Wordpress Experts: April 2013

Monday, April 22, 2013

WordPress Under Attack: Update Your Password Today!

It seems like hackers have been in the news a lot since the New Year, with PayPal, Evernote and the Government websites all under attack. It’s not even been a month since CloudFlare’s report of the biggest attack in history. The most recent string of attacks are on WordPress websites and it has led to many people being locked out of the admin panel of their accounts.

What Is WordPress?

For those unfamiliar with WordPress, it is a content management system. There are two versions, WordPress.com (the free version) and WordPress.org, that give you the framework for creating your own blog or website. WP is one of the most popular open source programs available, with 64 million blogs and websites developed and run through it.

The WordPress system allows people to create their own websites without having to hire a professional developer; is cheaper and is easier to maintain

WordPress Attacks: How Are They Happening?

According to both Hostgator and CloudFlare, the attacks have been ongoing for the past few weeks. They started off slow and died off but then the attackers came back with a vengeance. The attacks are happening through brute-force methods with the use of botnets. The idea is to break into the admin panel to take full control of a website.

The hackers are breaking into those with weak passwords, using the “admin” username, and so far around 90,000 IP addresses have been used to attack the websites. It is difficult to pinpoint the source of the attack or even determine the number of hackers.

This type of attack is actually one of the least sophisticated seen in recent months. Unlike many of the others, no group or individual has stepped forward to admit to the attacks (Anonymous, admitted to the attacks on the Government websites) and there is no clear motive except to get control of the websites.

While unsophisticated, brute force attacks are among the most common attacks and WordPress websites are under threat daily – this is just the largest level of attacks we’ve seen at one time.

A Potential Development of the Attacks

CloudFlare are currently reporting that the brute force hacking attempts could develop into a different type. At the moment, the attacks are on the admin panel – but it is possible for hackers to guess the username of others by looking at those who offer the most amount of content on a site. CloudFlare and other hosting websites are keeping an eye out for such a possibility and warning their customers.

WordPress for Android updated with Holo design and new features

Wordpress for Android has received a nice update today bringing it into the Holo age. While the publishing platform still relies largely on text-based input — there’s no drag and drop for images — its home screen has been updated with a left-side navigation panel and a couple new features.

For starters, the app adheres to Google’s Android guidelines, giving you quick access to Posts, Pages, Comments and Stats. While the old app used a large overlay grid, this method looks cleaner and is potentially faster.

New features include the ability to access the backend dashboard for WordPress.com-hosted sites and a “View Site” button to quickly share individual links.

Download WordPress for Android.

Via: Android Police

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Nine free tools to help with your online marketing

YOUR online marketing doesn’t end with you hiring a web designer to build a website. It’s but a tool in your overall marketing arsenal. In my daily reading online, I come across various free tools that can be quite useful to online marketers. I’ve used most of them so I can vouch for their effectiveness. I’m going to share some of them with you here.

Google Adwords

Keyword Tool.

Adwords is Google’s paid search advertising service. Inside Adwords is a very helpful tool for getting an idea of the words and phrases people use when searching for information on products and services. You don’t even need to be an advertiser to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. With it, you can select searches for a keyword or phrase by geographic region and by device. Then you can sort by global searches and local searches. You’ll even get an idea of how competitive your keywords are. So basically you’ll use it to find out the keywords you should be optimising your website for.

Hootsuite.

My last article spoke about the social media landscape and Hootsuite is just the tool to help you navigate it. It allows you to manage a range of social media accounts including Facebook Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare from one place. Hootsuite has a built-in URL shortener and post scheduler that makes setting up your social media marketing a breeze. You can even set up simple reports to see how you’re performing.

Mailchimp.

If you’re a small or medium sized business and want to begin an e-mail marketing programme, then Mailchimp is an excellent tool to use. It’s one of the top e-mail service providers on the web. For their free tier, you get up to 2,000 subscribers across all your lists and the ability to send up to 12,000 e-mails per month! The system is very easy to use and they’ve got tonnes of free templates to build on. They’ve practically gift-wrapped e-mail marketing for you.

Google Hangouts.

I recently read a blog post about how useful Google Hangouts can be as a marketing and customer service tool. I’ve been convinced and intend to use it myself.

If you’ve never heard of it before, it’s simply a video chat and screen sharing tool like Skype, but better. It lets you have a video chat session with up to nine other participants at the same time. This makes it great for an online group training session, one-on-one coaching, meetings and online support.

Zoho CRM.

How do you manage your customer interactions and information? I bet it’s some combination of a spreadsheet and your e-mail client. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps you manage interactions all in one place.

Zoho CRM is an excellent tool with lots of useful features including reminders, some automation and a contact manager. They’ve got a free tier that’s pretty good for a small or medium business that’s just started using a CRM. It even connects with Google Apps or MS Outlook if you use those for your business e-mail.

Wordpress.

When building a website, you really do want something you can update yourself easily. You use a Content Management System (CMS) to do this, and Wordpress is now the most popular CMS in the world. Guess what: it’s also free. With Wordpress you can add your own content to your website and not have to pay a web designer extra to update it for you.

It’s built quite modular, meaning you can add on plugins – paid or free – to extend Wordpress with almost any additional functionality you need, like contact forms, powerful SEO features and shopping cart functionality. Wordpress works with themes and you can find low cost themes for building directories, classified advertising websites, real estate websites and other types of businesses.

Google Alerts.

Want to know if people make mention of you or your business on their websites? Want to know what your competitors are up to? With Google Alerts, you can get notifications sent to you via e-mail when any relevant search term appears in Google’s search results.

For example, each time a web page mentions my name “Sherwin Ramnarine”, I get an e-mail alert. You can set this up to know what’s going on in your industry and who mentions your business name. For example, you can tell if your business appears in a new free directory online by setting up an alert for your business name, phone number, e-mail address or location.

SEOmoz Toolbar.

I’ve spoken about the importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in earlier articles and how your search engine results impact your revenue. This free toolbar from top SEO software provider SEOmoz helps you to analyse your website’s SEO performance, as well as your competitors.

Find out the number of domains that link to your website and get links to other useful data straight from the toolbar. The “MozBar” is available on Firefox and Chrome, two of the best web browsers available.

YouTube. Got video?

Then it needs to be on YouTube. In a previous article about ways to spice up your website with content, I mentioned some tools and ideas for creating short videos.

Once you create these videos for public consumption, host them on YouTube so they can be found when people are searching for information in video format. YouTube after all is the second most popular search engine in the world (after Google). Include links to your website in the video or in the description to get people to visit your website after they watch your videos.

Your website isn’t a standalone marketing tool that will increase your revenue.

By using some or all of these aforementioned tools, you’ll take a huge step toward getting ahead of your competitors and doing better with your marketing.

Drupal, Joomla, Jahia, WordPress and OpenText will be Featured at the CMS Expo Learning and Business Conference in May

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) April 11, 2013

Over 100 million CMS-powered websites now populate the web with brands that will be featured at this year’s CMS Expo, such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla. And joining CMS Expo for the first time will be the world leader in enterprise content management, OpenText, along with Jahia, SageFrame, and several other leading systems.
CMS Expo Learning and Business Conference is the only event in the world that brings these incredible technologies - and the people who power them - under one roof. It's a three-day immersion course, packed with answers to critical challenges web pros must master today, in order to be relevant tomorrow. CMS Expo is the perfect conference for business owners and managers, web content strategists, marketers and the whole web design and development team to help all team members stay up-to-speed on content management strategies and systems.
Justin Kerr, Aluent.com, has attended the conference the last 4 years. "CMS Expo has consistently been one of the most professionally rewarding and personally engaging conferences I've had the pleasure to attend," says Kerr in his blog post. Kerr also gives some great tips on how to get the most out of your time at CMS Expo (including the socials).
CMS Expo will share current online business success stories, strategies, tools and insights that web pros can use immediately to help their organizations work faster, better and smarter.
Conference Highlights include:
-80-plus Learning Sessions & Panels for web content pros
-Keynotes by world renowned business & technology leaders
-Business Expo hall, featuring leading technology companies
-Demonstrations and case study presentations
-Strong focus on mobile-first, responsive & adaptive technology
-Business networking and socials
For additional information about attending or exhibiting at CMS Expo, visit http://www.CMSExpo.net or call 888-804-9525.
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/CMSExpo/2013/prweb10604050.htm

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Epic Gallery WordPress Plugin

The Epic Gallery Premium WordPress plugin from the plugin and WordPress theme developer Mike Stott is a perfect combination of a built-in WordPress gallery with lightbox effect, a built-in comment and evaluation system and social sharing features for Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

The gallery is created responsive, adapts to the browser window and will look good on mobile devices such as smartphones, iPhones and tablets. The possible integration with the NextGen Gallery Plugin is another useful feature of the plugin.

The first picture shows the gallery in Grid view. The picture below shows the comment feature of the gallery.

Epic Gallery Premium plugin for WordPress

The plugin works like most plugins by Mike Stott properly with the popular NextGen Gallery for WordPress, expanding their operation. To the admin section of the Epic Gallery WordPress Plugins must only be selected and a corresponding point already cooperate NextGen Gallery and the Gallery Epic Wordpress Plugin.

Some key features

Compatible with NextGen Gallery
The gallery is created from the WordPress or the NextGen images
The gallery can be integrated via shortcode.
Galleries can be filtered by category, or NextGen Gallery
Lightbox effect
Full-screen lightbox
Tablet ready lightbox
Mobile ready lightbox
Swipe Gestures enabled
Comment System
Social sharing for Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest

Cradit :-- Epic Gallery

Automattic and Janrain add social login to WordPress.com VIP blogs

Automattic, the company behind 63 million WordPress blogs, and Janrain announced a partnership this morning that will bring social login, profile storage, and user analytics to its premium blogging clients.

“A lot of WordPress’ biggest publisher and media sites have been seeking social login and user management some time,” Janrain director Jeff Mills told me yesterday. “Our hosted user registration and management platform offers over 30 different identity providers.”

Social login, of course, is the ability to log into a site or app with your Facebook, Google, or other social identity.

Those big publishers include traditional media agencies such as CNN and the New York Times, as well as many of the top technology blogs. TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat, for example, all run on WordPress VIP and will have access to the new technology.

“Any customers can now with a single click add Janrain to their websites,” Automattic’s Paul Maiorana says. “Our goal is to make it really easy for our customers to engage with third party platforms.”

Janrain provides social login and user management technologies that allow web publishers to quickly and easy sign up users, understand who they are, identify unique people with multiple profiles, and manage all the data collected from users to create better engagement. With the new capability turned on, a site’s registration and login system will be taken over by Janrain’s functionality.

Source: Janrain

Social login via Janrain in action

That’s important for Automattic’s big customers, as many of them have multiple sites and multiple databases of users. Janrain offers the ability to rationalize those multiple stores, and, if companies wish, create a single unified database of all their users from all their properties. Janrain already does this for numerous brands including the Universal Music Group, which runs hundreds of websites for artists such as Lady Gaga: Sign in on any one of them, and you’ll be signed in on all of them.

Janrain simultaneously announced a partnership with Disqus, the commenting and conversation capability on multiple sites, including VentureBeat. That’s important, because sites often use multiple plugins like Disqus, and they can now can take advantage of Janrain’s support for Backplane. Backplane essentially allows for on-page communication between multiple web apps on a website, so that users do not need to log in twice to multiple apps on the same page. Log in to the website, and you’re automatically logged into all functionality on the site, even if it’s from a separate provider.

Regular bloggers on WordPress.com, who reach almost 400 million people and drive 3.8 billion pageviewss each month, will not have access to this new capability, Maiorana said.

“We have no immediate plans to bring this to all Worpress.com sites,” he told me. “But the technology foundation is in place if we ever wanted to do that.”

In addition, there is a Janrain plugin that offers similar functionality for free or non-VIP WordPress.com blogs, Maiorana said.

photo credit: ocean.flynn via photopin cc

Trying to implement pagination for a specific category ( WORDPRESS )

I implemented a custom post type for a discography. I managed to edit my template's loop, so it shows all the posts with the "Track" type, but now the pagination is not working anymore.

This is the code in the loop :

<?php
$args = array( 'post_type' => 'Track', 'posts_per_page' => 5);
     $loop = new WP_Query( $args );

while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post();
?>

//HERE COMES MY HTML STUFF


<?php    endwhile;?>
<?php fuse_pagenavi(); ?>

And this is the code for my fuse_pagenavi() :

<?php
function fuse_pagenavi($pages = '', $range = 4)
{
     $showitems = ($range * 2)+1;
     global $paged;
     if(empty($paged)) $paged = 1;

     if($pages == '')
     {
         global $wp_query;
         $pages = $wp_query->max_num_pages;
         if(!$pages)
         {
             $pages = 1;
         }
     }  

     if(1 != $pages)
     {
         echo "<div class=\"pagination\"><span class=\"pageof\">Page ".$paged." of ".$pages."</span>";
         if($paged > 2 && $paged > $range+1 && $showitems < $pages) echo "<a href='".get_pagenum_link(1)."'>&laquo; First</a>";
         if($paged > 1 && $showitems < $pages) echo "<a href='".get_pagenum_link($paged - 1)."'>&lsaquo; Previous</a>";

         for ($i=1; $i <= $pages; $i++)
         {
             if (1 != $pages &&( !($i >= $paged+$range+1 || $i <= $paged-$range-1) || $pages <= $showitems ))
             {
                 echo ($paged == $i)? "<span class=\"current\">".$i."</span>":"<a href='".get_pagenum_link($i)."' class=\"inactive\">".$i."</a>";
             }
         }

         if ($paged < $pages && $showitems < $pages) echo "<a class=\"pageof\" href=\"".get_pagenum_link($paged + 1)."\">Next &rsaquo;</a>";
         if ($paged < $pages-1 &&  $paged+$range-1 < $pages && $showitems < $pages) echo "<a class=\"pageof\" href='".get_pagenum_link($pages)."'>Last &raquo;</a>";
         echo "</div>\n";
     }
}
?>

Thank you in advance !

Installing the Look-See Security plugin for WordPress

You can check your WordPress site security with the Look-See Security Scanner plugin. The WordPress Look-See Security Scanner plugin allows your WordPress website to be scanned for any vulnerabilities within the files and server configuration. This article will explain how to install the Look-See Security Scanner plugin and how to scan your WordPress site.

Steps to set up the Look-See Security plugin

Log into the WordPress Dashboard.
Go to the Plugins, click Add New. Search the Look-See Security Scanner.
Click Install Now.
Click Activate Plugin.
Select Look-See Security Scanner in the tools section.
To get the scanner working, you will need to click Install Now.
Now you will see a confirmation that the Look-See scanner was installed.
Now you will see the Look-See Security Scanner Dashboard. In the Dashboard, Click Scan Now.
You will be presented with a File System scan that will show you where your WordPress my be compromised.
The Configuration analysis shows where your WordPress server configuration such as database prefix, sessions, inactive themes, and other security issues are found.

Source :-- INMOTION HOSTING

Monday, April 1, 2013

10 Things You Should Never Share On Social Media

Social media is all about transparency, sharing and being your organic authentic self.

Uh-huh.

Well there are some things you should probably just keep to yourself.

Here’s 10 of them:

#1 Your phone number

There are creepy, disturbed people out there on the Internet with ill intentions and bad manners. They are called telemarketers. Don’t feed the telemarketers. Especially after midnight. Sort of like Gremlins.

#2 Pictures of your credit card

Yep. People actually do this. I know you’re proud of your new Toronto Maple Leaf’s branded VISA card, but showing it off on Instagram is like posting Identity theft porn.

#3 Pictures of any bodily function

I know where you think I’m going with this one, but I’m not. I’m talking about potty training. This is one instance where “pics or it didn’t happen” needs to not apply.

#4 This

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

#5 An invitation to “please rob me”

Letting the 1/6 of the human population of this planet that is on Facebook know that you’re in Mexico this week while that brand new 60” TV that you posted about last week is home all alone is an invitation to “please rob me”.

#6 Vaguebooking

“Wondering why…” Me too. Un-follow.

#7 Your password

This one should be at the top of the no-brainer pile. If your password is the name of your cat who has his own Facebook account with 1,632 friends, then you either need to change your password or your cat.

#8 Anything that happened in Vegas

This is a rule for a reason.

#9 Your Klout score or any other social media stat

You’re clearly over compensating for something, which leads to the final thing you should never share on social media…

#10 A naked selfie

If you’re a A list celebrity taking nude pictures of your self in the bathroom with your iPhone for your PR firm to leak to the media that’s fine. Otherwise, not cool.

Got any more suggestions? Share them in the comments below!