WordPress Education

This article came through my email box recently. It’s from the informative website, tutzone.org.  I just couldn’t resist entering it here since I’ve not only actioned this advice myself for my blogs, but plan to use it on my clients’ sites as well. Thank you, tutzone, for another useful, recommended article.

When my blog was hacked, I realized that my directories were accessible to anyone, even bots, which is really a big loophole for security. As then the other person trying to hack in to your blog knows which plugins or what important files you have kept safe in your directories.

To avoid anyone access your installation folders or reveal loophole in security this simple hack comes in handy.

Note:  Do take backup of your .htaccess(hypertext access) file.

01.   Search for a file named .htaccess(hypertext access) in the webroot of your server (FTP) and can be easily edited using any text editor (like Notepad). Open it and add below code in it:

Options All -Indexes

02.   Save and you are done.

It is possible to tweak your Microsoft Windows operating system’s settings so that your Internet connection and your browser can be optimized giving an enhanced browsing speed.

Please note that any changes you make are directly associated with the registry settings; I therefore recommend that you do this in one uninterrupted sitting, possibly either making notes or taking screenshots at intervals if necessary.

1.     Click on START menu (bottom left-hand corner of screen).
2.     Click on RUN, and then type in “gpedit.msc”.  Click on ENTER.
3.     Click on ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES under COMPUTER CONFIGURATION.
4.     Click on NETWORK under ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES.
5.     Click on QOS PACKET SCHEDULERS under NETWORK.

Look at LIMIT RESERVABLE BANDWIDTH in the right-hand column. Under the STATE column (on the same row as and to the right of LIMIT  RESERVABLE BANDWIDTH) you should find the entry NOT CONFIGURED. This means that Windows operating system is still using the default settings, i.e. keeping 20% of the total bandwidth available for itself.

6.     Double-click on LIMIT RESERVABLE BANDWIDTH. In the window that opens up,  check the ENABLED option and reduce the percentage selector drop-down box to 0%.
7.     Click on APPLY to keep the newly tweaked settings.
8.     Click on OK.

Restart your computer; once you log in you should experience an enhanced browsing speed.

Bear in mind that this is only one tweak of many to enhance the Windows operating system, in this particular case it works on maximising your existing browsing speed.  Note that it doesn’t do magic and make the Mozilla Firefox browser any faster!

Yesterday I finally took the plunge and upgraded my current Internet Explorer browser version 6 (yes, 6!) to the latest version 8. The reason I at last did this upgrade was because I was coming across many sites (including Google Adsense) that were sating that they would soon no longer be supporting my current IE browser version, and also because IE seemed to be grinding down to a halt.  I do tend to use Mozilla FireFox for my blogs and associated work, but have always given preference to Microsoft products.

Today I found out that I couldn’t just click on the ‘Send and Receive’ within Outlook Express to access all my e-mail accounts in one go. I came back to my computer with my cup of decaff and found that none of my e-mails were coming through because they were stuck: a little box was prompting me for my Hotmail password, which I promptly typed in…. again and again and again. Since I have many different e-mail addresses for many different purposes, it is vital and time-effective for me to view all my incoming e-mails in one place, therefore the use of Outlook Express. (In another article I will write about the advantages of using Outlook Express over Microsoft Outlook).

I scoured the Internet for a solution and within seconds (using the speedy IE 8 browser) I came across the answer to my problem. The working and clear answer comes from the Windows Live site. If anyone else is experiencing that they can no longer use – send and receive – their Hotmail e-mails in Outlook Express, then the solution is below:

1.   In Outlook Express, on the Tools menu, click Accounts.

2.   Click Add, and then click Mail.

3.   Type your name, and then click Next.

4.   Type your full Hotmail e-mail address, and then click Next.

5.   Enter the following information, and then click Next:

• In the My incoming mail server is a list, click POP3.
• In the Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP, or HTTP) server box, type pop3.live.com
• In the Outgoing mail (SMTP) server box, type smtp.live.com

6.   Type the account name and the password for your Hotmail account. Clear the Remember password check box unless you’re the only person with access to the computer. Make sure that the Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) check box isn’t selected.

7.   Click Next, and then click Finish.

8.   In the Internet Accounts window, click the Mail tab, click the Hotmail account that you added, and then click Properties.

9.   Click on the Servers tab and under ‘Outgoing Mail Servers’,  please check the “My server requires authentication” box.

10.   Click on the Settings button to the right of the “My server requires authentication” option.  You may need to turn on the “Use same settings as my incoming server” option unless you are using a special account setup requiring a different Account name and password.  Most people will need to use the default option of “Use same settings as my incoming server”.

11.   Click the Advanced tab, and under Server Port Numbers, enter the following information, and then click OK:

• In the Incoming mail (POP3) box, type 995.
• In the Outgoing mail (SMTP) box, type 25 or 587.
• Under both Outgoing mail (SMTP) and Incoming mail (POP3), select the This server requires a secure connection (SSL) check box.
• Under Delivery, select the Leave a copy of messages on server check box if you want to see your messages when you use Hotmail in a web browser, your mobile phone, or other e-mail programs. By default, Outlook Express will delete the messages from the Hotmail server when they are downloaded to your computer.

12.   Click OK.

If you need pictures to help you on your way with the above tutorial, then visit the original post at Windows Live: http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions/settings/archive/2009/02/18/how-to-add-your-e-mail-account-to-microsoft-outlook-express.aspx

I wrote a post a short while back on how to edit the Meta links in WordPress to remove the references to Entries RSS, Comments RSS, etc. That post has now become relevant only to WordPress versions prior to WordPress 2.8.

The solution now for all WordPress 2.8 versions is to edit the default_widgets.php file which is in the wp-includes folder. Open up the widgets.php file with Notepad (or whatever other software you would normally use to edit php files). Find the following lines in the widget.php file:

<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>” title=”<?php echo esc_attr(__(‘Syndicate this site using RSS 2.0′)); ?>”><?php _e(‘Entries <abbr title=”Really Simple Syndication”>RSS</abbr>’); ?></a></li>
<li><a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘comments_rss2_url’); ?>” title=”<?php echo esc_attr(__(‘The latest comments to all posts in RSS’)); ?>”><?php _e(‘Comments <abbr title=”Really Simple Syndication”>RSS</abbr>’); ?></a></li>

And delete them. Afterwards make sure that you save this edited widgets.php file, and upload it into the wp-includes folder overwriting the original file. Note that the above example is shown only to remove the references to the Entries RSS and Comments RSS. If you want to also remove the reference to WordPress.Org, then you must also delete the following line:

<li><a href=”http://wordpress.org/” title=”<?php echo esc_attr(__(‘Powered by WordPress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.’)); ?>”>WordPress.org</a></li>

Sometimes you might notice that you’re browsing the Internet or, say, in the middle of doing a PowerPoint presentation or compiling a spreadsheet, and….. your PC has slowed down so much that you become frustrated. This can happen because memory usage increases and slows down the applications and processes on your PC. When this happens I used to re-start my PC, and go make a cup of coffee while I’m waiting for my PC to re-boot.

However, I found this tip on one of the forums I visit regularly. You can re-start your PC with just one click in virtually 3-4 seconds, following these simple instructions.

1. Right click on an empty area your desktop and select New, Shortcut.
2. In the box,  type the following text:   %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
3. Press Next.
4. Save this Shortcut with a name, e.g. “Restart-Hack”.
5. Press Finish.

And now….. whenever your computer starts slowing down, close all applications and double-click on this desktop shortcut  to get your computer running at a normal pace again.

Please note that on some occasions your PC might have slowed down also if your antivirus software is actively doing a full scheduled scan. If this is the case, you will be able to see that this is happening because your antivirus programme will have informed you that a scan is now live. If you are in the middle of something important that needs to be done quickly you can always pause the scan – or even stop it – whilst you finish your work.

Unfortunately the latest WordPress version 2.8 is not for me. I upgraded it on one of my working blogs, and I have to say that it appeared to happen quite fast and smoothly. However, I then found that a large chunk of my Dashboard had disappeared and refused to resurface. Normally this can happen if a plugin interferes with the main WordPress core files, and the solution is to either deactivate the offending plugin or find an older version of it.
Continue reading WordPress 2.8 is available

I recently had to research how to protect my own weblogs and those of my clients after one got badly hacked.

To protect my weblogs I have ended up installing even more plugins than I had before. I’m not keen on doing this, since invariably there crops up a plugin that one installs that all of a sudden makes the simplest action no longer possible. For example, I recently tried to help a friend out who was having problems with his polls plugin. I did some research and ultimately, after testing the WP-Polls plugin on one of my sites,  suggested he tried it. I left the WP-Polls plugin on my site, but found that I was unable to insert a hard break (a line) in between my photos in a post. This was a bit of a disaster since this site is a photo gallery site. I tried all sorts of options – including the html route which I prefer – all to no avail. Suddenly my WordPress photo gallery site decided that it no longer liked paragraphs, nor did it want to display my photos neatly with a line in between each of the series of photos. I knew this was due to the WP-Polls plugin because it’s the only major back-end change I have made in the last few days. At some point I will probably uninstall the WP-Polls plugin, but for the time being I might make use of it.  To make the page break reappear I had to install – yet another plugin – the TinyMCE Advanced plugin.
Continue reading How to safeguard your WordPress blog

My idea of installing two lots of separate WordPress installations on my server so that Helloo ! and Shoot! had their own separate identities and their own databases did NOTwork as perfectly as I thought it would!

Both weblogs functioned fine. But then I discovered that I could not claim the Shoot ! blog in MyBlogLog nor in Technorati. This meant that there were audiences that I could not target, and who might never see my photo gallery blog.

I playing around with moving the Helloo ! WordPress installation files away from the root directory into a sub-directory, and changing settings in the database – following helpful video instructions from EduChalk.org. But even with this method, both blogs continued to look as if they were working independently, but Shoot ! could still not be recognised by MyBlogLog nor Technorati.
Continue reading Update on choosing between WordPress and WordPress MU