of visitors a website gets. We find it quickest and easiest to use their free Chrome extension as shown below.

Airbnb traffic in SimilarWeb
Airbnb visitor data in the SimilarWeb extension for the Chrome browser

What is green web hosting?

A vital step to help reduce a website’s carbon emissions is to host it in a data centre which uses 100% renewable energy instead of fossil fuel electricity. But what is web hosting and how does it work?

Think of web hosting as the rented home that a website lives in. It’s how it gets online for the world to enjoy. 

The website’s files and databases get saved on a server in a data centre. Every time someone wants to open a website on their device, they make a connection to this server over the Internet, and the server sends back a response containing data which displays the website on the user’s device.

Server racks in a typical data centre
Server racks in a typical data centre

If you have a website of your own, you’ve probably chosen a hosting provider such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, HostGator or SiteGround. 

You most likely selected your hosting provider based on price, amount of storage space, online reviews or recommendations from friends.

If you used Squarespace or Wix as the tool to create your website, you wouldn’t even have needed to look for a hosting provider separately, as they include hosting as part of their subscription and they don’t offer or allow you to choose something else.

BUT the vast majority of these providers use data centres which are powered by dirty fossil fuel electricity. Very few of the big names in hosting make any reference to their data centre’s source of electricity, so it’s easy for this issue to completely pass you by when choosing a web hosting provider.

How to test your website

Are you interested in checking whether a website is powered by fossil fuel electricity or renewables? It doesn’t have to be your own site – you can test anything!

The Green Web Foundation maintains a directory of all the world’s servers, data centres and hosting providers which are known to use 100% renewable energy. They have a free tool on their website which allows you to test any website URL and discover whether it’s powered by 100% renewables (“green”) or not (“grey”).

Green Web Foundation
The Green Web Foundation’s free website checker

But we can go a step further than the basic renewable energy vs. fossil fuel check.

Using this innovative, free Website Carbon tool, you can measure the carbon emissions produced by a website every time someone views its home page, and how it compares to all other websites that have been tested in this way.

The average per-page carbon emission figure for a typical website is currently 1.76 grams, according to Website Carbon. But bear in mind that most websites are hosted in fossil fuel data centres and haven’t been optimised to reduce their emissions.

At erjjio, our view is that a realistic and achievable target is 1 gram per page, or below. 

Testing some big brand websites as examples, here are the results (as of April 2020).

Amazon website carbon emissions
Amazon

Squarespace website carbon emissions
Squarespace
GoDaddy website carbon emissions
GoDaddy

To recap the earlier discussion, a website’s carbon emissions aren’t only influenced by the type of energy (renewable vs. fossil) that its hosting data centre uses. The other major variable is the size of the data that’s transferred between the server and the device (laptop / phone etc) when the website loads.

Videos that play in the background on website pages are very fashionable and look great, but they’re typically very large files (i.e. several MB or larger). This has a major impact on the amount of electricity needed to store and transmit the file, and hence pushes up the carbon emissions.

Image files that haven’t been compressed are also the typical culprits for a high emission site.

If you test your own website and discover it has high emissions too, there are more free tools that can help you discover the culprit files.

Taking Amazon as an example, we can run another type of test using a free tool called Pingdom: 

Amazon in Pingdom
Amazon page size results in Pingdom

The results above reveal why its emissions are relatively high: the page size is over 4MB, which is relatively large for a website and is mainly due to lots of images being used on the page. At erjjio, our view is that the target threshold for the entire page of a normal business website should not need to be any larger than 2MB, and ideally it should be closer to 1MB or below.

A word about Content Delivery Networks

Content Delivery Network (CDN) technology is very popular for speeding up website page loading speeds, as it shortens the physical distance that data has to travel between the visitor’s device and their nearest server.

This is also beneficial in terms of efficiency, as it significantly reduces the energy used in the transmission of data between the origin server and the visitor.

However, the mechanism is based on data being cached into an entire network of global data centres, instead of just a single one – and often these networks aren’t powered by renewables.

Connection to a data centre without a CDN in place
Without a CDN
Connection to a data centre with a CDN in place
With a CDN

So, even if your primary hosting data centre is powered by 100% renewable energy, when you switch on a CDN this will most likely cause the website to fail the Green Web Foundation test because the site is now being cached across a whole network of fossil fuel data centres.

One of the most popular CDN providers is Cloudflare, as it’s affordable, easy to use and improves website security. In April 2019, they announced that they have committed to purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) to match 100% of the power used in their 175 data centres and 11 offices spread all over the world. This is very encouraging and ahead of all other CDN specialist providers, as far as we are aware.

At erjjio, our view is that it’s best to avoid using a CDN unless you have a significant number of international visitors – and of course to select a data centre that’s located in your country. If you’re not sure where it is, ask your hosting provider and they should be able to tell you.

Taking action and raising awareness

Now you know more about digital pollution, it’s time to take action!

Let’s recap the steps you can take to reduce your own carbon footprint:

  • Delete emails that you won’t need again, to prevent them being stored unnecessarily
  • Delete apps on your phone that you don’t use
  • Use your phone for quick Google searches instead of a laptop – it uses less energy
  • Unsubscribe from email newsletters and mailing lists that you never read
  • Use Google Drive and Google Photos for cloud storage

If you have a website of your own, you can test its carbon emissions using the Website Carbon tool. If you discover it’s not powered by green energy and you’d like to switch, check out planet-friendly hosting options.

If you’d like an even more detailed review of your website, we also offer a FREE website health check. You’ll get our expert advice and feedback, covering 15 factors relating to carbon emissions, design, security and search engine optimisation (SEO).

When you join us, we’ll even plant trees exclusively on your behalf every single month, through our partnership with the wonderful team at Eden Reforestation Projects.

Or simply drop us a line to arrange a chat – we’ll even plant a tree on your behalf simply for getting in touch 🙂

Together we can tackle the internet’s impact on the environment. 

Filed Under: Environment, Featured Tagged With: Featured environment article, Main Feature

How to share access to your Google Domains account

April 9, 2020 by ben_erjjio Leave a Comment

Overview

Google Domains is a simple and elegant service for registering and managing your domain name.

If you have registered a domain through Google and you are working with us to either transfer your web hosting to erjjio and/or launch a new version of your website, it’s helpful to share access to your domain so we can make the necessary changes to its DNS records as part of the transfer / launch process.

The steps to share access with us will vary slightly, depending on the method you used when registering the domain with Google. You may have purchased it directly through the Google Domains website, or you may have purchased it indirectly as part of the setup of business email through Google Workspace, as explained in our related article here.

The steps below illustrate how to share access for both scenarios – please use whichever is applicable. If you’re not sure which method you used at the time, see the first section below which shows you how to check.

Check which purchase route you used

1. Open the Google Domains website.

2. Click the blue My domains button in the top-right corner of the window.

3. Click the My domains tab in the sidebar on the left. If you purchased your domain directly through Google Domains, it will be shown in the My domains section at the top. Whereas if you purchased it through Google Workspace as part of your business email setup, it will be shown at the bottom in the Domains with Google Workspace section.

If you bought it through Google Domains

1. Click the Manage link for the domain, within the My domains section.

2. Click the Registration settings tab in the sidebar on the left.

3. Scroll down to the Users section and click Add user.

4. Enter our support@erjjiostudios.com email address then click Add.

5. Review the confirmation message then click Yes, add.

If you bought it through Google Workspace

1. Click the Manage with Google Workspace link, within the Domains with Google Workspace section.

2. Login with the business email address you used when you first created the Google Workspace account (i.e. the master/admin user for the account which manages the account’s billing etc).

3. From the menu in the top-left, go to Account > Domains > Manage domains – or simply search “manage domains” at the top and then click on the first result.

4. Next to your domain name, click View Details in the Status column.

5. Click Advanced DNS settings.

6. You should either be given the username and password for your domain host account (this may be a 3rd party system which Google had partnered with behind the scenes at the time, to provide you with the domain name registration service), or you might be directed back to the normal Google Domains website to manage the domain, as per the previous section in our article above.

7. If you’re given the username and password for a 3rd party domain host account, please send these login details to us securely, using the instructions we should have sent you separately about this.

You can find further help about the above steps on this Google Workspace help page.

Filed Under: Tools

The rise of sustainable fashion in the UK

March 18, 2020 by ben_erjjio Leave a Comment

Sustainable fashion is the latest trend and the fashion scene in the UK is working to address the environmental price tag of the industry. From the high-street to the red carpet, innovative solutions will benefit both the planet and our wardrobes. 

Recognising the problem of throwaway fashion, UK politicians have called on the Government to change the law to require fashion retailers to comply with environmental and social standards. The UK EAC has also sent a list of recommendations that require fashion brands to adopt sustainable practices. 

Here are the reasons why sustainable fashion is on the rise.

Sustainable Fashion is stylish longevity 

If fashion items were more sustainable, consumers would be encouraged to buy fewer clothes. Cheaper fashion choices allow people to follow the latest trends, however cheaper clothes also tend to be lower quality. The fashion industry’s current business model of fast fashion with cheap, low-quality garments drives widespread environmental damage – even if they look great in our wardrobes.

One of the most effective ways to reduce fashion’s environmental footprint is to increase garment lifetimes. The Clothing Sustainability Research Group at Nottingham Trent University argues garments should be designed for longevity, and the fashion industry is slowly changing its design practices to have a positive impact on how long items remain wearable.

If more fashion brands choose to extend the lifespan of clothing they could reduce carbon, water, and waste footprint by 20 to 30% each. Brands like Noctu use the finest, softest GOTS and OEKO-TEX certified organic cotton for their sustainable loungewear apparel.

Garment recovery schemes and upcycling clothes

The ever-changing trends in fashion encourage over-consumption and generation of excessive waste of unused clothing. The fashion industry is responsible for 20% of all water pollution worldwide. The UK buys more clothes than in any country in Europe, leading to millions of items of clothing ending up in a landfill every year. Research by Oxfam found that new clothes bought in the UK produce more carbon emissions per minute than driving a car around the world six times.

Fast fashion has given consumers the luxury to enjoy the pleasures of different styles but has also ushered in a throwaway culture. Due to coming and going trends, clothes have become single-use purchases depending on the occasion or the latest looks. 

To address the trend of clothes being a single-use purchase, some brands are adopting a “garment recovery scheme” by re-using damaged fabrics during production. Upcycling garments can reduce clothing and textile waste by reusing deadstock or gently used fabric to create great new products. Using pre-existing fabrics can divert 85% of textile waste.

Charity organisations like White Rose offer lovingly hand-picked recycled fashion from unwanted clothing donations. Meanwhile, Brands like Thoreau and Boden are fully committed to reducing their CO2 emissions and zero-to-landfill practices by using eco-friendly fabrics. 

Luxury brands are also getting into the upcycling game. Brands like Louis Vuitton and Burberry came under fire (quite literally) for burning unsold items. In 2018, Burberry pledged to end the practice and said it will reuse, repair, donate or recycle all excess stock.

Encouraging sustainable fashion choices

The UK has an exciting ecosystem of sustainable fashion businesses, researchers and designers who are already forging a new vision for fashion. 

Retailers are doing their part in reducing the environmental and social impact of the clothes they sell. Consumers are increasingly aware of fashion pollution, with most of them willing to pay more for sustainable fashion. People are actively looking for retailers and businesses who are blazing the trail for ethical and sustainable fashion. 

Meanwhile, celebrities are also promoting eco-friendly dress codes on award shows, demonstrating to their fans that sustainability and fashion are not mutually exclusive. The 2020 BAFTA’s ceremony encouraged their guests to re-wear existing pieces and showcase their green design on the red carpet. “Little Women ” actress Saoirse Ronan wore a gown made from discarded satin fabric while Kate Middleton re-wore her Alexander McQueen gown from 2012. 

Clothing brands like Thought Clothing use naturally grown bamboo, cotton, wool and hemp from responsible sources to make its clothing. Komodo is another ethical brand, offering 100% vegan and eco-friendly clothing which manages to be both affordable and stylish. 

Often there is an expectation that you have to give up premium looks or functionality within sustainable design. Oliver Co. is a UK brand aiming to change this perception by creating beautifully functional products that are designed to last, using innovative new fabrics, and working with high-end ethical factories. They craft sustainable accessories such as wallets and card holders from apple leather – an innovative, vegan, durable material made from waste from the Italian fruit juice industry.

Working towards a stylish and sustainable future

More work is required from the fashion industry to achieve a stylish yet sustainable future. Sustainable fashion demands a cultural change and further improvements to production processes and fabric materials. We are looking forward to a future where environmentally friendly options are as fashionable as they are responsible.

Filed Under: Environment

5 ways your business can be environmentally-friendly

January 22, 2020 by ben_erjjio Leave a Comment

Becoming an eco-friendly business should be at the top of your priority list. Many businesses are now taking action to reduce carbon emissions and waste, prioritising both the planet and a thriving yet sustainable work culture. 20 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the EU are already taking the initiative to craft greener office policies.

Regardless of which industry you may be in, it is time to join the green movement and adapt your business to become more eco-friendly and sustainable. You can start small and engage your employees to help you become an environmentally-friendly business.

Here are five environmentally-friendly business practices you can try.

Lessen your carbon footprint

To help you understand where to focus your efforts, it’s a good idea to calculate and report your annual greenhouse gas emissions inventory. Calculating your organisational carbon footprint is an essential component in crafting environmentally-friendly business practices. It assesses the problem and helps identify opportunities to become more sustainable.

Planet Mark is a highly regarded certification programme that helps businesses measure and reduce their carbon emissions, energy, and water consumption. With their three-step process, Planet Mark can help your business save money and build a stronger brand during your sustainability journey.

When it comes to reducing an organisation’s carbon footprint, a common practice is going paperless and switching to digital files rather than stacking up mounds of paperwork. However, going digital is not as environmentally-friendly as it may seem. Our internet usage also has a surprisingly large environmental impact; in fact, it is on par with the entire aviation industry’s emissions from fuel. A typical website produces around 4.6 grams of carbon emissions whenever a page loads.

Businesses should be mindful of the amount of data used and take steps to reduce their digital carbon footprint. Reconsider your website service providers and carefully choose those whose data centres use 100% renewable energy instead of fossil fuel electricity.

Using solar energy systems

Due to the increasing demand for electrical power and growing concern for the environment, both small and large businesses are adopting solar energy as an alternative power source. 

Switching to solar not only helps the environment, but is also a cost-effective energy source. Solar panels and other solar accessories are now an affordable option and require little to no maintenance. 

According to a report from The Economist, 40% of the UK’s electricity generation now comes from renewables, with the most popular renewable energy source being solar power. According to the same report, six in ten businesses in the hospitality and retail industry have adopted solar panels.

Offer meat alternative food choices

You can also discuss reducing or eliminating meat and dairy from your business catering during events and meetings. Studies have shown that the global livestock industry produces as much, if not more, greenhouse gas emissions as transport. Simply eating less meat can be essential to curbing the effects of climate change – it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing lifestyle change.

If your business offers free lunch and snacks, try to ensure this comes from responsible sources using ecologically beneficial systems. If you do choose to serve meat, ask your local butcher if the meat they serve was pasture-fed. The Pasture-Fed Livestock Association (PFLA) claims that grain-fed livestock rely heavily on fossil fuels to grow and process the grain compared to pasture-fed cattle and sheep who rely on existing grassland.

Another option is to engage employees who eat out or bring lunch to work, to only purchase food and drinks with verified environmental standards.

Sustainable water management

Often when businesses think about environmentally-friendly practices, water conservation and management tend to skip their list. Encourage your staff to brainstorm water-saving initiatives and create eco-friendly water-saving policies and procedures. This can include monthly reports on water use figures during team meetings; it can help establish a baseline for water use and identify achievable targets for saving water.

Aside from employee initiatives, you can contact your building management team to request the installation of low-flow restrictors. Low-flow restrictors for toilets and faucets can cut water flow down from 2.2 gallons per minute to 1.5 gallons.

Back in early 2019, Sir James Bevan, chief executive of the Environment Agency, warned that England could run short of water within 25 years. The demand for water will soon increase due to the impact of climate change and population growth. On average, people in England use around 140 litres of water a day. Sir James has called on the public to cut their water usage to 100 litres.

Engage and educate your employees about climate change and water conservation, and discuss more solutions. If you feel like ideas are running dry, research companies with the best water management practices. Coca-Cola has improved the efficiency of its water use by 20% and identified the need for a rigorous third-party evaluation of its water management approach.

Environmentally-friendly remote work

Working from home is not only convenient and less stressful – there are also environmental benefits of remote work. 

The biggest advantage of remote work is less commuting which means reducing carbon emissions. According to Global Workforce Analytics, remote workers can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tonnes every year. Now, that’s only for people who worked out of the office for half of the week!

Working from home also means using fewer office resources. It is one of the most effective ways to combat pollution and reduce waste management. With fewer employees at the office, your business can cut down on everything from printer paper to energy use.

With the rise of the digital age, you can encourage employees to use video conferencing or other alternatives to minimise travel. Another option is to incentivise walking, cycling or public transportation for meetings so your employees can not only reduce the office’s carbon footprint but theirs as well.

Prepare your meeting room because there are lots of environmentally-friendly discussions to cover. There’s no time to waste as you prioritise people and our planet in your new business plans. 

Filed Under: Environment

Zero Emissions Network

January 9, 2020 by ben_erjjio Leave a Comment

We are delighted to work with the Zero Emissions Network (ZEN) – a partnership project between the London Boroughs of Hackney, Islington and Tower Hamlets, supported by the Mayor of London.

ZEN is free to join and helps businesses, and more recently residents too, in London’s City Fringe area to save money, reduce emissions and improve local air quality.

The network offers free advice and services to switch to low emission energy and travel options with the goal of making the City Fringe a better place to live, work and visit.

Our exclusive offer for ZEN cardholders includes:

  • 3 months of FREE, 100% renewable energy web hosting on our Pro plan (details here)
  • 10% discount on web design / development projects
  • 10% discount on monthly Care plans

To redeem this offer:

Simply email us at hello@erjjiostudios.com and quote ZENCARD

Filed Under: Partnerships Tagged With: Featured partnership article

How to send email using SMTP and Office 365 in WordPress

October 24, 2019 by ben_erjjio 2 Comments

When setting up WordPress websites, there’s a fairly common issue which can sometimes be encountered, relating to the delivery of emails. The problem is that emails sent by the website fail to arrive in your inbox or perhaps keep landing in spam, and you may be left scratching your head as to why they’ve gone missing.

The most common examples of the emails that could be affected are those that should be sent to you when someone sends an enquiry via forms on your website, and the verification email which should be sent when there’s a change of admin ownership for the website in Settings > General.

Initial troubleshooting

The first things to check in these cases should be your SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) records within the DNS for your domain, as these control which servers are permitted to send emails on behalf of your domain – the system is designed to prevent people sending fake email pretending to be you. It’s a little bit technical – but don’t worry, we can happily check this out for you – just ask!

You may still find that the email delivery issue persists even after checking that your SPF and DKIM are correct. In these cases, and particularly if you’re using a 3rd party such as G Suite or Office 365 for your domain’s email hosting, the root cause is probably something else.

The next thing to check should be your Email Routing configuration in cPanel – if you’re using a 3rd party service such as G Suite or Office 365, you should select the Remote Mail Exchanger option.

If that still doesn’t solve it and you’re using Office 365 to send business email over your domain, the next step is to set up something called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). This makes everything much more robust and reliable and is pretty much guaranteed to solve the problem.

It takes a little bit of work to set up, but don’t worry – if you’re an erjjio client we can take care of most of the technical stuff, so you don’t have to.

Overview of our recommended process

In the following steps we’ll show you exactly how to set up and configure SMTP and solve your email deliverability problem, using an excellent SMTP plugin for WordPress called Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log.

There are several other SMTP plugins for WordPress out there to choose from, however we feel this one is currently the best on offer, because:

  • It has an integrated email log, which shows you which emails were sent successfully and which failed;
  • The email log works as soon as the plugin is installed, even if SMTP hasn’t been configured yet;
  • It has a webhook integration for Slack, so you (or we) can get instant alerts if an email fails to send.

The main downside when using it with Office 365 business email however, is that it requires a paid extension for the main SMTP plugin – whereas it’s free to use with Google Workspace for example. Despite this drawback, we still feel that the above benefits outweigh the cost. If these features/benefits aren’t very important to you however, in our opinion the next best and free alternative is FluentSMTP, which you could try instead.

You’ll need to purchase the licence for the Office 365 extension first, before proceeding with the rest of the steps below.

Set up the Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log plugin

1. Install and activate the main Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log plugin – it’s available for download in the WordPress repository here or via the Plugins > Add Plugins section in your WordPress dashboard.

2. You will see a message asking for your permission for the plugin’s developers to track non-sensitive diagnostic data about the plugin’s usage on your website. Our view is that it’s safe to opt in to this, but feel free to opt out by clicking skip if you prefer. If you opt in, you’ll receive an automated email asking you to confirm your email address, with a button to click on.

3. Install and activate the paid Office 365 extension plugin you have purchased too, and enter your purchased licence key when prompted. This can also be entered/updated via the Change License link.

4. Once both plugins are active, go to the Post SMTP tab in your WordPress dashboard and click the orange Start the Wizard button.

5. Enter your company or website name in the Name field, and your (Office 365) email address which will be used as your admin email for the website, in the Email Address field.

6. Then click the orange Next button.

7. The wizard should automatically set smtp.office365.com as the Outgoing Mail Server Hostname. If it shows relay-hosting.secureserver.net instead, change it manually to smtp.office365.com – and ignore the message about GoDaddy, unless you purchased your Office 365 licence via GoDaddy, in which case it would be best to follow their advice on updating the SPF record (we can help you with this if needed).

8. Click the Next button.

9. Select the Office365 API option (note: you will only see this within the available options to select from once you’ve installed the paid Office 365 extension for the core SMTP plugin, as described in the overview section earlier in this article).

10. Click the Next button.

11. At this point, you’ll need to set up an App ID, App Secret and Redirect URI in your Office 365 / Azure account in order to proceed. Follow the instructions to create these via the Azure portal link which the plugin provides, and watch their short YouTube video which walks through an example of how to do this too.

  • The App ID and App Secret will get produced in your Azure account (as per the Azure link and YouTube video above), and you should then copy/paste them into the respective fields of the SMTP wizard as shown below.
  • Whereas the opposite applies for the Redirect URI – the SMTP plugin should generate this for you, and you should then copy/paste it into your Azure portal. It’s also generally best to set up two of these Redirect URIs in your Azure account – one for the development website, and another for the live website:
    • The development website we build for you during a project will have a URI in the format: https://dev.erjjiostudios.com/[your project name]/wp-admin
    • The live website will be in the format: https://[your own domain]/wp-admin

12. You can optionally set up notifications so you’ll get alerted if your SMTP connection ever breaks and emails stop being sent. There are options for Email, Slack and a Chrome extension – they are all free and simple to set up, if you’d like to.

13. Click Next.

14. Click Finish.

15. Back in your Post SMTP dashboard – you should now see a message confirming that “Postman is configured” and also “Office 365 is configured”. To double-check this, click the link to Send a Test Email.

16. Specify a recipient email address of your choice, then click Next.

17. All being well, you should then see a confirmation that the test was a success, and an email should arrive in the recipient mailbox you specified. You can click Finish the return to the SMTP plugin dashboard.

That’s it – all done!

If you’re an erjjio client and you get stuck with anything in this process, please get in touch 🙂

Filed Under: Security, Tools

How to send email using SMTP & Gmail in WordPress

September 9, 2019 by ben_erjjio Leave a Comment

When setting up WordPress websites, there’s a fairly common issue which can sometimes be encountered, relating to the delivery of emails. The problem is that emails sent by the website fail to arrive in your inbox or perhaps keep landing in spam, and you may be left scratching your head as to why they’ve gone missing.

The most common examples of the emails that could be affected are those that should be sent to you when someone sends an enquiry via forms on your website, and the verification email which should be sent when there’s a change of admin ownership for the website in Settings > General.

Initial troubleshooting

The first things to check in these cases should be your SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) records within the DNS for your domain, as these control which servers are permitted to send emails on behalf of your domain – the system is designed to prevent people sending fake email pretending to be you. There are Google help pages here for SPF and here for DKIM.

You may still find that the email delivery issue persists even after checking that your SPF and DKIM are correct. In these cases, and particularly if you’re using Google Workspace for your domain’s email hosting, the root cause is probably something else.

The next thing to check should be your Email Routing configuration in cPanel – if you’re using a 3rd party service like Google Workspace, you should select the Remote Mail Exchanger option.

If that still doesn’t solve it and you’re using Google Workspace to send normal email over your domain, the next step is to set up something called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). This makes everything much more robust and reliable and is pretty much guaranteed to solve the problem. It takes a little bit of work to set up – but don’t worry, as always we can take care of all the technical stuff so you don’t have to.

Overview of our recommended process

In the following steps we’ll show you exactly how to set up and configure SMTP and solve your email deliverability problem, using an excellent free plugin for WordPress called Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log. You can either follow these steps yourself, or alternatively if you’re an erjjio client just let us know if you’d like any help and we’ll be able to do almost all of it for you ourselves. All we’ll need is for you to set up a free account in the Google Cloud console and then invite us as a collaborator – see later steps.

There are several other SMTP plugins for WordPress out there to choose from, however we feel this one is currently the best on offer, because:

  • It has an integrated email log, which shows you which emails were sent successfully and which failed;
  • The email log works as soon as the plugin is installed, even if SMTP hasn’t been configured yet;
  • It has a webhook integration for Slack, so you (or we) can get instant alerts if an email fails to send.

Set up the Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log plugin

1. Install and activate the Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log plugin via Plugins > Add New. It’s also available for download in the WordPress repository here. Once activated, you will see a message asking for your permission for the plugin’s developers to track non-sensitive diagnostic data about the plugin’s usage on your website. Our view is that it’s safe to opt in to this, but feel free to opt out by clicking Skip if you prefer. If you opt in, you’ll receive an automated email asking you to confirm your email address, with a button to click on.

2. Go to the Post SMTP tab in your WordPress dashboard and click the orange Start the Wizard button.

3. Enter your company or website name in the Name field, and your (Google Workspace) email address which will be used as your admin email for the website, in the Email Address field. For example, our own erjjiostudios.com business email runs through Google Workspace and we use the below – you would replace these with your own details.

4. Click the Next button.

5. The wizard should automatically set smtp.gmail.com as the Outgoing Mail Server Hostname.

6. Click the Next button.

7. Select the Gmail API option, then click the Next button.

8. At this point you’ll arrive on the Authentication tab of the wizard, and in order to proceed with the configuration, we need to set up a separate, free tool called the Google Cloud console.

Set up the Google Cloud console

9. Open the Google Cloud console here.

10. Make sure you’re signed in using the correct Google account, by clicking the profile icon in the top-right of the window. This should be the same Google account that you’re configuring for the website – make sure you’re not accidentally signed in with your personal Gmail account instead, for example – and switch to your business account instead if so.

11. If this is the first time you’ve used the console for your Google account, select your country of residence, tick the box to agree to the Terms of Service, select your preference for the email opt-in then click the AGREE AND CONTINUE button.

12. Click the blue ACTIVATE button (see screenshot above) at the top of the page to claim your free billing credit. Even once this credit runs out, Google continues to offer free usage within an ongoing monthly quota, which is more than enough for most small business websites.

13. Click the link to create a NEW PROJECT via the toolbar at the top.

14. Name the project “SMTP for [your website name]” then click CREATE.

15. Click the SELECT PROJECT link for your new project, in the notification that should pop-up in the upper right of the screen (or you can select it from the list of recent projects via the drop-down next to the Google Cloud logo in the upper-left).

16. Click the hamburger menu in the upper-left, then hover over APIs & Services and click Library.

17. Search for “gmail” then click the Gmail API result.

18. Click the blue ENABLE button.

19. At this stage, you can either continue with the following steps yourself, or if you prefer you can add us as a collaborator and we’ll do most of it for you (we’ll just need you to hop in at the end, to send a test email).

If you’d like to configure everything yourself, jump to step 25 below.

Add the erjjio team as a collaborator (optional)

20. Click the menu in the top-left of the window, then select IAM & admin > IAM.

21. Click ADD on the toolbar then in the “New principles” field enter support@erjjiostudios.com and set the role to Basic > Editor then click SAVE.

22. Click the blue SAVE button (visible once the role has been selected above).

23. Check that we have been successfully added as an Editor, as shown below.

24. Please send us a brief email or message in your Basecamp project at this stage, to let us know that you’ve added us – as Google doesn’t send us an automatic notification about it.

If you’ve added our team as a collaborator in this way, we’ll do the next part for you. We’ll just need you to jump in right at the end, at step 47, in order to send a test email – as you’ll need to login to your Google account using your private password, rather than you needing to share this sensitive information with us. We’ll let you know once we’re ready for you to do that last bit.

If you’d prefer to complete the rest of the steps yourself, continue onto step 25 below.

Configure the Gmail API credentials

25. Click the menu in the top-left of the window again, select APIs & Services > Credentials

26. Click the button to + CREATE CREDENTIALS then select the OAuth client ID option.

27. Click the blue CONFIGURE CONSENT SCREEN button.

28. On the next page, select the External option then click CREATE.

29. Enter “Post SMTP” as the App name and select your contact email address from the dropdown in the User support email field.

30. Enter the URLs for your website home page, privacy policy and terms (if applicable).

31. In the Authorised domains section, click + ADD DOMAIN then enter your website’s domain (not the URL – i.e. without https:// at the start).

32. In the Developer contact information section, enter support@erjjiostudios.com

33. Click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

34. Click SAVE AND CONTINUE.

35. On the next two tabs for Scopes and Test users, simply click the SAVE AND CONTINUE button for both of them – it isn’t necessary to enter information here.

36. Click the OAuth consent screen tab in the sidebar on the left, then click the PUBLISH APP button, then CONFIRM.

Link the Post SMTP plugin to the Gmail API

37. Click the the Credentials tab in the sidebar on the left, then the + CREATE CREDENTIALS button at the top, then select the OAuth client ID option (this is a repeat of step 26 above, now that the “OAuth consent screen” has been configured).

38. On the next page, select Web application from the Application type list.

39. Enter a Name of your choice – we suggest “WordPress“.

40. Go back to step 8 on this help page above, and copy/paste the Authorised JavaScript origins and Authorised redirect URI values provided by the Post SMTP wizard (in your WordPress dashboard) into the matching URI fields in Google Console, shown below.

41. Click the blue CREATE button.

42. You will then be shown a unique Client ID and Client Secret – similarly, copy/paste these values back into the matching fields in the Post SMTP wizard in your WordPress dashboard (also shown in step 8 above, and in the screenshot for step 43 below).

43. Click OK in the “OAuth client created” window above, and click Next in the Post SMTP wizard in your WordPress dashboard.

Complete the Post SMTP wizard

44. You can optionally set up notifications so you’ll get alerted if your SMTP connection ever breaks. There are options for Email, Slack and a Chrome extension – they are all free and simple to set up, if you’d like to.

45. Click Next.

46. Click Finish.

47. Click the Post SMTP plugin tab in the sidebar of the WordPress admin dashboard, then click Grant permission with Google.

48. Select the same Google email address that you specified in the earlier steps.

49. Review the message and click Allow.

50. Back on the Post SMTP Setup page, you should now see a message confirming that Postman is successfully configured – to double-check this, click the link to Send a Test Email.

51. Specify a recipient of your choice, then click Next.

52. All being well, you should then see a confirmation that the test was a success, and an email should arrive in the recipient mailbox you specified.

That’s it – all done!

If you’re an erjjio client and you get stuck with anything, please get in touch 🙂

Filed Under: Security, Tools Tagged With: Featured security article

How to transfer your domain to Google Domains

September 4, 2019 by ben_erjjio Leave a Comment

Overview

Google Domains is a simple and elegant service for registering and managing your domain name.

It’s particularly helpful if your email is also hosted with Google (see our help page about setting up Google Workspace here), as you’ll be able to access and manage your domain within your Google Admin Console, alongside your other Google Workspace management tools.

It’s a good idea to keep your domain registrar independent of your web hosting provider, so there’s no need to transfer your domain if you ever decide to switch to a new host.

Pricing

When transferring a domain to a new registrar, such as Google in this case, there’s usually a small fee to pay – typically around £10 for .CO.UK domains for example. However this is actually just a domain renewal fee – as part of the transfer, your domain ownership will be extended for an additional year.

For example, if your domain is due to expire in November 2019 and you decide to transfer it to Google Domains, your ownership of the domain will be extended to November 2020 as part of the process – this is what the transfer fee pays for.

Process

The steps to transfer your domain to a new registrar (such as Google in this case) vary slightly depending on the ending of your domain. Those ending in .CO.UK require you to change your “IPS tag”, whereas domains ending in e.g. .COM or .ORG require you to provide your “EPP code”, which is also commonly referred to as the “Auth code” or “Transfer code”.

The overall process is very similar however in all the above cases, and the instructions provided by Google are quite straightforward to follow. If you ever need a hand with any of it, feel free to ask us and we’ll be happy to help out!

1. Open the Google Domains website.

2. Click the link to transfer a domain you already own (circled below).

2. Make sure you’re logged into the correct Google account using the profile icon on the top right of the page (check our page on how to create a Google account if you don’t already have one).

3. Type in your domain (without https or www at the beginning).

4. Press Enter on your keyboard.

5. Follow the instructions provided on the page, which will vary depending on your domain as explained above.

For example, the instructions for a .CO.UK domain will look like this:

Continuing with this example of a .CO.UK domain as above, you’ll need to login to your existing domain registrar account and look for a place to change the registrar/IPS tag to GOOGLE. The exact place to find this varies a lot, depending on who your account is with – but it’s usually easy to find.

Then you’ll need to check the inbox of the email account that the domain is currently registered to, where you should receive an email from Google as shown below. Click the Confirm transfer button to verify that you want to transfer the domain. At this point you should arrive at step 6 in our guide below, with the authorisation code already completed for you automatically.

Whereas for a .COM or .ORG domain, the transfer instructions will typically look something like this:

You will then need to login to your existing domain registrar account and find the place to get your authorisation code. The exact place to find this varies a lot, depending on who your account is with – but it’s usually easy to find. Look for something that says e.g. “Transfer Out”, “Get EPP Code” or “Get Auth Code”.

6. Once you’ve got the code, paste it into the Enter authorization code field in the screenshot above, then click Continue.

7. At the next step to import your web settings, we recommend selecting the option to Keep my existing nameservers and don’t import any other settings. If we are already hosting your website for you, our erjjio nameservers should be displayed.

8. Click Continue again.

9. You can then choose whether to enable Privacy Protection (if available for your domain) and whether to automatically renew your domain every year – which is generally recommended.

10. Click the Proceed to checkout button.

11. You will then arrive on the checkout page when you will enter your contact and billing information.

12. Look for another email that should arrive in your inbox asking you to verify your email address, as shown below. You’ll also receive a separate email containing your purchase receipt.

13. Click the Verify email now button in the verification email.

14. Once this verification is complete, you should see your domain listed within your Google Domains account:

15. All done! If you have any questions or hit any unexpected issues with this process, feel free to get in touch with our team at support@erjjiostudios.com and we’ll be happy to help out.

Filed Under: Tools

How to add a second email address in Gmail

July 16, 2019 by ben_erjjio Leave a Comment

We’re sometimes asked how to login to additional email addresses, once they have been created through G Suite.

Once you’ve logged in for the first time, you will probably want to set up an email signature, and this process is quick and simple. See our article about setting up G Suite which explains how to do that part too.

The following steps explain how to login to G Suite email, when you already have an existing, personal Gmail account.

You can easily switch between different accounts, without having to logout of each account every time.

After signing into your existing Gmail account at https://mail.google.com, click your profile icon in the top-right corner, then click Add account.

Next, click the Use another account option.

You will then be prompted to enter your G Suite email address and password. Once you’ve logged in, you will be able to switch between this new account and the original account, via the profile icon in the top-right as per the earlier step.

Note – if you’re not sure of your password for the new account, you can use the Forgot password? link, after entering your email address. A reset link will be sent to the backup email that was specified for you when you were added by your account administrator in G Suite. This is often your personal Gmail address.

Alternatively, your account administrator can reset the password on your behalf, within their G Suite Admin Console at https://admin.google.com as follows:

Filed Under: Tools

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Second Home London Fields
125-127 Mare Street
Hackney
London E8 3SJ

0203 290 0284
hello@erjjiostudios.com

Registered in England & Wales | Company No. 10470799 | VAT No. GB 262 2271 28

© 2023 Erjjio Studios Limited

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