eLearning Blog Dont Waste Your Time » Blogging

WordPress Plugin #1: Security

David Hopkins — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:21:59 +0000

This isn’t a post about a ‘single’ plugin for WordPress that deals with security of your blog. Rather it is a generic title for the different levels and elements of security that you can, and should, apply to your blog to secure your content against hackers.

If you have a blog that has an admin panel that you login to via the website (WordPress, Blogger, etc) then you ought to have thought long and hard about it’s security. And I’m talking longer and harder than whether replacing the ‘e’ in your password, that is based on your cats name, with a ’3′!

If you look through the (long) list of plugins that supposedly help with various aspects of securing your blog you’ll never get any work done, or actually get around to securing it. So, here is a list of ones I use, have used, should be using, or have been recommended.

Secure WordPress
This plugin removes error information on login page, adds index.html to plugin directory, removes the wp-version, except in admin area.

WP Security Scan
This plugin will scan your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and it will suggest some corrective actions.

Secure Files
This plugin allows you to upload and download files from outside of your web document root for security purposes. It can be used to can restrict file downloads to users that are logged in, or have a certain user level.

Askimet
Akismet is possibly the most important and useful plugin you will ever install. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

Invisible Defender
This plugin protects registration, login and comment forms from spambots by adding two extra fields hidden by CSS.

Maximum Security for WordPress
This plugin guards against intrusion; tracks a plethora of events; blocks malicious content that could harm your readers and your search engine ranking; and includes a strong Web application firewall along with a full blown intrusion prevention system.

AskApache Password Protect
This plugin doesn’t control WordPress or mess with your database, instead it utilizes fast, tried-and-true built-in Security features to add multiple layers of security to your blog. This plugin is specifically designed and regularly updated specifically to stop automated and unskilled attackers attempts to exploit vulnerabilities on your blog resulting in a hacked site.

AntiVirus for WordPress
AntiVirus for WordPress is a smart and effective solution to protect your blog against exploits and spam injections, including; monitors possible platform vulnerabilities, virus injections, malicious links, etc. It can also send you email notifications and whitelisting.

One excellent website I came across deals with the things you should do to your WordPress blog post-install – “How to secure your WordPress blog: Repel attackers with these tips on creating a secure installation”. Read more on the TechRadar website: www.techradar.com

You might also want to look at the these other interesting links on what and how you can make your WordPress blog more secure;

WordPress Plugin #10: Subscribe to Comments

David Hopkins — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:29:25 +0000

If you’ve gone to all the effort to read a blog post and then type your comment in to the blog, waited to have it checked and moderated by the blog owner, wouldn’t you want to know when someone else replied or commented to either the original blog post or your own comment? I do.

By using the ‘Subscribe To “Double-Opt-In” Comments‘ plugin you give your WordPress readers this ability. The plugin

The plugin comes with plenty of settings you can edit including the ability to improve and personalise the standard text that is sent to the user when they subscribe. You can also query the plugin to see who is subscribing to what, and which of your posts are the most popular for email alerts on comments.

I have used this many times on other blogs, it is a very useful way to keep the conversation going. Otherwise you leave a comment then forget what you said, in response to what, and where you left it! For me that defeats the purpose of engaging in the first place?

So, when it comes to leaving a comment on a blog, do you like or use this feature, or do you leave the comment and forget about it?

WordPress Plugin #22: Lazy Image Loader

David Hopkins — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:03:01 +0000

One of the biggest gripes I have when I visit a website is the wait for the images to load before I can scroll down the page and read the text. So when I saw this plugin described on Twitter (and I’d seen the style used on websites like Mashable) I thought I’d give it a try. Why not – if I get annoyed when websites take too long to load, I’m sure others do too?

The plugin is called “jQuery Image Lazy Load“. As you visit the webpage the placement holder for the image is created, but the image is not loaded until you scroll the part of the page into view, and then it fades the image into view gracefully.

Nice and easy!

Do you have something similar working on your blog? Have you been using this and think it’s wonderful, or have a bad experience and want to warn me off it? Please comment below.

WordPress Plugin #5: Google XML Sitemap

David Hopkins — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:51:52 +0000

Even now, with all the changes and improvements in the way Search Engines do their work, we still look to a sitemap to find our way around. While you or I may look to the navigation, the Search Engines still appreciate it if you point them in the right direction and give them something to work with.

Someone pointed me at the Google XML Sitemap generator plugin a long time ago, and I’ve been using it ever since. You can find it easily in the Plugin directory via the WordPress control panel, or download it from the link above.

There are plenty of options to work through in the settings panel, from the basic settings of which Search Engines to publish/notify, the priority on the different types of content (pages, posts, comments, archives, etc) to the change frequencies on the same types of content (see images below).

In theory the sitemap generator will re-create the sitemap after each post you publish but I’ve never seen this working so I either re-create it manually using the ‘rebuild’ link in the settings after each post published or, which is more likely, when I remember to do so (about once a month).
I found this YouTube video, if you’re interested:

Someone stole your content? Blogging Plagiarism

David Hopkins — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:46:01 +0000

Sue Waters is someone I respect and follow, on her blog and on Twitter.

So I am mighty interested in her recent post on her advice if you find someone has been stealing content from your own blog – “How Do You Feel When Someone Copies and Pastes Your Post?”

Here are a few choice extracts that mean something to me, in my everyday role and blogging activity, but I strongly recommend you read her original article on the link above;

I’ve been a victim of this at times; once or twice it has helped and been beneficial to me, on one occasion it got me into a whole heap of trouble!

Again, this has happened to posts of mine; sometimes attributed to me (thank you) and sometimes a plain rip-off word for word (even the same spelling mistakes were visible!!).

Not always, but quite often the “rip-off”, for want of a better phrase, isn’t intended as malicious or underhand, but I agree with Sue that a politely worded email of phone call asking either for the copied text to be properly attributed or removed will work.

Isn’t this just basic ‘Netiqutte’?

One way I have ‘copyrighted’ my content is to use the services of Tracer, from Tynt (see my “What’s being copied from your website” post from July 2009).

And this is who it looks when you paste the copied text into the text editor in WordPress;

The text is pasted with the accompanying ‘Source/Read more’ link, and part of the Tracer system allows you to set what kind of Creative Commons License you want applied to your work. The person copying the work from you can easily remove this text but, again, it’s considered bad form, but doesn’t detract from the fact that the license remains.

When you think about copyright of text you find on the website think about the copyright about the printed word (books, novels, textbook, etc) … it’s the same.

InfoGraphic: Books vs eBooks

David Hopkins — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:34:16 +0000

Thanks to Knowbodies and Clive Shephard.

Presentation: Using eBooks

WordPress Plugin #6: WordTwit

David Hopkins — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:51:43 +0000

Integrating Twitter into your blog is, for me, one of the best things you can do. While there are plugins around that can display your Twitter profile and/or recent tweets, having WordPress publish your posts to Twitter automatically is a tidy idea.

Hence why I use, and like, WordTwit which “keeps track of when you publish new posts, and automatically informs all followers by pushing out a tweet.” The plugin details talks about an increase in traffic to your blog as a result of this automatic activity, and I can vouch for that – since loading the plugin back in April 2009 I have seen visitors to the blog jump from less than 1,000 per month to over 10,000 unique visitors each month.

You can choose from your preferred URL shortening service, but be warned you’ll need account details for some of them, so sign up and get the API key first:

You can personalise the message that is posted when you publish a blog entry, and you must remember to authorise the WordTwit plugin to your blog before it’ll work at all:

With the plugin working you’ll see something like the below on the new post page, including the shortened URL for the published post;

WordPress Plugin #12: Yet Another Related Post

David Hopkins — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:22:41 +0000

Getting people to your blog is one thing, keeping them there is another. While a good design and navigation is one thing, making sure your sidebar is well proportioned and easy to find your way around is another … but if someone has come to you about a certain topic then you ought to help them out by showing them other content you’ve written.

The ‘Yet Another Related Post‘ plugin does exactly this by giving “you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site.”

The plugin has many features including the ability to disallow posts by category and tag, limit by ‘match threshold’ using matching scores and it can also add related posts to your RSS feed, helping your RSS readers find the rest of your content in the same way normal visitors to the blog can.

If you look at the end of each and every post on this blog there is a list of 3 (you can have more or less) posts linked that are related to the current post by either title, tags, or content text. Here’s one for you;

WordPress Plugin #19: Smart YouTube

David Hopkins — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:14:32 +0000

I like to use visual representations of something I’m trying to explain when I can. While I haven’t made much myself I do like to include other peoples work.

Those who have tried it know the mess that you can get yourself into sometimes when copy-and-pasting the embed code from YouTube (especially if you want to customise the size to fit your blog).

So why not use this natty little plugin for WordPress and YouTube called ‘Smart YouTube‘? The plugin takes the hassle out of the embedding process by allowing you to simply paste the YouTube URL into the post, where you want the video to be placed and played, and it does the rest.

The settings of the plugin itself will handle all the sizes, colour schemes, and other things you can control, which means that all YouTube videos will have a consistent look-and-feel across your blog from now on.

Here are a couple of screenshots to show you some of the settings you can control;

And to demonstrate, here’s my favourite Lego movie take-off from Monty Python and the Holy Grail;

and this is what it looked like when I edit the post (note: be careful not to apply any formatting to the paragraph or the link, it wont work);

WordPress Plugin #14: Mobile-friendly Blog

David Hopkins — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:16:28 +0000

We are truly at the edge of human endeavour, as Stephen Fry puts it, and the rise of the Smart Phone like iPhone or HTC Desire is testament to this. And so is our increasing need to access email, Twitter, Facebook, etc on the move (or certainly away from our cumbersome and heavy desktop or laptops).

This is where the ‘WPTouch iPhone Theme‘ plugin is really really handy. It can transform your WordPress blog, irrespective of the template you use, into a quick and easy format for the majority of smart phone users. Don’t let the name fool you, it does work “when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm mobile devices” too, although I’ve not got these devices so obviously haven’t tested them.

The admin panel allows you to customize different aspects of your blog’s appearance to deliver a version of your blog to mobile browser visitors without modifying your regular theme. The plugin also includes the ability for your visitors to easily switch between the WPtouch view and your blog’s regular theme. The finished product … as viewed on an iPhone;