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Thoughts on Secure Passwords

This is taken from our original Account creation page which we updated today…

Please note that you are not required to create an account to purchase from this site. You will always be able to do so as a guest. Creating an account does allow you to save your billing and/or shipping address(es), review past purchases online, and leave comments or reviews.

19 February 2019 update…
We have changed the account creation process to automatically use your email address as your username and to automatically generate a password. This should not affect existing accounts, but should simplify things for new ones.

I want to interject a personal note here that when the site was first setup I grappled with whether I should allow passwords like “abc123” or not (which is essentially no password at all). In all reality who wants to hack into your soap account? I chose to enforce good practices here even if it seemed a little overkill.

I have now deleted the following from the My Account page, but post it here because I had fun writing it originally, and still believe it is good food for thought.

— John

Some ideas for creating a strong password (don’t worry, you will always be able to change it later)…

  • a favorite place, perhaps with the zip code
  • a special phone number, with a name added
  • a child’s name with a birthday
  • street address of a place you once lived, with city and state
  • your maternal grandmother’s full name
  • a phrase that you really like and will remember
  • words in a foreign language

Hints: The more letters or numbers the better, use spaces; special characters get extra points, misspelled words rank high. Think more in terms of passphrase than password… and, be sure to record it somewhere!

Here is a fun site for checking the strength of your password: How Secure Is My Password?

Creating a strong password/passphrase makes the site more secure for everyone (for real). Thank you for your help!

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Last Day of 2018

Well, it’s now almost 4:00 in the morning on the last day of the year, and I am wondering, where did the year go?

The website is finally up-to-date. It doesn’t mean there is not still plenty to do, but at least it is functional again and has most of our current soaps listed with updated pictures. Now it’s time to get busy pouring more soap! But then that’s kind of the fun part.

Please take a look around. We are low on many soaps after the Christmas holidays, but there are still good soaps to choose from. Also please take a look at the Alma-Clean. We have lots of that ready to go, and it is good stuff!

This page is open for questions and comments although I think you have to register first, which only takes a minute. I will always try to respond within a few hours.

Happy New Year’s Eve!
John

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Deactivated the ‘Contact Us’ Form

The site started crawling again Tuesday night (May 2nd), and I sat here astonished, realizing that after all this [website maintenance] if I had to sit through these page load times as a customer (much less my impatient self) I would flat out go somewhere else to buy soap, or salt, or scent, or anything! And for good reason! Okay, so I’m having some fun here, but I’m also serious.

I have been monitoring the web server in real-time and watching, with some interest, the processes that accumulate at different times and under different loads, including the work that I do on the backend.

I finally rebooted the server last night and took some other actions in an attempt to get the site running spry again. These actions were only semi-effective, and I ended up spending a good part of today learning yet more about caching web pages and running a lean site . It’s highly interesting, if it’s what you really like. Unfortunately, I don’t.

So, in what can only be described as the ultimate irony, it appears that the Contact form, in unison with Google’s own anti-spam technology (reCAPTCHA), is the very thing that forced the website back to a crawl. I have instituted a line of JavaScript instead in order to provide you with an email address, while hopefully hiding it from spam robots.

Many may ask, “Why don’t you just post your email address to the website and make it easy?” Well, from personal experience, that’s a disaster. Evil robots harvest it, and no spam filter can adequately deal with it. I am not doing that again.

So, that’s the story with the form on the Contact Us page that has now been decommissioned… at least for now.

Thanks for your time,

John

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Lavender in Soap

Let us talk a little bit about lavender, specifically lavender essential oil. Lavender is one of the most versatile of all essential oils, and one of the most well-loved. It is calming, and balancing. The word itself is derived from the Latin lavare: to wash. The plant is a member of the mint family. It’s botanical name is Lavandula angustifolia.

I was surprised how much there was to know about the essential oil. There are many different grades and varieties.

There is a standardized version, referred to in the industry as 40/42, which specifies the required levels of linalool and linalyl acetate that must be present. These are the main constituents in lavender essential oil, and are what make up much of its scent. Standardizing keeps it consistent, but also commercializes it, depriving it of any real character.

Like the grapes used in wine, lavender derives much of its character from where it is grown. There is French lavender, Spanish, South African, and more, each having a distinct scent. The highest quality lavender essential oil comes from Bulgaria, and that is the oil we use. It is also the most expensive, especially when buying organic.

Besides the essential oils there are also lavender fragrances. We use plenty of fragrance oils, to be sure, but most of the lavender ones smell noticeably fake to me. I certainly have no plans to use lavender fragrance oil in our soap.

All this to give you a little insight into what makes our lavender soap smell so wonderful, and why it costs just a little more. One of my great pleasures is to watch someone pick up a bar of soap, draw in its scent, and close their eyes in quiet satisfaction. If you like the smell of lavender, you will love the smell of our lavender soaps.

Thank you for your business!

John

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Pre-Holiday Update

We are pouring bunches of great new soaps, and it’s a good thing too — If you have visited the website recently it looks like we are out of almost everything! Let me tell you a little of what’s going on…

We are making a bunch of new coffee soap in our shea butter recipe (No.10), and lots of different mint soaps that are almost to die for.

We have updated our “Ginger” soap to formula No.10, have made a few loaves so far of Almond-Oatmeal, and are pouring a new scent that we haven’t even given a name to yet. We’ve got Tuberose in a new Q formula, and of course are pouring lots and lots of both Sandalwood and Goat Milk soaps, two of our best sellers. Oh, and lots of Lemongrass!

We are trying to offer a choice of bar size in more soaps, so that you can make your own decision on that, and will be simplifying the number of offerings on the website, working on that while soaps cure.

We were thrilled this summer to receive the last of Claire Hall’s calendula petals, grown right here in Wabasha, Minnesota. They are so much more vibrant and alive than the ones we would normally use, and look like petals of orange gold in each bar of No.08 with Calendula, of which we are pouring many slabs in the next few days.

I have personally been hiding a few pounds of expensive lavender essential oil for a special occasion, large glass bottles of Bulgarian and French oils, some organic… and you have never truly smelled lavender until you smell these. I think that all the lavender No.08s and No.170s we are about to pour will use these oils, just in time for Christmas. I think we will use it in the No.11s with yogurt that will be poured too.

That’s just some of what we are working on, and we will be posting new pictures to the website as soaps get cured and prepped. We also happen to make outstanding lotions, by the way, and bath salts too. We simply have not gotten to marketing those yet. They have certainly been tested. (smile)

Sorry for this long post. I started to write just a few sentences, and the more I wrote the more excited I got!

Thanks to all of you who have been so supportive this year, and helped us prosper. Our soaps really do continue to get better and better, with your help, and it is a fact that we would not exist without you. Thank you especially for your patience when it takes an extra day or so to get orders out, or when the website doesn’t seem to be working right, or when one of us fails to respond promptly to your comments or suggestions. You are much appreciated, and you have blessed us with your kindness.

Have a great weekend!
John

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Alma Soap Blog Goes Live!

Welcome! Well, the big day is finally here. Some of us were starting to wonder whether we would EVER get this thing going! Here are some quick notes to let you know what we’re still working on (besides almost everything), and what else is going on…

In the time we have spent putting this site together we have not been pouring soaps, so our inventory is down much lower than normal.  Rest assured that we are aware of this, and will be making all the soap we can in the next few weeks to make up for it. We will keep you informed of our progress.

We plan to setup a form for you to be able to request re-pours of special batches, or to request special combinations of soap & scent. You may also do this on our Facebook page (click here). Some fragrances present special challenges, but more often than not we can combine any fragrance and color with any soap base. As we see trends develop in preferred soap bases and favorite scents we will be doing this anyway.

Please note that the site is still actively under construction, and, although we don’t anticipate any large surprises at this point, we do ask for your patience while we work out any bugs and get systems in place. Given a little bit of time we will have everything running smoothly for you.

In our attempt to moderate spam you must register on the site to leave comments. We understand that many people may not want to take the time to register, and in that case we welcome your thoughts and comments once again on our Facebook page.

Thank you for visiting!