Quick and Easy WordPress Security

It's a sad fact that most people only take the time to protect their WordPress sites after they have been hacked. In all my years supporting CMS's like WordPress, I've had dozens of terrified site owners come to me for help in a panic after their site was attacked. Conversely, I've had exactly zero people ask me how to protect their site before an attack ever occurs.

The following are a few, easy to apply, best practices you can take care of right now to reduce the risk of your site being hacked. You cannot have complete security from attacks; you can only minimize your chances. Anyone who comes to you and says they can prevent your site from being hacked is lying!

My hope is that you'll apply the following suggestions (if you're not using them already) and look into further security measures you can take.

Anyone can do the following suggestions to immediately improve your site's security. But there's much more you can do to better protect your site than what's mentioned in this article. Many advanced security measures require editing server settings and file permissions, which require someone with knowledge of server configuration. If you want to improve your site's security beyond the recommendations in this article, you can learn more or hire a professional systems administrator to review and adjust your configuration.

According to WordPress, the two most common attacks target outdated plugins, or attempting to gain access by using "brute-force" password guessing using automated scripts. The following recommendations will help minimize your risk to these types of attacks.

Using Strong and Long Passwords

You've probably heard this recommendation before if not several times. You're going to hear it again. One of the best things you can do right now to improve your security right now is updating your password so it's longer. (Yes, I said "right now" twice on purpose!)

How long should your password be? According to an online password crack estimate, a password with 16 random numbers and letters will take a computer 2,780,885 centuries to guess. I think that's an unrealistic estimate given that processing power can be increased making cracking programs run exponential faster. This is why I make my passwords at least 20 characters and include special symbols.

You're probably wondering how you're going to remember long passwords of mixed numbers and characters. There are many methods to train yourself to remember passwords from mnemonic memorization to phrases, but I gave up trying to remember passwords a long time ago. I just use RoboForm and let it manage my passwords for me.

I wish we had something better than usernames and passwords for authentication technology, but that's what we're stuck with at the moment. Again, that's why I've relied on RoboForm for the past 10 years.

Don't stop with WordPress

Make sure your hosting account password is long and as well as your SFTP account. (If you're still using FTP, please switch to SFTP, it's much more secure, encrypting your data as it is transmitted between your computer and your website. This means your password is never sent in the clear and cannot be intercepted by an attacker.) And if you don't use FTP at all, delete any unused FTP accounts from your hosting.

What about two-factor authentication?

I use two-factor authentication (password plus a pin number sent to my phone) on sites that support it. For WordPress, I haven't found a two-factor authentication plugin that didn't lock me out of my site, so I can't recommend it right now.

If you're web host supports two-factor authentication, consider enabling it on your account.

Delete logins not being used, especially Administrator accounts

Delete all users from your WordPress site that are not being used. For added security, don't use your administration account for adding articles to your site. Use an account with an Author role instead to add content to your site.

Protect your login page

By default, WordPress doesn't do much to protect your login page. A brute-force attack can hit your login and try thousands of password combinations until it finds one, or until your web host shuts you down because your account is exceeding memory and CPU.

One measure you can take right now is to use a plugin that will limit the number of login attempts before blocking the source of the attack. There are several of these types of plugins available in the plugin repository; one I use is Limit Log Attempts.

You should understand that this type of protection can be undermined. An attacker can spoof where the attack is coming from after each failed attempt, making the plugin "think" each new attempt is legitimate. But a plugin like this can help in attacks looking for low hanging fruit, and since it's easy to add you may as well do it.

There are a number of other advanced measures you can take to protect your login page that include server access settings and configurations. You can start learning about these options by visiting WordPress Brute Force Attacks.

What about changing the "admin" username?

Popular security advice for WordPress is not using "admin" as a username. This may cause a few automated attacks to move on, but only because an attacker chooses not to find your username. It's quite easy to get the usernames of a WordPress site. It's much more important to have a long password.

Don't Login To Your Site on Public Wifi

Unless you're using SSL on your WordPress site or a protected connection, avoid logging into your site on public networks such as free airport or coffee shop Wifi. These networks, or the people on them, can log the communication between your computer and site and retrieve your username and password.

Apply WordPress Updates

I usually pick up a few new clients each month and I'm always amazed when I log in to their sites and find they are a behind in WordPress updates. When confronting one site owner about not applying updates, she told me about a blog post from an "expert" who said it's better to wait a week or two to apply an update because it may not be stable and might cause problems. This is not the best advice.

It's important to stay on top of WordPress updates as most are security fixes that address the latest exploits. Most of the time the hackers know the WordPress team will fix the vulnerability quickly so they count on the thousands of people who are slow to update their sites. It's a race against time and each day you go without updating increases the chance your site may get hit.

It's easy to apply an update and only takes a few seconds. When you see the update notification, just click the update button and the package will download and be installed.

When you see the notification of a new update you can run a backup first and then apply the update. If the update causes a problem with your site, just restore it with the backup you just made.

Minor versions of WordPress, like 3.6.1 or 3.6.2 for example, are commonly security and bug fixes. These versions usually don't introduce new features or deprecate old features that might "break" anything on your site. Major versions, like 3.6, are more likely to cause a problem (if any) because of themes or plugin compatibility.

In a perfect world, you'd have a staging (or test) copy of your site running on the same server that you can test updates to make sure there won't be problems with your site. I know most of you reading this don't have a staging copy of your site so you're best strategy is to always backup before applying an update.

To make the backup strategy work, you need to be confident in restoring your site. Use a tool like BackupBuddy and practice backing up and restoring sites. This exercise will also reveal if your web host has any issues with BackupBuddy.

Remove Plugins

Plugins are one of the most common ways sites are hacked. Delete all unused plugins from your site. Reevaluate the plugins you are using, do you really need them? Can they be replaced by something outside of WordPress?

For example, many people use the popular Contact Form 7 plugin to place an email form on their contact page. Why have a plugin that's used on only one page and probably used a couple times a week? Especially considering that it loads scripts on all your other web pages where it's not used and it might be vulnerable to new exploits and has to be updated periodically. Is it worth the overhead when there are alternatives? If you need a contact form you can use something like Google Docs to embed a form on your site without using a plugin.

Instead of using plugins that post your articles to Facebook and Twitter, you can have the same functionality without plugins by using your RSS feeds with services like Dlvr.it and Twitterfeed.

Take a look at your plugins and only keep ones that are critical to your business. Removing plugins will not only make your site more secure, but it will probably run faster.

Just like WordPress updates, make sure you stay on top of plugin updates.

Avoid plugins that bad ratings or have not been updated in months. This shows a lack of support. If there ever is a vulnerability discovered in the plugin, it may not be addressed right away by the developer.

Learn How to Backup and Restore Your Site

This recommendation doesn't help prevent an attack, but is essential for recovering from one. And since we know that 100% protection cannot be achieved, it's crucial that you to follow this suggestion.

Note I didn't say regularly backup your site. You should regularly backup your site, but backups are worthless unless you know how to restore your site.

Practice backup and restoring your site until you feel comfortable with the process. Then begin backing up your site regularly depending on how much content you publish.

If you don't know where to start when it comes to WordPress backups, a tool I recommend that's both reliable and easy to use is the BackupBuddy plugin.

Resources

As I said at the beginning, there are many more security measures you can take but these can be done right now. For more information about WordPress security, please see these resources:

• Think Your Password Is Secure, It's Probably Not


• Securi blog: http://blog.sucuri.net/


• WordPress's own security recommendations: http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress


• Security alerts: http://safewp.com/category/wordpress-security-alerts/

Facebook Open Graph Explained

You may heard the buzz around Open Graph and wonder what it's all about. You may have even read the Wikipedia entry for Open Graph but still don't know what it is. I'll do my best to explain it in a moment, but don't worry if you don't understand what it is. The more important questions are why you need it and how to use it, which we will also get into.

The Jargon

Open Graph is a type of Microdata (RDFa to be exact), which most notably has been implemented by Facebook. Microdata are basically special tags in web page code that can contribute to a "sematic web." Open Graph was designed to "socially graph" web pages, but it also can do things like provide Facebook-like functionality on sites and apps outside of Facebook.com.

Why It's Important

Since the dawn of the Internet, websites have primarily used HTML to display web pages in browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome. But HTML is formatting language, it tells the browser you have titles, paragraphs, images, but the browser and your computer have no idea what those titles, paragraphs and images are talking about.

You could be viewing a web page about a new Lexus but your computer doesn't know it's a page about a car. Open Graph and other Microdata technologies give meaning to webpages that other computers can understand.

Now with Open Graph, Facebook can put a web page into context, understand how to categorize it and how does the information relate to other entities: what kind of information is it, what is it talking about, who authored it, who else would Like it?

Now think about Facebook, the biggest social network in the world. If they know what a web page is about, they can show it to people who are interested in the same topics. If you have a website about football, wouldn't you rather Facebook show your articles to people who are sports fanatics instead of people who are knitting fanatics? Ah-ha!

Because of the famous "Like," Facebook knows what people are interested in, and with Open Graph, they can match web content to people's interests. Now you're beginning to see the power of Open Graph.

Open Graph goes beyond matching content to interests. It can identify how people relate to content. A video may have dozens of contributors, producers, actors, directors and more. Facebook can connect a video with everyone involved.

Think about someone who writes Kindle books, creates videos, and produces articles all over the web on several different sites. Open Graph can attach authors to their content no matter where it's hosted or shared, and connect that content to the author's fans.

Open Graph has detailed tags to help describe and catalog different types of content, video, audio and text, down to the individual roles of people collaborating on the piece of content. Where the content was produced and where people reside geographically. Most large and popular sites have been using Open Graphic for years now.

Why you need to use Open Graph:

Here's a summary of why you should integrate your site with Open Graph:

• Ensures your content shows up correctly in Facebook.


• It can help your content reach more people.


• Provides a personalized experience for visitors by recommending articles based on interest and showing which articles have been Like'd by friends.


• Can help you reach your target audience and demographic much more effectively.

Ever post an article from your website on Facebook, and the wrong image was posted?

This is an incredibly frustrating problem, especially when you use a posting service (like me) and you find the last dozen articles were posted with the wrong image or wrong description. This usually happens when the wrong tags are used, but sometimes it can be something else. I'll explain later how to avoid these problems.

The problem is without the right Open Graph tags, Facebook is left to guess what the information on the page is about, and they usually get it wrong.

With the proper tags, Facebook will understand what your content is, how it's organized and how it should be displayed within Facebook.

There are endless possibilities if search engines and computers can truly understand your site's content. There are rumors that Facebook will begin allowing people to add widgets from their favorite sites on their Timelines, and that this will only be possible with sites having Open Graph tags.

Google, Bing and Yahoo have teamed up to support a different set of Microdata published at schema.org. I have a hunch that very soon if Google is unsure what your site is about because you're not using rich snippets, they'll push it down in the search results in favor of sites that they understand and trust. Quote from Google:

Because we're always working to expand our functionality and improve the relevance and presentation of our search results, schema.org contains many new snippet types that Google may use in future applications.

You may not care about search results and get your traffic from other sources, but it doesn't end here. In the quote above "future applications" could mean a lot. Google and Facebook are continually working on ways to expand their reach and profits: new marketplaces, payment processing, messaging, advertising and more. In the future, without Microdata, your overall Internet presence could suffer.

And it even gets more intriguing: Google clearly states in Webmaster Central that it already recognizes Facebook Share coding for videos.

How to Implement Open Graph on Your Site

If you use WordPress it's easy. There are plugins in the WordPress repository that will insert the Open Graph tags automatically into your site's HTML markup. Here's an example of what some of these tags look like:



The official Facebook WordPress plugin is one place to start. WordPress SEO by Yoast is good. Jetpack from WordPress has gotten better this past year at implementing Open Graph tags. All these are free to use.

The three plugins I mentioned auto-populate the tags. But there are other plugins that let you manually add tags beyond the basics like title, description, image, author, etc. This type of implementation would be handy for video or music producers.

If you don't use WordPress then you'll have to manually add the HTML tags to your header either by using a web page editor or having your developer insert them for you. If you don't understand what I just said, consult with any web developer. A number of you reading this might be using Joomla or Drupal, which may have Open Graph plugins available like WordPress does.

Dealing with Open Graph Problems

If you use a plugin to add Open Graph tags to your site, it doesn't guarantee you won't have display problems when your articles are posted on Facebook. Here are a couple common Facebook posting problems and how to fix them.

Too small of an image

Your article needs to have an image at least 200 x 200 pixels or Facebook won't use it. Instead, they'll find a different image on your site big enough and use that, which can result in some lame looking Facebook posts that result in low click-throughs.

I've had problems with images that were either 200 pixels wide or tall. I assume whatever tool I used to measure my image wasn't accurate or my image was really 199.5 pixels on one side and I didn't know it. To be safe, make sure your images are much more than 200 pixels on any side.

Wrong description

Earlier I said if you don't have Open Graph tags to tell Facebook what your web page is about, it will guess and usually it's wrong. But sometimes a WordPress plugin will tag the wrong description, which will foul up your post when you share it on Facebook.

In my experience, this usually happens because of a plugin conflict or there are WordPress short codes in the content. If you can't fix the plugin conflict or depend on short codes, use the Excerpt field in the post editor in WordPress. Either copy the first few lines of your article into the Excerpt box, or write a custom description. Most Facebook Open Graph plugins will use the Excerpt for the description.

If you don't see the Excerpt field below the post editor, click Screen Options at the top left of the admin panel and check Excerpt. It should appear below the main post edit box.

Get to know the Facebook Debugger

If you're having problems with the way your posts are displayed in Facebook, and you have no idea what the problem is, try using the Facebook Open Graph Debugger:

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

Enter the URL of the page you're having problems with and the debugger will identify any issues.

In the example above, the debugger tells me I have one image too small and it will chose the second image in my post instead.

If there is nothing wrong with your page the Response Code will show 200.

This tool can help identify problems in your Open Graph tags, which you may be able to fix yourself. If you have consistent problems with your tags you may need to try a different plugin or ask a developer to look at your site.

The Future of Open Graph and Microdata

We may be at the very earliest stages of an exciting new frontier with the semantic web. At some point it will become mainstream to have Open Graph and Microdata tags on web sites.

Those who embrace these technologies will have a head start on where the web is going. The rest will be scratching their heads wondering what just happened.

This was just an overview of Open Graph, if you have any questions about your website, please get in touch with me here or on Twitter.

DuckDuckGo Tools and Resources

Many are flocking to the DuckDuckGo search engine as details of PRISM and NSA online surveillance activities have come to the public's attention. DuckDuckGo (or DDG) is one of the few search engines that respects user privacy.

Unlike Google, Bing, Yahoo and others, DDG does not record or collect user information. Search engines like Google and social networks like Facebook typically collect and use personal information to profit from ads and marketing. But as you've probably heard in the news, it was recently discovered that these tech giants and others share this private data, including IP addresses, emails, chat conversations, even Facebook posts, with the NSA and other federal agencies.

After the exposure of the PRISM program earlier this year, DDG's usage has increased astronomically and is currently receiving over 100 million queries each month.

Think you have nothing to hide? The NSA has already demonstrated abuses of their access to private data. Take the example of NSA Officers using collected information to stalk love interests. Who's to say they'll safeguard the data they collect and keep your information out of the wrong hands?

Since DDG doesn't collect user data, they have nothing to hand over to the NSA or anyone else. Of course, if the NSA wants to target a group or individual, they'll certainly get the data they want. DDG or any other privacy service can only go so far. Still, there are plenty of good reasons to use it over Google. Here are a few:

• No "personal search." Google likes to think they know what you want. Since they have your search history, the search engine will show results based on their assumptions about you. It's an annoying feature. People send you links you're not interested it but you click anyway, or your spouse borrows your computer to do a quick search from time to time. Suddenly the search results are showing items you have no interest in. Of course, these features can be turned off but they are on by default with most people not realizing it.


• Google and other search engines use search history to show advertising. Don't forget, Google is not a software company; it's first and foremost a media company that generates revenue from advertisements. If you don't mind being shown advertisements based on what you search for, that's your business (and anyone else who uses your computer). Once at an all day workshop, a manger had his computer connected to the projector. As he looked up information in Google and on some websites for the team, we couldn't help to notice the same flashy dating ads showing up in different places. He was a married man, was he really vising dating sites? Was it even him, did someone borrow his computer to browse dating sites? No one said anything but it didn't go unnoticed and led people to wonder.


• As good as Google is, I often don't find what I'm looking for on the first few tries. Movie times, word definitions, baseball scores, Google excels at the popular searches. It's the longer search phrases or obscure terms I usually have trouble with. Either I get unrelated sites or a bunch of spam sites. I can't say DDG is better at tough searches, but it does surprise me on occasion. DDG's results come from 50 different sources including Wolfram Alpha. DDG also makes an effort to block results from content farm sites designed to game Google's search algorithm and filters.

Since DDG does not collect personal data they don't have any targeted ads or personalized search "features." I like that they filter out content farm sites I get tired of seeing again and again in Google.

If you're thinking of making the switch, here's a collection of DDG tools and resources similar to what the big search engines offer. Be sure to bookmark this page for quick reference.

How to make DDG your browser's homepage, add or change default search provider and official extensions:

• 
  
  Chrome
  
  
  
  
  • DDG Home Page extension (adds an DDG quick launch icon to the Chrome start page)
  
  
  • Official Chrome extension
  
  
  • Make DDG default search provider for Chrome
  
  
  
  


• 
  
  Firefox (version 23)
  
  
  
  
  • To set DDG as your homepage, click and drag the following link to the small home icon in Firefox: DuckDuckGo Homepage. If done correctly you'll receive a popup asking if you want to change your homepage. Click 'Yes' and you're done.
  
  
  
  

  

  
  
  
  
  
  • Official Firefox extension
  
  
  • Make DDG default search provider for Firefox
  
  
  
  


• 
  
  Safari (version 5)
  
  
  
  
  • To set DDG as the homepage: visit DuckDuckGo.com. Click the Gear icon, select Preferences. On the Homepage setting, click Set to Current Page.
  
  
  • Official Safari extension
  
  
  • Add DDG as a search provider for Safari (scroll down)
  
  
  
  


• 
  
  Internet Explorer 9
  
  
  
  
  • To set DDG as the homepage: visit DuckDuckGo.com, click Set as Homepage on the bottom right. Also click Add to Browser -> Install IE search provider and check the box to make it the default search provider.
  
  
  • No official extension.
  
  
  
  


• 
  
  Opera
  
  
  
  
  • Add as Speed Dial entry and other integration options
  
  
  • Official extension
  
  
  
  

DDG mobile apps:

• Android: Google Play


• iOS: iTunes

Tools

DuckDuckGoodies are instant answers to common searches, like unit conversions and calculations, that appear on the top of the search results. Google has a similar feature they added to search a couple years ago.

Here's a categorized list of available Goodies with examples: DuckDuckGoodies 


Add a DDG search box to your site:

• WordPress plugin:
  DuckDuckGo Search Widget


• HTML: https://duckduckgo.com/search_box

Advanced searching: operators, switches and filters: DDG Syntax

Support and Community

Main help and support pages: https://dukgo.com/help/en_US

DDG user forums: http://duck.co/

There are lots more resources but this is enough to get most people going. From now on when someone comes to you with a question you don't know the answer to, instead of suggesting they Google it, you can now tell them to Duck it!

Why WordPress May Not Be The Answer

As a website developer and self-proclaimed WordPress expert (a dime-a-dozen these days), I frequently receive questions on whether or not someone should switch to WordPress from [insert other website platform]. Why are people so interested in using WordPress? It is the most popular website platform these days, but what's the problem with other platforms and how does WordPress solve these problems? After consulting for and speaking with hundreds of small businesses, non-profit organizations and website owners over the years, I've discovered that most websites suffer from the same problem.

It turns out WordPress can also have the same problem and switching over may not make a difference. Later in this article I'll reveal the answer to the most common website problem I come across on a regular basis. First, let's make sure you understand a few things about WordPress.

When you talk about WordPress sites, there are two versions:

WordPress.com - Much like Blogger, you sign up for an account and can create a new site. WordPress takes care of the hosting. However, you are limited to the features and options that they provide. There are additional features available that require an upgrade.

WordPress.org or 'Self-hosted' WordPress - You can run a version of the same software used at WordPress.com for free on your own web hosting account, giving you complete control over your site and no limitations. You can use any theme or plugin you want, or customize your site to your liking.

Though the self-hosted version is Open Source and free to use, it does have some costs since you run the software on your own web hosting account. Prices for web hosting start at as little as $3 a month, up to thousands of dollars a month depending on resource needs. Don't forget about the domain name, another $10-15 annual fee. I recommend people spend a little more than $3 a month for hosting to get higher quality service, or you can start out with cheap hosting and as the business grows upgrade later. For more on web hosting please see this free guide.

It's important to understand the difference between the two. For example, going from a platform like Blogger to WordPress.com typically may not make much of a difference. However, converting a site from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress presents a new set of features and options not available in Blogger.

Another aspect of WordPress is that with the range of theme and plugins available, just about any type of website is possible. A picture sharing site, online bookstore, video tutorial site, forum, even a new social network; these are all possible with WordPress and the right add-ons. This is one of the main reasons why it's so popular, but it still may not be a reason for you to use it.

Earlier I promised to address the most common WordPress problem people seek help with. The questions come in various forms: "Should I convert my site to WordPress?", "How can I improve the look of my WordPress site?", or "What plugins should I use?" Usually after a few questions of my own I discover the real problem: lack of traffic and conversions.

Let's talk about traffic

It seems that some people believe that WordPress can somehow bring more traffic. While there are plugins and themes that can help engage your target audience, or implement search engine best practices, there's nothing WordPress can do directly to bring more traffic to your website.

There seems to be a myth that using WordPress will automatically rank your site higher in Google, thus bringing more visitors to your site. Years ago that might have been true, or so it seemed. What really happened is that WordPress had search engine features built-in almost from the beginning. If a poorly coded site was converted to WordPress, you might see a traffic improvement overnight, especially if the competition also had poorly optimized sites.

These days most website owners have become savvy to search engine optimization and WordPress has become the most popular website platform on the web. Chances are your site's competition is either using WordPress or has a search engine optimized website. So if everyone is optimized for search why should Google put your site ahead of the competition in the search results?

There's actually much more at play when it comes to ranking high enough in Google to get a significant amount of traffic. The point is WordPress isn't special anymore when it comes to Google. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't take advantage of it. You can get traffic from several other places: social media, paid sources, email lists, joint venture partners and more.

So traffic can be addressed without having to switch to WordPress, but are there other reasons to use WordPress? Here's a better question you should ask yourself: What is the absolute single best thing for me when a visitor lands on my website? Not sure? Here are a few examples:

• They click an advertisement


• Buy at least one product


• Sign up for my newsletter


• Contact me for more information


• Like or follow the site on social media


• Other?

What is the absolute second best thing a visitor can do? What's the third? Make your own list of desired visitor actions and prioritize it.

Now look at your list. How does WordPress support these actions? Perhaps you can optimize for these activities by selecting the right theme, or installing a few plugins. Perhaps a free WordPress.com site is all you need.

Maybe you don't require WordPress at all. Perhaps you need better copywriting or ad placement, or a few customer testimonials. None of which doesn't require changing site platforms. You may be able to reach your goals with the website you already have.

And that's the answer to second part of the fundamental problem with websites: conversions. When you get traffic to your site, it needs to convert that traffic to visitor actions you define and prioritize.

The solution to the most common problem with WordPress and sites in general is sourcing traffic and doing everything you can on your site to make that traffic convert.

Site Design and Themes

You may wonder about the importance of having beautifully designed theme or entertaining your visitors with fancy effects. This would fall under conversions; sometimes a professional design will help conversions. Conventional wisdom says beautiful web design does matter, however I've also seen many cases where a crappy looking site sells products like hotcakes.

It's much more important to come up with your list of desired visitor actions first and get those optimized on your site than to think about a new design. Think about it. If you provide fitness services, which is better for your site: a custom WordPress theme crafted by a top designer, or a video of a customer talking about how you helped her lose 27 pounds in 6 weeks, with a convenient signup button just below? The latter is much more powerful and will convert more visitors than a fancy site design. And it costs less too.

Once you have your site optimized for conversions buy some traffic from one of the many sources online and measure the results. Tweak your calls-to-action to try and improve your conversion rates. This is how you should work on your site, instead of looking at site platforms or shopping for new themes.

Of course, this article didn't explain how to optimize conversions or where to get traffic. Those are topics for future articles; the main takeaway here is to focus on the real issues your site is suffering from. When you identify the true problems you know what to look for in solutions.

FAFQs: Frequently Asked Formatting Questions

Thanks to WordPress, Dreamweaver and other easy to use web publishing platforms, you don't have to be a techie to set up and manage a website for your business. However, one of the downside to not being a techie is that your web pages may have minor, yet annoying formatting issues that make your site look unprofessional.

So, for you DIY webmaster's out there, I've put together answers to 10 common webpage formatting annoyances.

Q: How do I properly embed a YouTube video on my site?

The easiest way to embed a YouTube video on your site is to use the code that YouTube provides for you on every video.

If you look at the bottom of the video you wish to embed you will see a box that looks like this one:



You can grab the embed code by simply clicking in the text box under the word "Embed" – this will highlight the code and you can then copy it (Ctrl C) and paste it into your web page at the appropriate position.

If you paste the code into Wordpress, make sure you're in Text mode and not Visual.

Q: What is a "Favicon" and how do I make one?

A: A Favicon is that tiny icon that many web browsers display in front of your URL name on certain websites. It also gets displayed on the task bar when the site is open, and in the favorites menu.

Your Favicon is just a tiny icon file, only 16x16 pixels, that is always named "favicon.ico" and that should reside in the root directory of your site – so if your URL is http://mysite.com then your Favicon is located at http://mysite.com/favicon.ico. In many cases that all there is to it, but to insure compliance with all web browsers you should also put the following line into the head of your HTML document.

<link REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="favicon.ico"/>

So how do you make a Favicon? There are a lot of ways, but one of the easiest is to use one of the online tools designed just for that purpose. A few possibilities are:

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

http://www.favicongenerator.com/

These tools take a square image and turn it to a properly formatted Favicon.

Remember that a Favicon is small; it is only a 16 x 16 icon, so it can't display a lot of detail. Keep that in mind before you convert your photo to a Favicon, the result may not be exactly what you wished for!

I like to make my own favicons using the tools I mentioned earlier in response to editing images. Because of the various devices and services these days that access websites, I make two sizes of favicons, 16x16 and 32x32 and put them both in the root website folder.

Q: How can I paste text from a Word document into my site without getting a bunch of gibberish characters?

A: This is a common problem that is usually the root of many formatting issues. People edit text in Microsoft Word and then paste it into your HTML editor or a WordPress post. It looks good until you publish the article or page and see mismatched fonts, misalignment or a bunch of "nonsense" characters like backwards question marks and diamonds throughout it. How can you stop this from happening?

First it helps to understand the reason it occurs. Word has a number of characters that have no HTML equivalent. Look at the double-quotes, such as "these". If you look carefully you'll see that the opening and closing quotes are different. But HTML only has one type of double-quote.

Fortunately the solution is pretty simple. You copy the Word document text into Notepad first. Then you edit Notepad, replacing the offending double quotes (and single quotes and apostrophes too) with the actual characters from your keyboard. Then you copy the final result into your HTML editor.

WordPress has an "Cleanup messy code" Word button on the toolbar to make importing Word text simple, without having to do the interim step of using Notepad.



Next we get into links...

Q: How do I make a link? How do I turn a picture into a link?

A: Hyperlinks are the greatest feature of the World Wide Web – seriously! You're probably too young to remember what it was like to visit a web page for the first time and click a link to get more information. The ability to link pages and to correlate information is what brought us to where we are today.

How do we make a hyperlink, or a link as we commonly refer to them?

A hyperlink is defined with an HTML "anchor" (a) tag. Like most HTML tags it has an opening and a closing tag, and everything in between the two will act as a link.

The following example is a simple link to Google:

<a href="http://google.com">Google</a>

I called it a "simple" link, I'll show you a more complex one in a minute. The first part, "<a href='http://google.com'>" is the opening tag. The hyperlink reference (href) statement gives the destination of the link, in this case Google's home page at http://google.com . Clicking on the word "Google" will send you to Google's page, leaving your original page. The "</a> is the closing tag for this hyperlink.

Now I will show you another link to Google, this one more complex:

<a title="Go To Google" href="http://google.com" target="_blank">Google</a>

You will notice that here are a few more parameters in this link. The "target='_blank'" statement will cause the hyperlink (Google in this case) to open up in a different page, very useful if you want to link your visitors to another page but keep your page open as well. On some browsers this will open in another tab instead. The next statement is "title='Go To Google'". This statement will cause the text "Go To Google" to be displayed when you hover over the link. This can be useful to provide instructions or more details about the link.

Now we know how to make a link (hyperlink). And we know how to put a graphic on our page. So to make a picture into a link we just put both methods together.

<a title="Go To Google" href="http://google.com" target="_blank">
<img alt="Go To Google" src="images/google.gif" border="0" />
</a>

If you've been paying attention you'll see how this works – we just made a hyperlink and placed an image of the Google logo in between its opening and closing tags. It's as simple as that. Once again this link will open in a new window or tab, remove the "target='_blank'" if you'd rather stay on the same page.

Q: When I post links on my site some end up with "%20" characters in them - how do I get rid of these?

A: Believe it or not this is usually perfectly OK, it just looks funny. The "%20" character is the HTML representation of a space character.

This occurs when you upload a file, say your brand new e-book, and the file has spaces in its name. So if the name was "My New E-Book.pdf" it will be translated into "My%20New%20>E-Book.pdf".

The solution? Simple – don't have spaces in the name! Sounds like a silly answer, but it's correct. So name your e-book ""My_New_E-Book.pdf", replacing the spaces with underscores or dashes.

I'm sure that was the easiest answer in this article!

Q: How do I align my text the way I want it? How do I change the fonts on my page?

A: Text alignment in modern web pages is determined by styling information. This information can be included on the web page itself or can be in a separate sheet called a style sheet – the style sheet will be a document ending in the extension ".css" (for Cascading Style Sheet).

To change the way your text is aligned or the font used (or a myriad of other display parameters) the first thing you need to do is find the style associated with the text you wish to modify.

Open your web page in your favorite text editor (I discuss Text Editors in the General Questions section if you don't have one yet) and look at the beginning of the document for a line that looks like this:

<link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen" type="text/css" />

If you see a line like this it means your page is using a separate style sheet document, in this example it's called "style.css" and it resides in the "css" directory. You should open up this file as well in your Text Editor. You may also find this style information is embedded directly into the tags that surround the text you wish to modify – this is not a great design technique but it often happens when the code is generated by WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editors. OK, we will now assume you have found the styling information. If it's the third type I mentioned (embedded directly into the tags) then you need look no further, otherwise your next task is to determine which styling information is associated with the text you want to modify. First, look in the HTML document and find the actual text you want to modify (hint: use your Text Editors "search" function). Once you find the text look before it and after it for one of the following tags:

<div>- This is a "division" tag, its section will end with a tag 
<span> - This is a "span" tag, its section will end with a tag 
<p> - This is a "paragraph" tag, its section will end with a tag

HTML tags are usually (with a few exceptions) structured so that you have an opening and a closing tag. If you place a tag within a tag it must be "nested" as in the following illustration:

<div>   - The opening division tag

   <p>   - The opening paragraph tag

        Some Text To Display

  </p>  - The closing paragraph tag

  <p>   - The second opening paragraph tag

        Some More Text To Display

  </p>  - The second closing paragraph tag

</div>  - The closing division tag

With a good Text Editor if you select the opening tag it will highlight the corresponding closing tag, which is very handy on a big HTML document as it can get confusing otherwise.

Using the above example we can apply styling information in a couple of different ways. If the styling information was applied to the opening "div" (division) tag then it would affect both lines of text. If instead we applied it to one of the opening "p" (paragraph) tags it would only affect the text within that paragraph.

It is common practice to create a style that affects ALL of the tags, for example a style might be defined that affects all of the paragraph tags so that every paragraph on the page has the same font. In areas where you want the paragraphs to be in a different font you would use division (div) or span tags and define a new paragraph font for that specific area.

To identify which style applies to which area we can use a few methods. Of course if the style is embedded into the actual tag then it's a no-brainer. But if the style is defined in a separate CSS page or at the top of the HTML page it needs to have a way of identifying which page elements it will affect.

One method of identifying the element being styled is to assign it an ID. The ID is simply a name you use for reference, like "top" or "left" or "latest_post". An element assigned an ID can only appear once within a document.

If you want to create a style that you can use in several places within your page you assign it a "class". Like an ID it has a name that is used to make it easy to remember, but unlike an ID it can be reused within a document.

Confused yet? I don't blame you; even seasoned web developers often wrestle with style sheets. But don't worry, once you start using them they become much easier to understand.

OK, now that we've had a style sheet primer we can FINALLY get to the answer to the question – how do you change the font or alignment (or color or size) of the text? The answer is by modifying one of the following parameters (this is just a partial list):

color: - The color of the text, can be a name like “green” or a value like #346723

text-align: - The alignment of the text, values are center, left, right or justify

font-family: - The font family, often more than one is specified as you can’t be sure what the user will have available. Value examples are Ariel, Times New Roman, serif

font-size: - The font size in points, values are a number like 12, 18, 24

For a complete and thorough discussion of CSS and how to use it I highly recommend the excellent W3 Schools tutorial at http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp . Their tutorial not only teaches you everything you'd ever need to know about CSS, it also has a feature to let you experiment by changing settings and seeing the results instantly.

Let's summarize for those who just want the facts. To change fonts, text alignment and a host of other display parameters we do the following:

1. We make a copy of our HTML and CSS files, just in case we mess something up!


2. We identify the text we want to change.


3. We determine which style sheet entry defines the style for our text.


4. 
   
   We either:
   
   
   
   
   1. Change that style sheet entry to meet our requirements or
   
   
   2. Copy that entry and create a new one with its own unique ID or Class, and then change our HTML page to use our new ID or Class.
   
   
   
   

Q: How do I add my logo to my page?

A: A logo is just a graphics file, an image. Graphics files come in a variety of formats, three of which are common on the web:

1. 
   
   GIF Format – This is an old format made popular by AOL in the days before the Internet. It's features (and limitations) are:
   
   
   
   
   1. It can only display a limited number of colors, which limits its use to drawings and icons.
   
   
   2. It can have a transparent background, meaning you can place a transparent GIF on a page and its "empty" areas will inherit the pages background color.
   
   
   3. It can be animated. Animated GIF's can be neat when applied tastefully, or they can be a horror when overdone.
   
   
   
   


2. 
   
   JPEG Format – A standard that allows for lots of colors in a very small file. It's features are:
   
   
   
   
   1. Millions of possible colors, making it ideal for pictures. Your digital camera probably saves in this format.
   
   
   2. No transparent background – if you use a JPEG for your logo you need to match its background to your page color.
   
   
   3. No animation.
   
   
   
   


3. 
   
   PNG Format –Combines the small size and rich colors of a JPEG with transparency of a GIF. Its features are:
   
   
   
   
   1. Millions of Colors.
   
   
   2. Transparent background possible. Note that this can cause problems with Internet Explorer version 6, but there is a fix for that.
   
   
   3. No animation.
   
   
   
   

To place a logo or any graphics on a page you use an HTML image (img) tag. For example, if we have a file named "logo.png" and we had it in our "images" directory we would place it on our page as follows:

<img src=”images/logo.png” alt=”My Logo” border=”0” />

The "src=" statement gives the name and location of the image relative to where the page is, in our case it is "images/logo.png" as we have our logo in a directory called "images".

The "alt=" statement is optional, but it is used to display text for old browsers that couldn't display images or browsers for the sight impaired. Some browsers, like Internet Explorer, will display this name when you hover over the image.

The "border=0" statement is also optional, but should be included if you don't want a border around the image. If you leave it out some browsers will place a border around the image, and some won't. If you put a number other than 0 here it will specify the width of the border in pixels.

One last thing about the image (img) tag – it is "self closing". You will note that it ends with a "/" character, and that unlike the tags we saw earlier there is no corresponding "</img>" tag to go along with it.

Some common problems for advanced DIYers...

Q: How do I make my web pages load faster?

Page load time is an important factor; users on slow Internet connections will not want to wait 2 minutes while your home page loads. Also, Google has started to consider load time in the way they rank pages.

Here are a few tips for making your page load faster:

1. 
   
   Graphics are usually the biggest culprit in slow page loads. Try to do the following:
   
   
   
   
   1. If you can, reduce the number of graphics on your page.
   
   
   2. Don't use HTML (r WordPress) to resize your graphics, do it yourself instead. A smaller graphic will take less memory space and will load a lot faster.
   
   
   3. Consider using PNG's instead of GIF's if you can.
   
   
   4. Keep all your images in a common directory, rather than scattered all over the place.
   
   
   5. Consider using thumbnail images (small images that link to big ones) f possible – they load much faster
   
   
   
   


2. If you have embedded style sheets on your page consider moving them to external style sheets (CSS files). Many browsers will cache these so that subsequent page loads will be faster. It also allows you to use the same styles on different pages within your site.


3. Same with JavaScript – if you use it on your page consider putting it in its own (.js) file.


4. You can compress JavaScript files with tools like the YUI compressor from Yahoo - http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/compressor/. This removes the "white space" that makes the files readable by humans but is unnecessary for web browsers. Make sure you have finished editing the file first!


5. If possible, move scripts to the bottom of your page. This will allow the displayable section of the page to load first.

If you're using WordPress there are a number of plugins that can cache web pages so they're readily available for visitors. Some performace plugins can integrate with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) which will host your images and other site files in different regions around the world, reducing the distances files have to travel to reach visitors in different locations.

You can test your page load speed and get a good idea of which elements are slowing it down by visiting http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Q: The picture on my webpage is too big, how do I fix it?

A: If you post a lot of pictures on your website, get used to using a good photo editor. There are dozens of good programs to choose from, I use SnagIt for quick tasks and Corel Paintshop for complex image editing.

If you're a Windows user you likely have Microsoft Photo Editor installed on your computer, which works great for simple image manipulation tasks.

There are also a number of free online image editing services that don't require you to install any special software. One popular one is Picnik, popular because it integrates with the flickr photo management website - http://www.picnik.com/

Resizing an image is important – while it is possible to use HTML or WordPress to resize an image it is much better to set it to the right size in the first place. It will drastically reduce the time it takes for the image to load, as I mentioned in response to the previous question about improving page load times. Smaller pictures result in smaller files.

Making an image larger should only be done as a last resort; the quality is usually degraded when you do this.

There are two operations that you can do to make your picture a different size:

1. Resize – as it implies, this changes the size of the picture while keeping all the information intact. One thing that you will want to set here is the "aspect ratio", the ratio between the height and the width of the picture. You will usually want to preserve this ratio, as if you don't it can make the resulting image appear distorted. But in some cases, such as when the image needs to be an exact size, you may need to break this rule.


2. Crop – this is the equivalent to taking a pair of scissors and cutting a section of your picture out. You might want to take a face shot of one individual from in a group picture, or eliminate a lot of unnecessary background.

Often your image manipulation will consist of both cropping and resizing – this is often the best way to make a picture fit perfectly without distorting it.

Q: Why do I have raw code displaying on part of my site, how do I get rid of it?

A: You probably have some incomplete HTML somewhere on your page. It may be a simple ">" character after a line of text, or as several odd characters. In most cases it means that you have either neglected to provide a closing tag (or perhaps didn't write the entire closing tag) for a page element, or added an extra ">" character after a closing tag.

The following examples illustrate this;  in both cases the code has an error:

<p>This is my wonderful website!</p

This would show up as:

This is my wonderful website!</p

And in this example:

<p>This is my wonderful website!</p>>

You would get a display like this:

This is my wonderful website!>

If you're on WordPress, look at your page in the Text tab of the editor and scan for out of place characters.

If using a Text or HTML editor like Dreamweaver, look at your page in the code widow. Most tools highlight the matching closing tag for every opening tag, making this easier to spot. Some editors have HTML validators and will even fix these problems for you.

Q: Why does my website look weird in Internet Explorer (IE), yet looks normal in Firefox and Chrome?

A: Welcome the wonderful world of web development! You will soon find that one of the biggest frustrations that a web developer faces is to have a site display properly in all the different web browsers. Often a site that looks great in Firefox will exhibit problems in Internet Explorer or Safari.

There have been times that I wanted throw my computer out the window because my site looked great in Chrome and Firefox, yet was not right in IE! So, what can we do about this?

Web browsers function by interpreting the HTML code in your site and applying styling information provided in either the HTML page or in a separate Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file. The key word in the last statement is "interpreting", and different browsers interpret these codes differently. The result is the page you think looks great in your favorite browser may not look so great in someone else's browser. And that is not a good situation.

If you don't want to mess with HTML and CSS (who could blame you), then find an expert on a site like Craigslist or Fiverr to resolve the issue for you.

If you're a DIYer and want to learn how to fix these issues yourself, keep reading.

1. Start by arming yourself with all of the popular web browsers, so you can check your pages yourself rather than suffer the embarrassment (and lost sales opportunities) of having someone else point out the flaws when you page is published. If you are on a Windows computer the list would include:
   
   
   
   1. Microsoft Internet Explorer – actually IE came with your Windows computer so you already have it if you're on a PC. It's the browser that you will find causes the most problems, but as it's also one of the most popular browsers you must always check your designs with it. To make life even more interesting, there are different results with different versions of IE, as of this writing version 9 is the most current but there are still a large number of users with versions 8,7 and even 6 that you need to cater to.
   
   
   2. Firefox – You must always test with Firefox, especially if your target audience is tech-savvy as it's likely the browser that they will be using. It's available for both PC and Mac users at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html.
   
   
   3. Safari – included with Macs, Safari is also available for Windows users. As it's the standard browser for Apple users there is a large audience who are using Safari, so you need to make sure your site looks good for them. You can download a copy for Windows at http://www.apple.com/safari/download/
   
   
   4. Chrome – this is Google's browser, based upon the same technology that drives Safari so it often produces similar results. It has become quite popular, and since it's a Google product you can be sure it will continue to be popular. Download it at http://www.google.com/chrome
   
   
   5. Opera: not as common but used by many professionals and purists, Opera is known for its faithful interpretation of HTML standards so it's a good browser to test on. It is also a popular browser on many mobile platforms, another reason you want to check your site on it. It's available at http://www.opera.com/
   
   
   
   


2. Most browsers come with built in code inspectors so you can view the HTML and CSS behind any element on your page. This is essential in pinpoint problems, especially with CSS. There are also browser debugging add-ons you can install if your browser lacks a built in tool, or if you just don't care for the one it has.


3. Run your design through the verification service at http://validator.w3.org. Not only will it tell you if your theme meets with standards (always the best way to ensure cross-browser compatibility), it will also list the errors it finds and offer suggestions as to how to repair them.


4. Check how your site looks on dozens of different platforms and browsers at http://browsershots.org. This is an excellent free service that eliminates the need for owning dozens of computers just to check your website.


5. Also remember that different sized screens will display your site differently. http://viewlike.us is a good site to test this.


6. Google. When you run into a wall, a search on Google may lead you to a forum or tech help site that has the answer you're looking for.

Armed with these tools and a lot of practice, you should be able to fix most problems. Occasionally, there's that problem that's seems impossible to fix. That may be the time to bring in an expert, or perhaps remove the element that's causing problems.

Note: If you are buying a WordPress theme for your new site do yourself a favor and check it out on your selection of browsers first. If it doesn't look good on one of them either reject the theme then contact the designer to get it fixed or apply one if the other techniques I mention here to get it working.

WordPress - 10 Essential Plugins To Meet Your Needs

Updates for WordPress seem to happen with regularity to keep your site secure and performing well. We all apply updates to our WordPress site, or at least you should be applying them if that option is available to you. But what about your plugins? You can update them when you are reminded, but have you recently taken a look at the plugins that you currently are using? What others are out there to take a look at and use on your WordPress site?. There are new ones being added almost daily and you need to periodically do a review of what you are using as compared to what is available.

There are articles which are posted which you can use as a guide to reevaluating the plugins you are using on your WordPress Site. In one provided by ComputerWorld, they have put together a list of the 10 essential WordPress plugins for your reference.

• Blubrry PowerPress - lets you provide audio and video podcasts


• Gravity Forms - commercial plugin with advanced form building abilities


• Jetpack - From Automatic the providers of WordPress with 13 different tools


• JQuery Accordion Menu Widget - Custom navigation menues


• Redirection - handles missing links on your site and redirects to valid location


• Revision Control - controls number of versions for post - essential tool for large site


• Social Media Widget - provides method for readers to communicate with Tweeter, Facebook, etc.


• W3 Total Cache - converts some of your site to static HTML pages for faster display


• WP-Table Reloaded - create tables which can be included in embedded in posts


• WPtouch - creates mobile friendly interface for your site

There are many others to be considered as well, but this is a great starting point. You really should be doing a review of the plugins on your WordPress site at least once a year. And in doing that, you should be looking at what is new and will improve your site. Take some time to read through 10 essential WordPress plugins.

Reuters' Blog Hacked Again This Week

WordPress Blog hacked again because it is not current WordPress version.

Reuters Blog has been hacked again this week, mainly because they are running an out of date version of WordPress. And with the hacking of their blog, false news reports have been added to the blog site at Reuters. This is not exactly something that you want to see for your business and to have it happen in two separate weeks is not exactly the best of news. Others are reporting on this and at the moment, their Blog Site is experiencing difficulties. You see the picture above and then you are taken to the main news site at that point. Guess they finally decided to take the site down until they can fix it.

Reuters is even producing a news story about the hacking of their blog site and indicating they did not post the false story. In that story, it was reported that "Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had died". That is obviously a false report and one that has created problems for Reuters.

"Reuters did not report the false story and the post was immediately deleted. We are working to address the problem," Barb Burg, director of global communications at Reuters News, said in a statement.

Others are saying this is serious as it is the Third time is two weeks that Reuters has been hacked and bogus information reported. That is not good news for the credibility of the blog site and the news agency. While Reuters is quick to blame others as the hackers of their WordPress site, they need to correct this situation.

As we reported last week, Reuters needs to update the WordPress software to correct this security hole that they have. We had indicated that they were vulnerable to be hacked again if they did not, and that is exactly what has happened. Exactly when they are going to address this has not been stated.

Given that the site is currently unavailable, one could guess they are working to upgrade the Wordpress software from version 3.1.1 to version 3.4.1. Reuters needs to fix this now. One more hacking like this and they will lose much of their credibility. I would hate to be working in the IT department over there and having to scramble to fix this problem.

Reuters' WordPress Site Hacked Because Of Old Version

Running old version of WordPress allowed hackers to gain entrance.

We hear it all that time. It is very important to keep your software up to date. We have employed Virus software on computers which is being updated daily and sometimes more than once a day. It seems that the threats that we face are continually growing. And if we do not maintain the software to its current version, we could get hacked. And it seems that is exactly what happened to Reuters and their WordPress site.

As is being widely reported, they were running Wordpress 3.1.1 instead of the current 3.4.1 which is the most recent and security patched version. The 3.1.1 version does not represent the latest version of WordPress and was released in April 2011. Since that time, there have been 11 newer versions of the software released. And they are always working to improve and fix things. The next version is scheduled for release in December.

For anyone who has a WordPress site that you are responsible for and it is self hosted, you are reminded to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress each time that you log on to the dashboard. They make it so easy to apply a newer version of WordPress, it is a big surprise that they did not and commented on by ZDNet.

This is a textbook mistake. You should always be using the latest version of your software, especially if you're a major company that is often targeted by hackers. WordPress is, in particular, a popular attack vector for cyber criminals. While there is no guarantee that the hackers exploited an unpatched security hole in WordPress to access Reuters' blogging platform, it's more likely given this new information.

This could almost be considered a rookie mistake if it were not for the size of the company. Some are even speculating that they are still running an old version of WordPress on their site. And this is after being hacked. If this is correct, then it would indicate that Reuters has made heavy modifications to the Open Source software to meet their needs and create a unique side. That would require migration of all that code to the most current release which would be a time consuming activity for them. After this most recent hacking event, they do not have too many other options going forward.

I took some time and went out to blogs.reuters.com and in a matter of minutes was able to determine they are still running WordPress 3.1.1. All I had to do was to look at the page sources and then search for "WordPress" and there it was. The report about this is accurate and they are still on the version which was hacked and let someone gain entrance to the blog and post material. Leaving this situation is place is not a good idea as it encourages others to try and hack the site.

They have been hacked and because they are still running an older version, hackers know exactly what to target in an effort to gain access to their site. For everyone out there who has a WordPress site, make sure that you are running the most current version of WordPress and you have updated all your plugins. It is critical that you take these simple steps to protect yourself and your site from hackers.

Is Your Wordpress Site Prepared For Mobile Users?

Desktop browsers are not the only place to display your site

 
The desktop used to be the only thing that mattered and up until a few says ago, that seemed to still be true. But with the recent proliferation of tablets and smart phones, the whole environment has altered and mobile must be part of your considerations for the future. If you do not look at mobile, you will be missing out on a growing segment of the market. And that segment is growing quickly and will continue to do so, especially with the improving smart phones which we are seeing this year. And they are only going to be getting better. The question is what have you done with your Wordpress site to prepare for the the coming mobile wave?

On some of my sites over the past few years, I have been using Wapple Architect which I have been very happy with under various sites. It has served me well and displays sites very nicely on a smart phone. It is very easy to set up and use, so there was no excuse to not have it on my sites to take advantage of. While I have used this Wordpress plugin, I am always open to considering other options for getting a mobile displayed web site. But, here at TechieDiy, we have found another one we are using for this site and it meets out needs very nicely.

In looking around, we here at TechieDIY have moved to WP Mobile Director as a different option for handling our mobile traffic through the same web site as our normal web site. As with other plugins, it detects the device, whether a computer or a mobile device. If it is a mobile device, it determines whether it is a smart phone or just a normal cell phone and handles it accordingly. There is both a free version and a paid version of the product available with the paid version providing advertising support. You should take a look at WP Mobile Director to see whether it will fit the needs that you have for handle mobile devices on your site.

These two are not the only ones available which can provide you with a mobile display from your Wordpress site. One of the popular ones is Wordpress Mobile Pack which many are using for their sites. This one provides a complete package to help you with your site and the ability to display varying displays and as with all of these, the ability to switch between the mobile or desktop version on a mobile device.

Another Wordpress plugin is MobilePress which has similar features as other leading plugins to render your browser based site on a mobile device. There are the expected capabilities for advertising as well. There are many other Wordpress plugins available for your Wordpress site where you want to display to a standard browser and to a mobile device. If you only want to have a mobile site, there are a number of mobile themes available for your to take advantage of.

For the world of mobile, it is important that you look at this now. With the changes to how mobile devices are working, in particularly the recent and coming smart phones, it is important to realize this shift in technology. With Siri from Apple, it has forever changed search options from purely text based to now voiced based. Now, with S Voice from Samsung and coming on their Galaxy S3, we are seeing an expansion of the methods for searching the web and you must consider the growing traffic. Even Yahoo's Axis, which has just been announced, is changing the mobile platform to use thumbnails as a way to navigate instead of entering text.

With GPS on smart phone, the ability to return search results based on where a smart phone user is located will further alter the mobile search world. There are so many others related to search which will be changing how mobile browsing is going to evolve and it is important that you make sure you are a part of it.

Take the time now to look at your mobile strategy for your Wordpress site. As more people get smart phones, where will your business be?

More Captcha Options For Wordpress

Increasing options for using Captcha with comments

 
In the last report, we provided information about how to deal with spam from comments and one of those options was to include Catpcha to eliminate automated comments from flooding your posts. While comments is not the only place where you might see spam being included, it is the one which we are focusing on here to provide some examples of ones you might want to consider. As with any Wordpress plugin, you want to make sure that it is part of the approved list of plugins. That will help to insure that you do not have any issues or problems with the plugin.

A new trend in Captcha is the move away from the letters in words displayed in a graphic. I admit that I have some difficulty at times with what I consider unreadable characters which I am trying to type in. This is because machine readable captcha is catching up with the original intent for it. As an example of the new way of Captcha is the idea of playing a game as part of getting validated that you are in fact a human being and not a machine adding the comment. A good example of this is AreYouHuman.com which displays varying games where you have to drag items which are moving around and place them on something else. The first one I saw was to put items related to pancakes on top of the pancakes. There was a saw included, which obviously would not work on pancakes.

This is a new trend which makes using Captcha more fun rather than straining your eyes to try and read what is there. Another one that relies on pictures is Sweet Captcha which displays 4 pictures on the left and on picture on the right. You are asked to pick one of the left hand pictures that matches what you are being told to do. You are then to drag it onto the right hand picture as part of the validation process. It makes this a much easier method of verifying that you are a human being and not a machine.

Another one that is very simplistic and very popular is simply called Captcha. It does not use pictures or images to get you to validate that you are a human. Instead, it wants to have you answer a mathematical question. You can vary between words and numbers and exactly where you have to fill in a value as shown below. This comes from BestWestSoft. As you can see, things can vary as to how they are displayed and exactly where the values can be entered. This one might be easier to crack by those desiring to add spam in your comments, but it is very simple.



While there are many others out there, I did not include any which are not currently supporting the current Wordpress version of 3.3.2. You can find others which support prior versions, but we do not recommend that you seriously consider them. You want any plugin which you might use to work within the current Wordpress version. If not, you are asking for problems with your Wordpress site.

Are there any Captcha plugins which you have seen which are part of the new easier to use method? Add them here in the comments so everyone can benefit.

Dealing With Wordpress Comment Spam

Comments is a great way to engage your readers

 
Posting articles on your Wordpress site is the first step in drawing attention to the information you wish to communicate. The goal is to then have people read that information and continue to return to your site. One of the ways to do that is an effort to cause people to place comments on articles written. You can do that in a variety of ways such as asking a question at the end of an article. If you spend time trying to engage people in conversations and are successful, you will more than likely end up with comments which one would consider spam. A lot of these kinds of comments are there strictly in an effort to get links back to another site. This usually happens after they are successful in posting some comment about how they stumbled on your site. If that one is successfully showing in the comments, they follow up with comments containing links back to their site and selling products.

You can find a number of sites which will define what spam can be considered as, so the next question becomes how to deal with it. There are a variety of methods and tools which will handle most of the unwanted comments. If you have installed the Akismet plugin on your site, it will automatically catch these kinds of comments and identify them as spam. If you have not installed the plugin, stop reading this right now and get it installed. It is a fantastic tool and one that should be on every Wordpress site you ever work with. If you have installed it previously and seen what it can do for you, you already know the value of Akismet.

Beyond that, there are several other methods you can employ to attempt to cut down on spam. One of the big problems is automated processes which populate comments on sites where the comments are open and available for entry. These automated processes can be foiled by using Captcha as a process against those machine entered comments. There are a variety of different Captcha methods out in the world, but for now, we are talking about those associated with handling comments being entered.

The ones that many are familiar with are ones that display a dynamically generated graphic which has letters and numbers in them. As part of adding a comment, the person (or computer) would have to enter the values which are contained in the graphic. These are supposed to not be machine readable, meaning that the computers trying to automatically add comments are not able to read them. For the most part this is a true statement and should block just about every automated comment. Unfortunately, as computers get more sophisticated in the programs reading the generated graphic, they may be able to figure out what needs to be entered. I believe we are years away from that.

Another method is a form of Captcha where there is a use of pictures instead of characters to stop the machine added comments. In these situations, you have to click on a specific picture before the comment is added. This generally stops the automated comment processes from being able to post comments. There are a variety of different methods associated with this kind of Captcha.

A very low tech method of Captcha is one where you have to answer a question, such as adding 2 numbers together of something like that. The question that is being asked determines what you are supposed to be answering and works quite well. You see this on a lot on forums, especially when doing searches. This type has been around for a very long time and appears to be pretty effective.

Another possibility is to move your comments from Wordpress to Facebook. This is pretty straight forward and instructions to complete this are available. This forces people to have Facebook accounts to add comments to your posts. You would now be getting comments from real people and not from anonymous commentors. There are multiple benefits from this if you have a Facebook page set up for your business.

Of course, you can decide you do not want to allow for any comments on your site and turn them off all together. That removes this whole issue, but it does remove a method of engaging with your readers. There are many plugins to accomplish the task of trying to filter all the comments down to those which are legitimate ones. It does take a little bit of time to get these things set up correctly, but once done, you have quality comments on your posts.

New WordPress Version Now Available

WordPress version 3.3.2 has been released.

Automatic, the developers of WordPress have released the latest version of WordPress as a minor one to correct some bugs and issues with the current version 3.3.1, That version has been very stable and reliable. Following is the actual announcement of the latest version from WordPress.org and of note is the security enhancements to external libraries.

If you hare hosting your own WordPress site, you can upgrade your site from the administrator panel inside of WordPress. For creating new sites, the new version is available at WordPress or if you are using a hosting provider to host your site, their cPanel interface should provide you with the latest version to create your new WordPress site.

From WordPress.org new site comes the details for the latest version.

• Three external libraries included in WordPress received security updates: Plupload (version 1.5.4), which WordPress uses for uploading media.


• SWFUpload, which WordPress previously used for uploading media, and may still be in use by plugins.


• SWFObject, which WordPress previously used to embed Flash content, and may still be in use by plugins and themes.

Thanks to Neal Poole and Nathan Partlan for responsibly disclosing the bugs in Plupload and SWFUpload, and Szymon Gruszecki for a separate bug in SWFUpload.WordPress 3.3.2 also addresses:

• Limited privilege escalation where a site administrator could deactivate network-wide plugins when running a WordPress network under particular circumstances, disclosed by Jon Cave of our WordPress core security team, and Adam Backstrom.

• Cross-site scripting vulnerability when making URLs clickable, by Jon Cave.

• Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in redirects after posting comments in older browsers, and when filtering URLs. Thanks to Mauro Gentile for responsibly disclosing these issues to the security team.

These issues were fixed by the WordPress core security team. Five other bugs were also fixed in version 3.3.2. Consult the change log for more details.

In another part of the information, WordPress has already started working on the next version of WordPress 3.4 Beta 3 which is available for download if you are so inclined.

WordPress Dominates For Blogging Web Site

Hitting higher trending with big popularity for WordPress.

 
WordPress has been growing in popularity for years. Five years ago, we were more focused on Joomla because of everything that you could do with it. It was very customizable, but the problem is that it took more than what most people would be able to do. With Joomla designed for a more technical person, we decided to shift our focus to WordPress. We already were familiar with it and believed this was the future for Small Business web sites. And the idea has proven itself with the great simplicity in WordPress and all the additional items and features which can be added. The numerous templates and plugins for WordPress continue to grow with the ability to find just about everything you need to create and maintain your WordPress site.

In a very recent survey conducted by Royal Pingdom, they discovered that of the top 100 blogging web sites, almost 50% of them are running as a WordPress website. Most of these are self hosted which is what we have been focusing on for years. 9% are hosted by a company with the main one being WordPress.com. The chart from Royal Pingdom tells the real story and we are providing it here:
 

The top 100 are based on those listed on Technorati who has been maintaining lists for years to show them ranked for the top 100 blogs. These numbers continue to change every day and we can expect to see WordPress increasing in the next survey which is done. We know that there are a large number of news web sites that are run under customized versions of WordPress and eventually some of those customizations leak out for use by everyone else.

While you may not be writing a blog, the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) provides you the ability to easily set up a web presence to represent you or your small business. If you have not set up you business web site, now is the time to consider doing just that. You can make your site as simple or complex as you like, but you should really consider starting out simple if you have not created one before. There are several different considerations which you will need to make and some of that guess work has been taken out by downloads which we are providing. If you do not want to have WordPress.com host your web site, here is a guide to finding a hosting company. There are a number of reasons why you might want to host your own WordPress site. Most of the hosting companies have cPanels, which are control panels and we have provided a tutorial on cPanels for your use.

We have a number of other articles of interest on our site related to WordPress which may help you in getting your site set up. Once you have your site set up, you are going to need to consider adding plugins to add features to your site, such as giving people the ability to contact you by adding a plugin called Contact Form 7. This is just one of the many contact form plugins you can add to your site. The area of plugins is one that can be discovered over time.

With WordPress continuing to grow, we believe that it is the correct platform for you to start a web site on for your business. It eliminates the need for high priced programming talent to give you an immediate presence on the web and there are templates which are available on the web to add a look and feel to your web site. The better templates come with associated costs, but can make your site look as good as some of the very popular sites.

If you are not using WordPress for your web site, you should take a look at it.